Standardised tests must be introduced in all primary school classes to help teachers assess their pupils, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation has said. But the INTO has warned of the dangers of a British or US-style national "accountability testing" system aimed at making comparisons on a "league table" basis between all the schools in an area, or throughout the State.
A report presented to the union's education conference in Derry over the weekend stated that such testing was "fraught with difficulty."
Evidence from other countries had shown that the need to achieve good results becomes "of overriding concern so that some teachers feel pressurised to go to considerable lengths in order to boost results". This pressure can lead to the adoption of "teaching approaches which teachers believe are of dubious pedagogical value".
The report, Teaching and Learning: Issues in Assessment, notes the imminent arrival of a revised primary school curriculum, which will propose assessment methods, including teacher observation, teacher-designed tests, work samples, portfolios and standardised tests. It is due for completion next month.
Unlike in many other countries, "formal educational testing in Irish primary schools has remained a distinctly ancillary, almost marginal activity".
There is none of the "national hysteria" associated with assessment tests seen in Britain, or the use of tests to stream pupils, as is common in the US, where 114 to 320 million standardised tests are taken in elementary schools annually.
The INTO would favour "a more structured approach to the recording and reporting of assessment information to parents". Its report lays down principles which the union would support. These include: assessment as an integral part of the teaching/learning process; its primary purpose is to help teachers plan and teach effectively; tests or pupil profiles should not take up too much class time; there should be "formative" assessment to help teachers, "summative" assessment to show results to parents, and "diagnostic" assessment to identify children with difficulties; and "standardised tests should be developed for administration in all classes between first and sixth class, in all curricular areas".
But it stresses that collecting school test results to evaluate the performance of schools or teachers is "totally undesirable, inappropriate and unacceptable".