Call to boycott tests for four-year-olds

Militant teachers are today pressing for a boycott of assessments of four-year-olds, claiming the Government planned to use them to create yet more school league tables.

Children who start school at four or five are assessed by their teachers during their first year, the "foundation stage".

The system, introduced by the Government last year, means teachers must assess each child three times in the course of the year, using a nine-point scale in each of six headings to describe their social, emotional and educational development.

Teachers say the so-called foundation stage "profile" is massively bureaucratic and tells parents little they did not know about their own children.

But at the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers today, delegates claimed the "score" generated for each five or six-year-old child could also be used by the Government as the basis for league tables at age seven - measuring progress during the first full year of infant school.

Delegates urged the conference to back a motion demanding the Government drop the foundation stage profile. If it refuses, they want the union to ballot members to refuse to fill it in.

Judy Evans, a teacher at Norcot Infants' School in Reading, said: "We should be looking at children's strengths and building on what they can do, rather than emphasising what they can't. That is what this scoring mechanism does."