NAPLAN Qld: John-Paul Langbroek won’t guarantee improvement
Despite the Premier nominating NAPLAN as a top priority for education, his minister is not willing to make any guarantees.
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Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek has sensationally refused to guarantee that Queensland’s NAPLAN results will improve over the next four years.
Despite Premier David Crisafulli naming NAPLAN improvement as the second top priority for his education minister, Mr Langbroek says he is not willing to make any guarantees.
The minister also revealed he would rely on anecdotal evidence to track whether splashing tens of millions of dollars to reduce the scourge of bullying was working.
Having a zero tolerance for violence in schools was also listed as one of the minister’s key portfolio deliverables ordered by the Premier when he was appointed in November.
Asked on Monday in a sit-down interview with The Courier-Mail if he would guarantee the state’s NAPLAN results would be better by the next state election in 2028, Mr Langbroek said: “I don’t make any guarantees.
“What my job is as minister, is to work with my department, to say, from a policy perspective, if we can work on the things that we believe, (with) the department … because they’re the experts.
“I’m not a teacher.”
Instead, Mr Langbroek said he would focus on removing the negativity around NAPLAN, without trying to add pressure for children and their parents, and improving participation from students.
“You’re in Grade 3, for Pete’s sake, let’s not put pressure on,” he said.
Queensland’s NAPLAN results for reading and spelling went backwards in 2024 across all year levels which take the test compared to the year before.
The state’s Year 3 cohort ranked second worst in the nation for reading last year, ahead of only the Northern Territory.
Year 9 was ranked the worst in the country for pulling out of sitting the NAPLAN tests for spelling, reading, writing, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy.
A former opposition leader, Mr Langbroek was education minister in the Newman government from 2012 to 2015.
In Monday’s interview he was evasive when asked how rates of bullying would be tracked to coincide with his core portfolio value to “reduce the administrative burden being placed on teachers to allow them more time to focus on classroom teaching.”
“I’m not even quite sure what it is,” he said.
“I don’t think we normally have a stat that says these are the amount of bullying incidents in schools.
“We don’t want anyone to be suffering from it.”
But a Queensland Audit Office report published in December found there were 76,400 reported incidents of bullying in 2023 alone, with children affected from as young as prep.
There were also 7275 cyber-bullying incidents in 2023 – a staggering 41.4 per cent increase compared to a decade ago.
“I think the way that that would come through once we’ve progressed our bullying plan will be the sense that I’m receiving fewer complaints about it,” he said. “It (bullying) is an issue with such variance that it’s hard to measure numerically.
“It’s not a case of we mark that down as a bullying incident, because in bullying, they’re all different ways that it can happen sometimes, and that’s part of the problem.”
It comes following a cash splash of $44m from the government allocated to behaviour management, a part of its $207.8m “Better Education” policy.
Earlier this year, a 12-year-old Townsville girl sadly took her own life as a result of continuous bullying both online and at school in the third child suicide in Queensland in as many months.
Her death came just months after Brisbane Lourdes Hill student Ella Catley-Crawford died by suicide in November after she became the victim of an online catfishing scheme planned by other girls.
Mr Langbroek said the government’s zero-tolerance policy of vapes in schools meant there would be “some actions”.
“It doesn’t always mean you’re automatically going to be excluded,” he said.
“I would prefer to as I did last time, say to principals, you’re in charge. You’re in charge of your local school community.”
In semester 2 of 2024, a whopping 1901 expulsions or suspensions were handed out to kids for bringing vapes to school with Mr Langbroek saying the numbers had already lowered in 2024 compared to 2023 – before he was the education minister.
“But I leave those particular matters of discipline up to principals and their senior teachers.”
When asked if he wanted to see a “return to the smart state” – a vision introduced by long-serving former Premier Peter Beattie which, among other things, looked at improving our education system – Mr Langbroek said Queensland calling themselves the smart state was “half smart”.
“ … traditionally, when it comes to results, because we’ve got such a different cohort of schools compared to New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, in terms of numbers, and also the five areas of Gonski need – we’ve got more of them,” he said.
“So us trying to say we’re smart is basically ignoring the challenges that we’ve got in our own state.”
When asked what his No.1 priority in the education portfolio was, Mr Langbroek said quality teaching.
“The thing that will improve a child’s education is the quality of the teacher in front of them,” he said.
“We need, you know, new teachers who are coming through to feel like they’re valued and supported.”
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