Testing and reporting vital to boosting school results

The poor showing of Australian school students in basic skills and subjects in international testing is a good reason to retain and if possible improve national testing. A review of the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has recommended an overhaul and expansion of testing to include science and technology, maths and critical and creative thinking. We are yet to see what content the additional sections would cover. But former Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority chairman Barry McGaw, who led the review, and his team were right to resist the pressure of teachers unions to scrap testing of all students and replace it with sample testing. That option, Professor McGaw told Rebecca Urban on Monday, would leave parents in the dark and deny schools accurate information about how they were performing compared with other schools. The review was commissioned by NSW with support from Queensland, the ACT and Victoria.

The review’s recommendation that testing be carried out in Years 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 (rather than Year 9) was sensible. Testing in Year 10 when students were more mature, the panel pointed out, would be useful for when decisions about choices needed to be made about upper secondary subjects. And testing as early in the school year as possible, rather than in May as at present, the report noted, would give teachers a measure of students’ starting points for the year. It would also debunk the criticism of unions and education academics that testing narrows the focus of classroom learning as teachers feel pressured to “teach to the test’’. That should not be the case.

Unlike subject tests, NAPLAN measures skills rather than knowledge. The only effective way to prepare students for NAPLAN, as the report says, is implementing the Australian Curriculum. But nor is it problematic if the testing focuses more attention in classrooms on “the basics’’. The problems too many students face with reading, writing and numeracy, the building blocks of education, are at the heart of many education problems.

The depth of that crisis was clear in December when Australia had its worst showing in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test. In global education rankings, the nation’s 15-year-olds performed at a significantly lower standard in reading, maths and science than a decade ago, despite government funding for schools rising by more than $20bn. Our maths performance equated to the loss of more than a year’s worth of schooling since 2003. In light of the need to lift the bar, the NAPLAN review recommended that the level of the National Minimum Standards on the NAPLAN scales be reviewed to ascertain if they are too low. The report also backs the development of new “proficient” and “highly proficient’’ benchmarks. As Professor McGaw says, Australia sets national minimum standards too low, “and the education ministers think that as well”. We need to aim higher.

The strength of NAPLAN, the results of which are reported on the MySchool website introduced by Julia Gillard, is its accountability. It informs parents about their own children’s achievements and that of schools. High fees do not necessarily produce high scores. NAPLAN also provides broader snapshots of how state and territory education systems are working in different year levels, and whether particular classes improve or fall back as they progress through the system. From 2008 to 2019, national NAPLAN results have revealed improvement in reading and numeracy in primary schools but not in secondary schools, a static performance in writing in Years 3 and 5 and a decline in Years 7 and 9. They have also revealed that Queensland and Western Australia have improved more than others, but they started behind the ACT, NSW and Victoria and have not surpassed them. On Saturday, Education Minister Dan Tehan pointed to the case of South Australia, where Years 3 and 5 reading and writing results have improved after the recent introduction of statewide phonics screening in government schools. As Mr Tehan says, NAPLAN will have a role in measuring the impact of disruptions caused by COVID-19 on students’ learning. But that should not preclude the system being improved.

Education standards will shape our future in an increasingly competitive, complex world. They are too important an area of social policy to be shielded from scrutiny. Parents are entitled to know about the quality of schools before they enrol their children; taxpayers are entitled to know if the system they fund is working. The misguided, self-centred push by unions to scrap comprehensive testing and abandon transparency is indefensible. This report suggests the system needs refinement. But whatever its new name, NAPLAN’s basic structure, which holds teachers, principals, education authorities and states to account, is serving our children, who are our future.