Formal testing of five-year-olds is unproductive

AS thousands of children start kindergarten in NSW schools, it is love of learning — not formal testing — which will be the key to their future success.

Formal testing of five and six year olds is unproductive.

• Why Lego could make school irrelevant
• There is life after the HSC
• How to choose the right school for your child
• Tips for moving kids to high school

THE school year begins today, and this also means, for most new students, the start of 13 years of formal assessment and grading.

While it is important to find meaningful ways to measure what our children know or what they have learnt, batteries of formal tests can create a destructive culture of comparison, and generations of children become hooked on grades instead of learning. Is that what we want school to be for them?

Formal testing of five and six-year-olds is particularly unproductive. A more meaningful approach is for teachers to spend time asking questions of the children (and their parents) to discover what they know and how they learn best. Questions such as: what interests you or your child; what do you/they wish to learn; what motivates you/them?

Ready for the first day of school.

Too many schools reduce learning and learners to a number, a rank or a grade. This approach can lead to a belief that if something is not easy to measure, then it’s not worth learning. The best teachers really know their students and what they can do. They provide meaningful feedback and ensure that their students understand what success looks like. And, importantly they foster in their students a deep love of learning.

In a recently published global survey, teachers said assessments were given too much attention. What mattered most to these 1500 teachers was early years literacy followed closely by teacher professional learning. The teachers rated assessment 12th in terms of overall importance. I agree with them.

Life long love of learning is the key to success.

The reality is that formalised testing such as the HSC and NAPLAN is a part of the present educational environment. However, there are many other ways to gather information on student achievement. For our youngest students, standardised tests should be avoided altogether.

We know that the best learning happens when students are genuinely engaged. It is time to move children out of 20th century testing factories and into 21st century learning labs.