The Page Research Centre’s new education report, “Neither better nor fairer: how student assessment practices betray Australia’s national education goals,” was featured in Education HQ:
Compiled with input from a host of anonymous teachers, educators Stephen Hart and Raymond Burns have called out the scale of the problem in a new Page Research Centre report.
They argue that if we want a better and fairer education system our current approach to assessment – and the academic standards we hold students to – must undergo dramatic structural change.
Dr Fiona Mueller, director of research at the Centre, says this research paper lays bare the “demonstrable structural inequity across the country” when it comes to our assessment practices.
“It’s the lack of comparability across schools and systems and jurisdictions…
“At the heart this is about learning integrity, so being able to measure what our students are achieving, not just what the curriculum intends for them to learn, or what we might spend a lot of time delivering in the classroom, but actually what an individual student can demonstrate in an equitable and valid assessment task…
“And we have no way of measuring that in valid and reliable ways,” Mueller, a former teacher, concludes.
Obvious discrepancies in the data speak volumes, the report suggests.
That is, while in some jurisdictions the proportion of Year 12 students receiving higher grades has increased ‘substantially’ and fewer students are receiving lower grades, we see stagnant or declining performance across national and international assessments, the likes of NAPLAN and PISA.
According to Mueller, a common understanding of what excellence entails is sorely lacking across the board.
