Dear Parents/Guardians
Salesian Secondary College is committed to developing and promoting the literacy skills of our students. As part of this work we intend to screen all First Years’ literacy skills by looking at their reading, spelling and writing. Doing this will to help us identify students’ strengths and needs in order to plan our literacy supports. This Test will take place on Monday 6th of September.
The screening test we are using is called the Post Primary Assessment & Diagnosis-English (or PPAD-E for short). The National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS), working with the Educational Research Centre (ERC), recently designed this test for students in Irish schools.
The PPAD-E has five parts: reading and understanding passages, spelling, written work, reading speed, and word reading. Four of the five parts of the PPAD-E are done in class groups. This takes approximately one hour to complete. The final part, a short word reading task, is done individually, with a teacher in the school. The test is suited to all ability levels, including students who struggle with reading.
There is no need for your child to prepare in advance. All that is required is a pencil. The purpose of the test is to help us know when someone may need extra help with learning, and what kind of help might be best. As we identify those students who require extra help, We will be able to tailor classroom instruction to meet those needs and give targeted interventions to those who need it.
Following the assessment, the ERC receives an anonymised dataset from the school that contains only school ID and test scores. The ERC uses this information to know how many tests are being taken, to manage printing and supplies, and also to use as a basis for future development of the PPAD-E test. Your child’s information will not be identifiable because the student names, IDs or any other identifying information, will not be shared by the school with the ERC.
Yours sincerely
Catriona Morgan O’ Brien
Principal
App