COUNCIL boffins stepped into the breach when a national body failed to meet an exam deadline.

Primary schools across the borough carried out Key Stage 2 SAT (standard attainment task) tests for all 11-year-olds earlier in the school year.

But the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has failed to deliver complete test results to local schools.

The council's local education authority (LEA) quickly stepped in and has specially adapted computer programmes to ensure that individual pupils' results could be collated before the end of the school year.

The move means schools now avoid a massive workload of paperwork and will be able to give parents a full report of their children's progress before they leave school.

Councillor David Ryder, Bury's education and community services chairman, said: "We are far from happy with this situation. It has been caused by a breakdown at national level and this is not the first time problems of this nature have been experienced."

Legally, the results do not have to be delivered until September, but Coun Ryder said that without the results children would leave primary school without them, meaning high schools would not be able to plan properly for individual pupils' needs.

"By acting immediately we feel confident that we can solve the difficulties which, while not of our making, just cannot be ignored," he said.

"As an LEA we pride ourselves on the relationship we have built up with our schools," he added. "This is yet another example of just how successfully that relationship works."

Schools will have to supply the LEA with what information has been released in order for the collating work to be done.

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