Last week in The TES a headteacher argued against the Sats boycott because it was not “unreasonable” to test children after four years of education (“Heads ramp up pressure and back Sats boycott”, December 4). This misses the point. I am not aware of any head who thinks testing children is unreasonable. The issue is how much the original purpose of Sats has been hijacked, and how they have ceased to be about individual progress and become a method for forcing compliance to the detriment of children’s learning.

Fran Bradshaw, Primary headteacher of the year, Whitehill Junior School, Hitchin, Hertfordshire.