At a time when politicians are seen as deeply untrustworthy by many people in our society, for a senior politician to publish statistics and then ask the public to ignore them seems destined to go one way only. If the data related to the number of angels on the head of a pin, or the time it takes for the first peer in the House of Lords to doze off after lunch, things would not be so serious. However this story relates to the Sats tests due to be published today based on the hard work of our children. Perhaps more significantly they relate to the extent to which our Schools have managed to prepare our children for their tests. The reason why Nicky Morgan is asking us to ignore the tests is because since last year the tests have been overhauled and made much harder than before. This means that most schools will see a drop in their results, if Ms Morgan is right to issue her warning. The Headteachers argued for the data not to be published this year, but instead to wait till next year and publish the two years results together. However the DfE have gone ahead anyway and now our children and their teachers will be placed at the mercy of journalists and parents as all of society try to makes sense of something that many of us argued was never really suited to be made public in the first place. It is shameful that the best she can do is publish the data and then ask us to ignore it, as if that will happen or would make any sense.