Tests regime blamed for holding back primaries across region

At least 400 Yorkshire schools will take part in a national boycott of the standard assessment tests (SATS) of 11-year-olds next week in a dispute over the damaging impact it has on the teaching profession.

The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT) is staging the action from May 10 after demanding that the Government scrap the current system.

The results from these English and maths tests are used to measure primary schools in annual league tables showing how many pupils have got to the minimum standard expected of 11-year-olds – known as level four.

Yorkshire has consistently had the poorest record of any region in England in these tables, with the latest results putting four councils in the region among the worst 20 in the country.

However union leaders say the system is hampering schools in the region which face the biggest challenges.

Ian Murch, the Bradford branch secretary of the NUT and national executive member, said: "It is important to make the distinction between this boycott and our general campaign against testing.

"We are against the tests because we believe they are damaging to children but this cannot be the basis for an industrial dispute.

"The boycott is because we think the tests are bad for teachers, headteachers and leadership groups in particular who are increasingly judged on their SATS results. We know colleagues who have lost their jobs, had nervous breakdowns or other mental illness as a result of the pressure that this system puts people under.

"A school can drop down 10 places in a league table with a difference in results which is statistically insignificant but which leaves schools being accused of failing. It has an enormously depressing affect on the job and it stops schools in difficult circumstances from being able to recruit staff because of the risk of failing in the league tables."

In the past week governing bodies have been drawn into the dispute after several Yorkshire councils wrote to them reminding them of their "statutory responsibility" to ensure the testing of 11-year-olds goes ahead. Education Leeds has revealed that it has had several enquiries from governing bodies about whether they could discipline headteachers who take part.

However Mr Murch said he was confident that tests would not take place in schools where the boycott was being held. He said: "Advice from local government employers is that governors should not be bringing in people other than the school's leadership team to administer these tests."

Stephen Watkins, the headteacher of Mill Field Primary in Leeds, which is taking part in the boycott, said: "If people were brought in from outside to administer the tests I would not let them into the school without a full Criminal Records Bureau check, a passport and a letter instructing me to let them in."

However an education campaigner has criticised the unions over the boycott. Nick Seaton, the chairman of the York-based Campaign for Real Education, said the testing regime should continue as it allowed people to hold schools to account.