The most tested children in the world.....can you opt out?

[chocolatequeen]

There was a piece about this on the BBC yesterday, re the unveiling of the latest 10 year education plans. It said that british kids are the most tested in the world. It set me thinking, is it possible to refuse to allow your child to be tested? We have one son in Reception, have been living abroad for all of his life so have no idea how gruelling this testing is, or how relevant and useful to their education, but what is there to stop parents from insisting their children do not participate?

Do home schooled children have to complete the same tests?

After next summer we may not have to worry about KS1 again.
Our LEA (East Herts) is piloting teacher assesment instead of tests, they will only have to produce one piece of work which will be their report of the day trip they have in that term.
I am very happy about this

Hopefully a similar thing will happen for KS2, before or as DS gets there

I think it's amazing and rather depressing to see how much schools have managed to persuade parents to worry about SATs. Special coaching, for example. The scores only matter to the school!

We did, very briefly, have SATs in Scotland. However, the EIS (Educational Institute of Scotland - main teaching union) appealed to parents to boycott them. As a result, something like 80% of children failed to appear on the appointed days in the first year ... SATs vanished, and never came back.

Of course that may be related to the rather abysmal state of many Scottish schools.

Ah ha - problem solved. I've recently moved to Scotland - I didn't realise the SATs didn't exist up here (although I think I probably should have done). Phew! BTW, I thought Scottish schools were supposed to be pretty good, and generally better than English ones??