How Well is Your Child Doing At School… Really?
The current schooling system in NZ makes it difficult to know if your child is reaching their full potential. If they are reported as being ‘at’ or ‘working towards’, how do you know – is your child achieving at school?
Parents often express frustration with the current system. Their child is graded as being ‘at’ or ‘working towards’, and even with extra help and tutoring, find them sitting at the same standard. Even with visible improvements to their reading and maths, their grade stays the same. NZEI president Lynda Stuart said that “National Standards narrowed the curriculum, put undue pressure on children, increased teacher workload and weren’t even an accurate measure of a child’s progress”.
New Government, New School System?
The new Government are committed to replacing the National Standards system. However, the timeframes for replacement are unclear and we simply do not know what it will be replaced with. Already National Standards have been scrapped for Primary Schools and the following guidelines have been released for the planned new system.
Primary schools will be required to use teacher judgement in conjunction with recognised assessment tools to:
- Determine the level a child is achieving in the NZ Curriculum level
- Between reports, show a child’s rate of progress
- Identify the children that are not achieving
- Report on next learning steps based on sound decisions
- Twice-yearly, report all this information in plain language to parents
In the meantime, how do you know if your child is achieving what they should be?
Is Your Child Achieving at School?
At In2learning we use standardised tests. These provide the information that you want to know about your child. There are several options for testing, including reading, comprehension and spelling. Each one gives an age level equivalent so you know where your child is at. Our reading tests give a result in years that is easy to understand.
While maths testing is not as precise, we can show where the child is performing compared to their peers.
This not only provides good information to parents about your child’s schooling achievement, it also provides a base result. The tests can be repeated in time to show progress and improvement.
Give us a call to discuss an assessment for your child. This enables you to get the best possible outcomes for your child, and the best possible future.