YOUNG David is an epileptic and was so ill last week he shouldn't have been at school. But he had National Curriculum tests to sit.

His headteacher said the 11-year-old -- who is a pupil at a Blackburn primary -- insisted he had to get to his class and he managed to complete the exams even though he had been desperately poorly through the night.

"He really shouldn't have been in but he was worried about missing the tests. We had to get him home by car as soon as the exam finished," the head added.

Children like David are the most tested and reported on in Europe, and across East Lancashire junior school pupils were last week swotting and sweating through another round of standard attainment exams.

Brian Peacock, who is secretary of the Blackburn with Darwen branch of the National Union of Teachers and a local head, said: "Pupils, even at primary level, are becoming increasingly stressed.

"What are we doing to our children? We're certainly not educating them."

National Curriculum tests were introduced in 1988, and, Mr Peacock said, they have increasingly come to dominate children's education. "Most teachers see them as unhelpful. They don't help pupils to learn and they don't help teachers to teach. They're just bad for the children," he added.

"We're no longer testing the valuable; we're being asked to value to testable."

And he said many other heads had reported to him stories of stressed-out children as young as seven who were worried about what they saw as an approaching ordeal. "Many are crying in class. It's tragic," Mr Peacock said.

End of Key Stage tests are taken by thousands of youngsters aged seven, 11 and 14 each year in East Lancashire. And by the time they get to 18 students will have taken up to 105 national exams.

Mr Peacock said: "These tests are set at national level and have no bearing on the needs of individual schools and pupils. The results are published in annual performance tables, so teachers are under great pressure to 'teach to the test.' "

Instead, they would be better employed using their own assessments and tests regularly to assess pupils' progress and needs, he added.

"Teachers should test so they can report to parents on their children's progress.

"These tests have become the ends instead of the means."

There is evidence of rising parental anxiety, too, as commercially-produced revision guides for guardian move into the top 10 non-fiction book charts.

Mr Peacock said: "Many of our children are becoming very stressed by the tests, losing confidence -- and dreading school."