Katie Bice: NAPLAN is the test that has failed
NAPLAN started off with the best of intentions but became twisted beyond recognition. It’s time for something new, writes Katie Bice.
Opinion
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NAPLAN testing was introduced with the very best of intentions but it went off the rails faster than anyone could have predicted. It was designed to ensure our kids were being taught the basic skills they need, so we can measure where they are at, if they are improving throughout their schooling and if, over time, we are getting better at teaching them.
It was supposed to give parents an insight into where their children sat in relation to national averages and a look into how their school was performing. But before anyone could blink, everyone lost their tiny minds. Schools started teaching to the test. Comparisons were made between schools and the scores were seen as a way of weighing one against another. Students stressed about it. Parents put too much emphasis on it. Bureaucrats wailed at the slightest dip in outcomes.
NAPLAN is now being reviewed by politicians here, in NSW and Queensland. The terms of reference released last week included a query into whether the system should be scrapped and replaced. Everyone agrees we can’t dump standardised testing altogether. There must be a way to keep track of how our kids and schools are performing.
But if its purpose is to track progress not of individuals but of our curriculum, we should question who gets access to the results. Do parents need to know how their kids went? Do they deserve to know how their child’s school performed in comparison to others?
And maybe the test itself should be shorter and have greater input from classroom teachers.
Two years ago one teacher reported her surprise about a section of the maths test that many at her school thought had been unfair on the kids. They believed the way maths questions were framed made them difficult for the students to understand; that, in effect, it wasn’t testing their maths nous at all but their reading and comprehension skills.
So you might have a student who is strong in maths and weaker in English but their inability to understand the maths questions would give them a poor result in that too. It’s setting them up to fail.
The best measure of a student’s success should not be how they perform on NAPLAN but what their classroom teacher says about their performance and what’s in their report. That gives you six months and then a full year of intel from a person who spends six hours a day with your child — not the result a computer spits out a few times over their schooling life.
Katie Bice is the Sunday Herald Sun deputy editor.
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