Are the Key Stage Two Reading Tests becoming easier each year?

This article presents and discusses some new research on the National Curriculum Key Stage Two reading tests for years 1998, 1999 and 2000. The research task was to use the original categories designed and declared by the QCA in 1998 to analyse the reading tests in the two subsequent years in order to examine the reliability of the tests. The research shows that in 1999, and again in 2000 the reading tests were progressively easier for the children to answer. This was because the number of questions requiring higher‐order reading skills, particularly those of inference and deduction, has decreased each year, while the number of questions requiring the lower‐order skill of literal information retrieval has increased. In this way the author questions the QCA’s declared ‘rise in reading standards’ from 1998 onwards.