The National Education Union is to ballot its members on a potential SATs boycott next year after delegates at the union’s annual conference voted in favour of the action.
Following a heated debate in which different union factions clashed over whether a 2019-20 ballot is achievable within the time available, and after a re-run of the vote following complaints about how the voting process was run.
The motion commits the NEU’s executive to “ballot all primary members for a boycott of all high stakes, summative testing within primary schools for the academic year 2019-20”.
It follows votes in favour of ballots at the conferences of the National Union of Teachers and Association of Teachers and Lecturers, which have now merged to form the NEU, in 2017. Today, members expressed frustration that those votes did not result in a ballot.
Today, despite attempts to propose a survey of members before a formal ballot, NEU members voted to approve plans to ballot primary staff for a boycott in spring 2020.
It is about time that we recognised the mental damage we are doing to our children. There is no benefit to our children doing theses tests -they only serve to grade teachers and schools (in a way that damages them too) . They mean our kids don’t have the broad education they should have in primary. After SATS we need to look at the damage the narrow secondary curriculum is doing to everyone. GET THE PROFESSIONALS BACK IN CHARGE-TRUST TEACHERS!