NAPLAN review explained: What it will look at and why

Extract from ABC News

AM

By Eliza Borrello

Posted about an hour ago

Photo: NAPLAN data is published on the Federal Government's My School website.

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NAPLAN — the national literacy and numeracy test sat by Year 3,5, 7 and 9 students across Australia — will undergo a "narrow review", Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham says.

The test has been highly controversial since it was introduced 10 years ago, and the Australian Education Union (AEU), which represents teachers, wants its future reviewed.
But after a meeting with his state counterparts yesterday, Senator Birmingham insisted the test would stay.
The review he has commissioned will instead look at how NAPLAN data is presented.

What is NAPLAN and is it important?

• The National Assessment Program tests the literacy and numeracy skills of students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9
• Students cannot pass or fail the assessment
• The annual testing is designed to help governments and schools gauge whether students are meeting key educational outcomes
• The results help identify strengths and address areas that need to be improved
• Schools and parents can see how an individual student's learning is tracking compared to their classmates and the national average

NAPLAN data is published on the Federal Government's My School website.
It is not easy to compare the performance of schools in a particular location.
If, for example, a parent wanted to know how their public school compared to the private one down the road, they would have to log in to each school's page one at a time and take notes.
But media outlets have continually mined the information and presented it in easy-to-read, so-called league tables, ranking schools' performance.
It is that aspect Senator Birmingham has agreed to review.
"The review is a review looking at the publication of data as it relates to NAPLAN, it's not a review into NAPLAN testing or the way in which assessments are undertaken," he said.
Ray Collins, the acting executive director of the National Catholic Education Commission, said the creation of NAPLAN league tables by media outlets had been problematic.
But he argued the tests were a useful diagnostic tool.

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"Particularly, over a period of years, a school would get, I think, some significant insights into areas where the school is doing well, and some areas where the school might need to do better," he said.
AEU president Correna Haythorpe disagrees.
"We've had widespread concern about this test and its use as a diagnostic tool," she said.
"We've had hundreds and hundreds of teachers participate in surveys and tell us that this is not a useful tool for them in the classroom.
"We're extremely disappointed about the announcement of the review, we were expecting to see a comprehensive review announced, we've had NAPLAN now for over a decade.
"It's a high-stakes and high-pressure test, not only for teachers but for students, and just looking at the data is really not accepting the reality of what was happening in our schools with this test."
John Hattie, a NAPLAN expert from the University of Melbourne, did not think the test was a good diagnostic tool either, but said it was never intended to be.
"It was to get a better sense of how the state of the nation was going," he said.
He argued NAPLAN could be improved but should continue.
"Before NAPLAN, we actually didn't know a lot about the focus of schools; in fact, we knew that every state claimed they were brilliant and every school was brilliant, so having a tool like NAPLAN helps to bring some reality to that," he said.