23 April 2010
NSW Teachers Federation
The UK's National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the National Association
of Head Teachers (NAHT) executives have decided to boycott the national
Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) following a successful ballot of both
unions' leadership members. It is not strike action as schools will be
open and children will be taught.
SATs are misused to compile meaningless league tables which only serve
to humiliate and demean children, their teachers and their communities.
The NUT and NAHT are supportive of a system of assessment that
highlights what children can do rather than focussing on failure.
The UK has had national testing since 1991. Similar to Australia's
NAPLAN tests the data has been used by the media to create simplistic
league tables. After years of damage to public education the league
tables were scrapped in Wales and Northern Ireland in 2001. As the
former Director-General of the NSW Department of Education and
Training, Dr Ken Boston has said, the UK primary school curriculum has
become a "dry husk" as teachers focus on national testing.
NUT General Secretary Christine Blower said "I am very pleased that we
have reached this decision. Not only are we boycotting SATs but 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".
This article can be found on the Web at:
http://www.nswtf.org.au/media/latest_2010/20100423_UKnoSATs.html
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