Teachers in Western Australia are pushing for all official assessments and testing to be scrapped for children under the age of eight.

They want schools to go with a play-based model, which is used in Scandinavian countries.

NZEI President Lynda Stuart told Andrew Dickens there's a real emphasis on play in many schools here too, because it's the way children learn.

She says countries like Finland are leading the way in education.

"They don't do testing until well into the teens for their young people over there, so there's some lessons we can learn from that."

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