New broom could see end of NAPLAN

Education Minister Simon Birmingham says NAPLAN could be phased out if recommendations in the Gonski report are adopted.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham says the NAPLAN tests could be phased out eventually. Picture: AAP

Education Minister Simon Birmingham says NAPLAN tests could be phased out if recommendations in the Gonski report are adopted but insists the skills-based tests stay in the short term.

Senator Birmingham yesterday rejected a call by NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes to ban the standardised tests immediately, saying parents liked transparency in the school system.

He said the Gonski recommendations released this week could eventually make the tests redundant.

“There may be a point of time a long way down the track where, if you fully implement all of the details in the Gonski report, you’re going to get the type of data and so on in a much richer, better way than perhaps ­NAPLAN gives us today,” he told Sky News.

However, he said this would not happen overnight.

He said the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy gave the community confidence children were acquiring the basic skills on which learning depended. The tests are sat by all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

Mr Stokes’s comments were labelled a “cop-out” by the ­Coalition’s eduction spokesman in Victoria, Tim Smith: “Unfortunately Rob Stokes sounds like he’s been captured by the Australian Education Union, rather than being on the side of parents.”

Senator Birmingham met state and territory education ministers in Adelaide yesterday and they agreed to further consider the Gonski recommendations.

“There was a shared sense of what the ambition should be and an agreement that we would work through the recommendations in this report,” he said. He added there would be terms of reference discussed later this year for a possible review of NAPLAN.

Bill Shorten said the standardised testing system, introduced by the Rudd government in 2008, should not be jettisoned until there was a better replacement: “So I’d like to see, on a bipartisan basis, people work towards seeing how we can improve it, deal with the concerns (of) teachers and parents, but not automatically junk the whole policy overnight.”

Victorian Education Minister James Merlino said there should be a wholesale NAPLAN review of both reporting and content. “Terms of reference are already being prepared for this review and it is important we get it under way as soon as possible,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said the state supported a NAPLAN review.

South Australian Education Minister John Gardner said he did not support calls to scrap the test, but changes could be made.

Tasmania’s Education Minister, Jeremy Rockliff, backed the test but also supported a review, saying some form of benchmarking was needed but “we should be aiming to continuously improve”.

Additional reporting: Matthew Denholm, Sarah Elks, Michael Owen