policy & reform campusreview. com. au
Testing times for teachers
Government applauds literacy and numeracy levels of teaching students, but not all make the grade.
By Loren Smith
Most university students simply need to pass all their subjects to graduate. Teaching students, however, have to score in the top 30 per cent of the adult population in literacy and numeracy, in addition to passing their regular exams, to earn their degrees.
This is the consequence of the government’ s Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students, of which the 2017 results have just been released. Education Minster Simon Birmingham was very pleased with the fact that 92 per cent passed the literacy component, while 92.3 per cent passed the numeracy one.
“ It’ s vital our newest teachers have the right skills to teach and the knowledge to lead by example,” he said.
More than 23,000 teaching students sat the 2017 test. On average, their scores were lower than those of the 2016 cohort, but higher than the inaugural 2015 results. This, Birmingham said, indicates space for improvement. He laid responsibility for this on universities:“ Higher education providers need to take responsibility for the teacher graduates they accept into their initial teacher education programs.”
Victoria University is host to one of the worst-performing cohorts. It was one of the 19 out of 52 institutions where at least 10 per cent of students failed a minimum of one test section: 27 per cent of its teaching students failed literacy, while 24 per cent failed numeracy.
Associate Professor Anthony Watt, director of learning and teaching in the university’ s education faculty, softened the apparent severity of these shortcomings.
“ You don’ t always get it first time,” he said.“ We’ re keen to support everyone to achieve the benchmark and we’ re working with students on that.”
By contrast, students at the University of Western Australia excelled: just 2 per cent failed literacy and only 1 per cent failed numeracy.
The tests came into being thanks to the Coalition government’ s Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, which also birthed the Gonski 2.0 reforms, among others. ■
State and territory implementation of the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students
Location of candidate’ s Higher Education Provider( HEP) |
Number of HEPs offering ITE courses |
Number of new students sitting the literacy test in 2017 |
|
Publicly available information on the test requirement |
New South Wales & Australian Capital Territory
Victoria & Tasmania
19 |
7563 |
NSW – From 1 July 2016 all existing and new students must meet the standard prior to graduation, and more specifically, prior to undertaking the final professional experience placement. ACT – From 1 January 2017 all students enrolling in an initial teacher education program must meet the test standard prior to course completion and degree conferral. |
13 |
9277 |
VIC – From 1 July 2016 all existing and new students must meet the standard |
|
|
prior to graduation and to apply for teacher registration. |
|
|
TAS – From 1 July 2016 new students only must meet the standard prior |
|
|
to graduation. |
Queensland |
10 |
4050 |
From 1 January 2018 all existing and new students must meet the standard prior to graduation. |
Western Australia |
6 |
1742 |
From 1 January 2017 new students only must meet the standard prior to graduation. |
South Australia & Northern Territory |
5 |
489 |
SA – From 1 January 2017 new students only must meet the standard prior to graduation. NT – From 1 January 2017 new students must meet the standard prior to graduation. In addition, from 1 July 2016 the NT Department of Education made it mandatory that a prospective NT government teacher must have met the standard to be considered for employment. |
10