By Jaimie Kaffash
22 April 2010
Teachers in England have voted to boycott this year’s Standard Assessment Tests for primary school children.
The National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers will not take part in the Sats scheduled for May 11-13. The organisations emphasised that this was not a strike and schools would remain open.
The unions say that the tests, which are taken by pupils in Year Six, are overly bureaucratic and cost the taxpayer £23m a year. They add that the assessment results ‘are misused to compile meaningless league tables, which only serve to demean children, their teachers and their communities’. They add that they support assessments that ‘highlight what children can do rather than focusing on failure’.
Mick Brookes, general secretary of the NAHT, said: ‘The government missed the opportunity to reform the assessment for pupils in Key Stage 2 when they abolished the same tests in Key Stage 3 in 2008. We cannot continue to have our colleagues and their school communities in the primary sector disparaged on the basis of a flawed testing regime.’
Christine Blowers, his counterpart at the NUT, added that the action would give teachers and pupils the chance to innovate. ‘We are saying to schools that this is finally the opportunity to do the exciting things you always really wanted to be doing in the classroom. We can make sure Sats week is a really brilliant week, a creative week, which is what we would want every single week of the year to be.’
Schools Secretary Ed Balls criticised the decision. He said that the ‘majority of teachers do not back the action’, pointing out that two-thirds of the unions’ members did not vote in support. He added that teachers had ‘a professional and moral duty to put the best interests of pupils and parents first’.
‘The unions have been clear they’ve got no problem with testing, they just don't want to see the results being made public,’ he said. ‘We believe it is unacceptable to deny parents a full picture of the progress their child is making and information about what is going on inside their local schools. Schools should be fully accountable to the public and communities they serve.’
But Brookes said this distorted the argument. ‘This is a total misinterpretation of the ballot and [Balls] knows it,’ he told Public Finance. ‘Forty-seven per cent of our members voted and the outcome was 61.3 % were in favour of the action and neither he nor I know what the other 50% are thinking. It is a misunderstanding of how the election process works.
‘Parents have a right to know about their children’s progress at the end of every year group. Parents are quite happy with accurate teacher assessments in Year Four, Five, Seven and Eight, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Why is it only Year Six teachers in England that are not trusted to provide proper assessments?’
22 April 2010
Teachers in England have voted to boycott this year’s Standard Assessment Tests for primary school children.
The National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers will not take part in the Sats scheduled for May 11-13. The organisations emphasised that this was not a strike and schools would remain open.
The unions say that the tests, which are taken by pupils in Year Six, are overly bureaucratic and cost the taxpayer £23m a year. They add that the assessment results ‘are misused to compile meaningless league tables, which only serve to demean children, their teachers and their communities’. They add that they support assessments that ‘highlight what children can do rather than focusing on failure’.
Mick Brookes, general secretary of the NAHT, said: ‘The government missed the opportunity to reform the assessment for pupils in Key Stage 2 when they abolished the same tests in Key Stage 3 in 2008. We cannot continue to have our colleagues and their school communities in the primary sector disparaged on the basis of a flawed testing regime.’
Christine Blowers, his counterpart at the NUT, added that the action would give teachers and pupils the chance to innovate. ‘We are saying to schools that this is finally the opportunity to do the exciting things you always really wanted to be doing in the classroom. We can make sure Sats week is a really brilliant week, a creative week, which is what we would want every single week of the year to be.’
Schools Secretary Ed Balls criticised the decision. He said that the ‘majority of teachers do not back the action’, pointing out that two-thirds of the unions’ members did not vote in support. He added that teachers had ‘a professional and moral duty to put the best interests of pupils and parents first’.
‘The unions have been clear they’ve got no problem with testing, they just don't want to see the results being made public,’ he said. ‘We believe it is unacceptable to deny parents a full picture of the progress their child is making and information about what is going on inside their local schools. Schools should be fully accountable to the public and communities they serve.’
But Brookes said this distorted the argument. ‘This is a total misinterpretation of the ballot and [Balls] knows it,’ he told Public Finance. ‘Forty-seven per cent of our members voted and the outcome was 61.3 % were in favour of the action and neither he nor I know what the other 50% are thinking. It is a misunderstanding of how the election process works.
‘Parents have a right to know about their children’s progress at the end of every year group. Parents are quite happy with accurate teacher assessments in Year Four, Five, Seven and Eight, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Why is it only Year Six teachers in England that are not trusted to provide proper assessments?’
