National Curriculum: Union claims boycott victory

THE largest teachers' union yesterday claimed victory over the Government and said its boycott of tests for 14-year-olds in mathematics and science had been solid.

The National Union of Teachers is the only union still insisting on the boycott. Both the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers lifted boycotts after the Government agreed to slim down the national curriculum and testing.

Papers in maths and science were set yesterday and today, and the English paper, including Shakespeare, will be taken tomorrow.

The NUT said the Government was likely to get as much support as it did last year, when only 150 schools insisted pupils sat the tests. Some schools had decided to use the tests for their own purposes, but they would not be reporting the results. Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the NUT, said last night: 'It seems the boycott has been entirely successful. The Government's aim cannot be achieved.'

If schools fail to co-operate or conduct tests but refuse to forward the results to the Department for Education, it means national comparisons will be impossible; a huge embarrassment for John Patten, the Secretary of State for Education.

Mr Patten said yesterday: 'I greatly regret that one of the teacher unions has continued to boycott the tests. I cannot believe that boycotting could play any part in the modern 20th-century classroom.'

The National Co-ordinating Committee on Learning and Assessment (NCCLA), which represents more than 350 secondary schools, also thinks that little testing will have taken place.

David Martin, headteacher of Chenderit school in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and convenor of the committee, said: 'My impression from colleagues is that very little is going on . . . But even if the testing is done, I have heard of only a very few schools where they will be reporting the results.'

The second largest union, the NASUWT, said tests in most schools had gone ahead. 'The picture is not clear,' said a spokesman. 'Our feeling is that where schools have conducted the tests, they have been very sensitive, and not wanted to make a song and dance about it. They do not want divisions in the classroom.'