2015 NAPLAN DEBRIEFING

The 'furore' surrounding the release of the 2015 NAPLAN results last week and the accompanying explanations by various dons and pollies certainly made for a gripping read. 'No significant progress made by students in both literacy and numeracy since NAPLAN testing was introduced in 2008' emanated as a common cry from these educational hangers-on.

 

Now you have to wonder. Why has it taken seven years to be in a position to make this fearless 'call'? There is a political perspective to this timing which I'll address a tad later. More importantly, is it an accurate 'call' and why has it been made now?

 

Let's start with the second question first. Has there been no significant progress made by students in literacy and numeracy since NAPLAN testing was introduced? Well, that's a really difficult question to answer given the state of play in school education at a national level. If students' attainments were pegged from a common curriculum platform across our broad land, then the call could well be cool. But that has not been the case over the last seven years. The national curriculum is only coming into play now. The 'call' is premature on those grounds alone. More meaningful results and trends may start to emerge over the next three or four years.

 

But there's a bigger problem regarding the accuracy of these NAPLAN results both in 2015 and in previous years. The NAPLAN testing doesn't adequately gauge high performing students' abilities and their 'growth' as they move through the primary and secondary education years. It never has. If a student does very well in literacy and numeracy attainments say in Year 3, he/ she won't- and I stress, WON'T- demonstrate continued and commensurate growth to that growth demonstrated by other students in their cohort when they come to the Year 5 tests. Such a tendency is a well-known feature of NAPLAN testing in all schools. Trust me.

 

And the problem with this lack of growth is not that teachers don't adequately extend high performing students in their classes but, rather, it is the limitations that are embedded in the NAPLAN testing program itself.

 

Now to the question of timing. NAPLAN testing and its predecessor, the Basic Skills Program here in New South Wales, were originally designed to provide feedback to individual schools on what their students could do and what they couldn't do in the exciting worlds of literacy and numeracy. Such information could then be used to alter, readjust or improve teaching programs within each school.

 

But that role has changed. Both state and federal governments have transformed these tests into 'high stakes' yearly events and we now see league tables of schools created based on NAPLAN results alone. The Gillard government was complicit in such a transformation with its advocacy for the My School website and the print media certainly get their rocks off by publishing such tables.

 

Here is where all this NAPLAN stuff becomes really septic and political. The current nation-wide processes leading towards local school 'autonomy' and teacher 'quality' create a climate where any school's NAPLAN results become a leverage point for future funding as well as teacher accreditation. If you think I'm drawing a long bow, just listen to Christopher Pine's take on last week's results where he stressed that teacher quality was the prime 'to do' task on his and the federal government's educational agenda.

Posted on f/b on 11 August 2015.