SATS exams should be replaced with multiple choice tests, a new report published has concluded.

The move would provide a “far more accurate” picture of how well pupils and schools are performing than the existing essaybased testing system, it says.

Sats tests in the core subjects of English, maths and science are taken by 11-year-olds in their final year at primary school.

Similar tests for 14-year-olds were scrapped by schools secretary Ed Balls in October, following last summer’s Sats fiasco.

The new report, by centre-right think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies, argues that there is an underlying problem with openended essay questions and it is not realistic to expect examiners to accurately mark essays written by 600,000 11-year-olds.

It says that “repeated failures” in exam marking in previous years has “undermined the validity and reputation” of the external exams.

Last summer more than a million schoolchildren were left waiting for marks after a series of blunders including a failure to train markers on time.

It later emerged that former head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) Ken Boston has warned Mr Balls that there is “no guarantee” that pupils will not see a repeat of the delays again this year.

Introducing multiple choice questions would be cheaper and quicker to mark and be an accurate test of knowledge and ability, the report says.

It would also allow more accurate year-on-year comparisons on school performance, the report, Ticking the Right Boxes, says.

Report author Tom Burkard said: “You can get a lot of information on how pupils are doing and you can do it in a way that is far less stress for teachers and pupils.

“Sats are getting attacked from every angle right now.

“As testing knowledge goes they’re a joke.”

The report says Sats are intended to test subject knowledge as well as critical thinking skills. It highlights one example of a question which asked pupils to continue writing a script in which a child is convincing his parents he should be allowed to stay up late.

Mr Burkard said: “What educational value that has is mystifying to me.”

He says that the current tests do not accurately test pupils’ writing skills.

“Pupils lose very few points for writing absolute rubbish. Because of the way markers are instructed to mark, as long as someone has written something that can be construed as an answer they can get the question right.

“There is no incentive under the current system to teach good writing skills.”

The report says multiple choice tests are 12 times more efficient in terms of the time taken to sit a test and more than 7,000 times more efficient to mark.

It says: “Using multiple-choice exams will also end the annual debate about rising standards and dumbing down.

“Individual tests of equivalent weight can be created with tests created by random selection from a large bank of graded questions.

“Providing that the bank is big enough, it becomes impossible to ‘teach the test’ without teaching the relevant skill, knowledge and concepts.”

Mr Burkard concedes that replacing essay questions with multiple choice will not immediately help children with writing, but the report says it will “eliminate a lot of counterproductive activity” in and out of the classroom and allow the introduction of teaching that will improve basic literacy skills.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: “Sats examinations are designed to assess the depth and breadth of pupils’ learning in key subjects and there are areas of learning which it would be difficult to capture through multiple choice tests.

“If this proposal were to be taken up, teachers would rightly have the suspicion that it was purely as a money saving exercise.

“They would have cause to question the educational value which could be derived from a tickbox form of assessment.”