Teachers need training on new reports, says expert

Teachers need more training to write and understand the reports they will be required to send home to parents under national testing requirements, a leading educationalist says.

Professor Helen Timperley from the University of Auckland's education faculty addressed a packed conference in Perth, Australia, this week about the effect of professional development on children's learning.

Her research, conducted over the past six years, showed that teachers who were assisted with interpreting test data and addressing problem areas achieved large improvements with their literacy and numeracy results. Low-performing students benefited most.

Professor Timperley's research involves 300 schools. Next week she will meet Ministry of Education officials to discuss how professional development should be rolled out in conjunction with the national standards.

Her literacy project has shown that the greatest changes in students' learning ability happened when teachers are able to look at assessment data in depth. But not all teachers know how to use the data effectively.

'It's about being able to diagnose at a really deep level," she said.

Professor Timperley admits this level of analysis would correspond to a big work load for already resource-stretched teachers, but said it was fundamental to teachers' understanding.

Turnout at Professor Timperley's presentations at the Australian Council for Educational Research conference this week indicated the "intense interest" Australians had on how professional development would impact implementation of its own standards.

Professor Timperley said she believed New Zealand was on the right track in developing its set of national standards. Frances Nelson, the president of teachers union NZEI, said it will take a lot of time and "really considered work" for teachers to be able to analyse the assessment data properly.

Teachers have a range of assessment abilities because not all schools have had the opportunity to take part in assessment courses.

The Government has indicated that the focus for professional development over the next couple of years will be on national standards.

Mrs Nelson is worried about the impact of cutting other training courses to make way for that.

"This is disappointing because there are schools that need professional development on the curriculum before the stuff with the standards will work anyway."