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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2590 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

After discussing this issue with the P and C Council just last week, I understand that the testing being considered is not simply a one-off test. The Minister may correct me on this, but I was rather pleasantly surprised that what was being considered was having students work on a unit which they would normally work on but constructing the unit in such a way as to draw from it literacy and numeracy conclusions. Such tests are provided by ACER, the Australian Council for Educational Research. Such a method of testing seems to me to be far more effective than one-off testing.

In Canberra we have the joy of seeing the way we test our students going into Year 12. We do not have the single one-off test that many other States have. Canberra Grammar retains one-off testing and goes in with New South Wales for their one-off test. I think most of us realise that our students do far better, and are seen to do far better, in their later years at university, instead of just working very hard for three or four weeks leading up to an exam, as I certainly did, because it was a method at university as well as a method at school. Indeed, that is how I got through all my exams. It meant that you could cruise the rest of the time. The big disadvantage of a one-off test is that individuals only have to be feeling off for that test or have something go wrong and their results can be skewed substantially. That is highly unlikely to be the case when somebody is tested over the time he is doing the work, as happens in our Year 11 and Year 12.

Another part of the statement of the Minister that it is interesting to consider is the issue of opting in and opting out. Using a whole unit, we could assess what is actually going on in school, not just literacy and numeracy, even though they are very important. In your statement, Minister, you pointed out that we ought not to just focus on literacy and numeracy but look at what we are doing with the whole child. Keeping that in mind, it is important for us to consider this whole opt-in, opt-out issue. Rather than allowing people to opt in and opt out of a unit, which would be very difficult, it may be appropriate for us to allow parents to opt in on how we use the data rather than on the collection of the data in the first place. My discussion with the P and C Council indicates that we still have to resolve where we should opt in and where we should opt out, if indeed testing is accepted. In the context of what Ms McRae said, is testing the best expenditure of our money, or would it be far better to expend our money in other ways?

We need to take our children through enhanced literacy, through enhanced numeracy and beyond. As Ms McRae said, we can effectively assess literacy and numeracy at the Year 12 level. When we are looking at data, it is important to be conscious of the fact that some students come to their literacy and their numeracy skills later than others. It is a perfectly normal part of growing up. Some children are numerate from a very early age and some are literate from a very early age. Others will pull together reading skills, speaking skills and writing skills at a much later stage. It may well be in the first couple of years of high school that that finally comes together for some students. When students are not completely literate at Year 3, should we be saying that we have a major problem? If they are not able to read at the end of Year 1, do we have a major problem? Probably in many cases we do not. In a small class at kindergarten or Year 1 level, it certainly is worth the teacher assessing what it is about a student that is affecting their literacy or their numeracy so that the issue can be pursued, but I think we have to be very careful about how we draw our conclusions. We should ensure that this is done within the professional concept of readiness theory to determine whether these students are ready.

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