NAPLAN tests are part of a big delusion

THE latest round of National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy testing will take place in just 10 days. There will be schools suspending their curriculums as preparation for the NAPLAN takes over.

NAPLAN homework will be set and there will be swotting by students to do well on the tests. I will have to leave off my study of Romeo and Juliet with my Year 9 students to begin the annual NAPLAN period. These results matter more than a sequential study and the momentum of teaching Shakespeare.

This is Labor's way. While Julia Gillard declares that she does not want Australian children to be the "runt of the litter" in terms of international and specifically Asian comparisons, the gross appropriation of NAPLAN results for political ends by Labor is a travesty of any credentials the party claims on school education.

Indeed, NAPLAN is exploited by Labor to advance its flawed education agenda.

NAPLAN is now the primary indicator of school performance. No matter that it delivers virtually worthless data. This does not stop Labor from using scores to point to individual schools as doing better than others. This is a craven misuse of data and shows just how culpable Labor is on mismanaging schools. Allow me to explain.

In an Australian Research Council-funded study, Mandated Literacy Assessment and the Reorganisation of Teacher's Work, published last year, it was found that schools were recasting their curriculums around NAPLAN performance and prescribing teachers' classroom expectations. The study observed that a "federal policy to mandate standardised literacy assessment presented many challenges".

One of these challenges, it noted, was that schools were given the incentive to prioritise NAPLAN preparation as a significant percentage of federal government funding is tied to "reward funding". If you do well at NAPLAN, Labor will pat you on the head and give you a bag of money.

But this is only part of the corruption of national testing under Labor. The emphasis on the need to number-crunch and tout performance has given rise to the evidence industry.

Or, as Barbara Comber, a professor in education at the Queensland University of Technology and one of the authors of the ARC study, said in the journal Education Review in May last year: "Given the need to provide evidence of enhanced student outcomes using government-approved standardised measures, it is not surprising that 'data' and 'evidence' are increasingly keywords in schools."

Add to this what Alan Reid, professor emeritus of education at the University of South Australia, said last December: "We need to be more rigorous in our public discussions by asking what the data is telling us, clarifying what it is not saying, and identifying what extra information is required."

So critical has NAPLAN become to Labor that in January last year, the Prime Minister had this to say: "Our efforts to bring transparency and accountability to our education system through the introduction of My School and NAPLAN testing continue to provide us with greater clarity on what works and where resources should be targeted."

This highlights Labor's serious confusion over NAPLAN. While Gillard, the so-called Education Prime Minister, can say, "I am focused on the undeniable facts that teacher quality and the strength of school leadership are the most important factors for educational success for our kids at school", she persistently sees money as the answer. It isn't.

This is palpably clear in what the Independent Schools Council of Australia report into school funding and poverty said in March this year. It found that measures such as NAPLAN and the authority they are given as a means of determining educational performance were inappropriate.

"For students without ready access to wider educational experiences through home and family, defining school quality in terms of basic skills only limits expectations and fails to prepare them with the knowledge and skills necessary for further study, employment and active citizenship.

"A substantial body of research shows categorically that the correlation between education spending and achieved qualitative outcomes is weak. A reasonable level of funding is unquestionably the bedrock for good educational performance but money does not equal better performance." The blunt fact is that Labor will not be party to the sacking of poor teachers. If it wants better school outcomes, NAPLAN scores for example, then it has to ensure that the "teacher quality" Gillard apparently believes in has some meaning. The Australian Education Union will not brook sacking teachers but it thoroughly supports the Gonski reforms of throwing good money after bad.

The AEU and Labor, in effect, protect inferior teachers in sheltered workshops called schools.

What Labor does not draw attention to is that it actively allows businesses to feed off the anxiety NAPLAN has created. Labor's lack of ethics is little short of appalling. The "test industry", as Comber reported in the ARC study, is let to grow without check.

"Online private consultants offer support to schools improving standards through coaching, practice tests, expert data analysis and so on," she said.

"Some businesses seek to capture the parent market as well, by offering online literacy practice for home and school, while others produce practice test booklets available for purchase."

But Labor ignores this and ignores the lack of verification and independent authentication of NAPLAN results. Being tutored for NAPLAN through whatever means is fine by Gillard - just get the results. So minimalist is the worth of NAPLAN that, once the tests are over, normal service resumes in schools.

Given that NAPLAN does not deliver good data, Labor's misappropriation of this data is inexorably linked to funding. While schools that do well get a reward, so do schools that do badly. It is actually in a school's interests to do badly, so as to get more funding. This is one of Labor's secrets. Can you think of a school under Gillard that was sanctioned over bad teaching? No. More money will solve all school ills.

NAPLAN is fudged by schools in what amounts to cheating through extraordinary and allowable assistance through the NAPLAN business test industry. NAPLAN shows one thing though - the utter moral turpitude of Labor's education agenda.

Christopher Bantick is a Melbourne writer and senior literature teacher at a Melbourne boys Anglican grammar school.