Introducing SEQTA: A new era in student assessment By Emily FitzSimons, Director of Teaching and Learning
“The fundamental purpose of assessment in education is to establish and understand where learners are in an aspect of their learning at the time of assessment. The ultimate purpose of using assessments … is to enhance learning and so improve levels of achievement.” – Masters, 2014, Australian Council for Educational Research. The world of school assessment and reporting is seeing rapid change. In response to the latest research on learning, and a strong desire to enhance student growth, schools are grappling with an evolving assessment landscape. When many of us were students, we received a school report twice per year, which provided little more than a global summary of our behaviour, application to our studies, and overall grade in each subject. Such reports, while valuable in some ways, only provided parents and students with performance information after the assessment period, with no opportunity to enhance performance during the learning. Effective assessment should provide specific feedback and be offered at such a point in time as to assist the student on their journey, not simply report what was achieved afterwards.
A Geelong College school report from the 1920s, offering limited feedback at the end of the term.
12 Ad Astra Issue No 136
The Geelong College aims to provide an inspiring education in order that students might become empowered, creative and independent learners. Students are both encouraged and equipped to take responsibility for their own learning, embrace and demonstrate resilience in intellectual challenges, and be collaborative, reflective learners. Ultimately, we want all students to develop a lifelong love of, and capacity for, learning. At The Geelong College, our students’ intellectual growth is critical and this semester we have introduced a new platform for providing feedback to students and an ability for families to monitor their child’s progress in a timely manner. SEQTA is a student and learning management system, an all-in-one collaborative teaching and learning platform which draws together information on student learning, achievement, attendance and pastoral care. SEQTA’s program is currently used in more than 450 schools around Australia, providing students and families with unprecedented access to timely, regular and detailed information about a student’s learning journey. In Semester 1, we launched SEQTA Engage® for parents across all three schools and SEQTA Learn® for students in Years 4-12.
Prep students practise their writing skills in a classroom of today.
