Parents staged the first ever “kids’ strike” on Tuesday (May 3) in the UK in protest at the “shambolic testing regime” of SATs.
Nearly 40,000 people have signed up in support of the action what parents claim is “over-testing” at the expense of children’s happiness.
Parents, heads and teachers are opposed to the Key Stage 1 testing for six and seven-year-olds, standards for which have been made tougher this year in an attempt to drive up standards,Sky News reported.
The ‘Let Our Kids Be Kids’ campaign, which is coordinating the kids’ strike, has written to UK Education Secretary Nicky Morgan calling for an “end to SATs now”.
The letter said: “Please take a long, hard look at this.
Do you want your legacy to be the confident cancellation of unneeded and unnecessary SATs, showing you are listening to your electorate and the teachers you claim to support ... or the overseeing of a shambolic testing regime desperately unwanted by millions of people to the point that this country saw its first open parent revolt?
“You have the power to stop these tests. Now. Our children, our teachers and our schools deserve better than this.”
The campaign says its petition has been signed by 37,486 parents.
The reception baseline test was ditched recently because experts found it was unfair.
The National Union of Teachers has also written to Morgan saying that scrapping those tests had not “lessened the dissatisfaction of teachers with an untrialled system whose effects seem, even now, not to have been grasped by those who have introduced it”.
Head teachers claimed the introduction of harder tests would lead to thousands of schools failing to make the grade.
