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An additional issue with NAPLAN’s
limited literacy testing is that teachers are
spending too much time teaching to the
test, and thereby neglecting the teaching of
unconstrained skills.
As Mantei puts it, “high-stakes testing can
displace educational priorities”.
Many facets
to NAPLAN
Education academics on the
pros and cons of NAPLAN.
By Loren Smith
M
onths before controversial
NSW Education Minister Rob
Stokes called for NAPLAN to be
scrapped, change.org user Sparkt started
an online petition in this vein. In the
interim, a retired MIT professor slammed
the tests, calling them “bizarre“. Some
Australian experts joined him; others, as
well as parent groups, opposed him. All
the while, the federal government stood
by the standardised literacy and numeracy
exams. Clearly, NAPLAN attracts extremists
on either side. But there are also
moderates, such as education academic
Glenn Savage.
In the lead-up to the recent annual tests,
Savage and his colleagues shed informed
light on the varied shades of NAPLAN.
Glenn Savage, Senior Lecturer in Public
Policy and Sociology of Education,
University of Western Australia
‘NAPLAN is not the great equaliser’
“NAPLAN privileges a particular version of
equity that is easily quantifiable,” Savage says.
He explains his view by way of an
anecdote: his friend, a principal at an
inner-city school in Perth whose students
come from a range of socioeconomic
backgrounds, says their differences don’t
impact their NAPLAN scores; most do well
on the tests.
“To many, this seems logical: school
levels opportunity, by way of the OECD’s
‘equitable system’,” Savage says.
But when he examined the school’s data
more closely, by the time students were
in Year 12, he noticed “very clear patterns
between background and success”.
For example, students from refugee
and Indigenous backgrounds were much
more likely not to attend university.
Indigenous students were more likely to be
unemployed post-school, and to not finish
school in the first instance.
Savage’s conclusion? “While NAPLAN tells
us some important things, it doesn’t tell us
many others.”
Jessica Mantei, Senior Lecturer in Language
and Literacy, University of Wollongong
‘We need to re-examine literacy’
NAPLAN takes a narrow snapshot of
literacy, and this is problematic, Mantei
says. In explaining this, she quotes
management guru Peter Drucker: “If you
can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The
only literacy component NAPLAN measures
is constrained skills, like spelling and
punctuation. This means unconstrained
skills (comprehension and vocabulary,
for example) are neither measured
nor managed.
Though Mantei concedes it would
be difficult to measure these skills in a
standardised, multiple choice test, they’re
“what we really need in an ongoing way”.
And while NAPLAN contains a writing
component, it “has become so contrived
it’s useless”, Mantei maintains.
Dr Steven Lewis, Research Fellow,
Research for Educational Impact Centre,
Deakin University
‘It’s about macro versus micro’
Lewis began his NAPLAN appraisal with
an overview of its twin purposes: to
increase schools’ accountability, and to
help policymakers and schools improve
student outcomes. Unfortunately, Lewis
says, it doesn’t really fulfil these. It does,
however, give us macro insights as to how
students are performing, for instance, in
metropolitan versus regional areas, or in
Victoria compared with Tasmania.
It also tells us how students generally
fare across class, ethnic background and
gender divides.
“There’s very little it can tell us at a
micro level because it’s too limited and
error-prone,” he contends. For example,
as there are only two questions on a
particular strand of maths in the NAPLAN
maths paper, the error margins are very
individually high. Yet this effect fades as the
sample size is enlarged.
So, to truly assess individuals, Lewis
thinks we need to rely on assessments
other than NAPLAN.
“Teachers are experts in this,” he says.
Jihyun Lee, Assessment Specialist and
Educational Psychologist, School of
Education, UNSW
‘NAPLAN can be individually diagnostic’
Lee challenges Lewis: she says NAPLAN
can be used to effectively measure
individual students’ progress.
To illustrate, per her research, there’s a
“substantial overlap” between students’
numeracy and maths scores in Years 7–9
and their NAPLAN scores in this context.
Because of this, “one can’t argue for one
[assessment style] over the other”.
“NAPLAN can be an excellent vehicle to
convince [students that] they can do better
academically,” she argues.
What can be improved, she proposes, is
the involvement of stakeholders in any future
NAPLAN modification. As a contributor to
the development of PISA in the US, she is
well-placed to recommend this. ■
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