I've yet to read more risible rubbish!

The fear of tests is patently inculcated by incompetent teachers fearing exposure and expulsion? Tests need to be seen for what they are. Just a tool and the only one available to understand where there are shortcomings and where remediation will help!

I'm not sure the Finns would welcome the verbal?

Yes, they have a very different system that involves the (routinely snowed in) parents in home schooling much more, particularly in (hugely resisted here) the early leaning phase!

Children entering school already able to competently read and write, spell and do basic maths must be such a huge head start!

Little wonder the universally funded Finnish education model, (and the basis of Gonski) where parents are acutely and intimately aware of their children's abilities or any shortcoming, is the envy of the western world?
Alan B.

Light is the best disinfectant. Testing takes a persons future out of the hands of a cabal SJWs in the dark corners of the Staff room. Sounds good to me.

Hey Phil if this loss of three days a year is so important then take it off your paid twelve weeks holiday a year. Problem solved!
Now dry your eyes princess and be a better teacher.

Three comments thus far. Nothing suggesting that testing for testing's sake is a sign of reaching education goals.

A bit of teacher-bashing, which is to be expected.

Good article, ho-hum responses.

Yep another teacher trying to avoid their lack of ability being highlighted by the results they don't get with their pupils, & a fellow traveller in JohnBennetts post.

Us older folk will remember teachers trying to put the fear of god into kids when the dreaded inspector came to school. Teachers hated & feared being evaluated, so tried to pass their fear onto us, to make us behave better. Well the teachers got their wish. They are no longer evaluated by inspectors, & the quality of teaching has resultantly deteriorated as any parent can see.

About the only thing that highlights the more incompetent teacher today is the results of common exterior set tests. Too long has the in class assessment allowed poor teachers to destroy young lives by failing to give the education kids need for success, & being to hide their incompetence.

The only sensible course is externally set & marked, universal annual assessments, [examinations] of what each kid has actually learnt & assimilated for the year. Without this too many kids are disadvantaged by lousy teachers who should be removed to prevent more harm to our kids.

Any time you see a teacher complaining about universal testing, you know you are looking at an incompetent teacher, frightened of what it will reveal about them.

Since when was Finland, barely off the Soviet teat, a "leading" country.

Primary schools are nothing more than child-minding centres these days, run by poorly trained women with no discipline skills, all members of the exteme left hairy brigade, intent on the political brainwashing of other peoples' children, and ruining their chances for future academic development. This peanut talks about the "fear" of NAPLAN testing. Well it's him and his fellow dirty dealers who have been putting fear into to the minds of parents, who are now, fortunately, finding that their kids are actually benefiting from having their skills, or lack of them, revealed. Academic testing is certainly better than the perversions disguised as learning the likes if this character would see foreced on children,