By John Pickard, President of Central Essex NEU District (personal capacity)
Today, the National Education Union begins balloting its members in the Primary School sector over whether or not to boycott Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs tests. These tests, at the ages of 7 and 11, have skewed primary education for years and the case for their abolition on educational grounds is overwhelming.
The ballot is part of the union’s campaign to scrap the tests, but in order to be able to get over the arbitrary obstacles of the Tory Government’s anti-trade union legislation, we need to have not only a majority, but for more than half the membership to take part in the ballot. The union, therefore, is at this stage conducting a consultative ballot to gather members’ views on the issue. Even if members are opposed to a ban on SATs, it is important that they vote.
The NEU has correctly argued that the SATs tests are only one part of an education system that is obsessed with tables, targets and testing, the “three Ts”, and which have no educational or pedagogical value whatsoever. It is a system designed only as a means of fragmenting the education service, setting schools against each other, ultimately privatising education and, in the meantime, undermining the cohesion and solidarity of the education workforce. The main driver behind the completely intolerable work-load currently being imposed on all teachers is the chronic obsession of school managers with data, tables, targets and tests. Large numbers of schools are dominated by a management strategy that is based on bullying, harassment and intimidation of staff and much of this rests upon the regime of SATs, tables and targets that utterly dominates all school-level education.
Tests should be based on teachers’ professional judgement and expertise
Every single survey done by the NEU or by other education unions shows that teachers overwhelmingly oppose SATs tests. The NEU is also opposing the imposition of compulsory Phonics testing and Multiplication Tables testing on little children. Teachers are not opposed to tests. Testing and assessment has always been a part of the education system and they were there there long before the Education Reform Act that brought in SATs. But before SATs testing was managed by teachers using their professional expertise and judgement about what was age-appropriate and what was not. The current ‘high-stakes’ tests, far from “driving up standards”, are having a severely damaging effect on teaching and learning in schools – and that is the opinion not only of teachers and parents, but of the big majority of experts in the field of education.
This ballot gives us a great opportunity to demand real change in the way testing is done in schools and it should be seen by teachers as part of a general drive to improve their conditions of work and lighten an unsustainable workload. It is only an indicative ballot at this stage and it is being aimed only at primary teachers. It will be run through Survey Monkey from today, June 4, to July 2nd. Union members with a valid e-mail address will receive an email with a link and a unique voter ID. Those without an email address will receive a ballot paper by post, again with a unique voter ID. The ballot will include two questions: Do you support the union continuing to campaign for the abolition of SATs and league tables? and If the union balloted you in the next school year would you refuse to administer statutory tests and refuse to prepare children for them? Member should reply YES to both.
Districts must actively campaign for a YES result
Union Districts (what were formerly ‘branches’ or ‘associations’ under the old NUT structure) should make sure that they actively campaign to get the greatest possible turn-out in the vote. School reps should put up posters, discuss with other members and call special school meetings where this is possible. The primary sector suffers notoriously from intimidation and bullying of staff and probably the majority of primary schools do not even have a recognised union rep. Where that is the case districts must assist in the campaign among members.
Our district officers have organised a mail shot to go out to many members identified on the union database as primary members in our area. Committee members are organising a phone around, with a dozen or more members each, to speak to members in primary and to urge them to support the union in the ballot as well as to persuade work colleagues to do the same. In addition, we are using social media, including paid-for ‘boosts’ on Facebook, to reach out as far as possible to teachers in our area. These initiatives at local level need to be backed up by the union structures from top to bottom. The union nationally and regionally must put all its staff and other resources into the campaign to get past the government-imposed threshold on the ballot and ensure that a boycott ballot next academic year can be a success.
· Make sure you VOTE and urge all your primary colleagues to do the same
· Vote YES to support the union and end the system of toxic testing.
· Vote YES to start a fight-back against excessive workloads and the obsession with data, targets, tables and testing
June 4, 2019
