Lucy Carne: Scrapping NAPLAN and school rankings will only fail our children

Preventing student resilence and teacher accountability by scrapping NAPLAN and school rankings is no guarantee of success, writes Lucy Carne.

The manic attempt to protect the fragile self-esteem of students and teachers has got to stop.

Prizes for everyone! Learning play! 21st Century Skills! Overpaid consultants!

It’s clearly not working.

The latest move in the destruction of academic sensibility is the call to scrap the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) test and the bizarre removal of school comparison data based on NAPLAN results.

The desire to placate the fear of failure is letting down our children. Picture: iStock

Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe last week demanded the Federal Government axe the annual NAPLAN test as it was “plagued by a lack of credibility” and put “unnecessary pressure” on students.

It comes as Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) also blocked the compilation or publication of “league tables” by third parties and has changed its MySchool website to no longer offer school comparisons.

Parents can still search for a school’s past NAPLAN results on the taxpayer-funded portal, but cannot easily compare schools or see the best and worst performers.

Ms Haythorpe praised that decision, saying “the publication of NAPLAN league tables is damaging to school communities”.

But is this move to ban benchmarking really motivated by unions’ fear that parents will be misinformed by NAPLAN league tables or rather that the public will not be misinformed?

NAPLAN was introduced 13 years ago to provide critical information on school and student learning needs by testing the literacy and numeracy skills of every student in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

It is Australia’s only national standardised test that provides long term big data to illuminate gaps in learning and skills and accurately guide curriculum planning, resource allocation and policy decisions.

The MySchool website was always contentious, but it offered parents, who once had no idea of how effective their local school’s teaching was, information to assist in their choice of school.

School performance comparison is not novel – Singapore, which consistently outperforms Australia in literacy and numeracy, provides parents with detailed school league tables, as does Britain.

School rankings are embraced in other nations. Picture: Supplied

Even ACARA’s own website says that “by providing extensive information on Australian schools, the My School website introduces a new level of transparency and accountability to schooling in Australia”.

Well, that’s no more.

Beyond school Open Days, Australian parents are now back to sourcing school intel from our neighbour’s personal trainer’s cousin whose kids went there eight years ago.

This assumption that parents will blindly choose a school based only on NAPLAN results is also absurd.

We all know that what makes a great school is more than just standardised test results held once a year – it’s the teacher turnover rate, athletic and creative programs offered, the school’s pedagogy, the commute from home or work, classroom resources, fees, uniform costs, even the state of the playground equipment or gardens.

But this veil of secrecy around how schools compare and lack of transparency and accountability will only let down our kids.

Rather than use NAPLAN results to advocate for improvement in education performance, the suppression of comparison protects underperforming teachers.

And it’s a symptom of the problem plaguing our schooling.

It’s the self-defeating desire to placate the fear of failure.

Without easily accesible school rankings, parents will have to revert back to gossip and rumours to source school recommendations. Picture: iStock

Feelings are fundamental. Kids must now pass everything. And teachers must not be held accountable.

It originates from the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where self-esteem is vital to self-actualisation.

Success is now a right, not a privilege achieved by the lessons of defeat and failure. And comparison has become problematic and only holds people back.

An example of this madness is the famous Californian education report Toward a State of Self-esteem that stated: “Appreciating my own worth and importance does not depend on measuring the quantity or quality of my abilities against those of someone else … The point is not to become acceptable or worthy but to acknowledge the worthiness that already exists. Our feelings are part of this and accepting them builds our self-esteem.”

It’s a malaise that has even spread to higher education.

I write this as a current Masters student having returned back to university after 18 years since my last degree and I’m staggered by the lack of rigorous exams I was expecting.

Every assessment is an assignment and many are in groups. It’s basically impossible to fail.

Like thinking that printing more money will make us richer, blocking school comparisons and protecting students from the pressure of standardised testing will not make us more successful.

Ultimately, this denial of resilience and accountability will fail us all.