A MASS ‘kids strike’ takes place today as the hated SATs exams are boycotted by more than 30,000 parents and their children.
Parents are taking their children out of school today because they have had enough of the continuous testing and re-testing of their children. The system has been widely criticised as taking education back to the Victorian era.
Teachers say that the SATs exams have caused ‘chaos’, and that the situation has got so bad that schools have become nothing more than ‘exam factories’. SATs (Standard Assessment Tests) are taken by children aged six or seven in Year Two and then again in Year Six, aged 10 or 11, before a third set in Year Nine aged 13 or 14.
Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: ‘The education secretary appears to be oblivious to the confusion and chaos caused by the current assessment regime in primary schools and the impact this is having on teachers, parents and children.
‘Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs are an unreliable method of assessing either a school or a child’s performance. They are producing a situation in which our youngest pupils are being subjected to age-inappropriate expectations.
‘This is making children stressed, and switching them off from school – many are telling their parents that they feel as if they are failures. This is an unacceptable way to be educating children, especially those under the age of 11.
‘We need to stop this exam factory approach. We need excitement and high self-esteem in our classrooms, not this stultifying atmosphere of tests, booster classes and booster breakfast lessons. It is quite clear that parents want to see an end to this madness.’
The Let Our Kids Be Kids group launched the campaign for parents to boycott the SATs. The campaign has caught on like wildfire. In an open letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, Let Our Kids Be Kids wrote: ‘Please take a long, hard look at this.
‘Do you want your legacy to be the confident cancellation of unneeded and unnecessary SATs, showing you are listening to your electorate and the teachers you claim to support . . .
‘. . .or the overseeing of a shambolic testing regime desperately unwanted by millions of people to the point that this country saw its first open parent revolt? You have the power to stop these tests. NOW. Our children, our teachers and our schools deserve better than this.’
Parents are keeping their children off school for ‘a day of educational fun instead’. By Monday, a petition on the 38 Degrees website backing the plan to keep children at home had gained over 31,000 signatures.
At least 270 events supporting the boycott take place today across the country.
A former headteacher, Jo Scrimgeour who lives in Truro, Cornwall, is taking part in today’s boycott. She said: ‘Because I’m an ex-teacher and an ex-headteacher, and with two boys at primary school, I’ve seen both sides of what these tests are doing.
‘With the new curriculum, there’s been an enormous narrowing. This year, schools are having to spend huge amounts of time on spelling, punctuation and grammar particularly. There just isn’t time for all sorts of other things.
‘My son, in year one, is coming home with spelling lists and is only doing Physical Education (PE) once a week, but when I started teaching it was very different.’ Today, instead of sitting the tests, Scrimgeour’s sons will go to the woods in Truro, with a group of other pupils and their parents. That’s what I want my sons to be doing, playing in the mud and finding mini-beasts, not underlining adverbs,’ she said.
