WITH the new year traditionally seen as the time for a fresh start, perhaps it’s fitting that testing for secondary school scholarships has been brought forward from May to February – even if that does cause a few headaches for parents, coaching schools and test providers in the short term.
Greg Nicholson, psychologist and founder of Edworks, which has been offering scholarship preparation to kids for 22 years, says the move might make testing harder for students.
“The testing will be a lot more challenging for the [children] because they are essentially just out of grade 5. They don’t have the cognitive maturity yet to deal with it.”
Many children ask for additional coaching in the lead up to scholarship testing, rather than having it foisted upon them by their parents, Nicholson says. “They seem to be aware via friends or siblings’ past experience, and are more proactive.”
He says Edworks has structured its scholarship coaching as a positive learning experience, focusing on the qualitative rather than right or wrong. “We see it as an opportunity to develop some life-long skills. Students want something meaningful out of the learning process rather than it just being answer-driven.”
If children are allowed to take control of the learning experience, he says, they will feel less anxious. “We’re empowering them to learn how to think smart, and giving them opportunities to develop and refine those skills.”
David Weeding, senior project director of scholarships at the Australian Council for Educational Research, which produces scholarship tests for schools, says the date change has its positive side. “The good news is there will be a bit more certainty earlier in the year for parents as to where their kids are going.”
However, he would be against testing occurring any earlier. “Our test is a very good predictor of the performance at year 12. Students coming into school at year 7 on the basis of a scholarship that’s been awarded using our testing program have a median ATAR score of 98.5, in the top 1.5 per cent of all students. The further away you move from the date they actually start school, the more chance there is that the measure becomes more unstable and unreliable.”
The ACER test takes a whole of Australia approach, rather than breaking things down by state curriculum, and assesses children’s ability at verbal reasoning – using a humanities multiple choice test – and mathematics reasoning. It also establishes linguistic production through creative writing.
So how important is coaching when it comes to the scholarship test? According to Weeding, a small-scale study carried out in Australia suggests that, while coaching does have an impact on candidates performances, this is mostly in the middle band, while those already at the top stay there.
“It’s very hard to get a scholarship,” he says. “The test is designed to separate out students at that very top end of performance. Coaching isn’t adding much to them – their parents are just hedging their bets – but other parents will look at those children and link the cause and effect.”
Officially, ACER does not recommend coaching to parents. Weeding says that if they are considering enrolling their children anyway, they should make sure that any training equips them for more than just sitting scholarship tests. “It should provide your child with skills or knowledge they can use in other areas of their life, for example interview techniques. That’s far more valuable.”
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