Standardised testing is a subject that many people believe is placed on either ends of the spectrum; the best way to assess student’s abilities or a complete stress invoking exercise for everyone involved. However, if we take a step back and look at it objectively, it becomes clear that it is neither. Standardised testing has both positive and negative aspects and when used effectively can play a vital role in improving the education of our students.

Let’s being with the negatives:

• Standardized testing does not take into account external factors and evaluates a student’s performance on one particular day. Many students have the ability and knowledge to answer questions and topics, however do not perform well when it comes to examinations. This can be due to many external and emotional factors comprising of; stress, anxiety, family pressure and conflict and lack of focus or motivation.
• Moreover, standardised testing only evaluates the individual performance of the student instead of the overall improvement and growth of the student over the course of a period of time. For example; a teacher who has worked hard to assist their students to grow and the students who worked extremely hard over the course of the subject/subjects and improved substantially, unfortunately failed to score proficiently in one examination. This does a disservice to both teacher and child, and argues the question if standardised testing ignores the full evaluation of a child and the education system or instead of one single test performance?
• Standardized testing is argued to create stress, anxiety and pressure on both educators and students.
• The success of Australian schools and many around the world are dependent on the performance of their students in standardised tests. Federal funds are given only to those schools that perform well compared to others and this adds an extra pressure on public schools to constantly evaluate their performance. This can lead to unhealthy competition among schools and evoke a tough screening process on students to perform for standardised tests.

Positives:

• Undoubtedly, the greatest benefit of standardised testing is that it provides a set of established standards or instructional framework which provide teachers with guidance for what and when something needs to be taught. The net result is less wasted instructional time and a simplified way of timeline management. It also enables students who move from one school to another from being behind or ahead in their new school.
• Standardized testing gives parents a good idea of how their children are doing as compared to students across the country, states, and districts and in their local area.
• It can be argued that standardised tests are objective in nature. Standardised tests are either scored by computers or by educators who do not directly know the student.

Standardised testing is an arguable topic and can be swayed on both sides of the spectrum. However, the most significant opportunity standardised testing provides is the ability to use the results in an effective manner by educators, students and most importantly by parents.