The government has announced mandatory reading, writing and maths tests for primary schools.
From next year, schools will be required to test the ability of five year olds to link sounds and letters at 20 and 40 weeks of schooling.
From years 3-8, schools would have to test children’s reading, writing and maths twice a year using either e-asTTle or Progressive Assessment Tests (PATs).
Its back to the future all over again…
NACTional have been beating the same drums basically the entire time i’ve been a voter; despite every time they implement their ideas it turning out (as the experts have repeatedly told them) that it doesn’t work like they claim it will. Tax cuts to improve the lot of everybody, boot camps to stop youth crime, standardised testing for children - its all the same nonsense over & over again.
They implement it, it doesn’t help anything, and then under a Labour government they remove it & implement what the experts in the field have been suggesting instead.
Testing 5 years olds isn’t got to cost us the $300m hit for not buying ferries so its not the same immediate economic vandalism; but if it helps to ruin the first few years of education for a whole cohort of children that can’t exactly be great for the country in 20 plus years.
2014: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1409/S00145/government-continues-its-obsession-with-testing-children.htm 2009: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1121909.pdf