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Tag: national standards

  • Teacher Workload: After the Standards

    There was a small sigh of relief when the Rt Hon. Chris Hipkins announced that National Standards were no longer a government requirement for primary schools to use. Okay; it was more of a large cheer than a small sigh, but suddenly we are nigh on six months from that announcement, and as a teacher, I’m not seeing much of a decrease in workload.

    Yet we’re assured that the government is working to reduce paperwork in the teaching profession.

    When announcing the scrapping of National Standards, Hipkins got rid of the four point ruler for measuring children, but ensured that teacher workload remained high. You see, he said that “Parents will still receive reports at least twice a year on their child’s progress and achievement in maths, reading and writing as well as across the curriculum areas. But this reporting will focus on children’s progress, rather than measuring them against arbitrary National Standards.” – Chris Hipkins

    So now, not only do we have to continue to report to parents twice a year (suggested at every 6 months), we are now also commenting across all of the curriculum areas.

    You see; National Standards themselves did not add any extra work to the teacher workload. We already know from day in and day out interactions with the students, whether a student is below, at, or above – and so making that call took a matter of minutes and a slightly different grey shade on the report. The issue teachers had with National Standards was largely around the barbaric way it labelled children as failures, and was too broad in its measure to show any progress students might have made.

    No; it wasn’t National Standards themselves that caused an insurmountable amount of additional workload. It was the need to report to parents formally in written form twice a year.

    Prior to that, parents would usually have a parent/teacher meeting in the middle of the year to chat about how their child was doing, and a written report at the end of the year as a summary of how well their child was doing. Evidently this wasn’t enough. Too many children were slipping through the gaps and failing. We needed to keep parents informed on their child’s progress (or lack of) so that we could catch them before they fell through.

    Except, now; with the requirement of two written reports, teacher’s workload doubled. But not just in writing screeds and screeds of reports. Teacher’s also need to gather data on each student, test them (and re-test them), anaylise their data, and compare it to an arbitrary set of benchmarks in order to see their progress. Instead of doing this at the start of the year to inform teaching and then repeating in Term 4 to write a summative report, we are now carrying out these tests throughout the year, to spread the workload out, and to be able to write two reports.

    So while the National Standards have been scrapped, their remnants still remain, and continue to add to the workload and stress being experienced by teachers across the country.

    Time for some Maths.

    In our school’s current reporting format (which is largely based off a Ministry approved/suggested template) I have written on average 105 words for each of the Reading, Writing, and Maths curriculum areas. This includes the current progress a child is making and their next learning steps. That’s 315 words per report. My current class has 31 students in it. That’s 9,765 words. Double that because we report twice a year, and add some on for a General comment on the final report, and we’re bordering on 20,000 words each year in reports. To give an idea of how much this is, a Massey University Research Report worth 60 credits should not exceed 20,000 words, and a 90 credit Thesis paper should not exceed 30,000 words.

    Every year.

    What’s the solution? There’s no easy way to say this; but getting rid of the mid year report and replacing it with parent meetings seems the only way to bring the workload back to something more manageable. In my experience, there are parents of below expectation students who are aware they are below. Parents who don’t know their child is below the expectation are usually ones who a) aren’t actively helping in any way and won’t help in any way just because it’s written on a piece of paper, or b) aren’t all that concerned. This is a generalisation, sure; but I suspect that parents who care about their child’s education are going to be aware of where their child is in relation to where they’re expected to be without the need for it to be written down in a report. I also suspect that making parents who don’t care about their child’s education aware of where their child is in relation to where they’re expected to be isn’t going to change the amount of care or effort that they are going to be willing to invest in order to make any sizeable difference.

    Therefore, the need to report twice a year is somewhat redundant. It’s created twice the workload, and stretched assessment throughout the year (instead of letting the teacher teach throughout the year) and adds to the stress without actually adding anything to education.

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  • Individual Testing is Killing Teaching

    When I was at school, I can’t remember ever doing a one on one test with my teacher.

    I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m saying I don’t remember it. I do remember being tested, in whole class tests, PAT mostly. Colouring in blank circles was fun.

    At some point, teachers or schools or ERO or MOE wanted to know more. They wanted to get more specific information on the learners, to track, to identify gaps, or simply to report against National Standards for.

    And it lead to each individual child in every class being tested individually. Each child’s strengths can be identified, and the gaps they have can then be specifically targeted. Teachers knew what each child needed, and could pass comment on this first hand to their parents or caregivers, through the wonderful National Standard reports that were sent home twice a year.

    Great.

    Except that it is unmanageable.

    28 kids in your class. That’s 28 tests, all carried out individually with the teacher. That’s 27 students who are left to quiet independent work while the teacher questions 1 child. Rinse and repeat. Let’s say that each test takes 5 minutes with the teacher, allowing for arrival, sit down, thinking time, and several correct questions that lead to more difficult ones (and therefore more thinking time) and then leaving time. At 5 minutes a test and 28 students, that’s 140 minutes of testing. 2 hours and 20 minutes to conduct one test for the whole class. 

    This of course does not account for the additional time of hushing students, interruptions, and maintaining a semblance of order over the class while trying to test one child at a time. The testing can take days, usually weeks to get through the whole class one at a time.

    This is the problem though. During those weeks, there is no teaching happening. It’s simply independent work while I test. It becomes too hard to switch between teacher and tester, and so constant switching between these two roles sends one spiralling into minor bouts of schizophrenia.

    Add in that this is one test, for one subject, say Maths. Add in Writing. Add in Reading.

    The stain of National Standards lingers on. While many schools have ditched them, the mindset of the assessments that have been left behind are still causing teachers to be testing, testing, testing – not because of the National Standards, but because of the style of assessment that schools are now using.

    There is no doubt that these tests produce a very accurate and specific picture of what each child knows and doesn’t know, and it becomes very hard to argue against. However, there needs to be some compromise, otherwise we will continue to fall into one of the two modes – teaching or testing – throughout the year.

    But why?

    Why do we test at all – in all honesty?

    In this article, there are numerous points made. Most poignantly is where it says “some countries have achieved better outcomes from their state systems by deliberately shunning standardised testing. In this informative Atlantic article, the Finnish journalist Aru Partanen cites the attributes of a Finnish school system that regularly outscores the US ( and New Zealand) in international rankings of student achievement. Among other things, Finland has no standardised testing, and no private schools at all.”

    In the opening paragraph, it raises exactly where we are at in New Zealand education right now. It says “Testing kids in the classroom sounds like a good idea. Surely that keeps tabs on how they’re doing, and identifies which kids might be falling through the cracks…and that’s all good, right? Well…except that most teachers have always done testing, have always sought to detect kids at risk, and have always managed to strike a healthy balance between teaching and testing. The issue is whether the demands to follow standardised testing procedures (and the practices and attitudes that go with them ) may now be poisoning the whole environment for learning.”

    This was written in 2013. Five years ago. I had been teaching for three years. Now five years later, and approaching a decade in the classroom, I am still teaching and then testing. Now, with the removal of national standards, we have the opportunity to make a change. Something has to change.

    I didn’t become a teacher to make kids sit tests, or even interview kids about what they know and if they can tell me different ways of solving the same problem. I didn’t become a teacher to spend hours on end analysing data and working out what kids don’t know and feel guilty for how much more I should be working.

    I became a teacher to teach. I became a teacher to help kids learn.

     

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  • The National Standards Fallacy

    Since the coalition bringing Labour, NZ First and Greens into power, teachers have been rejoicing. Especially primary teachers.

    Why?

    Well, early on in the election campaign, Labour outlined it’s distaste for National Standards and signalled their intention to remove them from our education system. Something that teachers across the country had been asking for since their inception in 2009.

    Today Labour announced through the new Education Minister Chris Hipkins that it would keep it’s promise and scrap National Standards.

    Inevitably, Nikki Kaye was quick to reply and outlined a number of reasons why it was a mistake to get rid of the Standards.

     

    And while jubilation is all around, and teachers have a new bounce in their step as they skip around the school playground while on duty, there is a small part of us that is left in wonder, concern, and nervousness as to what we’re now meant to be doing now.

    See, there is now a generation of teachers who have only ever taught with National Standards standing behind them with a whip and directing every decision they ever made in their planning, their teaching, their practise, and their career. Put simply, many of us know no different. We simply weren’t teachers before National Standards hijacked our education system.

    So many of us are left wondering, what can we do now? What are we meant to do? Obviously we still have our assessments, but how often do we need to actually do these now? How much do I need to change in my reports that go out at the end of this term? Some are even asking ‘What do we replace them with?’

    But here’s the thing.

    It’s all false. A complete fabrication. It’s a fallacy and has been from the start.

    Here’s what I mean.

    National Standards were pushed out on schools. No beta testing. No ironing out the kinks. Schools had to re-build their charters, teaching programmes and assessment schedules to fit them in. Up until then, schools had been surviving quite well on the assessments they had beforehand. Reporting to parents may not have been as regular as twice a year, but no doubt would have commented on student ability, academic or otherwise, and would have made mention of progress rather than achievement.

    The reality is we didn’t need them. We don’t need them. And now we don’t have them.

    We do not need to replace them with anything.

    When you take a worm out of an apple, you don’t go putting a caterpillar in it’s place.

    While they are gone in the blink of an eye, as signalled by Chris Hipkins today, this doesn’t mean it won’t take a significant amount of time and energy to adjust, to rebuild, and to get used to life without the standards. Lots of policies need to be re-written, new systems designed in each school (as best they see fit for their community) and training and support provided for teachers who know no other way (or can’t remember a time without), such is the entrenchment of National Standards on their career to date. This is a huge undertaking, and should not be taken lightly. For my own school, a big job that will need to be done is to return to a mid and end of year report schedule for our Year 1 to 3 students, and of course, a re-design of the school reporting template. These are just two of the jobs that are going to require time and energy to roll out for our school. Multiply this by the total number of schools across the country, and suddenly there’s a better understanding of the task ahead for us.

    The bonus of course is that it is hard and difficult work that teachers will be only too happy to do. Some are chomping at the bit to get their hands dirty stripping out any mention of National Standards in their schools. Some are a bit more relaxed. But I’ve yet to see a teacher since this announcement who hasn’t felt like a large and heavy burden taken off their shoulders and who haven’t breathed a big sigh of relief.

  • Now What: Recovering from the Standards Era

    Original article: Now what? Recovering from the Standards Era

    When the coalition government was confirmed last week, I joined with many of my teacher colleagues  in a frenzy of jubilation and relief as we comprehended the significance of this outcome on the future of NZ education.  One campaign promise, in particular – the abolishment of National Standards policy that has plagued schools since its introduction in 2009.

    But after the initial elation and resultant hope that those in education experienced upon hearing the appointment of the new Minister, the reality of what this might mean for many teachers is beginning to creep in.  There is little debate among educators that the Standards were having a significant and detrimental impact on our students.  Furthermore, teachers were faced with the enormous workloads, over-testing and pressures to ‘get kids’ to the standard which, in turn, were sucking the joy out of teaching at all levels.   However, at the signing of the coalition, and the confirmation from Minister Hipkins that the standards were to be abolished, so began the rhetoric about what these might be ‘replaced with’.

    For those who have taught before the Standards era, there will be the vague recollection of the introduction of the New Zealand School Curriculum Document in 2007.  This document signaled an approach to education that reflected international evidence of the need for integrated and holistic opportunities learning opportunities for our students.  At its inception, it was lauded as a world-leader, innovative and reflective of the type of ‘21st Century learning’ that our future students were facing.

    From this document came tools for teachers to specifically measure the progress of their students in the key areas of literacy and numeracy.  The Literacy Learning Progressions, a document that describes specific literacy knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students draw on in order to meet the reading and writing demands of the curriculum; and the Number Framework enabling teachers to clearly establish their students’ current knowledge and mathematical skills, and determine the next point for them in progressing this knowledge and skill base.

    With the arrival of the National Standards, so too was the well-orchestrated public perception that up until their arrival, teachers were not actively involved in the assessment and documentation of their students’ learning progress.  That they were almost ‘winging it’ when it came to knowing what current skills and knowledge their students had, and were not actively planning for and responding to these in order to progress this knowledge and skill base.  These Standards were clearly needed.

    The vision, values and other learning areas of the New Zealand School Curriculum subsequently took a back seat.  Literacy and numeracy were elevated to being the key focus of learning that teachers needed to focus on in order to demonstrate that they were doing their job, and that they could progress students to a stated benchmark.

    The predicted side effects of the arrival of the National Standards also came to pass.  Reduction in time spent on learning areas such as the Arts, Health & PE, Sciences and Social Sciences.  Reduction in opportunities for students to be creative, innovative and develop problem-solving skills and independent thought.  Reduction in time available for those ‘teachable moments’.  And teacher well-being  impacted negatively, with excellent practitioners leaving the classroom.

    Read more here.

    Source: https://www.longwortheducation.co.nz/single-post/2017/10/29/Now-What-Recovering-from-the-Standards-Era

  • The end of National Standards

    I always pay attention to those that stand up for educators, education, schools, and teachers.

    The likes of Bryan Bruce, Welby Ings, Nigel Latta , Ken Robinson, Pasi Sahlberg and Kelvin Smythe all comment on education in support of teachers, and against GERM, even though they don’t have to. I’m not here saying that these are the only ones that do, or that I mention them because their views happen to agree with mine, or mine with theirs, or that their views lie heavily in my favour as a teacher.

    It’s more because what they say is down to earth, common sense, and full of truth. The weight of experience cannot be ignored either.

    Another advocate is Martin Thrupp, who has long expressed his disdain for National Standards.

    His latest article in reaction to the axing of National Standards raises so many good points that I have no other choice but bring them to your attention.

    Thanks Martin.

    Original Article: End of National Standards

    I have been asked to reflect on the end of National Standards and, this being the blog of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education (NZARE), I thought I would focus particularly on how researchers and academics contributed to the debates over the Standards and to how they are now being thrown out.

    I will be referring in places to my recently-published book, with Bob Lingard, Meg Maguire, and David Hursh, entitled The Search for Better Educational Standards: A Cautionary Tale. This book provides a rich account of the rise and enactment of the National Standards policy from multiple perspectives. The book also looks at Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori, the Māori-medium assessment system that accompanied the National Standards.

    How not to make policy

    To me, one of the most interesting things about the 2017 general election and National Standards was the National party’s pre-election announcement that it would be further reinforcing the Standards. With the new ‘National Standards Plus’, the reporting of a child’s National Standards data would go online so that parents could track their child’s achievement as they were assessed. 

    It is tempting to say that National were already in a hole with this policy and should have stopped digging. There had been numerous signs in recent years that that the policy was in trouble (see A Cautionary Tale, chapter 9). Indeed, just the week before ‘National Standards Plus’ was announced, a feature-length article in the New Zealand Herald had pointed out numerous difficulties with the existing form of National Standards.

    But the National-led Government had become fully invested in the National Standards policy. When it was first announced in 2007, it was National’s big idea for education – the ‘cornerstone’ of its education policy. Over the 10 years that followed, the Government had dismissed all criticisms. Any late turning back would be a sign of weakness, and instead the National party wanted to plough on with this truly awful project that had already became a world-class example of how not to make education policy.

    As shown repeatedly throughout A Cautionary Tale, the National Standards were too driven by political rather than educational considerations. As Bob Lingard says in his reflection (A Cautionary Tale, chapter 10):

    “The analysis seems to demonstrate that instead of evidence-informed policy what we have here is more a case of policy-based evidence, with the political in the National Standards very much overriding research evidence and professional knowledges, to the detriment of the reform”.  

    The contributions of researchers and academics

    Despite the National-led Government’s adherence to the National Standards, researchers and academics certainly pushed back against the policy. I emphasise this because a recent posting on Diane Ravitch’s popular blog quotes Australian Phil Cullen handing out bouquets and brickbats around the National Standards being thrown out. While I agree with much of what Cullen has to say, the only mention academics get are as “schooliolist academic know-alls”. It is as if we contributed nothing to the campaign against National Standards.

    In fact, researchers and academics did a great deal in this space! A particular highlight for me was the 2012 open letter signed by over 100 education academics against the public release of the National Standards data. But there were countless other instances of academics and researchers opposing the National Standards, either publicly or more behind the scenes. Opinion pieces, articles, TV debates, radio, public meetings, meetings behind closed doors – and all the rest of it. Chapter 8 of  A Cautionary Tale, about the politics of research, gives numerous examples.

    A number of us also did empirical research that helped to explain how the National Standards were a problem (see A Cautionary Tale, especially chapters 3, 5 and 7). And, of course, New Zealand researchers are part of international networks that are working on the same concerns about high-stakes assessment in other countries (see A Cautionary Tale, especially chapters 2 and 10). Note to Cullen: without doubt, some of the best work in this area is coming from Australian academics.

    It is true that some researchers and academics chose to support the National-led Government’s National Standards policies (A Cautionary Tale, chapter 8). This happened for various reasons that may have included the researchers’ educational views, their political beliefs, the political pressures that were upon them or their organisations, and the advantages that came with supporting the policy. It may have also involved a judgement that it was better to be ‘inside the tent’ and have influence than be on the outside.

    But this range of viewpoints among researchers and academics is no different than was seen within the teaching profession and amongst principals, where National Standards also had supporters. Indeed, a central problem that the new Labour-led Government will have to grapple with, having removed the National Standards policy, is doing away with the data-driven disposition amongst teachers and principals that grew along with the policy under the previous Government.

    Read more here.

    Source: https://nzareblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/end-of-national-standards/

  • Hipkins says National Standards ‘will be gone very quickly’ | OneNews

    Original article: Hipkins says National Standards ‘will be gone very quickly’ to allow ‘a bit less testing and a bit more teaching’

    The controversial school testing method of National Standards is being scrapped by the new government for reasons that include them not being a “measure of progress”, says incoming Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

    Hipkins said on TVNZ1’s Breakfast this morning the standards that were introduced in 2010 “will be gone very quickly”.

    “That’s not to say parents won’t have quality information on how their kids are doing … but we want that to be good information not the very arbitrary information the National Standards gives.”

    The standards test children Year 1 to 8 in reading, writing and maths.

    “National Standards is not a measure of progress,” Mr Hipkins said.

    Other testing measures will still stand, but he said parents “want to know how their children are progressing rather than jumping through a particular hurdle at a particular time”.

    “We want to focus on quality teaching and learning rather than constant assessment.

    “A bit less testing and a bit more teaching.”

    See video here.

    Source: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/hipkins-says-national-standards-gone-very-quickly-allow-bit-less-testing-and-more-teaching

  • Scrapping National Standards Bad News for Parents

    It was only a matter of time before this response came forward from the opposition.

    It is scary to think how blind some people become by their own ignorance. Nikki Kaye shows just how out of touch she is with schools and what National Standards actually provided.

    The government’s plan to scrap National Standards in schools is bad news for parents and will remove a key source of information, says former Education Minister Nikki Kaye.

    Chris Hipkins, education minister in Jacinda Ardern’s new Labour-led government, has said primary schools will have to report to parents on progress across curriculum subjects.

    But National Standards, which set out levels of numeracy and literacy for Years 1 to 8, will be abolished.

    Mr Hipkins told the New Zealand Herald there were a range of tools schools could use for that, and it was a matter between teachers and parents.

    Ms Kaye says it shows a disregard for parents and students.

    See. No. If anything, it shows regard for parents and students. No teacher wants to label children, and even less so when we’re being asked each year to label kids with labels that have extremely negative connotations. No student needs to work hard all year, only to be told they’re “Well Below”. A generation of students who think “What’s the point” and who have learned to give up because all the hard work they have done hasn’t met a certain standard? Yeah… disregard for parents and students. Totally.

    “Parents need to know where their kids are up to and children need to know how they are getting on,” she said on Monday.

    National Standards didn’t help with either of these two things. Firstly, no school to school moderation was ever held, and so these were not National, and nor were they standard as schools were left to interpret them themselves. Students will still get to know how they’re getting on, and probably more so now that teachers can talk about progress, and hard work, as well as countless other topics and interests held within the many facets of the curriculum, rather than just the narrow and prescribed view held by National Standard supporters.

    “Families also deserve to know what Labour will replace National Standards with – not be told they are going to overhaul the way our students learn but will get back to you with the details later.”

    Once again, Ms Kaye is wrong here. Why does National Standards have to be replaced with anything? Do doctors get rid of tumours and replace them with a benign lump of fat? No. Get rid of it. Destroy it. And let it heal. That’s what needs to happen here. In addition, National Standards has not been a system for how students learn, and never has. It has had a profound impact on how we teach, because of the complete restriction over the subjects that require the most attention, but it has not, and was never designed to, be a way that children learn.

    Ms Kaye says National Standards also provide the Ministry of Education with key information that allows targeted interventions when students are not achieving well.

    “Key information” that the man himself, Sir John Key, called ‘ropey’. Yeah. Such a loss to the MoE having to try and justify the standards. As for targeted interventions – I’d like to hear about where the Ministry had provided any kind of support to schools who had students that were not achieving well.

    This has been communicated numerous times to the Minister, the Government and the Ministry of Education. Maybe instead of sticking by the National Standards, own up and try and see that you might have gotten it wrong. No one will think less of you. But don’t come out and start sprouting out ideals and hyperbole about how integral National Standards were when quite clearly they aren’t. Trying to use parents and students views to justify them is poor, because for every parent that ‘raves’ about them, there are those that oppose them.

    Original Article: Scrapping National Standards ‘bad news’

     

  • National Standards should go – teachers

    Original article: National standards should go – teachers

    The possibility national standards in schools could be scrapped has many Manawatū educators rubbing their hands with glee, and parents relieved.

    The programme set in place standard measures to decide whether pupils have reached required accomplishments.

    It was made compulsory for years 1-8 in reading, writing and maths from 2010 as one of the first actions by National Government. This year, Labour made it an election pledge to review the law if it came to power.

    Widespread frustration with national standards was clear, Manawatu Principals’ Association President Wayne Jenkins said.

    “They were not an effective means of improving student learning. I do not foresee any school fighting… their repeal or removal.”

    He would like them to continue to be available should schools choose to use them, but did not want them to be compulsory.

    “We need to be able to have ways of assessing students wider than the national standards. We need to look at how we can assess for example the essential skills and social learning skills that are going to be key, life-long skills.”

    The programme had not done what it was introduced for, and worse, was a “barrier” to learning because it was time consuming, Kairanga School principal Alastair Schaw​ said.

    After 21 years as a school principal, he believed schools were reporting to parents honestly and helpfully about their children’s progress before the standards were introduced.

    “National standards was a populist lie, rushed in without a proper voice from [educators].

    “The teaching profession will celebrate. Never before have I seen such a waste of time and effort in the establishment and running of something that meant so little.”

    As a standard, they were not effective, because every school interpreted them differently, he said.

    His school would drop them if it became legal and continue to use standardised testing tools within the New Zealand curriculum, called curriculum levels.

    Whakarongo School principal Jaco Broodryk said he​ would be “delighted” if national standards were scrapped, and believed they were “detrimental” to learning and teaching.

    Read more here.

    Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/98262213/national-standards-should-go–teachers

  • The pendulum swings back on school tests | BBC

    Let’s hope that NZ Government can make the change before they have to go back on this. Let’s ditch any National based assessment for primary schoolers. It’s too much. Too much pressure on the children. Too much pressure on the teachers. All for what? Thankfully the UK Government are beginning to see that what they’re doing isn’t helping…

    30 March 2017

    If news stories could have a soundtrack, then this scrapping of tests in the early years of primary school would have the creaking sound of a pendulum slowly swinging back.

    The Department for Education is proposing that national curriculum tests taken by seven-year-olds in England could be ditched.

    Instead there would be an assessment of five-year-olds by a teacher – a so-called “baseline test” – which would be used as a starting point for measuring progress through primary school.

    It represents a step backwards from more and more testing – a shift in attitude as much as policy.

    And it raises again the thorny question of what kind of tests young children should face in primary school.

    Are such tests a helpful indicator for identifying pupils’ needs? Or are they an unnecessary pressure – a case of too much, too young? And are such tests going to mean a paper mountain of extra bureaucracy for teachers, hindering rather than helping learning?

    ‘Hope over experience’

    The teachers’ unions have broadly given their support to the government’s announcement to row back on the tests for seven year olds in reading, writing, maths and science.

    But the National Union of Teachers still says the idea of a baseline test for four or five-year-olds remains a “triumph of hope over experience”.

    The teachers’ union questions whether this can ever be a sufficiently reliable test to be used as a fixed point against which to measure all the following years of a child’s progress.

    But the counter-argument to this is that you have to start somewhere.

    If schools are to be held to account for how much progress children have made by the age of 11 – then it has to be measured against a starting point.

    And isn’t the natural starting point in the first year?

    There is also a strong argument that it is the low achievers and the disadvantaged who will be most in need of the extra help that a test might identify.

    And at the last general election, all three main political parties were sympathetic to the principle of baseline testing.

    But the announcement on testing also raises another great back and forth of the education pendulum. How much data is too much?

    Parents’ evenings, with spreadsheets and targets, can feel like a chat with the accountants.

    And for the schools themselves, the accumulation and analysis of data has become a major part of their working lives.

    Read more here.

    Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39444999

  • Reform ‘high stakes’ primary tests, MPs urge

    As we look to the future of education in this country, why is it that we are following the trend and examples from the UK? Yet our Education Minister(s) head over there to see their awesome examples of how to destroy public education…

    Children’s education in England is being skewed by the use of high-stakes tests taken by 11-year-olds as a school league table measure, say MPs.

    Annual test results should be replaced in the tables by a three-year rolling average to “lower the stakes”, says the Commons Education Select Committee.

    The current system has led to a narrow curriculum and “unnecessary stress” on pupils and teachers, argues the report.

    Last year, new tougher tests for 11-year-olds saw passes drop sharply.

    Ministers maintain that parents have a right to expect testing in schools to show whether their children are gaining the right skills in maths and literacy.

    But the committee says the close link between the tests at 11 and school accountability can “lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and ‘teaching to the test’, as well as affecting teacher and pupil well-being”.

    It wants the current system scrapped, with three-year rolling averages for schools published instead of the results of individual year groups.

    ‘Held to account’

    The report also calls for greater emphasis in Ofsted inspections on a broad and balanced curriculum.

    Committee chairman Neil Carmichael said too much emphasis on test results had led to too much “focus on English and maths at the expense of other subjects like science, humanities and the arts”.

    “It is right that schools are held to account for their performance but the government should act to lower the stakes and help teachers to deliver a broad, balanced and fulfilling curriculum for primary school children.”

    The report says poor implementation of the new system last year, with “guidance delayed and test papers leaked online”, caused significant disruption in schools.

    The MPs want ministers to reconsider the new writing assessment which emphasises “technical aspects like grammar and spelling, over creativity and composition”.

    “The balance of evidence we received did not support the proposition that focusing on specific grammatical techniques improved the overall quality of writing.”

    They also want spelling, punctuation and grammar tests for 11-year-olds to become non-statutory.

    Ministers recently announced proposals to scrap tests for seven-year-olds, following years of pressure from teachers, parents and educationalists.

    The Department for Education is consulting on a new assessment for pupils when they first start school – but the report urges caution when introducing a “baseline” measure.

    “It should be designed as a diagnostic tool to help teachers identify pupils’ needs and must avoid shifting negative consequences of high-stakes accountability to early years,” they warn.

    Read more here.

    Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39745884