Teachers Plan to Boycott Tests

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Tension between the national teacher union and Labor governments will escalate into industrial warfare as teachers prepare to boycott national literacy and numeracy testing this year.

The Australian Education Union, which represents more than 180,000 teachers in public schools around the country, will put the recommendation to delegates at its annual federal conference in Melbourne today.

The president of the union, Angelo Gavrielatos, said the looming threat of school league tables [school rankings based on student test scores] had ''united the profession in a way not seen before in Australia''.

He said despite their stated opposition to league tables and the simplistic ranking and comparison of schools, state and federal governments had failed to prevent them.