ARTICLES
Five Things We Wouldn’ t Know Without NAPLAN
By Peter Goss
NAPLAN testing happens the second full week of May each year. Michael Coghlan
NAPLAN, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy, has been a prominent part of Australia’ s education landscape since 2008, when it was introduced by then Education Minister Julia Gillard. It’ s a controversial test, lauded by some but disliked by many.
Ten years on, the role of NAPLAN is under question, with some arguing it should be dropped entirely. Here’ s why it’ s a vital navigation tool for policy makers and researchers.
What is NAPLAN?
Every May, Australian school students in years three, five, seven and nine sit standardised tests in reading, writing, numeracy, spelling and grammar.
A great virtue of NAPLAN is that each domain is scored on a single scale. Achievement can be compared across different school year levels, courtesy of a common learning progression for all levels of the NAPLAN tests. This lets us analyse the learning growth of specific groups of students as they move through school.
I have consistently argued the best way to lift achievement is to maximise individual learning progress. The same theme underpins the Gonski 2.0 report, and if we want to lift learning progress at scale, we must be able to measure it.
What is NAPLAN used for?
There are many claims about the benefits of NAPLAN, each of which deserves scrutiny on its merits. For example, using NAPLAN:
• policy makers and researchers can better understand student performance, to inform system-wide policies, support and resource allocation for schools;
• teachers can use the data as a diagnostic tool to improve teaching in the classroom;
• parents can make more informed choices about where to send their children, via the MySchool website which publishes school-level results;
• parents have more information about how their child is progressing relative to others.
35 SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 2