School Gate: Should teachers boycott the tests?

Children should sit the national curriculum tests that teachers intend to boycott, respected education figures said yesterday.

Christine Gilbert, head of Ofsted, the schools regulator, suggested that it would be impossible to inspect primary schools fairly without the results of the tests taken by 11-year-olds.

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, a government adviser, said the tests, formerly known as Sats, were an important benchmark.

An expert group reporting today is expected to support the position of Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary. He is on a collision course with two unions, which plan to disrupt next year’s tests. Mr Balls asked experts to evaluate the issue after last year’s testing fiasco delayed results, and led to the eventual abolition of the tests for 14-year-olds.

While backing Mr Balls’s stance, the group will suggest concessions such as scrapping the tests for 11-year-olds in science, while keeping those in English and maths, and pressing ahead with the creation of school report cards. That could dilute the impact of primary school league tables, which are based on test results.

However, teachers have smelt blood and unions said last night that they would not be swayed. The National Union of Teachers, which has 250,000 members, and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), which represents most primary heads, voted recently to ballot members on taking action to disrupt tests.

If this goes ahead, teachers will refuse to give lessons on test material or to set the papers. They say the system traumatises pupils and results in the curriculum being narrow.

Mr Balls has said the current form of testing is not set in stone. But if the tests were abolished, they would be replaced with some other form of nationally regulated testing.

That would not appease many teachers, who are angered by schools being judged on academic achievement. Mick Brookes, the NAHT general secretary, said: “There’s little or no appetite for report cards with a letter on the front that label schools — it would be arbitrary and misleading.”

But Lord Sutherland said the tests should be reformed, not scrapped. “Parents want to know how their child is getting on,” he said. “Whether for good or ill, that’s a reality and we’d better learn to live with it.

“Only a national system can see whether or not a school is achieving at a comparable level to schools in similar areas.”

Ms Gilbert told MPs yesterday that abolishing the tests at 11 would make it very difficult for inspectors to do their jobs.

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