Nearly half of schools in UK boycotting their national curriculum exams

[Hannah Bell]

As many as 300,000 11-year-olds will find their national curriculum tests cancelled this morning.

The estimate of the amount of disruption caused by a boycott of the tests - in maths and English - increased yesterday. Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that the number of schools backing the boycott ranged from 30 per cent to 75 per cent from local authority to local authority. Overall, about half of the 17,000 schools due to sit the tests are set to abandon them.

Ms Blower added that, if no agreement could be reached on reviewing the tests and scrapping exam league tables derived from them, the boycott could be repeated next year.

"We would have to consider that," she said. "The purpose of the boycott is to get rid of the SATs (national curriculum tests). If we had a different series of tests and a categorical agreement there would be no league tables, then obviously that would be different."

The NUT - along with the National Association of Head Teachers - has voted in favour of boycotting the tests because they believe the importance placed on them - with performance tables based on their results - has forced schools to teach to the tests at the expense of the broader curriculum.

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"League tables" = the school rankings such as the ones used in the US to help enforce the Wall-Street-approved "school reform" initiative.

Too bad US teachers don't do the same.

[Hannah Bell]

1. kik