There's more to school than NAPLAN
As we approach the May NAPLAN assessment, it is useful to recall the purpose of NAPLAN and why it was introduced by Australia’s education ministers.
NAPLAN is the only national assessment all Australian children undertake (four times across seven years of schooling in years 3, 5, 7 and 9), replacing various state and territory assessments. NAPLAN only assesses literary and numeracy, as is its intention.
Over the last 10 years, NAPLAN has been doing what it was designed to do – providing data on literacy and numeracy achievements at a student, school, state/territory and national level. In recent years, attention has been given to growth in literacy and numeracy learning across Years 3–5 and Years 7–9 at a school level. Gain and achievement are both important.
While literacy and numeracy are fundamentally important for all young people, there is no question in my mind that NAPLAN is not, and should never be, the sole measure of a child’s achievement at school or of the success of a school.
The school curriculum has so much more to offer. All students should have an opportunity to study a rich curriculum for literature, science, humanities and social sciences, technology, health and physical education, languages, and the arts. In fact, it is through such learning that literacy and numeracy can be enhanced.
The data gained from NAPLAN have proven value Numerous studies have been conducted using NAPLAN data, providing valuable insight into education and community issues. For example, NAPLAN data have been used recently in a University of New England study into the ‘nature versus nurture’ theory, where education outcomes of identical twins were tracked.
NAPLAN data have also been used by the Australian Education Union to identify gaps in achievement according to socio-economic circumstance and geographic location (December 2017) and by others to identify gaps in achievement between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and other Australian children. More recently, NAPLAN data have been used to inform discussion about opportunities to achieve educational excellence in the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools led by David Gonski. NAPLAN provides an evidence base for these important conversations.
For parents, NAPLAN is an important tool for seeing how their child, compared with the rest of Australia’s children, progresses in gaining the fundamental skills of literacy and numeracy. It supports conversations between parents, teachers and schools on working together to help children achieve their full potential.
Schools and education systems have long recognised the value of NAPLAN data and have used them to inform decisions about improving student outcomes.
NAPLAN has evolved over the last 10 years and should continue to evolve. Changes that have been made include alignment to the Australian Curriculum, inclusion of persuasive text to the writing assessment and a reduction in the time taken to return results.
This year NAPLAN will be undertaken in some schools as an online assessment, meeting calls from stakeholders to make the test more engaging, to provide more precise assessment through tailored testing that adapts to each student’s performance in the assessment and to get the results faster, to inform decisions about teaching and learning. Once NAPLAN is online, I anticipate that further improvements will follow.
NAPLAN continues to evolve in both the design and delivery of assessments and in the way that results are reported. Online assessment will provide more detailed information to teachers, including how a student responded to each question in the assessment and how each question is linked to the Australian Curriculum.
NAPLAN is providing data on literacy and numeracy achievement to inform decisions about improving learning for all young Australians. It is not the only source of data that can be used, but it is the only national set.
As with any test in life – whether academic, sport or hobby-related – some students may feel anxious about NAPLAN. In these cases, it is up to the adults in students’ lives to help keep NAPLAN in perspective. It is a short assessment taken only four times during their school life, assessing what students normally learn in the classroom every day.
Robert Randall is the CEO of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority