Dear Mr. Simon Birmingham,

As the Minster for Education, you will know about the new Teacher Literacy and Numeracy Tests which are to be compulsorily sat for the first time this year. There has been a massive error of judgment in the creation of these tests. There is no common sense in these tests, and neither do they exhibit any form of good, or logical, practice. 

Either, we should not have been allowed entrance into university, in which case the entrance determinations need to be corrected, or, there is no faith in the quality of the degrees graduating teachers are leaving university with. There can be no other reasons for the implementation of this test unless you are doing this to measure the effectiveness of your systems and asking us to pay $185 to enable you to do this, or to make it appear that the government is doing something about teacher quality. A basic skills test is not going to fix either of these problems and making  education students pay for this test is completely unfair.

Myself and many of my classmates understand and are supportive of the need to raise the standard and profile the teaching profession in Australia. But, is this really the best solution we can come up with? This test, of the same level as the Year 9 NAPLAN test, belittles and insults the profile of the teaching profession.  

We, as Education students are offended that after gaining entrance into a University course, we have to sit a basic skills exam, of such a low level, at the end of completing a degree of four or five years. If we have gained entrance into university and completed teacher suitability interviews and checks, why do we need to take a basic skills test? 

Further, to make these tests a condition of gaining a teaching qualification after we have completed four- or five-year degrees is a money-grabbing exercise and simply does not make sense. We have already accrued $25,000 in HECS debt before we have to pay $185 for our basic skills to be tested. We understand that new students commencing their degrees will need to sit these exams before they gain entrance, but if a basic test with such low standards is the best method of screening potential teaching students' skills then there is a serious problem in the university admissions system, which remains unaddressed. Students wanting to contribute positively to Australia are being used as 'cash cows' by universities, and the government, and this is incredibly demeaning and discouraging.

Please get rid of these tests, and deal with the real problems within the university systems.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Pentz 5th Year Education and Arts Student at The University of Sydney