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Defending Teachers, Defending Education

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Martin attends Anti-SATS Alliance National Conference

On Saturday, June 12^th, Martin was the only one of the four General Secretary candidates to attend the national conference of the Anti SATs Alliance at Imperial College, London.

Teachers, parents, governors, Heads and academics attended and discussed a number of themes including:

The effect of SATS on pupil self-esteem and behaviour

How SATs results were going to be tightly linked to performance management and pay

The enormous cost of the SATS regime and how it unbalanced the curriculum

The unreliability of SATS results – and the need for more research on possible racial bias in testing (as had been exposed by studies of testing in the United States)

The need to develop the NUT Conference policy of looking at alternatives to the Foundation Stage profile and rebuilding a boycott at Key Stage One

Developing parental opposition to SATs and keeping up the public campaign

Looking at schools where there has been an attempt to develop alternative curricula, such as the "Rethinking Schools" initiatives in some US schools. (one idea that many British teachers would relate to is a principle set down for schools in Nebraska - that "teachers should be regarded as leaders of reform, not impediments to it" !)

The meeting ended on a positive note – taking up a theme that Martin had injected into the workshop discussion: the Union can win its battle to stop SATs and league tables damaging education by building support for action to boycott SATs once more.

The Anti-SATS Alliance’s work in researching the damage caused by SATs and developing alternative assessment methods can be crucial in that campaign. Next time we ballot, teachers needed to know not just what they were voting to boycott but also what kind of assessment they were going to put in place of SATs – methods that protected both children’s education and teachers’ workload.