Teachers in boycott threat

Teachers are planning to boycott Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) in schools in an attempt to force the Government to abolish them.

Joint action is proposed by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the National Association of Head Teachers against the controversial exams taken by seven and 11-year-olds.

Key Stage 3 tests sat by 14-year-olds have already been scrapped after a marking fiasco last summer which saw millions of pupils receive their results late or not at all.

Christine Blower, Acting General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "Primary schools' patience in enduring the damage caused by the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 tests has been stretched to the limit and beyond. It is particularly unfair and unjust that the Government wants primary schools to continue with the very tests that it has decided to drop in secondary schools. Our deadline for the end of SATs of 2010 is reasonable and our alternative is one which will enhance teaching and learning. Above all else, the Government needs to understand that this year's National Curriculum tests will be the last."

Mick Brookes, General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "Having made the educational and professional case for the abolition of assessment arrangements in Year 6, we have now imposed a timeline. We feel it is unconscionable that we should simply stand by and allow the educational experience of children to be blighted and for colleagues to be humiliated and demeaned on an annual basis by the publication of league tables."