Primary schools are to receive additional funding from the Department of Education to support a new assessment system - in which teachers build up a detailed profile of each pupil and compare their grades with the national average.
Under the new system, due to be announced this week by the Minister, Dr Woods, pupils will be awarded marks out of 10 for various skills in each subject area - and the detailed results for every year in primary school will be made available to parents.
Work is well advanced on a model for assessing oral, reading and writing skills for English and a similar system is now being developed for Irish and music. It is hoped the profile system will eventually be extended to all subjects. Yesterday, a group of 50 teachers who are co-ordinating in-service work on the new primary curriculum were briefed on the new model by Mr Gerry Shiel of the Educational Research Centre who, with his colleague Ms Regina Murphy, has led research on the new procedure.
At this stage, it is envisaged that the new pupil profiling system will be a non-compulsory assessment system be available to schools. But the Department's decision to support the initiative with funding for schools signals how it has gained official backing. Pressure for more formal testing and assessing procedures for primary school children has been building up in recent years. The White Paper on Education launched by the previous government recommended formal testing at primary level but this proposal was abandoned by the Government on taking office. Recent figures which show that one in 10 children are leaving primary school with significant literacy problems may increase the pressure for more detailed assessment procedures at every stage of primary education.
The pupil profile would provide a much more comprehensive record for both teachers and parents of how a student is performing at each stage from junior infants to sixth class. It should allow those with learning difficulties to be identified at an earlier stage.
The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) which advises the Minister on all matters relating to curriculum and assessment at primary and post-primary level has also been briefed on the new model. In the past, the NCCA has recommended that "a new standardised pupil profile should be designed to provide a common format for recording in all schools". The INTO has also recognised the potential of maintaining a continuous and comprehensive records of pupils' achievement - provided the system is manageable at classroom level.
The pupil profile system is widely used in Britain, the US and Australia, where it is seen as a vital source of information for teachers and parents. In the Irish education system there is no formal testing of pupils in primary schools. Many teachers use the standardised test to measure the achievements of pupils in maths and English, but this only tells how the child is performing in relation to a limited range of skills.
Under the new model a detailed pupil profile would be built up on a record card. The entries on this card should reflect both the informal assessments made by the teacher and the results of formal tests. The plan is that teachers and parents should be able to see at a glance how each student is performing across the curriculum; how he/she is performing in relation to the rest of the class and how he/she is doing in relation to the national average for his/her age group. The pupil profile system should also prove helpful to secondary schools and give them more information about their student intake.
In English, for example, the pupil would be awarded marks out of 10 for oral language, reading and writing skills. The teacher would use the Individual Profile Record Card to assess such issues as the child's interest in reading, his/her spelling, dictionary skills, handwriting, vocabulary, reading comprehension and use of language in the classroom.
The new assessment model, based on pupil profiles, was first recommended by the 1990 Review Body on the Primary Curriculum. But its introduction has had to await work on the new primary curriculum which will be introduced next September.