campusreview.com.au
policy & reform
‘Unethical’
LANTITE activists call for test to
be scrapped.
By Wade Zaglas
The alleged shortcomings and
unfairness of the Literacy and
Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher
Education (LANTITE) have been highlighted
by education students and academics.
Indeed, an article in The Australian
recently pointed out a number of issues,
including the inability of students to sit
the test at the moment due to COVID-19
restrictions, and arguments that the test
has no real bearing on whether you will be
a great teacher or not.
One member of the Student Teachers
Acting Against LANTITE Facebook group
said she received high distinctions
throughout her degree but failed the
numeracy component of the test,
eliminating her chances of graduating.
An earlier story we published on the
controversial test also underscored a
number of discriminatory factors at play,
including allegedly not making “reasonable
adjustments” for students who have a
disability, English as a second language
(ESL) speakers and Indigenous Australians.
While the LANTITE Facebook group is
not against the test in principle, it contends
it is flawed and will only exacerbate the
teacher shortage facing the country.
Here are some of the key issues group
members have with the test:
• Despite being introduced in 2016, it
was applied retrospectively. So, if you
started an education degree in 2014 and
expected to graduate in 2017, you still
had to sit the test.
• The LANTITE group has had clarification
from its lawyer that it is unethical for
universities to apply it to students who
began before 2016; however, universities
still have the discretionary right to do so.
• You cannot prepare adequately for the
test because you cannot anticipate what
will be in it.
• The test results provide no real feedback
other than a “simple bar and dot” graph.
• After accumulating a HECS debt of
up to $40,000 for a five-year degree,
and passing all other requirements, it’s
draconian to base an individual’s life
trajectory on one exam.
• Some states require a LANTITE pass as
a registration requirement, while other
states require it as graduate requirement,
even though some of those people
will use their degree in areas other
than teaching.
• To date, there is no sufficient evidence
to suggest that the LANTITE ensures
teacher quality.
• The LANTITE implicitly degrades older
teachers or those who graduated before
2016 as “dumb” by constantly referring to
the need for “quality teachers”.
According to the LANTITE Facebook
group, the Australian government and the
test administrator, the Australian Council
for Education Research (ACER), have
characterised this as a “basic” test to the
general public, but reportedly this could
not be further from the truth.
According to The Australian, however,
roughly 90 per cent of students sitting
the test for the first time passed it, but the
overall pass rate has dipped slightly since.
The LANTITE Facebook group also
points out “that the UK scrapped a similar
test called QTS after a mass teacher
shortage and a failure in the marking
algorithms”. The group is concerned that
Australia is following the same trajectory.
They also allege that both the
government and ACER will not openly
state that the test is based on a marking
algorithm or a weighted bell curve,
although the marking system, they allege,
clearly displays this.
The post-test information provided to the
individual sitting the test is scant, to say the
least. The LANTITE Facebook group reports
that no information on how to improve is
provided, or even which questions were
answered incorrectly and correctly.
The test administrator, ACER, offers this
information on how to interpret results:
“Given the purpose of the test is to
determine if a candidate has achieved the
standard, the statement broadly indicates
how far above or how far below a standard
the candidate’s test result is.
“The result of a candidate who achieves
the standard will lie in Band 2 or above. The
result of a candidate who does not achieve
the standard will lie in Band 1 or below.”
But what is missing from the test
feedback information is specificity, and this
brings up a very important question: How
can we correct something we don’t know
is wrong?
Currently the Student Teachers Acting
Against LANTITE Facebook group has
8000 signatures on a petition to change
the test, and has also attracted the support
of several academics.
It will be interesting to see if this has
any bearing on the test and how it is
administered in the years to come. ■
9