Primary head teachers to boycott SATs

80% of head teachers from 17,000 primary schools will not administer tests in Maths or English, with some members were willing to take industrial action.

Head teachers reportedly feel that the SATs tests are 'misused':

"...to compile meaningless league tables, which only serve to humiliate and demean children."

Huw Thomas, head of Emmaus Catholic and Church of England Primary School in Sheffield, and an NUT member, is however reluctant to carry out the boycott as he claims it would be misleading:

"Tthere was no way I was going to send children off with practice papers for the holidays and then give them the message that they might not be doing them."

General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Christine Blower, argues that the SATs week should be converted into a more productive and benifical ‘creative week'.

The exams are due to be sat by 600,000 children in pupil's last year of primary school between May 10 and May 13. With Britain’s biggest teaching unions confirmed in the boycott, league tables and assessment regimes are to be thrown into chaos.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls is urging those who voted for the action to think hard before disrupting children’s learning; arguing that such a boycott will not only confuse and inconvenience parents but damage the profession’s reputation.