It is that time of year again. During the second week of
September, in schools across South Africa, learners in grades 1-6 and 9 write
the national standardized tests, known as the ANAs, in language and maths. In
grades 1-3 the language is a learner’s home language (in our school’s case,
Zulu), but starting in grade 4, no matter what a learner’s home language, they
write an ANA that tests their English skills. Everyone takes a maths ANA as
well. Again in grades 1-3, the maths exam is written and to be answered in the
learner’s home language, but again, starting in grade 4, everything is done in
English. No one likes the ANAs, of course, but standardized tests are an
unfortunate way of life at this point, so there is no use grumbling.
I found that much of the process here is nearly identical to
America. Lots of paperwork for documenting everything, assigned seats for the
learners in the classroom, specific set times when each test is to be
administered, instructions to be read aloud and examples to be done together
before the test is given, two proctors per room (there was even a “training”
session that the principal had to administer to the teachers about how to
proctor appropriately), more paperwork for reporting scores and absent
students. If there were major differences, I certainly didn’t notice them.
There isn’t much else to say about the test itself.
Teachers, principals, and even past volunteers complain about how poorly the
test is written, how many mistakes it has, how it doesn’t follow the
curriculum, any number of things. But in truth, I didn’t find any of it to be
true. I’m not saying it was a great test of knowledge, but every question that
was on the test was not only part of the curriculum, but was at an appropriate
level of difficulty. I found only one mistake, and it was not really that big
of a deal. In general, I actually thought the test was quite fair. It just
seems unfair because so many of the learners in the rural areas (our school is
no exception) do not seem to be able to pass.
To pass, a learner needs to score a mere 40% (so in the case
of grade 5 maths, a learner needs a 24/60). With that in mind, I had two goals:
have 17 out of 34 learners pass and have the class average above 40%. Sadly, I
failed at both: only 15 individual students passed, and the class average was a
38%. But I was close! And while I know that in a lot of cases, close doesn’t
count, I feel like in this case, it does. I was really proud of how well the
kids did and I was excited with their progress on a few specific topics,
especially multiplication of multi-digit numbers and long division. I am very
much hoping that I can follow this group of kids to grade 6 next year and make
that goal a reality!
No comments:
Post a Comment