Parents seeking “bragging rights” are hiring private tutors to prepare children for NAPLAN testing, against official advice, as experts warn the trend might be counterproductive.
With some sought-after private schools seeking children’s primary school NAPLAN records when making enrolment decisions or handing out lucrative scholarships, the tutoring industry says parents will continue to seek an edge for their children.
Violet, who is year 5, has tutoring for the NAPLAN test, but it is a part of her overall tutoring program.Credit: Simon Schluter
The results of this year’s NAPLAN literacy and numeracy testing of students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 were published on Wednesday and will be closely studied by parents as a marker of their children’s progress and the performance of their schools.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), which runs NAPLAN, says it is intended to measure students’ progress to identify children in need of extra help and is “not a pass or fail test”.
The authority does not even recommend that children study for the assessments.
But some parents sought tutoring for NAPLAN because they wanted their children to be the best, Sonia Francis of Avivo Elite Tutoring said.
“Often it was a bragging tool,” Francis said. “Sometimes they might have been looking at [their children] going into scholarships or selective schools and they need them to maximise those marks so they can produce their NAPLAN results.
“[For] other families … education is so critically important that they want the child to be performing at the best level.”
Trisha Jha, research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, said external tutoring for the NAPLAN test could cause problems in terms of the data.
“High levels of tutoring adoption in that school may make the school look like it’s doing a great job, but it might be the opposite,” she said.
“The parents are investing more to get support somewhere else. There are definitely problems with being able to trust that the data says what it says.”
Bhavika Unnadkat, Victorian board member of the Australian Parents Council, said some parents were hiring tutors because they thought NAPLAN was an exam in which their children had to excel.
“It is very hard for parents to understand what NAPLAN is, why it’s important,” she said.
“We’ve shared it in multiple different forums, but it is a complicated topic for parents to understand.
“It should be managed in a way that they should just go and perform what they know.”
The most recent nationwide NAPLAN results show nearly 33 per cent of the 1.3 million children sitting the test were either in need of additional support or “developing” across reading and writing.
It also highlighted an economic and demographic divide in academic achievement. More than 57 per cent of Australia’s most disadvantaged year 9s struggle with their reading, compared with 17 per cent from the top socioeconomic bracket.
Carly Elliott-Steele’s children, Violet, who is in year 5, Ivy, in year 7, and Leyla in year 9, have been receiving tutoring since COVID-19 plunged them into lockdown for school in 2020.
She said there might have been some tutoring around NAPLAN before the test, but it was not the focus. Elliott-Steele said she did not understand why parents would pay for tutoring specifically for the test.
“I think it’s a waste of money,” she said. “Unless you want your kid to do really well, and it means ... their NAPLAN results might affect a scholarship or something.
“I don’t think the kids should have to worry, or parents should have to put pressure on their kids. It’s crazy.”
Grattan Institute education program director Jordana Hunter said NAPLAN was designed to be a check-in on students’ foundational literacy and numeracy skills.
“It’s not an assessment of academic knowledge or future academic potential,” she said.
Hunter said parents of children struggling with foundational skills should talk to their school to ask what support was available to help catch up.
“Spending thousands of dollars on private tutors to work through practice NAPLAN tests doesn’t sound like a great use of time or money to me,” Hunter said.
ACARA chief executive Stephen Gniel said the authority did not recommend excessive preparation for NAPLAN or parents and carers using coaching services for this purpose.
“NAPLAN is not a test than can be studied for, and it’s not a pass or fail test,” he said.
“The best preparation kids can do is to go to school every day, listen to their teachers and be engaged in their classroom activities.”
Gniel said the national assessment gave students a chance to show what they had learnt over time in reading, writing and numeracy, and reflected only one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process and did not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance.
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