NAPLAN: Exams are a very narrow test, leading university educator says

A LEADING educator has criticised NAPLAN exams as a “very blunt instrument”, as more than a million students across the nation prepare for today’s tests.

Year 3 student Ella Carpenter with her classmates studying for today’s NAPLAN test / Picture: Richard Dobson

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A LEADING educator has criticised the annual NAPLAN exams as a “very blunt instrument”, as more than a million students across the nation prepare for today’s grammar, spelling and writing tests.

Australian Catholic University senior research fellow Dr Kevin Donnelly made the comments regarding what he described as the narrow scope of the compulsory annual tests for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

In NSW, more than 352,368 youngsters will be quizzed in maths and English in the next three days.

But Dr Donnelly said NAPLAN takes up a lot of teaching time with unintended consequences.

“While I’m in favour of accountability and transparency, it takes up too much time,” he said.

“There’s a lot of pressure on schools and teachers to perform, especially in Years 3 and 5 and it does interfere with teaching and learning.

“It is a very narrow test. I would argue from an educational point of view, it’s only testing a very narrow spectrum of skills and abilities.

Year 3 students Ella Carpenter, Liam Connell and Juliya Louangxay are ready for NAPLAN / Picture: Richard Dobson

“There are some schools, where they are so heavily focused on literacy and numeracy, that music, art and physical education miss out.”

Education authorities should be considering “sample tests”, which would test a representative selection of country and city schools in order to gather useful information.

In previous years, teachers have been accused of teaching to the tests at the expense of the curriculum.

Students will sit two exams today, one on writing and the other on “language conventions”, or spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Reading is tested tomorrow and numeracy on Thursday.

Year 3 student Ivy Clarke studying with her classmates (from left) Juliya Louangxay, Cooper Armstrong, Ella Carpenter, Liam Connell and Aaqib Saad / Picture: Richard Dobson

Because of a change in the curriculum this year, primary school students will need to know the meanings of nouns, adverbs and adjectives, as ­educators have removed explanations for those words.

Parents and Citizens Federation president Jason Vial said they were concerned NAPLAN was still “overblown” in parent’s minds. “There’s a lot more to schools than NAPLAN,” he said. “It shouldn’t be how you define a school.”

But Australian Tutoring Association chief executive Mohan Dhall says fewer parents and students are stressing about results this year.

“It has settled down a lot from a few years back, it’s now not seen as such high stakes,” he said.

“What we see is that parents might ask our tutors to have a slight shift to NAPLAN in the eight weeks leading up to the exam, just as they do at school.’’