Australia’s biggest education union has decided to go ahead with its threatened boycott of next month’s national literacy and numeracy tests.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) represents teachers in public schools and the union’s national executive has voted for an immediate ban on teachers handing out the tests.

The Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard, is equally adamant the exam will take place and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the Government will not be intimidated.

Mr Rudd is all for national testing for literacy and numeracy and the publication of each school’s results on the Government’s My School website.

“Mums and dads right across Australia, schools right across the country want to see how their school is performing and how we lift the quality of the performance of each school,” he said.

“[It] doesn’t matter where you come from; small towns, large cities, state schools, non-government schools, people actually want to see the performance of their schools lifted.”

Students in years three, five, seven and nine are due to sit the tests next month, but some teachers are worried about how the results will be used.

Mr Rudd has dismissed their concerns that it will lead to the creation of simple league tables, ranking schools from best to worst.

“I don’t believe anyone should be fearful of transparency. We need to have a transparent system which is all about lifting the standards of our schools,” he said.

But the Government is on a collision course with the AEU.

AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos says the national executive has voted unanimously for a ban on the tests.

“The resolve is unwavering. This is a touchstone issue for the profession,” he said.

“We take our ethical and professional responsibility to our students and our school communities very seriously, and if the Government won’t act to protect students, well then clearly we will.

“In schools and in education we always celebrate success, but what we can’t do is reinforce failure.

“We’re talking about children as young as in year three, five, seven and nine. International research and evidence shows that league tables are damaging for students, damaging for schools.”

Parental supervision

And Mr Gavrielatos is still angry about the Government’s suggestion that parents could help supervise the test if some teachers will not.

“You would have seen today a number of parent organisations – Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria – have all come out and condemned that announcement,” he said.

“Ultimately it would be an extreme act by any Labor government to consider such action.”

Ms Gillard says the union has made the wrong decision and is appealing to teachers to ignore the order and administer the tests.

“I’ll be saying to teachers stay the course, stay with the national testing. I’m saying to the AEU it’s made the wrong decision,” she said.

“As Minister for Education I’m in the process of canvassing all options to ensure the national testing rolls out as scheduled.”

Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne says Ms Gillard must sit down and talk to the union.

“That’s what the Coalition is calling for. Her stubbornness in refusing to do so is placing the education system at risk of breaking down through division and disunity created by her,” he said.

Negotiate

President of the Federation of Parents and Citizens Association of NSW, Dianne Giblin, is also urging the union not to go ahead with the boycott.

“For us it will be very disappointing,” she said.

“We would not support the boycott of NAPLAN testing, but what we would like to see is the Government and the union starting to have conversations to resolve this issue.”

She says some parents have indicated they would be willing to supervise tests, but she says that would be inappropriate.

“This is a government responsibility and governments need to be assuring parents that they will find [the means for] the test to go ahead and they will negotiate with the unions to come to a satisfactory resolution for our kids.”

Chris Watt from the Independent Education Union says while it shares concerns about how the data will be used, the tests will go ahead in private schools.

“We, like the AEU, have some concerns about the presentation of data, but we’re hopeful at this stage that we can continue to be heard on that and work on getting some improvements,” he said.

But Mr Watt says the test results are valuable to private schools.

“Our members are saying to us the thing that they find most valuable in the NAPLAN tests is irrelevant to the My Schools website and that is that it’s being used as a diagnostic tool, and that’s what they want to continue to do it,” he said.