Teachers and parents cause students to become overwrought by NAPLAN and the HSC

Teachers and parents are to blame for students being overwrought by NAPLAN or the HSC but not the tests which are vital tools for data collection, an education expert has argued in opposition to Education Minister Rob Stokes’s anti-exam rant last week.

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Teachers and parents are to blame for students being overwrought by NAPLAN or the HSC but not the tests which are vital tools for data collection, an education expert has argued.

Centre of Independent Studies senior research fellow Jennifer Buckingham has shot back at Education Minister Rob Stokes’s claim the schooling system is “hypnotised by the neoliberal fixation with quantification”, arguing the major tests are a rigorous source of data and the results are valuable.

Mr Stokes went on an anti-exam rant last week penning an opinion piece for Fairfax in which he said the system was failing to “measure” education goals “holistically”.

“Anaesthetised by the data around us — and hypnotised by the neoliberal fixation with quantification — we place inordinate emphasis on tests such as PISA and NAPLAN that reduce a student’s educational journey to a number, and a school system to a line in a league table,” he said.

Education Minister Rob Stokes. Picture: Peter Lorimer

Mr Stokes, who wants a review of NAPLAN, said the primary school test was “too often misused as a tool to measure the performance of teachers, schools, and different school sectors”.

“This is problematic because it transforms NAPLAN into an instrument that it was never designed to be, and sees policy makers look at unfavourable NAPLAN data and make snap decisions about the overall health of our … system.”

But Dr Jennifer Buckingham writes today in The Daily Telegraph exams are “more equitable” than other forms of assessments as success isn’t dependent on “a student’s home and school resources and more closely a product of individual capability and effort”.

“Tests are the only way to get an objective measure of system and national performance. The purpose of national assessments like NAPLAN and international assessments like PISA is not to satisfy a “neoliberal fixation with quantification” as NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes has put it.

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Research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies Dr Jennifer Buckingham.

“It is to get a clearer sense of achievement and progress over time, with improvement being the goal,” she writes.

Dt Buckingham says there is no evidence that exams are “no longer a suitable way to assess academic achievements and capability”.

“In essence, learning is understanding plus memory. Students should of course understand what they are learning, but if the information has not been retained in their memory, they haven’t really learned it,” she says.

Dr Buckingham also dismisses the argument that exams are too stressful for children.

She said anxiety over exams is the result of teachers and parents projecting this onto children and exam stress only intensifies in university.

“It’s really a case of how schools handle it in the schools and sort of pressure parents put on it, more than just doing a test,” she said.

Mr Stokes’s calls to review NAPLAN have been supported by Labor. Mr Stokes was unable to comment yesterday.

Originally published as Teachers and parents cause students to become overwrought by NAPLAN and the HSC