YARC Australian Edition Launched April 2012

April 2012: YARC launched in Australia

International expansion for highly trusted UK reading comprehension tool from GL Assessment

23 April 2012 - With a recent report finding up to eight million workers fail to have the reading, writing or numeracy skills necessary to undertake training for employment, literacy is top of the educational agenda in Australia.

The UK’s highly trusted York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC) – a powerful tool for identifying the nature and extent of reading difficulties – has now been revised for Australian students aged five to 18 years.

Psychological Assessments Australia (PAA) has worked alongside GL Assessment to carry out the largest data collection project ever undertaken for an individual assessment of reading in order to fully standardise YARC for Australia.

Walter Howe, director and educational psychologist, PAA, says: “Establishing a high standard of literacy right from the beginning of a child’s education is vital for our economy to continue to thrive. Teachers are often skilled at picking up when there is a problem with reading, but it can be difficult to pinpoint in which specific area the problem lies. An authentic assessment like YARC can identify the stumbling blocks, quantify the severity and offer guidance on how best to intervene.”

He continues, “Even though YARC was conceived as an international idea, we needed to be certain it was appropriate for our students and curriculum. Following an ethics approval from all the education departments and a number of Catholic Education Offices, we collected data from 1700 children to ensure the assessment was fully standardised for the Australian market. We also employed an independent consultant to provide mapping to the ‘Australian Curriculum: English’, to confirm the skills being assessed were appropriate to those being taught.”

YARC was developed by a team of experts in the psychology of reading, under the leadership of Professors Maggie Snowling and Charles Hulme, at The University of York’s Centre for Reading and Language. The University has recently been invited to join the Russell Group in recognition of its excellent research, outstanding teaching and learning, and the impact of its work with business and the public sector.

All material for YARC was originated by the Centre, then trialled and standardised in collaboration with universities across the UK in a project lasting over three years. YARC was first published in the UK in 2009. In order to ensure suitability for Australian students, a number of minor changes were made. For example, some words were substituted, such as ‘truncheon’ to the more commonly used ‘baton’, and artwork was altered to reflect Australian currency instead of English. Piloting indicated that young students were unfamiliar with the fonts used in the UK edition so these were changed to the five different fonts currently used in different Australian states.

Andrew Thraves, publishing and strategy director at GL Assessment, UK, comments: “As the quality of a country’s education, particularly in the core areas of literacy and numeracy, becomes ever more important in terms of that country’s likely future place and rank in the world economy, high-stake assessments have a significant role to play in ensuring educators are able to help students maximise their educational potential.”

“YARC Australia is GL Assessment’s first foray into the Australian education sector. We have been involved in the largest standardisation of a reading test ever undertaken there – firmly establishing our ability to deliver quality assessments no matter where in the world we operate. YARC’s successful publication and initial popularity further underlines our credentials as an international provider of assessments.”

YARC is suitable for use by specialist and support teachers, heads of English, SENCOs and educational psychologists.

There are two different editions of YARC, one for primary school and one for secondary. The Complete Primary Set, catering for children up to 11 years, includes an ‘early reading’ section specifically for children between the ages of five and seven. This assesses alphabetic knowledge, single word reading and phoneme awareness.

The YARC Secondary Complete Set, for students from 12 to 18 years, assesses the three main components in ensuring children understand what is being read; accuracy, fluency and text comprehension, both literal and inferential. The main component is two parallel sets of graded passages that students read silently. They then answer comprehension questions on the texts.

The tests are quick to administer and provide standard scores, percentile ranks and age- equivalent scores. This information can be used to plan early intervention and identify those students who may be entitled to special provision arrangements in national tests such as the Year 12 final exam.

See GL Assessment at http://www.gl-assessment.co.uk/research-and-articles/april-2012-yarc-launched-australia