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Head teachers have voted for a boycott of this year's Sats tests due to be taken by 11-year-olds in England in a few weeks' time.The results of a ballot by the National Association of Head Teachers and some members of the National Union of Teachers have just been announced.
Together, the two unions represent heads in about 80% of England's 17,000 primary schools.
These national tests, in maths and English, are only taken in England.
However, it is not yet definite that the unions will go ahead with the action.
Turnout was just under 50% among NAHT members and nearly 34% for the NUT.
Among the NAHT, 61.3% of those who voted backed a boycott.
At the NUT, 74.9% of those who voted did so.
A toal of 24,699 people were balloted.
The executive leaders of the unions will meet separately next week to take their final decisions.
League tables
The unions say the tests are bad for children's education - because teachers are forced to "teach to the test" and concentrate so much on the "three Rs" that other subjects are squeezed out of the curriculum.
They are also deeply opposed to the league tables drawn up from the results of the tests.
The unions insist any boycott would be industrial action and would not amount to a strike.
The aim, they say, would be to "frustrate the administration of the tests".
What this would mean is that head teachers and their deputies - who generally stage the tests - would not open the packets of test papers delivered to their schools.
All the political parties have urged the unions not to go ahead with their threatened boycott of the Sats, which are due to take place over a few days from May 10.
Hundreds of thousands of 11-year-olds in England are expecting to sit the tests next month.
Siobhan Freegard, co-founder of Netmums, said most parents thought Sats were "not a good thing" - but it was probably too late to stop them going ahead now.
The unions want the Sats to be replaced with teacher assessment.
Teachers are assessing their pupils all the time - measuring what they can do and saying which level they are working at.
In England, they already have to report their assessments of children in the last year of primary school to the government.
This year, for the first time, those assessments will be published alongside schools' Sats results.
This change came about after talks between the government and union leaders and ministers had hoped this might have been enough to head off a boycott.
But the NAHT and the NUT had passed motions at their annual conferences last year to ballot on a boycott if the government did not agree to abolish the tests.This article is from the BBC News website. ? British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.