More for school support staff rather than more tests
National has come in for some flack over its suggestion that it would introduce national testing and national standards in schools. It doesn’t seem entirely clear that it is introducing national testing, with the media saying yes, and National’s education spokesperson Anne Tolley saying:
I am mystified by the Federation’s references to National testing. We have explained our policy many times to the sector over the past three years and they know we have not proposed national testing.
Our national standards policy has been well received by school principals and teachers because it is flexible, and builds on the best-practice methods that are already getting good results.
Except they aren’t being received that well after all. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research’s latest report shows that national education standards are favoured by:
- 10% of the 196 primary school principals surveyed.
- 13% of the 912 primary school teachers surveyed.
- 10% of the 194 high school principals surveyed.
- 25% of the 818 high school teachers surveyed.
That’s not a very impressive mandate from people educated, qualified and experienced in the field about what works best when teaching children. Interestingly Boards of Trustees, made up primarily of parents, were nearly as dismissive as teachers and principals. (38 percent support in primary schools and 31 percent in high schools).
And with good reason. As Metiria noted last year testing kids while failing to provide any additional funding for support staff or more programmes would serve only to stigmatise young students, without offering them any support they may need to do better. It narrows the curriculum and thus learnign experiences and results in teaching to the standard or the test. It is also important to draw a distinction between assessment – which already happens constantly in schools from entrance to exit - and standards and testing which fail to measure accurately or fairly the learning that children are doing holistically in their clasrooms.
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
The National approach to education is to measure ’success’ by mandatory testing. Pigeon-holing kids is dated and, according to at least one visionary, killing creativity:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea tivity.html
October 4th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I am reminded about the advice given to trainee doctors by an old hand:
“Before ordering a test on a patient, decide what you will do if the test:
a) returns a positive result, and
b) returns a negative result.
If your two answers are the same, don’t order the test.”
Trevor.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Real life situation.
Two youngsters received the same English grade in the 2007 7th form certificate, in two different cities, and hired by the same employer. Last week they were given the same thing to do, by me. It involved reading a simple instruction manual and doing everything it contained. One of them completed the task in six hours, which would be about right for the amount of work involved, the other is still at it after 31 working hours so far.
What does this tell me? That the current certification system does not work, as people with totally different abilities are being given the same grades, making those grades meaningless. SO now I guess I go back to doing my own testing and rejecting anyone who doesn’t measure up to my basic standards. (I used to use the USA SATs as a good guide to basic learning, and probably will again!)
Why bother giving them any form of certification at all? Just give them a certificate that says they turned up x% of the requirement, and let us who have to deal with the challenges get on with it ourselves!