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Column Do we really need mandatory standardised testing in primary schools?

Learning support teachers are more than capable of screening and diagnosing learning difficulties, writes Peter Gunning.

IT IS THAT time of year again when our broad primary curriculum surrenders its holistic hallmark and yields to a narrow focus zeroing in on numeracy and literacy.

Multi-talented teachers, who normally engage their multi-talented children in imaginative and experiential teaching and learning suddenly morph into standardised testers, pinning notices onto their classroom doors requesting silence please as tests are in progress before informing the children that they have one hour and that they may begin.

Standardised tests

Standardised tests have been used in primary schools for over twenty years. In the school where I was principal until my recent retirement, we used them as a means of screening children to ascertain which of them might benefit from additional learning supports.

Prior to 2012, such screening was informal and discretionary. Since 2012 yearly standardised testing in numeracy and literacy has become mandatory for all primary school pupils from First to Sixth Class.

Principals are obliged to tabulate and forward results of these tests to the Department of Education and Skills each June. It is also mandatory to publish the children’s scores on the their yearly report cards.

This can result in definition by test performance which is alien to the multiple intelligence culture which exists in our primary schools where each child’s holistic development is central.

Their usefulness can be inflated

These Drumcondra Maths and English tests or the equivalent MICRA-Ts and SIGMA-Ts can be useful screening tools of a child’s progress in the key areas of literacy and numeracy.

However, the danger is that their usefulness can be inflated, and detract from the real and varied learning experiences enjoyed by children in our schools. Teachers and parents have a responsibility to ensure that the correct perspective is maintained.

The tests provide so-called “hard data”, STENs  (basically an out of ten score) and percentiles (indicating at which percentage point the child is at on a national grid). No less but certainly no more.

An upset father

Last summer, I had a visit from a father who was very upset about his child’s STEN score in her SIGMA-T maths test. He produced a line graph which he had drawn showing his daughter’s performance over the previous four years.

Eimear had an above average STEN:8 (basically 8/10) each year but scored a STEN:7 in 2017. The father wanted to know what we were going to do about this set-back. Before I glanced out of the window to check whether the sky had fallen in, I asked him had he ever heard his daughter sing.

Teachers too can fall into the trap of thinking that which can be counted matters more than that which actually counts. Noticing the abstract for this article on my study table, Cathal, my now adult son reminded me of his experience of what he calls STIGMA testing in fourth class.

Misuse of hard data

His class teacher administered tests at both the beginning and at the end of the school year ranking the children in order of performance. He asked Cathal to explain how he had fallen from seventh in the class in September to seventeenth in June. This teacher in his misuse of hard data is in good company.

The Irish Times annually aggregates third-level entries to produce a top-down league table of post-primary schools. Using that which can be counted and overlooking so much that really counts the tables come under the erroneous title “Top Schools”.

Tackling social disadvantage, welcoming students with learning disabilities and opening special classes for children on the ASD spectrum may be more difficult criteria to measure but each add to the betterment of our schools.

Why the need?

Mandatory standardised testing at primary level is at the very least questionable. Why the need? Learning support teachers are more than capable of screening and diagnosing learning difficulties where and when the need arises without turning the whole school into an examination hub once a year.

Teachers need to keep their focus on ensuring that in their classrooms the teaching and learning is active and creative. There should be no distracting from this focus on child-centred education. Because, from that centre the creative outcomes are immeasurable.

Fortunately, the primary school curriculum lends itself to unearthing such outcomes. Provoke the imagination and a child’s inherent talents and infinite potential will emerge.

On visiting sixth class last June I asked the children how many of them were poets. No hand went up. I demonstrated a simple four line rhythm and rhyme technique. Within half an hour they were all producing four liners. The following day there was a sign on the doors of both sixth classes. “Please Do Not Disturb. Poets At Work.”

A number of years ago I attended a lunch after a confirmation ceremony. I was asked by a bishop, as a teacher had I ever encountered “real genius”. I told him that I met with genius on a daily basis. The bishop looked somewhat bemused. He had a rather more academic interpretation of the word “genius” than me.

But when it comes to defining a genius I agree with Einstein: “Everyone is a genius but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will spend its whole life thinking it is stupid.”

Peter Gunning is a retired primary school principal and writer.

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    Mute Smiley
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    May 3rd 2018, 7:09 AM

    I’ve first-hand experience of schools where teacher bias against some children has had to be changed because of standardised testing results. Some teachers look at children’s misbehaviour and don’t give those children the extra hours required because of the children’s behaviour. Often said children’s misbehaviour is a result of being unable to cope with the level of teaching because of lack of reading or mathematical skills. Not picked up until standardised tests are administered.

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    Mute TheHeathen
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    May 3rd 2018, 7:46 AM

    @Smiley: And that’s the main point behind the article. Learning support and SEN teachers are well able to spot this. We don’t really need standardised testing. We’re aping the awful and corrupt British system of league tables, while they have realised the error of this system and are changing.

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    Mute Graham
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    May 3rd 2018, 9:06 AM

    @Smiley: exceptionally rare for child’s issues with literacy/numeracy to only become apparent through a standardised test. And students with behavioural issues usually have more not less teacher contact time/interaction

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    Mute Dara O'Brien
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    May 3rd 2018, 7:12 AM

    I broadly agree with the author, we tend not to allow for children who’s natural talents lie outside of the standard ‘go to college and get a degree’ route. In other countries, mich more credence is given to apprenticeships and learning valuable skills that aren’t strictly speaking, ‘academic’

    That said, the standard of literacy in the country is falling rapidly (I don’t know enough to comment on numeracy) to the point that at least one well known university had to introduce a mandatory grammar module for its third level journalism students. The lecturer told me that the only people who now know enough to teach the rules of grammar are students who learned english as a foreign language.

    I’d agree with him – my written language skills are good but I struggle to explain in terms, technically correct, why something should be written in a particular way. I instinctively know if it’s right or wrong (probably because I read a lot as a child and absorbed it) but can’t expalin grammatically.

    So I feel there is a need to test progress at least in the fundamentals. Whilst it’s a good way of checking the effectiveness of the educational system, the outcome shouldn’t be used to pigeonhole students.

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    Mute Pat O' Sullivan
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    May 3rd 2018, 7:36 AM

    @Dara O’Brien: Poor grammar and writing skills is more of an argument against the current narrow standardised testing, which only tests maths, reading and a little bit of spelling.

    In 2010 the government set ambitious reading and numeracy targets for schools to achieve by 2020. They hit those targets around 2014. Our PISA rankings rose and Irish primary school students are now the top readers in Europe in one study.

    The government reaction was to raise numeracy and reading targets for the next ten years. In my opinion, the should have taken the win and turned the focus more towards writing, which tests ignore.

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    Mute Seeking Truth
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    May 3rd 2018, 1:49 PM

    @Dara O’Brien: This is taught in the American achool system and is definitely missing in the Irish system. One of the national standardised tests, the ACT, tests your ability to edit and correct a written letter, including parts of speech, punctuation, etc. It is a very useful tool.

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    Mute Smelly Chemist
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    May 3rd 2018, 7:42 AM

    First year university students don’t know things I was taught in primary school like how to multiply and divide without calculators or how to divide by a fraction (turn it upside down and multiply). They don’t understand things I was taught in secondary school like what the slope of a line really means or how to rearrange equations or use correct units. They also generally have terrible grammar and handwriting. I don’t know what they’re doing in schools.

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    Mute eric nelligan
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    May 3rd 2018, 7:55 AM

    @Smelly Chemist: rightly or wrong education has moved away from knowledge and learning towards understanding and manipulating data. Add in the hours and hours now devoted to things previously done by parents; wellbeing, feelings, physical activities, health and dental care, emotional support, it’s no wonder certain skills are pushed to the side.

    Skills that can now be done with computers are the things that suffer.

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    Mute Rónán O'Suilleabháin
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    May 3rd 2018, 10:11 AM

    @Smelly Chemist:
    Would have to echo your experience. I did a lot of private tutoring in college and encountered the same issues. Even at that it’s not that they forgot how to add and subtract fractions, it’s that they couldn’t even solve the problem correctly with the calculator either. Issues with BOMDAS etc.

    Just because something is no longer required doesn’t mean the method isn’t useful and necessary practice.

    But as for standardised testing I have a vivid memory of the my 5th class teacher calling out who had the highest reading age and who had the lowest. I remember the 11 year old kid with an 8 year old reading age bawling his eyes out. I’m sure that was very helpful in his educational development!

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    Mute Emily Barry
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    May 3rd 2018, 5:56 PM

    @Smelly Chemist: I’m in sixth year and can do all of the above. We are taught them in school, especially for higher level maths and English for what you’re referring to so I disagree. Clearly it is being done in schools but clearly some students still can’t grasp the maths. Still though the broad stereotype is just wrong.

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    Mute Joe Conlon
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    May 3rd 2018, 9:07 PM

    @Emily Barry: Compare leaving cert maths exams from the 80′s and 90′s to those now and you will get the gist of his point. Nobody is calling the students thick or less intelligent but the curriculum has been made a lot easier and I think that’s the point. Good luck in the exams

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    Mute Kathryn Crowley
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    May 3rd 2018, 10:09 AM

    As a former principal I too strongly agree that what really counts in schools can’t be counted. Results of a standardised test is merely a snapshot in time. The child may be unwell on the day, may have not slept well the night before, etc. Teachers should use the scores only as part of the jigsaw and use their professional judgment and knowledge of the child to paint a fuller profile. Tests can be useful to back up this judgment in order to draw up an educational plan. But no high stakes should be attached to the results, either for the child or the school.

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    Mute B Ó Raghallaigh
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    May 3rd 2018, 9:51 AM

    So having seen it not work in other countries we want to bring it here? Why not look to a successful education system like Finland?

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    Mute Austin Rock
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    May 3rd 2018, 10:45 AM

    @B Ó Raghallaigh: Ahh that would be too radical (aside from the fact they are probably best educated in Europe) lets take the mess the Brits have done and apply that.

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    Mute Fintan McCutcheon
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    May 3rd 2018, 11:36 AM

    Agree. The problem with testing in schools is that it can only measure what is measurable, thus, those things that are measurable come to be prioritized over those things that cannot be readily measured. This skews Learning and , consequently, Teaching in some very ridiculous ways. For example, it is really important for a school to teach, and for children to learn, critical- thinking. But critical-thinking cannot be measured by standardized tests. Even the tests that pose to measure critical-thinking do not do so and instead measure other things such as precocious language or verbosity or vocabulary. To increase a child’s score on these tests a teacher , overly influenced by the virtue of messurement, would work diligently on vocabulary etc as oppposed to programmes of learning that would genuinely improve children’s capacity for critical thinking, all of which are pedagogies that would draw children into philosophising, dialogue, resolving, experimenting etc, all of which cannot be measured.

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    Mute Oisín O'Connor
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    May 3rd 2018, 8:26 AM

    Honest question: are these results used at a school level, to identify schools that are performing far below or above the median? Or even to calculate the variance in results depending on age? These could be useful insights which could help with allocation of resources to the right schools.

    The author is correct – interpreting results aymt an individual child level can be misleading and pointless. But identifying schools/areas/types of schools where there are issues could be very valuable.

    E.g. I’d be surprised if the educate together “1st class to 2nd class change” results aren’t markedly better than catholic schools’.

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    Mute Bríd Uí Mhaoluala
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    May 3rd 2018, 9:04 AM

    @Oisín O’Connor: We have worked hard over the years and as an indirect result the test scores we get are well above the average – which means that we will lose SEN staff in the next review. So schools that do well get punished .
    And thinking that ET schools get better results than Catholic ones in 2nd class is frankly hilarious.

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    Mute Brian Deane
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    May 3rd 2018, 11:19 AM

    @Bríd Uí Mhaoluala: Agree. The issue here is not so much mandatory testing as mandatory reporting of the test results to the DES. The big question is how will they use the results? Well, big hint – how does anyone think a corporate entity such as the DES which has no problem cutting capitation funding to schools will use results of any sort? They use them to justify further cuts to funding for schools. QED

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    Mute Bríd Uí Mhaoluala
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    May 3rd 2018, 12:52 PM

    @Brian Deane: They ARE using the results to cut SEN hours . We were told that the data would only be used for statistical purposes when the DES first sought it. That didn’t last too long !

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    Mute Catherine Barry
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    May 4th 2018, 6:36 PM

    It’s highly unlikely Einstein ever said that nonsense about fishes and trees. The cartoon that most often accompanies it features various animals like fish and monkeys, making it completely non-analagous with children WHO ARE ALL OF THE SAME SPECIES. These tests are designed to be screening tests. Just because of one teacher’s inexcusable practice of using them to rank the kids in her class (a practise I somehow doubt is widespread), that does not devalue the essential need for screening for literacy and maths problems. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/

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    Mute Paddy Carroll
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    May 4th 2018, 10:33 PM

    I would question the validity of the results as teaching to the test cannot be resisted by some teachers. I suspect it is more widespread than admitted and obviously not done openly. It is totally unprofessional, whether due to pressure from the principal or to cover up for poor teaching or simply to look good.

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    Mute Lucy Barrett
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    May 7th 2018, 12:33 PM

    As the mother of a son who hated (still hates) tests in any shape or form I agree wholeheartedly with you. My son is an intelligent, kind and sometimes annoying adult. These tests don’t measure everything, they can’t.

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