raymond.brown@cambridge-news.co.uk
TEACHERS, parents and children teamed up in a bid to end Sat tests in Cambridge primary schools.
The group of protesters was outside The Grafton collecting signatures for a petition against the exams.
They were also publicising a meeting, due to be held last night at Long Road Sixth Form College to step up the campaign, at which children’s author Alan Gibbons and John Bangs, of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), discussed the alternatives.
The NUT and the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) are engaged in a joint campaign against the “tyranny of testing and league tables”.
In the next phase of the campaign both unions are asking their members to vote on Sats in surveys. The NUT’s indicative ballot will run until November 30.
Both unions want to use this process for one final attempt to persuade the Government to drop the tests, a union spokesman said.
The unions have threatened to ask members to boycott Sats in 2010 if the Government fails to back down.
“It is time to rescue our children from a Gradgrindian experience of school.”
The teaching unions are stepping up the campaign against Sat tests that still remain in English primary schools.
A spokesman said: “We want the Government to pull this year’s unpopular tests in favour of teacher-led assessment.
“Both unions are surveying their members in anticipation of a strike ballot in the new year.
“The campaign against Sats is supported by a number of high-profile children’s authors and is backed up by overwhelming evidence from the Cambridge primary review.”
Entries (RSS)