NAPLAN Testing - Important Diagnostic Testing

Tomorrow is the beginning of the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests. These annual diagnostic tests are conducted at the same time at every school across Australia.

What is NAPLAN and is it important?

The National Assessment Program tests the literacy and numeracy skills of students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9
Students cannot pass or fail the assessment
The annual testing is designed to help governments and schools gauge whether students are meeting key educational outcomes
The results help identify strengths and address areas that need to be improved
Schools and parents can see how an individual student's learning is tracking compared to their classmates and the national average

NAPLAN testing has come under fire in recent years as parents and certain areas of the community scrutinise its importance in schools and impacts on students. Conducted over three days, the tests actually provide invaluable diagnostic data on students current achievement and helps schools and teachers develop individually tailored programs for students to improve their learning at school.

Unfortunately, the media have jumped on this data in recent years to develop 'league tables' and try and pit schools against each other. Often these tables fail to take into account things such as socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage or look at the relative improvement of school. They would rather use the data to highlight those schools that have lower than the National average.

Parents have also started to withdraw their children from this testing regime at an alarming rate over the past few years. Often they are ill-informed as to what the results from the testing is used for and can dis-advantage their children's education in doing so. Often schools are funded in some way from their NAPLAN data as governments try to direct funding where it is most often needed.

My advice is, unless your child cannot physically do the test due to a disability or anxiety, then make them take the test. The information it gives your child's school is invaluable and is used to plot their education in a meaningful way.