JOHN Swinney was heckled by teachers yesterday as he insisted the government would press ahead with standardised school tests to help close the education attainment gap.

The new Education Secretary was jeered by some activists from Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, at its annual general meeting in Dundee, as he tried to reassure them new online assessments would not add to their workload, but simply replace the current patchwork of tests.

Calling closing the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils his “driving mission”, Swinney said the assessments were essential to identifying problems and driving up standards.

As he set out "why we need standardised assessments" he was met with loud cries of "we don't" from some delegates in the Caird Hall, but persisted: "We need them so that we can encourage and drive the process of educational attainment in Scotland.

“Because today [without adequate data] we cannot judge where to target interventions to support those that need that support, to ensure they can fulfil their potential."

He said assessments were “not about adding to the burden, creating league tables, or having a finger-pointing culture” but for gathering data to help pupils improve.

Ministers will issue a tender next week for a new online assessment system for the 2017-18 school year, which will mark pupils automatically.

Swinney said no primary pupil would have an assessment longer than an hour.

However many teachers remain sceptical of the assessments, fearing a rigid test-driven culture of the kind seen in England under former Tory education secretary Michael Gove.

On Friday, EIS delegates backed a potential boycott of the new tests in primary and secondary schools if they proved an “unacceptable” burden.

It coincided with EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan saying there was “nothing inherently wrong” with assessments, but if they led to an “obsession” with targets they could be “potentially destructive” and would be strongly resisted.

However government sources last night said the “high-stakes” tests seen under Gove were categorically not the plan in Scotland, and the assessments would be a mix of online questions and individual judgments by teachers using their professional experience and discretion.

Despite complaints about testing, Swinney also won applause for saying he wanted to lighten teachers’ workload by cutting down on admin and bureaucracy.

He said he wanted to “liberate” teachers from “congestion” in the curriculum and make it easier for them to focus on teaching that closed the attainment gap.

He said primary teachers should be free to prioritise literacy, numeracy and health & wellbeing at the expense of other subjects, without fear of being criticised by school inspectors.

“If you find that it is difficult to close that attainment gap because of the degree of congestion within the curriculum then that is an issue that I commit to you today I will address as part of my tenure as Education Secretary.”

He issued an invitation to members of the profession to tell him what changes they believed would make a difference.

"We must have bold objectives in Scottish education, but we also must support those bold actions with practical steps."

Before speaking to the 250 delegates, Swinney had listened to demands from teachers for the “decluttering of the primary curriculum”.

Speaker after speaker complained that teachers were being asked to perform more tasks, but no duty was ever removed from their to-do list.

One teacher from Midlothian said: “I frequently feel I’m drowning in this sea of priorities”.

In a Q&A session after his speech, Swinney said he heard the “mood music” on national testing, but added: “We're not always going to agree on everything.”

He said: "The standardised assessments are not going to be additional to, they are going to be replacements of, because most authorities in some shape or form are doing some form of assessment process.

"Standardised assessments for me are not about adding to the burden or about creating league tables or having a finger-pointing culture.

"They are about equipping us with the data to enable us to ensure that people are given the best chance in life to prosper."

His comments were met with cries of “Rubbish!” from one delegate.

Flanagan said afterwards: "Delegates in the hall made clear their very real concerns over the Scottish Government's plans for national standardised assessments within the National Improvement Framework, and Mr Swinney was left in no doubt that any return to a target-setting, league table approach to education would be fiercely resisted by teachers.

"However, his general comments on the need to tackle excessive workload and cut bureaucracy as a means to freeing up teacher time to support the raising attainment initiatives, were well received by teachers and lecturers within the hall."

Swinney also went further than the recent SNP manifesto, by saying the government would completely - rather than “substantially” - close the attainment gap in a decade.

The manifesto only refers to “delivering significant progress in closing the attainment gap within the lifetime of the next parliament and substantially eliminating it within a decade”.

Asked about the higher test he had set himself, Swinney said: “I don’t understand what the point is of setting an objective which is something that isn’t ambitious, that we don’t think is bold and commensurate with the requirements of fulfilling the potential of young people in Scotland. Let’s go into this boldly, to close the attainment gap in Scottish education.”