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.