WHILE teachers campaigning against the Standard Assessment Tests in schools may win some support from East Lancashire parents over claims that they put

undue pressure on both them and their pupils, they are unlikely to get mass backing for them to be abolished altogether.

And the bid in Lancashire by the largest teaching union, the NUT, to have SATS replaced by a system that relies on teachers' assessments alone -- currently being promoted by efforts to get school governors and heads to

vote against the tests -- is sure not to find favour with parents whom they hope will be roped into their protest.

For while many parents agree that the tests and associated performance tables have faults -- not just as a source of teacher and pupil stress, but also their leading to a considerable amount of school time being devoted to chasing SATS success -- they do also value them as a measure, however crude, of how well their children are taught and how their schools compare with others.

It may be that the tests and tables need to be refined to give a broader picture of schools' achievements -- allowing for such things as the social and economic conditions among their intake and demonstrating not just pupils' pass rates, but also improvements -- but junking them altogether would scrap a powerful stimulus to do well and make bad teachers

unaccountable for poor performance.