Teachers have decided not to ballot for strike action if controversial new exams are introduced next year.
Members of the country's largest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), debated the issue at their annual general meeting on Friday morning.
The union is concerned that some schools will not be ready for the National 4 and 5 qualifications, which are due to replace Standard Grade and Intermediate qualifications from 2013-14.
East Renfrewshire Council is postponing the new exams, which are part of the Scottish government's Curriculum for Excellence, by a year.
Delegates at the AGM in Dundee were asked to approve a motion asking the Scottish government to grant a nationwide one-year extension or face a vote for industrial action.
The motion, put forward by Renfrewshire and South Lanarkshire local associations, was defeated by 102 votes to 181.
The vote comes less than a month after national body Education Scotland said it was "confident" the exams can be brought in on time.
Education Secretary Michael Russell ordered the organisation to carry out a special audit to see how advanced the preparations were.
Education Scotland chief executive Dr Bill Maxwell said in May: "Evidence from the audit shows that secondary schools are making good progress in their preparation for the new national qualifications."
Teaching unions branded the audit a "shallow exercise which barely skimmed the surface", with both the EIS and the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association voicing concerns.
In his speech to the AGM, EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said: "You only need to look back at the so-called deep audit to realise that lip-service alone is being paid to the notion of the teachers' voice being central to the debate."
The audit "raised question marks over the capacity of Education Scotland to provide effective support to schools".
He said: "I think we do need to be cautious about the central and, I think, increasingly politicised role that Education Scotland now seems to have in Scottish educational life."
The concerns of members about the implementation of the new curriculum are "genuine" and must be "taken seriously".
The "real test" of the reforms is the impact they will have on the least successful pupils.
He added: "What has been missed from this whole discussion is the change focused on the least successful group of learners in our schools, those pupils who currently leave with the weakest set of qualifications and the most ill-defined future prospects, because that is the group that has most to gain from the changes if they are enacted properly."
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "The Scottish Government welcomes that EIS members have rejected industrial action on this issue. We are fully committed to working closely with teachers, schools and unions, to provide additional support where it is needed to ensure the successful delivery of the new national qualifications and our recent agreement with the EIS on CfE will underpin that."
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