Computer literacy/illiteracy Year 6, 10 National Test

The national ICT Literacy Years 6 and 10, 2005 assessment was conducted by ACER and completed in July 2007, but was not published until Jan 2008. Media reports describe almost 50% of students being "computer illiterate", a term not actually used in the report. The full report can be downloaded from here.

The assessment attempted to move beyond a simple measure of skills related to operating the software and hardware.

A sample of Year 6 and Year 10 students did hands-on tasks that set up a number of meaningful tasks involving common computer tasks such as searching and choosing information, creation of a presentation and so on. Students were then assessed against these and placed in one of 6 profile levels illustrated by the graph below. [click to enlarge image]



The profile standards expected for Years 6 and 10 are marked on the graph, with a large proportion of students from both year level assessed at Profile level 3. [click to enlarge image]




I have not read the report in detail but it seems that the writers have made their best estimate at expected year level proficiency and divided the students into a small number of profile levels. It is striking that there is such a large overlap between the year 6 and 10 students at level 3.