The government's plans for students in KS2 and KS3 to be "tested when ready" mark an attempt further to embed instrumentalist views of education. "Testing-when-ready" is seen as an intensification of the harmful regime of testing, targets and League Tables which Mansell (2007) labels "hyper-accountability". Highlighting aspects of Mansell's book together with recent research into teacher-"cheating" and resistance to high stakes testing in the USA, this article concludes with a call for teachers here to safeguard their willingness to consider and understand the learning which tests don't see.