Schools not ready to grade reports against new curriculums

Some primary schools warn they are not ready to grade children against the new English and maths curriculums in mid-year reports to parents.

The curriculums were introduced this year and the Education Ministry has proposed a new four-point scale to standardise the way schools describe children’s achievement.

It suggested four descriptors: needs support, progressing towards, proficient, and excelling.

“Needs support” would apply to children who were not meeting the level of achievement expected of their year group and needed significant guidance and assistance,

Pupils who were “progressing towards” could complete tasks with some guidance and needed targeted support while those who were “proficient” would be meeting expectations for their year level.

The draft said “exceeding” could apply to students who consistently showed advanced understanding, knowledge and skills for their year level.

The ministry told schools they could use the descriptors if they wanted to, but there was no requirement to do so this year.

Testing several years ago suggested the new maths curriculum would be more challenging, but the children who sat those tests had not been taught the curriculum.

Principals spoken to by RNZ were reluctant to say children who met curriculum expectations last year might not meet expectations under the new curriculum this year.

Auckland Primary Principals Association president Lucy Naylor said families should regard the mid-year reports as setting a new baseline for their children’s achievement against the new curriculum.

“We’re no longer reporting against the old curriculum. So there might be a shift for parents, it’s a new curriculum, it’s a tighter curriculum,” she said.

“What parents might see is variation. So where a child might have been proficient against the old curriculum there might be a little bit of a change to that because we have more indicators within the new curriculum to report against.”

However, Naylor said this year was a transition year for introducing the new curriculums and schools would be at different stages of readiness to report on children’s progress.

Dunedin North Intermediate principal Heidi Hayward said it was too early to know if fewer children were meeting the new maths requirements.

“Schools are really just scratching the surface in understanding the new maths curriculum so I think it’s imprudent to try and report against a curriculum that schools have actually not had enough time to learn and use properly,” she said.

“We’ll be taking a very cautious approach to reporting.”

Hayward said teachers would rely heavily on test results this year, but needed to use their overall judgement when deciding how well their pupils’ were doing.

She said reports should ideally show parents how well children were achieving against expectations for their age group, and how much progress they had made.

“As a parent what I really want to know is has my child made progress and where do they sit in relation to the expectation for age and they’re two quite different things,” she said.

She said it was important to know whether high-achievers had improved or progressed much during the year, and also whether pupils performing below expectations had made progress in catching up to their peers.

Hayward said the ministry’s proposed descriptors would not provide that information and her school would this year use its old reporting templates.

The principal of Douglas Park School in Masterton, Gareth Sinton, said his school’s mid-year reports would not use the ministry’s proposed terminology because there was not enough detail to help schools decide which of the four descriptors to use.

“If I pick Year 6 writing, there are 53 what they call sequence statements, so 53 skills that the kids are expected to be taught and pick up across their Year 6 year in writing. So to be proficient it says you need to be meeting the expectations. It doesn’t say if you need to have all of those, all 53. If you need to have 90 percent of those, 80 percent of those, 75 percent… So the descriptor is so vague that we don’t feel confident enough yet to make a judgement against this new curriculum,” he said.

Sinton said greater national consistency was possible, but currently different schools had different ideas about where the cut-off points lay for each level of achievement.

For example, one of his staff was talking with staff from five other schools about the curriculum expectations and all five had different ideas about where the cut-off points should be drawn.

“All five schools had different thoughts. So if you translate that across the whole system of 2000 primary schools, there’s an issue and it’s not even an issue on the horizon, it’s an issue right here in front of us,” he said.

Sinton said his teachers would explain to parents in mid-year reports what their children could do in maths and English, but would not make an overall judgement about their performance.

The Education Ministry said the new curriculums had a different approach to learning and school leaders and teachers had asked for clarity on how they should assess and report student progress and achievement against the new curriculum.

“Progress descriptors provide consistent language for how each child’s progress is tracking against the new curriculum expectations. The descriptors are in draft and we’re consulting on these until 30 June,” it said.

“National consistency in how progress is assessed and described will support teachers to meet students’ needs and support a common understanding of when additional support or extension needs to be considered. It will also support continuity in teaching, learning and support as students move to the next year level or school.”

The ministry said national consistency would ensure parents would not have to interpret different approaches for describing how their children were doing as they moved to the next year level or school.

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