NAPLAN

4/8/2016:  NAPLAN has come under fire this week as an expensive exercise producing plateauing results.  Is it all worth it?  Watch this space.

9/8/2016:  Today I read an article by Bethany Hiatt, "Test just part of school kit", The West Australian, 9 August 2016, p19, citing the evidence that students and teachers have become used to the routines of NAPLAN testing and the worry for both groups has diminished. The same article indicated the improvements from 2008 but also highlighted the plateauing that is now occurring. The ACARA Chief Executive Robert Randall was quoted as saying: "Plateauing results are not what we would expect or assume from our education systems." The Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham agreed indicating that 'flat' results were not good enough.  He was reported as complaining that "improvements to NAPLAN results had been insufficient despite a 23.7 per cent increase in Federal funding since 2013."  Hiatt indicates that this is consistent with the Turnbull government's position that "the way education funding is spent is more important than the amount."  Senator Birmingham calls for evidence-based measurements that will get results for our students..."

According to Hiatt the evidence-based measures referred to include "assessing children's skills in their early school years to see if intervention is needed.....and providing incentives for top teachers to work in disadvantaged schools."

As a school principal I would welcome the data that NAPLAN provides but maintain that the emphasis in the learning program is on having every student achieve as many of the outcomes required in the curriculum as possible based on effective teaching.  This is the day to day data that teachers obtain :  it is the bread and butter of explicit teaching.  In the normal course of admitting early childhood students the teachers will ascertain what they can do and know and will proceed from there.

On the matter of top teachers for disadvantaged schools, I was a superintendent of a district containing many disadvantaged schools and I disagree with the top teacher sentiment. It is a naive and destructive view.  The quality of the teachers is paramount to an effective learning program in an effective school.  In an effective school every teacher wants to be the best that they can be and they work hard to keep up to date and to use best practice teaching because this is how it is in the culture of their school, disadvantaged or not.  No child should have a teacher who is not as I describe.  Effective school principals know this and work hard to ensure that quality teaching is a given within the culture of their schools.

Money is well spent if it is focussed on allowing and encouraging teachers to be the best that they can be.  If changes are to be made within a school to achieve this best teacher goal then the money spent must be embedded in viable change process.  I have witnessed so much money wasted because the change processes have been poorly designed.  It is worth emphasising that some of the most effective in-service for teachers is when they are given the opportunity to discuss in relevant teams the various syllabus outcomes they will be working with so that they have an agreed position on what the outcomes mean and the student performance(s) that indicate the outcomes have been achieved.  It is a standards setting activity whereby teachers share their expertise and learn from one another.

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