TESTING children to assess their progress is always divisive.
Caution over the Scottish Government’s plans for standardised national testing of pupils in primary and secondary schools is understandable. If they become too high-stakes, as have SATS in the English education system, tests can distort the process of learning and teaching.
Now, the teachers’ union the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) has warned it is deeply sceptical over minsters’ plans for the data derived from new standardised tests.
There is huge sensitivity over the use of this information. The EIS warns against the “notion” that the Scottish government will micro manage schools from Edinburgh, rather than trusting the judgement of teachers.
The fear is we create a system where schools and their staff are judged on the basis of these results, and this in turn changes the way lessons are taught.
But officials state the tests will be used to diagnose problems and identify successes. Data collected will be about national trends, not school by school performance.
Such use of data is hard to dispute. It is difficult to see any problem with using test data to identify an area of the curriculum, or a part of the country where pupils are performing less well - so action can be taken to improve matters. Likewise, there is nothing obviously wrong with identifying areas which are doing better than their neighbours, in order that others might learn from their success.
The use of data is dependent on how the tests themselves are used. Nobody would wish to see children over-tested at the expense of learning, nor educators reduced to mechanical delivery of a test.
Such tests should instead be providing the sort of detailed information for teachers which will enable them to identify strengths and weaknesses within classrooms, rather than individual children.
The Government has indicated that these tests are not about judging individual schools, but national trends. If that is the case and the tests are not used for high-stakes assessment but instead in away which is reactive, flexible and diagnostic, then they will be sensible and helpful - as the EIS appears to concede.
Perhaps a greater concern at present is the number of local authorities who have existing pupil testing regimes and therefore will test children multiple times, when the standardised tests are introduced.
This could become a serious issue, should pupils spend more time being tested – or preparing to be – than learning, and should teachers have to devote more time to administering or interpreting tests and results.
It is understandable that some councils who already have established systems do not want to give them up for something they haven’t yet seen.
But it is greatly to be hoped that such arrangements are transient, and that the problem will cease to be an issue once the new tests are seen to be working.
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