NSW imposes Nelson’s reporting requirements

By Jennifer Leete

The State Government has imposed new student report criteria for primary schools so it can get federal funding.

On August 14 Premier Morris Iemma released to the media details of new requirements for student reports which are to be implemented by all public primary schools for the half yearly report in 2006. This arises from Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt's agreement to implement Federal Government requirements which Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has made a condition of Commonwealth funding.

The Nelson requirements are:

"i. where the child undertakes a standard assessment in reading, writing, spelling and numeracy at year 3, 5, 7 or 9 will include the result of that assessment against appropriate national benchmarks;
"ii. where the child undertakes a standard assessment in reading, writing, spelling and numeracy at year, 3, 5, 7 or 9, will include the result of that assessment against achievement levels or bands;
"iii. where the child undertakes a standard assessment in reading, writing, spelling, and numeracy at year 3, 5, 7 or 9, will include the average achievement of the child's peer group in the school against achievement levels or bands;
"iv. must include, for key learning areas, or subjects studied, an assessment against achievement levels or bands as defined by the education authority or school. These achievement levels should be labelled as A, B, C, D, E (or an equivalent) and should be clearly defined against specific learning standards; and
"v. must report for key learning areas or subjects studied, the child's achievement relative to the achievement of the child's peer group in the school by at least quartile bands. Reporting the assessment of the child's peer group in the school must not breach the privacy of individual children."

The imposed NSW reports will now contain reporting of Achievement Grades A-E for each of the syllabus strands in English and mathematics and one Achievement Grade for each of the other key learning areas in primary schools. The Achievement Grades are as follows:

A--outstanding achievement
B--high achievement
C--satisfactory achievement
D--limited achievement
E--low achievement.

In addition it will be mandatory to report for each key learning area achievement in quartiles, that is top 25 per cent, 2nd 25 per cent, 3rd 25 per cent or 4th 25 per cent. The use of the term 'bottom 25 per cent' on an earlier draft was rejected, the Minister presumably assessing that '4th 25 per cent' was more palatable. In a typical example of media spin all of the examples provided to the media to show how this would look showed students who were performing in the top 25 per cent.

In response to this aspect of the imposed reports, Federation's media release said:

"The Federation is concerned that the imposition of reporting quartile achievement bands for children as young as 6 years of age could be counterproductive to the efforts being made by teachers to engage all students, including those who are under-performing academically, in learning.

"A written report which indicates that, for up to six of the Key Learning Areas studied in NSW primary schools, a particular student is in the bottom quartile, could be quite damaging for student self-esteem and attitudes to learning.

"All teachers and parents understand the negative cycle which can be created when constant feelings of failure, particularly in the development of literacy and numeracy skills, damage student self-esteem."

The imposition of this quartile reporting is contrary to the professional and educational judgement of the vast majority of primary teachers. Since the introduction of outcomes based assessment in the early 1990s primary teachers have worked very hard to ensure that they were making consistent professional judgements against syllabus outcomes and stage statements. The Department of Education and Training (DET) has required reporting to parents on student progress to reflect this since 1996.

All primary teachers know that the extent to which outcomes, particularly specific syllabus outcomes, were used for written reports to parents has been a huge issue and there have been lots of professional and industrial debates in schools about the extent to which detailed reporting of syllabus outcomes was appropriate, as well as the workload implications of such reporting.

It was these concerns which led to the Federation calling for and the Government agreeing to conduct the Eltis Review.

The plan to implement those parts of the recommendations of the Eltis Review has now been completely overtaken by the Nelson requirements, which NSW is now imposing.

The new format threatens the congruence between school and home because it creates a disconnectedness between what is happening in the classroom and the method of reporting. The previous DET mantra about the need for consistent planning across curriculum, programming, assessment and reporting seems to have been abandoned in the light of threats to the flow of funds from the Commonwealth.

While the Nelson requirements appear to refer to all students, Minister Tebbutt has indicated they will not be used for kindergarten and has said she is prepared to have further discussions with the Federation about their application to year 1 and year 2. The Federation will seek to have these issues clarified as soon as possible.

In press comments following the Premier's release of the reports, the Primary Principals Association expressed similar concerns to those of the Federation and the Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations expressed some concern about the use of "quartiles".

Federation's September Council meeting will further consider the issue.

Jennifer Leete is the Deputy President.

Federal government's chains emerge

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August 2005 contents