Another school is possible!
Where next for teachers' action on
SATs?
Simon Bexley
This weekend saw a
conference in London hosted by the Anti SATS Alliance. Entitled ‘Another
School is Possible!’ the event was attended by around fifty, mostly
members of the NUT’s left groupings. Especially well represented were
the Socialist Teachers Alliance, and the SWP faction who have been
instrumental in organising the ASA. Up for discussion, the next phase in
the struggle between the Government and their least favourite teachers’
union. Round one seemed to have been won by the Government when, in
December insufficient numbers of members returned their ballots to meet
the union’s stringent criteria to activate industrial action. However,
of those who did reply, 85% supported boycotting the tests. The prospect
of a new kind of industrial dispute was averted, one in which workers
were to take action to support their oppressed sons and daughters. It
might have been legally awkward but we knew we could have carried it
through.
It feels as though
the opponents of our brutal and relentless testing regime won the
arguments long ago, it’s hard to find a primary teacher with a kind word
to say about the tests. Devolved bodies in Wales, Northern Ireland,
Jersey, The Isle of Man are all phasing them out, Scotland never had
them in the first place. Yet, still the Government insist that children
in England are put through SATs at 7, 11 & 14. Why? In three words,
performance related pay. New Labour’s ‘standards agenda’ requires an
ongoing effort to keep teachers in check through systems of performance
management. As minister David Reynolds was heard to say, without the
SATS, “who will control the teachers?” At the heart of this policy lies
the notion of measuring teachers’ output. This must be driven up by
setting teacher against teacher and school against school in their
efforts to achieve the SATs results which will see them scramble to the
top of the hated league tables. It’s all about cooking the books to
produce the right figures: half of all the appeals launched by
privatised school operator Ed-excel were to bring their schools’ SATs
results down, in order that they could look like they had
achieved relatively better GSCE scores in the new ‘value-added’ league
tables.
So, where do we go
from here? The conference heard from both teachers and leading academics
in the field, all urging the popularisation of alternatives to testing.
We need more rigorous research into the benefits of teacher assessment.
However, we can’t research our way out of this mess. As Richard Hatcher,
leading socialist educator from the University Central England put it,
we need research to generate alternatives, then we need to
take action to bring those alternatives about. Many practical
suggestions were put forward for campaigning strategies. In order to
‘reclaim assessment’ from the Government and its ‘test mania’ we need to
press home the message to parents regarding the damage inflicted by SATs
both on diversity in the curriculum, and on their children’s health and
wellbeing. We need to advise headteachers and parents on ways in which
they can circumscribe the law requiring them to ensure their children
attend school to take the tests. Currently, there is a culture of
intimidation and fear about stepping out of line, and the prospect of
fines, even imprisonment for those who do. Who says Stalinism’s dead!
What happens next
will depend in part upon the results of the NUT’s election for General
Secretary, currently underway, the result to be announced on June 28th.
Socialist Party candidate Martin Powell-Davis attended the Anti-SATs
conference and Socialist Teachers Alliance/Campaign for a Democratic
Fighting Union candidate Ian Murch sent a message of support. Both of
these left wingers are regarded as outsiders in the contest. However,
with so many pressing concerns for teachers looming, pensions and
workforce remodelling as well as the SATs issue, now is not the time to
start conciliating with the Government.
http://www.freewebs.com/nosats/
http://www.socialist-teacher.org/
June 2004
