Teachers call for boycott as scrapped Sats carry on

TEACHERS are planning industrial action within weeks because hundreds of secondary schools are still running Sats even though ministers have abolished the discredited tests.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls announced that Sats for 14-year-olds would no longer be compulsory in the wake of last year's marking fiasco which delayed results for 1.2 million pupils.

But about three-quarters of state secondaries across England are still planning to run the tests in English, maths and science next month because they have had no time to devise alternative assessments. Up to 60,000 pupils in London could be affected. Members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers are calling for a boycott of Sats for 14-year-olds in schools where staff face the extra work of invigilating and marking hundreds of papers each.

Delegates at the ATL's annual conference blamed the situation on Mr Balls, who decided to abolish compulsory Sats half way through the school year.

Abdul Choudhury, representing the union's Tower Hamlets branch, said the minister's decision showed a "lack of understanding" of how schools plan their timetables, budgets and classes.

He said teacher assessments would be more accurate than Sats, which many staff are not trained to mark.