A panel of experts have revealed that NAPLAN testing is detrimental to the joys of teaching and school life – and it could also be detrimental to the breadth of learning available to students.
The Facing the Facts report, commissioned by the State School Teachers’ Union Western Australia to assess the state’s public education system, was released on Monday, 6 November.
WA teachers surveyed in the report said the publication of NAPLAN sometimes led to schools requesting that “less able” students don’t participate in the testing so the school could improve its position in the NAPLAN rankings.
Facing the Facts also revealed school administrators have “pressured [teachers] to teach the learning points known to be assessed in the NAPLAN test”.
“‘Teaching to the test’ has become the norm for many teachers and, as a consequence, schools and teachers have reported a narrowing of the curriculum and a loss of time for other parts of the curriculum,” the report reads.
“The primary focus for an assessment system should be the students, whose needs and interests have often been overlooked in the process of designing and implementing NAPLAN.”
NAPLAN not focused on student outcomes
On Perth radio station 6PR, report chairwoman and former WA premier Dr Carmen Lawrence said that when the sole focus in a classroom was test scores – driven by that school’s emphasis on maintaining or improving their position “compared with other schools of similar socio-educational status” – the breadth of education was limited.
“Some kids are being kept at home during NAPLAN because of the potential risk to the school’s reputation,” she said.
The report, which was undertaken in collaboration with researchers at WA’s Curtin University, also suggested the mental health of students was negatively impacted by rigorous testing and stated that “despite the significant resources deployed in the introduction and subsequent management of NAPLAN, the expected improvement in educational outcomes has not eventuated”.
Public ATAR rankings already scrapped
With findings from the report prompting calls to scrap NAPLAN, one potential alternative aimed at reducing the current problems was to switch NAPLAN from being a census assessment to a sample assessment, similar to the Programme for International Student Assessment. The report also recommended conducting tests less frequently without identifying school scores publicly.
That idea has already been explored in relation to ATAR rankings for schools in WA and led the state’s School Curriculum and Standards Authority to stop compiling or publishing a median ATAR results league table.
Inequality in WA schools is growing
The Facing the Facts report also found the extension of compulsory schooling and vocational education past year 10 was not adequately funded to meet the needs of WA students, while money spent on each student over the past decade had declined in public schools and increased in the independent school system.
The panel’s findings highlighted concerns that, while the independent school system empowered schools to recruit its own staff, that freedom had led to difficulties in staffing regional and remote schools and produced inequality in terms of which schools could secure senior, experienced teachers.
To address what the findings determined as inequitable access to quality education, the report recommended an annual audit of independent schools’ spending over concerns they were not currently accountable.
