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Teacher's union says national assessments take up too much time Karl Gernetzky, Business Day, Johannesburg, 3 November 2014 South Africa's second-largest teachers union, the National Professional Teachers Organisation of SA (NAPTOSA), has resolved to push for a review of the Annual National Assessments. Following the conclusion of its biennial congress at the weekend, the union is set to add its weight to existing public concerns from teachers that the annual evaluation of the maths and literacy knowledge of pupils was holding back teaching them. NAPTOSA concluded its 4th biennial congress on Saturday and, amid other resolutions, resolved to push the Department of Basic Education to review the annual tests of pupils in grades 1-6, and grade 9, the union's president, Basil Manuel, said on Sunday. NAPTOSA also had general concerns of "content overload" in the curriculum - another matter that may be pushing teaching towards a "rote"-based system, as opposed to more dynamic preparation of children for the future. "We need to reconsider the time and effect of these tests against the innate value that we extract from them," he said. The ANAs have been promulgated as a diagnostic tool to gauge content knowledge and provide data from the classroom to region to province, amid widespread recognition that a greater focus on the status of knowledge in early phases is necessary to broadly improve education outcomes. This follows years of criticism of having just the matric results as a broad indication of the how well the system is doing on a year-to-year basis. However, complaints from teachers are that they spend too much time teaching how to do the tests rather than teaching the curriculum, with Mr Manuel saying "we are going to take on the department to rethink ANA, with our people roundly rejecting that ANA is actually about the quality and teaching and learning". NAPTOSA's concerns follow criticism of the current testing system from the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), which concluded its national congress - a four-year event - last month. SADTU resolved to push for the administration of the test once every three years, something it maintains could improve interventions in the classroom, and prevent a system where teachers are forced to focus on the tests at the expense of teaching the actual curriculum. SADTU also intimated that teachers risked being victimised by education officials. NAPTOSA has resolved to gather additional data to evaluate the effect of conducting the tests - although there was pre-existing research pointing to a problem, Mr Manuel said. Despite supporting the current curriculum, which has been received positively by most in the sector, it did not take provision for time to prepare for the tests. Mr Manuel said on Sunday that in terms of the curriculum, efforts should go towards stabilising it, even as the union continues to be concerned that it may be too rigid in terms of timelines for teaching content knowledge. The union has meanwhile developed several resolutions aimed at the issue of special schools for children with needs, he said. SA had an inclusive model of education. However, the lack of access to specialist resources in general schooling, such as psychologists, meant that children were falling behind often permanently, he said. The union had also reacted to comments made last week that SA should expect a great deal more technology in the classroom. Mr Manuel said on Sunday that despite supporting inclusion of new technology such as tablets or web-based approaches, a clear concern showed through from members that SA had not yet established the necessary infrastructure to support it. Some schools, for example, lacked stable access to electricity, or had been cut off from promised internet access, he said. Speaking at the official opening of the [NAPTOSA] congress on Thursday, Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi had outlined a provincial plan to rapidly roll out ICT in the province aiming, over the next five years, to have "One teacher, one tablet, one laptop one classroom and one textbook". Beyond the benefits to teaching and learning, the department was looking to technology as one of the ways to "finally close the traditional gap between poor and rich schools", Mr Lesufi said. Also speaking at the event, FirstRand CEO Sizwe Nxasana had intimated that a partnership forum established between business, the state and organised labour would be looking to ensure that schools had cost-effective access to things like data. Mr Nxasana is also the chairman of the National Education Collaboration Trust, a forum established last year between the government, business, labour and civil society. He said on Thursday there were already provisions for cutting data costs for education institutions, but "over the past 20 years none of that has actually happened". At the same time, a significant amount had not been done in supporting SA in terms of credible and robust information technology strategies for schools, he said. From: http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2014/11/03/teachers-union-says-na tional-assessments-take-up-too-much-time -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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