The children's laureate, Michael Rosen, is a fierce critic of the Government's education policies. He's against testing – and wants pupils to be excited by literature again.

Andy Sharman talks to him in The Independent, Thursday 28 August

Michael Rosen, the children's laureate, can't help but feel a tinge of glee at the recent SATs fiasco. "There is a bit of schadenfreude, if you like," he says, "a bit of celebration at their misfortune" – meaning the misfortune of the Government; or the Department for Children, Schools and Families; or ETS; or head teachers; or advocates of testing. Take your pick, Rosen has multiple gripes with multiple people when it comes our education system.

The writer and broadcaster has for years been the patron of stressed-out children and an arch critic of formal testing for under-16s. His daughter Elsie, aged seven, has just completed her Key Stage 1 tests, which he says has given him an added sympathy for confused parents. "The teacher starts talking to me about various marks," he says in his north London rasp. "Now, I'm immersed in education but she started saying, 'level this' and 'attainment target that' and all the rest of it and I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I said, 'Well, how's Elsie getting on?' and we began to have a proper conversation and got a sense of where she was at."

Read the full piece at The Independent online.