Standardised testing in first class

yellow hen

Are there standardised tests in first class in school? Are they the drumcondras or different? Do all schools communicate the results to parents? How much emphasis should I put on these?

Sorry for all the questions!:o

byhookorbycrook

Don’t place any emphasis on them at all ! 2nd/4th and 6th must legally do them but the majority of schools do 1st to 6th.

There is a new version of the Drumcondra tests which have been re-done to be much harder as the older ones were considered too easy .

You are entitled to ask for the results , if they don’t come in a school report .
The tests should be taken with a very large pinch of salt this year as they weren’t standardised in a pandemic! The DES have done a major u-turn on this , schools were told to focus on well being and not to place further anxiety on children ( and parents !)

If there was a serious concern about your child’s learning , it will have been flagged by the teacher already . 1st class children in particular can perform badly on the day as they haven’t had such formal testing and it can be very off putting .

Blush_01

yellow hen wrote: »

Are there standardised tests in first class in school? Are they the drumcondras or different? Do all schools communicate the results to parents? How much emphasis should I put on these?

Sorry for all the questions!:o

Standardised testing is completed in 2nd, 4th and 6th class - Drumcondra or Micra-T and Sigma-T. Some schools may opt to test from 1st class every year. The results should be included in your child's end of year report. The teacher(s) should help you to understand what the different scores mean and work with you to support your child with their learning based on this.

Most classes will spend some time revising their Maths and English (and Irish if it's an Irish-medium school) before the tests, as part of their class work.

The kids will be aware in advance of the testing happening, in most cases, but there's no point in having them do lots of extra work to prepare. The testing is evaluative and especially in a year like this one, knowing exactly where students are would probably be more important than in any other year. Every school and teacher is different, but if it was me, I'd want a proper view of where they are, given how fragmented the past 14 or so months has been for students.

byhookorbycrook

We never tell the children ahead of time .Revision isn’t meant to be done , it can inflate test scores .

Some teachers do “ coach” and it’s very obvious who they are, within a school. The class they take in , say, second suddenly all score far higher that year , then miraculously fall back again the year after . It’s not “ good” teaching , if it were, the children could hold the gains in maths in particular.

Immy

Our school do them 1-6 and parents are sent results in report.

They were very beneficial for my daughter as a low score in English put her on the watch list. Although teacher thought there was nothing wrong she just tested badly on the day. After a few months in extra help lessons it was discovered her poor reading needed extra investigation and she is dyslexic.

yellow hen

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

We never tell the children ahead of time .Revision isn’t meant to be done , it can inflate test scores .

Some teachers do “ coach” and it’s very obvious who they are, within a school. The class they take in , say, second suddenly all score far higher that year , then miraculously fall back again the year after . It’s not “ good” teaching , if it were, the children could hold the gains in maths in particular.

No, you misunderstand. I'm not asking from a prepping the child point of view. Moreso prepping myself for the results

I'm already aware of a difficulty which impacts my childs learning. So often the teachers will say that yes, he's doing ok (not amazing, ok). But I feel they mean ok for who he is. I also want to know how he's doing relative to his peers.

byhookorbycrook

The test will give you a snapshot of the day. If the school are using the new Drumcondras, you will find that the information that can be gleaned from them is better than the old ones.
Reports must be sent out to allow adequate time for a parent to clarify any information therein, so if anything pops up, contact the teacher. Is there a classroom support plan in place for your child already?He should have one, if the teacher has flagged any little issues for him

The best of luck to you.

ShamoBuc

Those new tests are a real disaster. The stens were considered likely to drop anyway, given this and last years fractured teaching, but they really increased the difficulty level and students will more than likely drop at least 1 if not 2 stens as a result.
I can see parents being alarmed on seeing such a drop having not been tested for 2 years and maybe not understanding why. A 3rd class student will probably only have a first class sten to go by for example and there could be real anxiety on seeing a major change.


DES was all about well being etc and then throw out a harder test a couple of months back in school.

This really was not the year to delve into a new and tougher test I think.

byhookorbycrook

We were "fortunate" in that we did the revised tests (ie the more difficult ones) two years ago.As with any school that did them at that stage, there were drops, because they were meant to be harder and cuase possible drops. The tests are meaningless in reality, as they were not standardized in a pandemic and have already caused many children upset . I'm attaching a pdf. that any parent should read re these tests this year and would urge parents to read it and take the contents into consideration.