Creative boycott

Following my posting on the test boycott, I have received the following interesting email from an East London primary schoolteacher explaining the approach of one school to the boycott:

You might be interested to hear how the SATs 'boycott' is being interpreted in our school. I wonder how many other schools are following a similar approach? Our Year 6 will be sitting SATs tests under full exam conditions. But they will be the 2009 tests, not this year's' The raw results won't be reported to the borough, but they will be used - informed and modified, where appropriate, by teacher assessment - to give parents an overall level which the school thinks the child has reached at the end of primary school. If the borough asks, I imagine the same overall level will be reported to them. I think this is a sensible response to the situation we find ourselves in. I for one don't have a problem with SATs. The powers that be at my school have a similar view. The classroom reality is that we've been building the kids up towards the exams all year, and we can't tell them now: 'Sorry, all that work's been wasted. We won't be doing SATs.' Colleagues say 'It's the league tables we object to.' I happen to think that SATs should continue - though my experience, with children now beginning secondary school, is that secondary schools largely discount them. From a professional point of view, I think teachers are in severe danger of landing themselves with something far, far worse, in terms of workload, if APP is to become the alternative.