Primary-aged children across Wales will soon be having their literacy skills tested in a new series of assessments developed and launched by Swansea-based experts.
Stories about family, school and adventure give the tests, which are designed for children in the Year 4 to Year 6 age-group, a less daunting feel.
The All-Wales English and Welsh Literacy tests cover subjects such as spelling, grammar and punctuation in a story-based format and have been developed over three years by Education Psychologists based at Swansea Council and Robert Powell, the recently-retired Head of the National Foundation for Education Research, Wales branch.
Senior Education Psychologist at Swansea Council, Stuart Forbes said the new literacy tests had been designed to compliment the existing All Wales Reading Tests.
“We developed the All-Wales English and Welsh Literacy tests from scratch in response to requests from schools in Swansea and in other Welsh authority areas who were already using the existing reading tests.
“We carried out some research about children’s preferred reading materials in that age-group, which indicated that they liked to read about family, school and adventure, so these have formed the basis of the test questions.”
Director of Education at Swansea Council, Richard Parry said, “I’d like to thank those involved in developing the tests and all the schools in
Swansea which kindly helped with their piloting and standardisation.”
Further details about the tests are available at www.readingtest.org
