Computer skills to be tested to steer pupils towards jobs

Sydney Morning Herald, 15/1/01
By Damien Murphy

All Year 6 and Year 10 students at NSW government schools will undergo compulsory testing in computer skills as a
preparation for entering the workforce.

Private schools throughout NSW are also expected to follow the lead and begin formally testing computer literacy among
students.

A pilot examination program involving 20 government schools in metropolitan Sydney, regional centres and rural areas begins
this year.

The tests will be expanded to about 100 schools next year and be available across NSW by 2003, involving more than
170,000 students.

The move to make computer studies as important as subjects such as English and mathematics makes good a promise made by
the Premier, Mr Carr, during the 1999 State election campaign.

However, the State Government backed away from its initial plan to hold external tests after the NSW Teachers' Federation
accepted responsibility for carrying out the computer skills examinations as part of agreeing to a 16 per cent pay rise last year.

Although no new staff will be recruited for the computer testing, under the Technology in Learning and Teaching program, about
$2.7 million is being spent to double the number of teachers trained in computer skills to 40,000 by the end of 2003.

The Minister for Education, Mr Aquilina, said yesterday that although NSW schools had one of the highest pupil to computer
ratios in the world - eight to one - testing all students in primary and later in secondary schools was a way of ensuring they did
not slip through the net without acquiring a necessary skill.

"In 10 years' time if you do not have computer skills the plain fact of the matter will be that you won't be able to get a job," he
said.

The Opposition spokeswoman on education, Mrs Patricia Forsythe, said computer literacy testing of students was welcomed
but there were concerns that the Government had not trained enough teachers to impart computer skills.

"The Auditor-General was critical that only one third of the State's teachers had had training in computers," she said.

"We believe the State Government should take a leaf out of the Victorian Government's book and issue all teachers with a
laptop computer."

The president of the Teachers Federation, Ms Sue Simpson, said the task now facing teachers was to build on basic computer
skills so that students could be trained in more complicated and integrated applications of information technology.

Meanwhile, a Fairfield City councillor, Mr Thang Ngo, called on the State Government to provide free Internet access and
more PCs to students from low-income families before introducing compulsory computer literacy tests.

"If it comes down to choosing between feeding and clothing the family and buying expensive computer equipment and Internet
access, then food and clothing will always come first," he said.