NAPLAN Results

Tuesday September 14th: At last the NAPLAN results arrived in school. They were given to all Grade Three and Grade Five pupils back in … and then had to be sent off to be corrected. What arrived back at school on Tuesday 14th was a very colourful and professional result sheet with each child’s name on it. We sent them home with a cover note inviting parents/guardians to make an appointment to see the teacher. None did. Yet there was no reference point or benchmark to establish whether or not their child had improved since last year-as they had not done it last year. Even for the Grade Five pupils there was no reference to their score in Grade Three. So the pupils were rated average, above or below average in Maths and English. There was a detailed and complex explanation of these scores in small print that many of the parents that I spoke to had not even read. They just looked at the dots. Certainly the results do not inform student learning in our school, yet they will appear on a website and be used to compare schools. By the way, we did very well. I think that instead of sending home the results it would be more meaningful for parents/guardians to hand them out personally with appropriate interpretations.