What you need to know about the NAPLAN test

Schools are scrambling to prepare for next month’s NAPLAN amid the biggest overhaul to the test in more than a decade. TAKE A SAMPLE TEST

Schools are scrambling to prepare for next month’s NAPLAN amid a major overhaul to the test.

Schools are scrambling to prepare for next month’s NAPLAN amid the biggest overhaul to the test in 15 years.

From this year, NAPLAN tests will be conducted entirely online and held on March 15 instead of May, with parents and schools to receive individual results in July.

From the first day of term, students have been doing practice tests, with some parents and teachers saying this puts enormous pressure on pupils.

It comes as Federal Education Minister Jason Clare rejected a plan to call students with low skills “developing”, saying “we need to make it clear more assistance is needed”.

“There’s always going to be children who fall behind at school. It’s our job to help them catch up,” he said.

Victorian students posted the biggest drops in the nation in NAPLAN results last year, with major declines in three learning areas in the past year chalked up to Covid disruptions.

Victoria is the only state to have recorded “substantial decreases” in the past 12 months, the national NAPLAN snapshot reveals.

The major slides in achievement were in year five numeracy and grammar and year nine spelling.

Western Sydney University Professor Susanne Gannon said attention to NAPLAN masks serious ongoing questions about why Australian governments had created conditions where educational inequities occurred.

“As a single point in time test, NAPLAN has always been just one source of data that teachers and schools can draw upon to design targeted interventions to support student learning,” Prof Gannon said.

“What potential it has for identifying which students need support will be assisted by the earlier delivery of NAPLAN and more rapid provision of results to schools.”

Prof Gannon said NAPLAN bands had been poorly understood and it may be more useful to move to a quartile reporting system, with four levels of reporting.

“Don’t let us forget that NAPLAN and its associated My School website were initially introduced by Julia Gillard as levers for parental choice and have been used most often at system level for comparing states, sectors and schools,” she said.

Flinders University Associate Professor David Curtis said in terms of international assessments, such as PISA, Australia had witnessed a steady decline in achievement in all three domains, reading, mathematics and science, since 2000.

“We need assessments that give us advanced notice about student achievement so that remedial action can be taken,” he said.

“It is not simply an issue of our standing relative to other countries on PISA scores, but the levels of skill that Australian citizens have and whether our population has the skills required of an advanced, knowledge-based economy. NAPLAN assessments can provide this advance notice.”