![]() There is also a whole “how to do NAPLAN” industry of tutors and books pushing formulaic approaches to writing and playing on families’ anxieties. It has been found to have a narrowing effect on both the teaching of writing and students’ capacity to write. There have been widespread calls from educators and academics for the NAPLAN writing test to be withdrawn. Yet one of the keenest critiques of NAPLAN has not been addressed. Pleasingly, the new descriptor for the lowest quartile – ‘Needs additional support’ – puts the onus on the school and school systems to respond to student needs. The move to four levels of reporting will be more accessible to parents. Bringing NAPLAN testing forward will hopefully make it more useful where it really matters – in schools and classrooms. The creation of a teacher panel by ACARA as part of the process of setting standards hints that the professional expertise and voices of teachers are valued. Notably, the pandemic-induced NAPLAN pause did not lead to the collapse of Australian education but was seen by many teachers as a relief when they were dealing with so many more important aspects of young people’s learning and well-being.Įducation Ministers’ adjustments to NAPLAN indicate that they are at last responding to some of the more trenchant critiques of NAPLAN. ![]() NAPLAN has gradually morphed into a diagnostic tool for individual students, though there are other tools more fit for this purpose. ![]() In any case, as Stewart Riddle reminds us, what makes a ‘good school’ is far more subtle and complex than anything that a NAPLAN can tell us. Parental choice is constrained by income, residential address, work opportunities and a myriad of other factors. No doubt there is a lot to learn from highly effective and usually overlooked small rural schools, but few families can move to them from the city. A closer look at the SMH table of Top Performing primary schools shows that most low ICSEA public schools ‘punching above their weight’ are very small regional schools. The Sydney Morning Herald notes that “Public schools with and without opportunity classes, high-fee private institutions and Catholic schools in affluent areas have dominated the top 100 schools…” The reporters are careful to draw attention to a couple of atypical public schools, achieving better results than might be expected from their demographics. Media analysis of NAPLAN results correctly identifies what researchers know only too well: that affluence skews educational outcomes to further advantage the already advantaged. Last week’s ACARA media release reiterates that their primary purpose is so parents can make ‘informed choices’ about their children’s schooling. NAPLAN and My School website were initially introduced by PM Julia Gillard as levers for parental choice. Many schools will be already deeply into NAPLAN test preparation. ![]() We are now about one month out from the new March test window so expect to hear a lot more in the coming weeks. This week it is media league tables ranking schools and sectors, according to NAPLAN results, coinciding with the upload of latest school-level data to the ‘My School’ website. Last week, it was the Ministers tinkering with NAPLAN reporting and timing.
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