New literacy tests for teachers

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In a shake up of teacher training former chief inspector of education Graham Donaldson has proposed a literacy test for trainee teacher in Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-12163746

Lindsay Paterson who is professor of educational policy at the University of Edinburgh, said that as things stood, teacher training courses were “simply not intellectually challenging enough”. It is currently understood that the teachers will have to pass literacy tests and writing tests when they apply for teacher training courses.

Boys unable to read

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Approximately 1 in 11 boys are leaving primary school with a reading age of only seven years old.

The BBC investigation found that according to the SATs reading test in some areas of the UK up to 15% of boys are leaving primary school with very low skills :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12000886

Just before leaving primary school, children take a reading test as part of their Sats examinations. They are then marked into categories, level 4 being the expected standard.

According to the Department for Education statistics, the proportion of children gaining that grade has increased dramatically over the last 15 years, from 49% to 81%.

But this masks a stubborn problem at the lower end of the school spectrum. In 1995, the proportion of 11-year-olds getting Level 2 or below in English – the standard expected of a seven-year-old – was 7%. In 2010, it had fallen only to 5%.

Pisa test Wales

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Well it seems that the latest Pisa test results cast Wales in a dim light.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-11930257

The test shows that reading, numeracy and science standards in Wales are below international test averages. The curriculum and education in Wales has been under Welsh Assembly control for the last 10 years, whilst Leighton Andrews has blamed teacher complacency for the test results surely questions need to be asked of WAG education policy ?

With performance falling further behind the rest of the UK, the results may make uncomfortable reading for the assembly government.

Online tests

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What are literacy tests?

This reading test tool provides online reading tests to measure and track a pupil’s reading age with assessments. There are two types of reading test available – multiple choice sentence completion and auditory sentence completion, both of which are based upon standardised data. With the current focus on literacy this test system provides an important tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the measures schools put in place to support pupils’ literacy.