An Otago primary school principal believes a new online tool being developed by the Ministry of Education for assessing primary pupil achievement may go the same way as the beleaguered Novopay payroll system.
The new computer-based Progress and Consistency Tool (Pact) aims to support teachers to make a consistent, overall judgement about how well each pupil is progressing and achieving in relation to National Standards and the New Zealand curriculum.
It will provide a framework for describing the steps pupils typically take as they develop expertise in reading, writing and mathematics across the curriculum.
However, Pembroke School (Oamaru) principal Brent Godfery said it appeared some of the standardised assessment tools used as part of the Pact system might have been altered and used to manipulate pupil achievement results ''for political purposes''.
He said standardised assessment tools such as e-asTTle had been reliable,
but he was concerned the ministry seemed to be changing how some assessments were being developed and used.
''For example, the Ministry of Education recently told schools to scale down writing assessment by up to two sub-levels.
''This is the equivalent of about 18 months of progress. The data gathered by some schools last year using the unscaled assessments will be used to assist in making National Standards overall teacher judgements [OTJ].
''Last year, principals were commenting on the unusually huge improvements the data was showing while the teachers felt the writing had not improved that much.''
Mr Godfery said these assessment results would be collated to assist teachers in making OTJs for where pupils sit in National Standards.
''The specifications for this have been set out by the Ministry of Education.
''These are the same people who set the specifications for Novopay.
''I have no confidence in this being made useful or workable.
''It seems Pact may be going down the same track as Novopay, and that we are all in for another huge waste of time, resources and money being spent on another piece of garbage.
''This money would be better spent on actually supporting students rather than in measuring them.''
A ministry spokeswoman said a teachers' advisory group had been established to provide input into the design of the Pact tool.
The ministry had also met hundreds of teachers and school leaders to ensure it developed and tested a tool that met their needs. The feedback received had helped its design and development.
The implementation plan for the rollout of Pact had not yet been finalised, she said.
''The changes made to e-asTTle are designed to improve the accuracy of the information generated by the tool for students and their teachers.
''This is part of our regular cycle of review and refresh for our assessment tools.''
A ministry spokeswoman said all areas of the tool would undergo extensive trials with teachers before implementation.
''It takes time to get this right, and we want to be sure that each part of the tool works well before we release it for teachers to use.''
