New tests to assess 'modern skills'

STUDENTS will be assessed on their social and emotional skills.

Classroom

STUDENTS will be assessed on their social and emotional skills, creative thinking and cultural understanding in subjects such as geography, maths and science, under an expansion of the national testing program to be considered next week by education ministers.

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority is developing tests for the national curriculum including the general capabilities, often described as 21st-century skills.

The national curriculum relates seven general capabilities to each subject, with the maths curriculum suggesting students study intercultural understanding in geometry and probability to "explore and compare cultural knowledge, beliefs and practices" in investigating angles or describing probability using fractions, percentages and decimals.

A briefing paper prepared for the ministers, and obtained by The Weekend Australian, proposes to start national tests of a representative sample of about 12,000 students in Years 6 and 10 from 2016 in history, from 2017 in geography, from 2018 in health and physical education.

The tests would also assess one of the general capabilities as applied to that subject, with history in 2016 to include critical and creative thinking and "intercultural understanding".

Geography would test creative and critical thinking as well as information and communication technology capability; the health and physical education test would quiz students on their "personal and social capability", described as social and emotional skills, and their "ethical understanding", described as "building a strong personal and socially oriented ethical outlook".

Seven capabilities are outlined in the curriculum, comprising literacy, numeracy, information and communication technology capability, critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, ethical understanding and intercultural understanding.

ACARA chief executive Robert Randall would not comment on the briefing paper before the ministers' meeting but said the curriculum document was not an assessment framework.

"ACARA would never test intercultural understanding in the context of mathematics," Mr Randall said.

"Content descriptions set out what teachers should teach and what will be tested.

"Whether teachers link this piece of mathematics to intercultural understanding is a choice for them to make, depending on the students in their class."

The ministers' meeting in Sydney on Friday will be the first with federal counterpart Christopher Pyne, who is intending to conduct a review of the national curriculum to ensure its rigour.

"I have previously stated my support for more traditional teaching methods and an orthodox approach to education but I will await the expert advice from the review," Mr Pyne said.

The Australian curriculum says the seven general capabilities "encompass the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that . . . will assist students to live and work successfully in the 21st century".

All students sit the literacy and numeracy tests in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, but a representative sample of students in Years 6 and 10 are tested in science literacy, civics and citizenship and computer literacy on a three-yearly basis.