In this issue:

• Grading your child’s report
• What makes a teacher education course effective?
• Improving attitudes may increase participation in schooling
• Using online assessment to inform teaching and learning in primary and secondary classrooms
• ACER UPDATE

What should parents expect of the reports schools provide? If the report your child brings home is difficult to understand, or if it is like the report you yourself took home from school, then it almost certainly falls short of today's best practice. In an invited opinion article published by Education Age in The Age newspaper on 2 September 2005, ACER's Chief Executive Professor Geoff Masters and Research Director, Assessment and Reporting, Margaret Forster identified six features of highly informative school reports.

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Teacher education is high on the political agenda in Australia, with several parliamentary inquiries on the topic underway at federal and state levels. These inquiries reflect, in part, dissatisfaction among many school principals with the preparedness of graduates. ACER conducted a survey in March 2004 for the Victorian Institute of Teaching of all teachers who had graduated from teacher education program in 2002 to determine how well these new teachers felt that their teacher education program had prepared them for the demands of teaching. ACER's Research Director, Teaching and Leadership, Dr Lawrence Ingvarson reports on the survey's findings.

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The nurturing of positive attitudes to school could be the key to increasing participation in education beyond the compulsory years according to the latest findings in the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY). A new report, Attitudes, Intentions and Participation, by Siek Toon Khoo and John Ainley found that intentions to complete or leave school formed early in secondary school are powerful predictors of participation in the latter years of school and attitudes to school strongly influence these educational intentions. The report examined the relationship between students' attitudes to school and intentions to participate in education and training and the influence of these attitudes and intentions on participation.

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The latest developments in the iAchieve online assessment program were presented to delegates at the recent ACER Research Conference 2005, Using Data to Support Learning in August. In his conference presentation Professor Jim Tognolini, ACER's Research Director, Systems and School Testing, described the iAchieve instrument and demonstrated how the feedback can be used to inform teaching and learning as well as describing planned future developments. He explained that the development of iAchieve combined internet technology with the latest advances in assessment theory to provide schools and students with a powerful tool to support learning at school and at home.

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Senior secondary school students' perceptions of the world of work

A new report conducted by ACER for the Smith Family into the perceptions of work held by senior secondary school students provides a valuable insight into the current skills shortage and youth unemployment rate by uncovering a significant mismatch between student career aspirations and the reality of the labour market. The survey of 3,018 year 10, 11 and 12 students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds has found that a majority of students are identifying preferred career paths based on their skills and personal interests with little to no understanding of the availability of these jobs in the current labour market. Most (80%) expect to get the job they would most like at age 25 and few have considered the possibility of compromise should employment in their chosen field be hard to come by. The study, What do students know about work? funded by the AMP Foundation also found that a quarter of students were planning insufficient education for their preferred job.

Visit the Smith Family website to read more

Download the report (PDF: 2.9MB)

 

Literature review on accreditation of teacher education

ACER's Teaching and Leadership research program has been awarded a contract with the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership (NIQTSL) to prepare a literature review and issues paper on the development of a national system for the accreditation of teacher education. It is the third project to be undertaken by ACER for NIQTSL. The project is to be completed in December 2005.

 

CEET Annual Conference

The Annual Conference of the Monash University-ACER Centre for the Economics of Education and Training (CEET) will be

held in Melbourne on Friday 28 October. The conference theme will be "The New Federalism in Australian Education and

Training". Questions to be addressed at the conference include

Where are the good job prospects?

How do we measure skills shortages?

Are high-skill jobs moving off-shore?

What is happening in migration?

What is happening to participation in work by youth and older persons?

What are the responses in education and training?

Further details are available from Monash University website.