Education Minister, Ed Balls, still refuses to apologise for the SATS test cock-up - or even admit that the system is flawed.
Yet beyond Westminster, many now recognise that there is something profoundly wrong with State-run SATS testing. Teachers don't like being drawn into "teaching to the test". Parents find that State tests tell them remarkably little about the progress their child has made.
Then, when it all goes horribly wrong, the Minister blames the quango, who in turn passes the buck.
So why have State-run testing at all?
As a member of the Education Select comittee, I produced a recent minority report arguing against government-run testing in the first place - precisely because I said it would lead to the sort of mess we now have.
Does a Minister oversee the system to assess would-be vets or architects? No. Is an executive agency of government used to set music grades? Of course not. Can leftist quango chiefs tinker with the content of the International Baccalaureate? Never.
And guess what? It all works just fine. Such tests tell us what level of ability students have attained. There is no traditional summer angst about grade inflation. You never get the catastrophic SATS cock-ups we got this year.
So why not leave exams and testings to the schools themselves, and to universities, employers and professional bodies? It'd give us rigorous testing that meant something - and without the incompetence.
It took a while, but a couple of decades back people started to see that our economy didn't need to be run by people like Ed Balls or quango chief, Ken Boston. Its time to extend the same logic to testing.
