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initial teacher education student’s
personal literacy and numeracy skills,
not their ability to teach these skills to
school students.”
Huh? Okay, let me get this straight.
These tests should measure our personal
numeracy and literacy skills, not what we
can teach in the classroom. Am I missing
something? If they don’t measure anything
of value in the classroom, which they do
not, why are we wasting approximately
$93 for each test? We are all in education
programs to work as educators, so if these
tests do not measure our ability to teach,
what is the point of them?
As one student wrote, these tests do
not measure our ability to teach students
concepts like nouns and verbs. Despite my
own personal numeracy not being great
– according to these tests – I successfully
managed to teach students various
multiplication strategies.
On a Facebook page dedicated to the
LANTITE, many student teachers are at
a loss as to what to do next, since many
(myself included) will have wasted years
of effort and money for a degree they
will not receive. One student teacher
was kicked out by her university for not
meeting whatever requirement needed,
despite having only one subject left.
Many students felt confused after they
completed their third attempt (which
used to be the maximum, but now it has
changed to five). Many students cannot
continue with their placements because
they have not “succeeded”.
One student wrote: “Ours tacked the
LANTITE onto our third‑year prac from
this year. It has become an assessment
piece, you don’t get your grade for the
whole subject until you pass all assessable
components. Therefore, you also can’t
proceed to the 4th/5th prac as the others
are prerequisite and of course we [can] not
graduate.”
Again, what a complete waste of time.
One student commented their efforts
were now “useless”. If they are now
deemed useless, can we get HECS refunds
please as we did not graduate and are not
able to work?
I was of the opinion that the government
wanted a better education system. An
article in The Australian from 2016 notes
that the LANTITE was the brainchild of
the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory
Group (TEMAG), which was founded in
2014. According to the Department of
Education’s website, TEMAG issued a
2015 report that highlighted the need for
a difficult selection process for education
courses. I am assuming the LANTITE falls
into this category. Sadly, what TEMAG fails
to comprehend is that teaching is more
than a test. TEMAG – and therefore the
government – is equating the standard of
who I am as an educator with whether or
not I can meet an apparent standard on a
test, thus encapsulating the entire teaching
profession to marks on a piece of paper.
In a 2015 paper, University of Southern
Queensland senior lecturer Stewart Riddle
noted that the demonstration of basic
grammar skills on a test and the ability
to teach literacy within the classroom do
not have any relationship with each other.
If, as Mr Birmingham states, it is about
personal literacy and numeracy, how in
the world does that relate to being inside
a classroom?
Riddle (2015) states that “reducing the
complex work of teaching to performance
on a test … only works for those wanting a
fast headline and political advances”. Boy,
is he right!
A 2018 article by Melissa Barnes, a
Monash University lecturer in education,
and Russell Cross, a Melbourne University
associate professor in education, states
that there is no evidence to suggest
a correlation between the tests and
excellent teachers.
They also note that, as a policy initiative,
the LANTITE suggests that the selection of
students into educational programs is the
first step to ensure a higher teacher quality.
In that case, why were we all accepted into
the programs by universities? Shouldn’t
the LANTITE, if there is substantial proof
that it creates better teachers (so far there
is not), be administered to incoming
teaching students, not those of us who
have spent years working towards being
able to teach only to be told that there
is another hurdle? This hurdle essentially
means that a lot of universities around the
country are holding many of our deserved
degrees hostage.
To be blunt, ensuring a higher quality of
teachers will not come from a test or two.
Teaching is apparently a highly valuable
profession, and yet many are overworked
and unbelievably underpaid. How about
start there?
What I do not understand is how
meeting some benchmark on two
standardised tests automatically proves
that a person is qualified to teach.
Meeting marks on tests does not take into
consideration any of the 37 professional
teaching standards of the Australian
Institute for Teaching and School
Leadership (AITSL). The seven main
standards, which are further categorised
into a total of 37, are as follows:
1. Know students and how they learn
2. K
now the content and how to teach it
3. Plan for and implement effective
teaching and learning
4. C
reate and maintain supportive and safe
learning environments
5. A
ssess, provide feedback and report on
student learning
6. E
ngage in professional learning
7. Engage professionally with colleagues,
parents/carers and the community. How
are any of these standards depicted in
the standardised tests, which apparently
prove an individual is ready to teach?
A quote that is attributed to Albert Einstein
is, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge
a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will
live its whole life believing it is stupid.” I’ve
seen a cartoon illustration of this quote in
which a monkey, a penguin, an elephant,
a fish, a seal and a dog are all standing in
a line. In front of them is a teacher sitting
at a desk telling them to take the same
test, in this case, climbing the tree behind
them. This exquisite image is, in a nutshell,
the education system in this country.
Standardised testing works, apparently,
above all else, despite the fact that in
our degrees we are told to cater to the
individual learner in the classroom.
Again, which one is it? Standardised
testing or personalised learning? The
government can’t have both. Having your
cake and eating it too just does not work.
Trust me, I have tried.
The double standards here actually
prove one thing: that the government
and the universities are absolutely clueless
in that they have no idea what they
are doing.
As far as I am concerned, this is
purely a money-making exercise by the
government. It never was about producing
better teachers. It is a facade. ■
Mihad Ali is a Master of Teaching
student who lives in Victoria. She is
currently a teacher’s aide at an aftercare
school program. She hopes to graduate
soon and fulfil her dream of becoming
a teacher.
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