Monitoring Student Progress in Mathematics and Science
Section 22 of the Education Act requires schools “to regularly evaluate students and periodically report the results of the evaluation to the students and their parents.”26 Schools are required under the National Strategy to Improve Literacy and Numeracy (2011) to provide more meaningful information to parents about student progress. The NCCA produced a range of report card templates to assist schools in this regard and published assessment guidelines for schools in 2007,27 reflecting a wide range of assessment approaches at the primary level, such as teacher questioning and observation, conferencing, and student self-assessment.
The National Strategy requires standardized test results to be reported to parents and to the Department of Education and Skills annually. The DES requires these results at three points of the primary school cycle—second, fourth, and sixth grades. In practice, annual administration of standardized mathematics tests to all students in Grades 1 to 6 is almost universal. Individual schools choose their own assessment instruments, with the proviso that standardized tests have been normalized for an Irish population and are consistent with the Primary School Curriculum. The National Strategy does not require individual schools to publish data, nor does it allow data to be used for the compilation of school comparison league tables.
Although Ireland does not operate a national mandatory system of assessment for primary schools, it monitors standards through the regular assessment of reading and mathematics performance in a representative sample of schools. Every five years, the Educational Research Centre conducts national assessments of reading and mathematics on behalf of the Department of Education and Skills. The main functions of the national assessments are to assess national standards, identify factors related to test performance, and inform policy. Almost 8,200 students in Grades 2 and 6 took part in the most recent survey in 2014.28
At the primary level, classroom tests in mathematics include multiplication table tests, commercially produced mental arithmetic tests, teacher designed tests, and problem solving activities. Classroom assessment tests in science primarily comprise pen and paper tests that test content knowledge. Standardized tests are available for mathematics but not for science. Lecturers in Education at St Patrick’s College, Dublin, have developed a new criterion-referenced standardized assessment in science for primary schools—the Irish Primary Science Achievement Tests (IPSA-T)—but this is not used at the national level.
At the post-primary level, students take teacher-made assessments at the end of most terms. These assessments are generally in written format in mathematics, with some elements of practical work assessed in science. It is normal for report cards, with grades and teacher comments, to be issued after such assessments. At the end of lower secondary school, all students take formal state examinations in mathematics, at higher, ordinary, or foundation level. The almost 90 percent of students who choose science as a subject also are examined, at higher or ordinary level, with 35 percent of the total grade based on students’ completion of a range of experiments and developing a portfolio of work.
A new junior cycle framework29 has been introduced that reduces the focus on this externally assessed examination as a means of assessing students at junior cycle, and increases the prominence of classroom-based assessment and formative assessment. In each subject, two structured Classroom-Based Assessments will be introduced, which will contribute to and build on the use of formative assessment in the classroom. Each assessment will be drawn from a variety of types of assessment, which might include project tasks, investigations, and practical or designing and making tasks. The new assessments will be introduced to students commencing post-primary education in September 2016, for science, and in September 2018, for mathematics. The National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy (2011) also calls for the introduction of full cohort standardized achievement testing of mathematics and science to students in Grade 8. Given the impact that this will have on assessment for Grade 8 students and the need to implement the other changes in assessment at junior cycle, the time frame for phasing in full-cohort testing in schools will be considered during the interim review of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy.