Primary Schools Getting New Ways Of Assessing Children’s Progress

Primary school teachers are being given new tools to help them accurately assess how much children are learning at school.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard today unveiled the new literacy assessment tools, which will be available for the start of next year for students in Years 5-7. Numeracy assessment tools are also being developed and will be available for the start of 2003.

The Government has committed $28.4 million over the next two years to assessment initiatives.

"This is a really exciting step forward for education in New Zealand," Trevor Mallard said.

“Not only will the new resource help teachers to assess their children, but the push of a computer button will provide them with an immediate analysis of the results."

Schools will be provided with a CD-Rom to give teachers the ability to test what their children have learned and show what they should be learning next. It will also allow them to compare how their children are doing with other children throughout the country.

“The tests will be able to be used any time during the school year and may be designed to suit the whole class, a group of children, or an individual.

“It also means parents will benefit as well, from the better information that schools will be able to give them about how their children are doing.”

“We have learnt that some children have been missing out on some aspects of their education until they wanted a qualification for the world of work. As everyone knows, that’s far too late. This new system will provide teachers with the information they need to identify those children, and to put them on the right track.

The initiative will provide teachers with:

- Exemplars of student work in all areas of the school curriculum, to show the progress that learning is expected to make

- More literacy and numeracy assessment tests

- Further development of the Assessment Resource Banks; and

- Additional professional development to help teachers to make better use of assessment information.

Trevor Mallard said new initiative was firmly sited on the government’s policy that the assessment of students would be based on the use of information that would improve teaching and learning, and not on ranking schools.

“I hope teachers will use the assessment information from the new tools to make a difference for all students, but particularly for those students who are not currently achieving as well as they should be,” Trevor Mallard said.

More information is available at: http://www.tki.org.nz/e/assessment/

Ends

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