Lewisham NUT
(personal capacity) THE NUT's three to one vote to do the SATs marked the end of one phase in the antiSATs campaign.
The magnificent response by parents teachers and governors to demonstrations and strike action around cuts opens the next.
The 4,000 strong demonstrations in Oxfordshire and the half day strike which schools shows Just now wrong the NUT's climbdown was.
The task of anti-SATs campaigners is now to build on the WELFARE STATE mass protest against cuts and expose the hypocrisy of the Tory government which has found £35million to spend on SATs while threatening ten thousand teaching jobs through cuts.
The Tories do not even provide all the money for SATs. Local authorities which want schools to do the SATs must match the government's contribution from their own overstretched resources.
Not one penny should be directed to the SATs away from services which benefit children's education.
At school level teachers and parents should also take up the demand that none of the school's ordinary budget is used to do the SATS.
Supply cover needed for classroom's tasks should be additional to that required for ordinary teacher absence. Special needs support directed to SATs classes should be extra to that normally provided.
The full work load implications of the SATs must be drawn out and excess workload fought at school level as much as possible.
The NUT national executive has directed that problems over closed 270 "excessive workload" are directed to nationally controlled regional offices. In this way it hopes to dissipate teachers' attempts to show that any work to do with the SATs is excessive and so to make teachers do the tests.
In schools where heads and governors undertake not to victimise teachers, or in which science, maths and English teachers feel confident and supported, it may then be possible to boycott the tests completely.
Above all the campaign against SATS needs to be taken forward through a renewed turn to campaigning amongst parents. This will highlight how unsound the tests are and the way the Tories plan to use them as an eleven-plus.
Parents Against the SATs is calling on parents to withdraw their children from this years tests.
NUT activists need to connect Easter's annual conference to a renewal of the boycott when Shephard's review doe not produce substantial changes in tests or league tables.
Anti-SATs activists need to use the groundswell of anti-cuts anger to link the SATs to the overall Tory offensive against state education.