Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 157: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if, in regard to her address to the INTO conference on 18 April 2006, she will indicate the manner in which standardised tests inform policy making at national level by providing invaluable information regarding attainment levels in schools here, or allow parents to judge their child's progress against the national norm in view of the fact that her Department does not collate the results of school tests; if her Department intends to collate the results of all schools' standardised tests; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38292/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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A standardised test measures how a pupil performs at the time of the test in relation to what is expected for a pupil of that age or class.

Test results can be used at school level to identify pupils with learning difficulties at an early stage so that support and interventions can be put in place. While standardised tests do not indicate the nature of a learning difficulty, they can be used to flag potential difficulties and to prompt further assessment.

Also, an item by item analysis of the child's performance on a standardised test can help a teacher identify areas of particular difficulty for the child. Test results, therefore, when used with information gleaned from other assessment measures, can help teachers and parents with a full picture of the child's progress and, in so doing, guide the teaching and learning process in a very meaningful way.

At classroom level, information from standardised tests can be particularly useful in informing individual and group teaching.

Standardised tests also have an important role to play at the level of the whole school. They provide valuable information for teachers, principals and boards of management when engaging in self-evaluation, a vitally important stage in planning the development and improvement of the individual school.

These are the reasons why I believe that standardised testing, as one of a range of modes of assessment and carried out on a systematic basis, has real potential to enhance the quality of teaching and learning for our pupils at classroom level, and to provide valuable information for parents about their children's learning.

I intend to make standardised testing at the end of first class, or the beginning of second, and at the end of fourth class, or beginning of fifth, a requirement. However, it is not my attention that these test results will be collated on a national basis. Instead, the results will be retained at school level and be available to inspectors conducting evaluations. As I have indicated many times already, inspectors' reports will not contain data that might facilitate school comparisons or the compilation of league tables.

To meet the need for national data, I intend to introduce a separate programme of national monitoring. This will enable trend data on pupil achievement in different categories of school to be compiled using rigorously constructed samples of schools. The outcomes of this process will be used into monitoring the effectiveness of national policies and programmes.

It is not my Department's intention to use test results obtained during the national monitoring to compile school league tables. Neither will they be used, as a stand-alone criterion, in the allocation of resources to individual pupils or individual schools or in the measurement of the effectiveness of the teachers and schools that form part of the samples.

My Department is currently finalising the arrangements for introduction of the introduction of standardised testing as quickly as possible.