excerpt from The Independent …

“May 10, 2010

Nearly half of schools to boycott SATs as teachers rebel

By Richard Garner, Education Editor

As many as 300,000 11-year-olds will find their national curriculum tests cancelled this morning …

The NUT – along with the National Association of Head Teachers – has voted in favour of boycotting the tests because they believe the importance placed on them – with performance tables based on their results – has forced schools to teach to the tests at the expense of the broader curriculum …

Meanwhile, at an anti-SATs rally in London‘s Jubilee Gardens yesterday, children’s authors revealed they would be going into schools to read poetry and tell stories to provide pupils with an alternative to the SATs.

The author Alan Gibbons said at the rally: “We will be conducting poetry sessions, reading books and doing story-telling activities – trying to show an alternative approach to SATs.”

More than 90 children’s authors and illustrators signed an open letter to the Government warning that the tests were switching pupils off reading because they concentrated on learning excerpts from books for the tests rather than reading the whole story.

Ms Blower told the rally: “We are standing up and saying we must get rid of the SATs and the league tables. Let’s make sure that every child has a great year unencumbered by ridiculous tests and make schools a SATs-free zone.”

Related articles:

• English Sats boycott ‘widespread’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Sats boycott prompts threat of legal challenge (telegraph.co.uk)
• Hundreds of primaries to boycott Sats (guardian.co.uk)
• Pupils to miss Sats in mass exam boycott (telegraph.co.uk)
• Sats boycott: headteachers ‘may have pay docked’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Q&A: Sats (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Heads ‘under pressure’ over Sats (news.bbc.co.uk)
• English Sats boycott ‘widespread’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Children’s authors back teachers’ Sats boycott (guardian.co.uk)
• Schools Prepare To Boycott Sats Tests (news.sky.com)