Scottish Teachers threaten to boycott controversial tests

According to The Herald Scotland, teachers are threatening to boycott controversial classroom tests for primary and secondary school pupils.

This comes after the Scottish government brought forward plans for new standardised assessments for pupils in P1, P4, P7, and the third year of secondary school.

The new controversial tests have been introduced because the government does not trust that the assessments being used by councils currently provide sufficient national evidence progress.

Members of the EIS are also worried that the publication of data, which shows how well pupils are doing, will encourage unfair comparisons between different schools.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) union is soon to discuss whether its members should pull out of administering the assessments or reporting on their results.

A motion from the union’s East Renfrewshire local association calls on the annual general meeting of the EIS to oppose standardised testing “which the EIS determines as detrimental to learning and teaching in schools”.

It goes on to call on members in primary and secondary schools to be balloted on a boycott of the “administration and reporting of the test results”.