The Coalition Government is delivering consistency in student assessment, giving parents certainty on how their child’s doing at school, Education Minister Erica Stanford says.
“Currently, the first glimpse at student achievement is when children sit NCEA. It’s far too late to learn in Year 10 or 11 if they have not been adequately prepared with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.
“At the earliest opportunity, parents deserve to know how their kids are progressing at school and have confidence they are moving in the right direction.
“That’s why the Government is introducing consistent assessment tools so no matter where you live in New Zealand, parents and teachers will know more about how our young people are learning.”
From 2025, all children in their first year of schooling will have an opportunity to run through a phonics check, to help teachers understand how well a child can read words by sounding out letters.
“This will be done after 20 weeks of schooling and repeated after 40 weeks. It will help teachers identify and arrange additional support for those who need it right at the start of the child’s education,” Ms Stanford says.
Awesome. At Year 1 there is still time to support and helps the kids who are behind. By Year 11, there is little you can do.
Progression monitoring on reading, writing and maths will also be introduced for children in years 3 through 8.
These will be done twice each year and will inform teachers about the next steps needed for a child’s learning.
Excellent. Erica is making so many great changes, so quickly.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
6 comments:
There have always been assessments available for teachers to use like the PAT but teachers were discouraged from sharing the results with parents because schools might be obligated by parents to do remedial work.
Teachers are already burdened with administrivia and supervising remedial work would actually be too much extra time and effort.
In higher decile schools, this problem is overcome with schools helping to organize parents using after school commercial firms for after school tuition, paid for by parents. Hence our growth in the alarming gap between achiebvement in lower and higher decile students.
In Singapore, a nation with the highest international scores in education, there is a shop on school grounds selling workbooks often recommended by the class teacher for those students not achieving at the correct level. The parent or some other person including siblings or a tutor can work through these books with the child out of school hours. From an article on Breaking Views last week our high achievers are also under performing. They need extension work.
Best of all would be a purging of our sick education system of its ideology which selectively disadvantages low decile students because of ineffective teaching methods. Michael Johnston has written about these methods.
Excellent. Testing should be done at regular intervals so that gaps in learning are identified. An engaged parent is the best way to help children, and a better assessment program can aid everyone in targeting a child's specific needs. This can help them reach their full potential in life.
Everyone wants the best outcomes for our children. They are the future.
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'Best of all would be a purging of our sick education system of its ideology which selectively disadvantages low decile students because of ineffective teaching methods.'
Agree ... cancel all contracts with the odious NZ Council for Educational Research.
All she now needs to do is hold back "students"' to their level and the system may approach the effectiveness acheived 100 yers ago. As Waititi has proclaimed maori to be congenitally superior, there should be bo negative divison related to race. I notice my reports into the 50s have postion in class 10/47 etc recorded. Those at the bottom displayed no signs of severe distress. Nor did they become gang members.
Robert Arthur is obviously of the same generation as myself. My memories are of term exams, in the days of three terms per year. Exams might have been from the old Standard Three onward. Plus as Robert notes, your position in class was noted on term reports - along with subject pass or fail percentages. I can also recall school inspectors.
If universal performance measures are applied to all pupils, and teachers, the result must be win win all round.
If it is true that some pupils (how many) are coming into secondary school without the real basics of literacy and numeracy then something has gone off the rails badly. Who is teaching the teachers?
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