in the classroom
More than 1.3 million Australian students sat their NAPLAN tests in March .
does at least offer the time they didn ’ t previously have to do .
However , schools will need to be careful not to structure the entire rest of the year and base all their pedagogical and curriculum decisions to be only in response to NAPLAN test results .
With schools nationwide struggling to hire teachers , will they have the time and the resources to do that ? Regardless of what we do to tinker around the edges with NAPLAN , schools are still in a moment where they don ’ t have the resources needed in order to support students and teachers in the ways they want .
None of the recent changes announced by the government will change this . The government will not be able to provide the resources and supports necessary for any of these benefits to actually manifest .
This is a real concern that we need to keep pushing forward and making it clear that even with more time during the school year , it doesn ’ t give schools more money to hire new teacher aids , and coaches or more time to implement professional development .
How will the changes in how results are reported affect teachers and students ?
With the ten bands , there was a lot of additional labour for teachers as they needed to help students and parents to interpret the results , which took away teaching time .
Reducing to four bands will simplify the results for parents and give them an easier understanding of where their kid currently stands .
However , sometimes simplifying things doesn ’ t lead to better and we run the risk of missing the nuance that the ten bands provided .
There will be a risk that these new results will be taken as overgeneralizations about what students and teachers are doing .
A lot of experts are warning that the new achievement levels will show more students falling below proficiency , which is a huge concern .
Who should take the blame for that ? History has shown us that teachers are always the first to be blamed . When things change or don ’ t go as people expect , educators are blamed .
I ’ m afraid that these new achievement levels are going to do exactly that .
Teachers and schools operate in complex societal conditions and they can ’ t mitigate all the effects that impact student achievement and performance on tests .
When none of those societal factors changes and all we change are the reporting of the data , what it will look like on paper is that teachers have failed .
That will be the discourse that they will be left having to bear .
Do you think there should be any other made changes to NAPLAN testing ? Getting back to the purpose of NAPLAN is always my recommendation .
We have been looking in detail at what this test says about students , teachers and schools rather than checking the temperature of the nation in literacy and numeracy , which was the original purpose .
When we scrutinise NAPLAN , we introduce confounding factors and biases that end up blaming teachers and schools for things that are outside of their control .
However , when we take a much broader look , in a census-level assessment , you can ’ t blame individual teachers and schools , it becomes an issue with the system .
Going back to the basics would also eliminate teaching to the test . ■
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