Gill Lee, officer Lewisham NUT, personal capacity
Teachers, parents and local activists paign against government's SATS tests, which blight the lives of school students and those who have to teach them.
Across the country local anti-SATs campaigners have been signing up parents anxious about the stress SATs cause their children. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has promised its members a survey of their views at the start of the autumn term leading to a ballot in October.
A militant campaign against the SATs would challenge a key part of New Labour's education strategy and has the potential to reinvigorate NUT associations across the country.
The SATs label children repeatedly as educational failures. The school curriculum is increasingly geared towards the tests. socialist Outlook Large amounts of pupils' learning time is actually spent revising and children are put under huge pressure to perform well -especially in inner city schools where league tables and the myth of 'parental choice' mean schools need good results to retain budget levels.
The SATs were introduced by the last Conservative Government as a central plank of their attack on comprehensive education. The SATs would, the Tories believed, prove comprehensives failed children while at the same time leading to competition between schools and fragmenting opposition to Tory policies.
They would also, when combined with league tables and Ofsted, enforce the teaching of a centralised national curriculum. Schools which performed badly in the tests were named, shamed and often closed down. This led to an increasingly polarised situation in which schools either did well, attracted more pupils and so bigger budgets; or did poorly, suffered falling rolls and reduced budgets.
New Labout continued with the SATs, League Tables and Ofsted. In so doing it has itself brought about the current situation in which ever greater numbers of school leavers leave without any GCSEs. SATS exclude children educationally by labelling them as failures.
ahe NUT's decision to begin with the SATs follows a unanimous vote at the NUT conference last Easter and comes in the run up to elections for NUT General Secretary. This will be a powerful lever in pushing members of the Broad Left (in fact, the right) of the union towards support for a ballot.
Achieving a vote for action against the SATs within the union is not, however, a foregone conclusion. SATs directly affect a minority of teachers: those teaching particuAST LONDON lar year groups in primary and English, Maths and Science in Secondary. While the KS3 SAT this year were bad enough in English to recruit almost every English teacher in the country to the anti-SATs cause, Science and Maths teachers are generally less hostile to the contents of those particular tests
But the major problem facing those B who wish to abolish the SATs
through industrial action is the lack of confidence of teachers in engaging in battle with a key plank of Labour Policy.
The campaign has to be on educational grounds - and yet this could quickly bring teachers into conflict with anti-union legisla| Stephen Hawk NU tion. The current leadership of the NUT has capitulated whenever such a battle ha been posed.
Local anti-SATs campaigns have a vital role to play. They can help NUT members feel confident enough to fight the SATs They can provide a voice for classroom assistants, parents and pupils who are fed up with the damaging efects of SATs
They should also be used to engage those influenced by the Labour Party in a debate about the damage done by Labour to comprehensive education.
The Socialist Alliance should work with NUT groups and to ensure that the national Stop the SATs Campaign is built as broad!! as possible.