NAPLAN

Last week was NAPLAN week in our school and indeed all schools in Australia. In 2008, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) commenced in Australian schools. Every year, all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed on the same days using national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy. This was fine and dandy until last year when the Government used the data to compare schools. This has put pressure on schools that is hard to explain. Now instead of having a useful tool to inform student learning into the future, they have created a competitive culture that values a numeric ranking over a rounded moral and spiritual education. There have been horror stories in the media all week telling of schools who have exempted pupils in order to keep their scores up, teaching to the test etc. There was even a story of Year 9s (15/16 year olds) deliberately getting answers wrong in order to get their teachers into trouble. It was even suggested that teachers from one school should administer the tests in another school!
On the ground here, I felt like a secondary principal at Junior Cert time. This box arrived by courier about a week in advance. I had to sign for it and then ensure that it was double locked and only given out immediately prior to the test. There was a four page checklist of things to do and record. A supervisor even arrived on Thursday to check that all procedures had been and were being followed. I had to show him the double locks and where the box was stored. He stayed in the Grade Three classroom for the duration of the test. Teachers were very tense as were pupils and parents.