Australian public school teachers voted on Tuesday to boycott national literacy and numeracy tests unless the government changes its plans to publish the results online.
Australian Education Minister Julia Gillard is refusing to back away from the government's plans and has not ruled out taking action against the union under industrial relations laws if it bans the tests.
At the Australian Education Union's annual federal conference, delegates voted not to cooperate with implementing the next round of NAPLAN tests in May.
The Australian federal government wants to publish the results on its My Schools website live from next week in order to rank the performance of schools around the country.
The union's federal President Angelo Gavrielatos said the boycott aims to protect disadvantaged students and schools from the "damaging effects" of the rankings.
"Schools in disadvantaged areas will be publicly branded as failing schools."
"That unfair branding has a damaging impact on students, teachers and parents and makes the job of addressing disadvantage much harder." he said.
However, Gillard denied the website will create a league table and said the government will not change its mind.
"I want to make very clear my determination, these transparency measures will go ahead," she said.
"Banning national testing would be bad for students, bad for parents and bad for the future of education in this country."
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