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,

Quite a silly article really and it completely missed the main issue with standardised testing.

If you introduce a standardised testing procedure with rewards or punishments for performance in schools, what you are going to get is teachers spending a large part of the year training their charges to complete the test. This will result in the development of children who will be really good at memorising the answers to a NAPLAN test, but not a whole lot more.

If that is what you want out of your education system, so be it.

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

I can see that you would have excelled on the NAPLAN test. A pity about the rest of your education though.

Thanks AlanB, ttbn and Has been. I did enjoy your comments. "This character', ttbn, started teaching in 1946, did the whole circuit; was the most test-fixated principal of larger schools that you ever saw. Weekly tests, monthly tests, terms tests, the lot. What a 'peanut', I was, ttbn. I decided,[in 1968, it was] that I didn't join a caring profession to be nasty to children. I hope you all get better soon.

I think that the underlying problem is 'factory schooling'. If we seek an innovative society we need to explore new models of learning. For this I suggest that we get away from the factory approach and consider group child teaching - home schooling - mentoring ... and who knows what else.

By the way the tests are biannual (every two years) so the days lost per year is, one and a half. Not as the article suggests 3 days a year. Test fail :)

My kids were largely/partly home schooled. Both have PhD's from real universities and for better or worse are not steady job orientated ... but they are flexible, smart and creative ... and mostly happy.

Naplan is fear based testing?

What a pile of dung.

Xdope,

OK, so you've gone batty in your old age. You would have produced much better students when you were teaching than those churned out now. It is very sad to see older people trying to be hip, and embracing the madness of the young. You have misused and abused your experience.

I think what your referring to is either Dumbing Down which I understand is otherwise known in the US as Common Core.

ttbn,

" Finland, barely off the Soviet teat .... ?!

Tell that to a Finn and stand back. Finland was never under the Soviet heel and, I fervently hope, never will be yet.

I taught for a very short time in the sixties, a class of forty nine kids, half each in Grades IV and V. We had weekly tests on Friday mornings, in Mental Arithmetic, Arithmetic Problems, Spelling, Dictation and Social Studies. By the end of the first week, I had an idea of who were the kids who didn't need much assistance, and who were the students who certainly did. Weekly tests were really a measure of how well I had been teaching those kids who needed more assistance. At the end of the year, every child was promoted to the next grade on the strength of their success in passing those tests.

So tell me about those classes of twenty and twenty five where it would be too stressful for the teacher to ever test the kids.

'Go back to large classes, I say, forty to fifty kids, two to a desk - I heard of teachers back then with more than sixty kids - with no computers, weekly testing, rote learning of tables and difficult words, and dismissal for teachers who can't do their job. Bring back the cane too, it didn't do me any great harm. Some kids need a good thrashing.'

Joe

Well done Phil, who, as a long retired educator, is one of the few proactive, pro children and pro classroom teacher activists in Australia.
My understanding is that there are basically two types of tests. Testing for competency is usually done to ensure someone has the knowledge or skills required for a particular profession or task. I fail to see how 300,000 or so 8 year olds, or ten year olds etc can be all given the same competency test at the same time and expect the test to be in any way meaningful or beneficial. We know that there will be a spread of results, so what is the point? Targeted testing, as decided by teachers and parents, using material written specifically for particular needs of particular children, is far more professionally beneficial.
The second type of test aims to give a predetermined spread of grades. Many senior school and University courses are designed to give this result. In other words they are written to ensure only a predetermined fraction will achieve highly, and other fractions are predetermined to achieve down the scale and even to fail. This is, to my mind, potentially immoral.
Neither models are appropriate for supporting the education of young children. For the nation's young minds we, as parents, grandparents and carers, need to be demanding better than the simplistic, poorly constructed and expensive Naplan tests our children are given. Naplan is a professional embarrassment.
Good on Phil Cullen for calling the Emperor's new clothes for what they really are and shame on those who have allowed Naplan to trivialise our children's most important learning years.

Tests set for an individual class, come on Woolly, you've got to be kidding.

Half the reason teachers resist testing is they are too damn lazy to write tests, & hate having to actually mark a test, with corrections. Too much effort for today's bunchy.

We had a daughter do poorly, she was told, in a math test. We told her to bring the paper home so we could assist her where she may be weak. It transpired she had not seen her paper, marked or otherwise, the teacher had just told them how they had performed. She was refused when she asked for her paper.

We demanded a conference with the head, & the math department, & as the school textbook hire scheme we ran for the P&C put $170,000 into the school each year, we got it.

It transpired they never bothered marking tests, & would not give papers back, as they had used the same test for 6 years, & despite changes in the curriculum intended to continue to use it.

The head was a good one. There was quite a broom go through that school, which improved things a little for a while, at least until a change of head master.

Of course another problem is half the so called teachers could not pass a year 10 test in their subject, & have never had to.

With today's mobile population it is critical we have a national curriculum. A kid must be able to move from Broom to Toowoomba, & seamlessly pick up their education. Individual quirks of teachers is just not acceptable.

There is an old saying:

"you can't control what you don't measure"

Top performing schools use tests in all subjects on a routine basis to understand how their students are doing so as to focus on areas that the students are not grasping.

Not to do so is lazy and harmful to the students, who may be blissfully happy until they get their yr 12 results.