Year 10 computer skills test banned

Federation council vote unanimous

Today, three hundred teacher representatives from across NSW have determined to ban the 2006 Year 10 Computer Skills Assessment Test. The Federation Council's vote was unamimous.

Maree O'Halloran, President, said:

"The test is designed to assess a syllabus taught over four years. The State Government's computer rollout to schools has been too late and too little for students in Year 10 this year.

Public education has been chronically underfunded by successive State and Federal Governments. The result is that many schools have insufficient hardware and software. Technical assistance and support is limited or non-existent.

Public high school teachers have gone to extraordinary efforts and done amazing things with limited resources and often little training. Nevertheless, through no fault of the teachers, it has been impossible to adequately prepare students for this test.

The level of technological support and resourcing is completely inequitable between schools. In particular many private school students have had access to individual computers, including laptops maintained by the school, for the whole of Years 7 to 10. No public school student has this level of resource.

The facts are:

*There are over 300,000 students in NSW public high schools. There are approximately 30,000 teachers and school support staff.

*No school has a technical assistant provided by the Department on site. For example, a high school with over 1000 students and approximately 100 staff would not have a technical assistant on site.

*Students have to share computers and computer time.

*In many teacher staffrooms there is only one computer for up to ten people.

*Many schools have not had sufficient functioning computers to teach the syllabus requirements.

*Relatively few teachers have been provided with the professional development needed to teach the 149 mandatory computer competencies.

The NSW Board of Studies has allowed a "pen and paper" option for the 2006 test. Such an option acknowledges that many schools have insufficient computers for students to actually sit the test, let alone to have completed the syllabus requirements over the past four years.

This situation is not good enough. Teachers are not willing to let current Year 10 students be disadvantaged because of the State Government's failure", concluded Ms O'Halloran.

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Last Modified: 11 Mar 2006