Leaders of the nation's head teachers have outlined the direction they think the education system should take in regard to the system for measuring pupils' performance.

The current SATs system, which has seen parents told the 'level' their children are performing at, comes to an end in September this year after the government decided it was too vague in its assessment and difficult for parents to understand.

Schools have been told they can take the lead in designing their own assessment systems, built to meet the needs of pupils, teachers and parents.

As such, the National Association of Head Teachers has published its efforts after a commission was set up solely for this important task.

It found that heads should be the ones who take ownership of the system in a bid to stop fragmentation.

Russell Hobby, the union's general secretary, said: "We can keep what was good about our previous system of assessment and address its flaws.

"The commission has taken a great deal of evidence, thought deeply about what might work and proposed a set of principles that can ensure consistency without strait-jacketing schools."

However, the National Association of Head Teachers group deemed that levels should continued to be used, at least in the short term. Other conclusions state pupils need to be judged against objective criteria and not ranked against each other - an idea mooted by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg last year.

Education secretary Michael Gove said the report from the commission offers practical and helpful guidance to schools and encourages them to embrace the autonomy that will allow them to meet the needs of students and offer more useful information to parents.

Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said people in primary teaching jobs are concerned they will spend more time devising assessment schemes that will ultimately risk inconsistency and waste money.