Gordon Brown and his side kick Ed Balls both still support the national testing of 11-year-olds in England against expert advice and a teacher outcry.
Prime Minister Brown wrote in the Times Educational Supplement last week that the tests are just as important for public accountability as A-levels and GCSEs.
But exactly who is Mr Brown protecting? It he thinking of what's best for children and teachers or is he, as has been suggested, simply playing politics?
The sad truth is that while many parents from England, especially those from a private education or grammar school background, still regard the tests and the resulting league tables with high esteem he is unlikely to back down.
This week the head's union NAHT sent out letters to its members asking if they supported a boycott of next year’s Key Stage 2 Sats in England. The NUT, who have joined forces with the NAHT, also announced over 24,000 signatures of support from people from all walks of life has been collected. But there needs to greater mass protest to cause a U-turn.
For primary teachers in Wales, news of the Sats saga in England must be puzzling. How can two nations standing side by side think so differently?
Primary teachers in Wales have the flexibility to teach in a test free zone and there is no desire to bring back Sats.
But who is right? On the surface the hard evidence of crude exam results favours England.
Education Reporter was told of a tense meeting recently. Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the NAHT, had been summoned to a meeting with Mr Balls and his advisors.
Mr Brookes talked up Wales and its visionary move in abolishing KS2 Sats. Balls was said to reply: “But just look at their (Wales's) results in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2006.
Granted, at face value the Welsh performance of 15-year-olds in maths, science and reading was not good. In maths the UK was ranked 24 out of 57 developed countries, but Wales came in a below par 34.
Wales’s GCSE performance since 1999 has also been on a slippery slope compared to England.
However, Mr Brookes took a different perspective on reply.
He told the School's Secretary if you compared Wales’s performance in PISA with some of England’s poorest regions, and took out the affluent counties, Wales actually did better than all but one English region.
It is also to Wales’s credit that 11-year-olds in Wales outperformed their Sats counterparts in England last year.
This is not to excuse the disappointing outcomes that Wales has had since divorcing from Westminster in all but teachers’ pay and conditions, although it must be said Wales has improved year on year.
Amanda Hulme, chair of the assessment reform campaign in England, gives all credit to Wales for the nation's bold move in scrapping Sats.
She, along with Mr Brookes, also acknowledges the assessment system that replaced Sats in Wales was overly bureaucratic and work heavy for teachers.
But it is time Brown and Balls were less dismissive of Wales.
They also need to start listening and trusting their teachers or they might live to regret it. Sure, there will be the old school that still sees tests as the gold standard.
But these people miss the point.
Education is not about exam performance and crude league tables, but a way of life.
It’s about creating a spark in young people’s mind and engaging them in a voyage of discovery and lifelong learning from the cradle to the grave.
Wales is creating a generation of young people who will grow up to be independent thinkers with a well rounded education, the type of people who will be able to apply what they learn to everyday life - not just to tests.
Wales’s play-led Foundation Phase curriculum for under-7s is universally adored and its philosophy is supported by the findings of Robin Alexander’s Cambridge Primary Review.
That’s not to say all is rosy in the land of song and the nation does not have pressing educational challenges.
Raising Wales’s outcomes on the world stage is vital and the pressure is on but Wales now has the right education system to achieve that, if not the money.
And while England braces itself for yet another Sats fiasco, Brown and Balls could do a lot worse than learn a lesson or two from his nearest neighbours.
The big question for Brown and Balls will be if scrapping Sats for 11-year-olds will win or lose Labour votes in the ballot box next year.
Politics, not children’s futures, are sadly the lowest common denominator here.