To be honest, if my children were whip smart at tying their shoelaces or making their bed in year 3, I would have been doing victory laps of the kitchen bench.
But alas, those skills took another year, or perhaps even two. And that’s the case with many, many children who go on to study medicine or nuclear science or languages or law or whatever else takes hold in their dreams.
Now, though, it seems NAPLAN has become the new great divider – between children and schools and even parents.
Look at the media league tables this week heralding what school ranks best when it comes to NAPLAN, canvass the local news stand for expensive practice tests to hone an eight-year-old’s writing skills, and just listen to how children now see the test.
Once the NAPLAN test, an annual literacy and numeracy test for students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9, was used for its original purpose – a simple diagnostic test aimed at picking up classes or schools or even states that might be falling behind.
But over time, that has been eroded; it’s now being used as a gold-star measure of academic achievement – even in year 3.
Schools routinely deny that, but then ask for a copy of year 3 results when a child applies for high school enrolment.
In some classes, educators are routinely teaching to the test. And tutors are being employed by parents in all those years – 3, 5, 7 and 9 – to ensure their child scores well.
What does that prove?
Many teachers believe that if the NAPLAN test was ever a useful tool to peg quality, it has now become useless, even citing situations where low-performing students are encouraged to stay away from school and not sit the test, so that the class average or school results don’t suffer.
The wrong message?
What message does that send? And why are we putting so much pressure on children at an age where they should be more focused on asking questions than knowing the answers?
Just consider this question on a NAPLAN practice writing test for those students in year 3.
- Imagine if a character found an object that made something amazing happen. Write a narrative about the adventure.
Students, in this instance, are given a window of 40 minutes to complete it, under exam conditions.
Imagine if most eight or nine-year-olds even understood the meaning of the word narrative!
So let’s try maths.
-
Stef’s book has more than 324 pages but less than 342 pages. Which of these could be the number of pages in Stef’s book.
a) 322
b) 326
c) 344
d) 346
Wouldn’t it be better for our year 3 students if we were encouraging them to read Stef’s book – rather than looking at the page numbers?
Or what’s the probability of an arrow landing on a particular image in one spin. I’d provide the answer there, but am not 100 per cent sure.
The same goes for questions – on a year 3 practice NAPLAN test – about weights and patterns and shapes made by folding paper along dotted lines.
Diagnostic testing is valuable, when it leads to students with learning difficulties being identified.
Or when it fingers those with extraordinary academic ability. Or those who learn in different ways.
It perhaps is even more crucial, post COVID, where a marked inequality in different schools surfaced.
But NAPLAN, like its big sibling ATAR, is no longer fit for purpose.
NAPLAN is now being used as a parental boast and as part of many schools’ marketing strategies and fee structures. In some places, it’s being used by real estate agents as a reason to buy into particular catchment areas.
And its impact on students, who should be at the centre of any education system we value, is telling.
Year 5 students who are vomiting before a test. Others, in year 7, refusing to attend school. Parents withdrawing their children. Teachers contemplating industrial action if it is not changed.
And still the federal government and Education Minister Jason Clare forge ahead, tinkering with bands of achievement – and ignoring those underlying issues that go to the heart of our children’s wellbeing and development.
Imagine what we could do if we decided to disrupt education, in the way we’ve disrupted our own workplaces. And imagine if we started with NAPLAN.
