Parents pleased with new national tests
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September 20, 2008 12:00am
PARENTS have given high marks to new tests ranking their kids against the nation's students, but an expert said testing should begin in prep.
About 250,000 National Assessment Program literacy and numeracy report cards for Victorian students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 at most government and private schools started going out this week.
Nationwide, about 1.2 million students did the tests.
Parents with students at Merrilands Prep-12 College in Reservoir said the NAPLAN results were easy to understand and worthwhile information for tracking their child's progress.
Some students felt the results did not accurately reflect their academic strengths as shown in their school term reports. The NAPLAN test is part of a contentious Rudd government push for parents to have information on every school's literacy and numeracy results from next year.
RMIT University literacy expert Associate Professor Kerry Hempenstall said some form of national screening should begin in prep to identify early problems.
Prof Hempenstall said the national assessment had strengths but the current format was a "wait to fail" model in which literacy and numeracy problems were undiscovered until grade 3.
He said the Federal Government had not disclosed the benchmark students were measured against.
"My concern is the sole attention to reading comprehension. It is possible for someone to read extremely slowly and appear to be going OK," he said.
"They might appear to be average or better, but if you listen to them reading they may be dreadful, and there is the appearance of success."
Merrilands College principal Wayne Hill said his teachers found NAPLAN an important tool and the response from parents was mostly positive.
In results released last week Victoria outstripped national averages in most areas.
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I like the point that you make there Jayel about comprehension of words. The difference between a good English teacher and a standard one in some way comes down to more class involvement in the text that are being read and the teacher being able to identify words in the text that may not be understood. I remember my year 7 English teacher was very good in this way in that she would identify words and would simplify meanings by finding the base word and pronunciation. Also correct prefixes, grammar and spelling are very much lacking. I don't believe the latter point is just with todays teachers though as reading through the Herald Sun comments many of the older generation still have a lot of trouble grasping these basic concepts. These are students from the so called better era of education where whacking students made them perfect individuals when they look back at their childhood.
Posted by: Murray of Fairfield 5:05pm today
As a literacy 'expert' Hempenstall ought ot know that the purpose of reading is to comprehend written text - I guess that is why the benchmark reading tests focus on assessing comprehension. Although he worries about oral reading, this is a different skill - it is possible to pronounce words correctly, but not comprehend them. What use is that? Also, reading speed depends on what is being read - try timing yourself reading a book on nuclear physics compared to a newspaper article. The fact is, reading is a complex skill we do not fully understand and its assessment is similarly problematic. Less testing and more informed teaching is the way to go.
Posted by: jayel of gold goast 12:51pm today
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