Brussels, 17/09/2009 (Agence Europe) - According to a report based on the work of the Eurydice network which was presented on Wednesday 16 September, European pupils sit, on average three national tests during compulsory education, with some countries testing up to ten or eleven times. Regular national tests have become widely established across Europe in the recent past as a means both of informing education policy and practice, and guiding pupils' school careers.
The Commission report, “National Testing of Pupils in Europe: Objectives, Organisation and Use of Results” gives a comprehensive picture of Europe-wide patterns and trends with regard to the objectives, frequency and scope of national tests in compulsory education. It also looks at the use made of test results in the 30 European countries covered (EU member states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). “Reliable information on pupil performance is key to successful and targeted education policies,” said European Education, Training, Culture and Youth Commissioner Ján Figel', noting, however, that he sees “nationwide tests as only one type of pupil assessment, which needs to be balanced with other practices so as to avoid over-testing. Rather than only grade pupils, such tests should be there to help them improve”.
Key messages of the report are: 1) National tests for validation of learning and performance monitoring have become a regular practice in most European countries. The efforts of European countries to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their education systems have led to a growing emphasis on measuring performance. The majority of European countries have developed regular national testing relatively recently, and it has expanded rapidly in the current decade. In school year 2008/2009 only the German-speaking community of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Wales and Liechtenstein did not administer national tests in compulsory education. National tests serve multiple objectives: current national tests are most often used either to certify individual pupils' achievements, or to monitor schools or the entire education system. A smaller number of countries organise national tests to support pupils by identifying individual learning needs. 2) The frequency and scope of national tests vary across countries. On average, European countries organise national tests three times during compulsory education. The great majority of national tests in Europe are compulsory for all pupils in a given age-group and, where they are optional, they are often taken by almost every pupil. Certain countries test pupils much more frequently than the European average. Thus, in Denmark pupils can take up to eleven national tests during compulsory education, followed by Malta and Scotland (up to ten), England (up to seven) and France (up to six). In six other countries, on the other hand, there is only one national test during compulsory education. National tests often concern only two core subjects: the language of instruction and mathematics. Only a minority of countries consistently test a wider spectrum of their respective curricula. 3) Only a few countries publish school test results or consider them in school evaluation. Although schools in Europe are often provided with their aggregated test results which can in turn be compared with the national average, national test results are rarely published or used as an accountability tool in external school evaluations. It is usually up to the schools to organise the ways in which these results are used for the improvement of their work. Furthermore, most European countries do not publish the aggregated test results of individual schools. (I.L./transl.rt)