Are This Year’s NAPLAN Changes for Better or Worse?

We spoke to an education expert to see what he thinks about the testing.

As if students don’t have enough tests and assignments already, NAPLAN loves to roll around for every Year 3, 7, 5 and 9 student.

NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) has been around since 2008, testing students on their literacy and numeracy skills.

Why? According to the NAP website, the results help government, education authorities, schools, and the community on whether or not young Aussies are meeting important educational outcomes.

Charles Darwin University’s education expert Dr. Stephen Bolaji stated recently ‘NAPLAN can be good to identify progress, but in an extremely narrow understanding of education.’

With new dates and a new result system this year, we spoke to Dr Bolaji to see if the NAPLAN is something students need to be worried about when it comes around, and what his thoughts are on the testing.

You heard it here – you technically shouldn’t have to do any extra studying or prep for NAPLAN. The literacy and numeracy skills needed should be integrated into your regular learning.

Dr Bolaji said, ‘I think that students don't really need to prepare for this assessment if indeed the curriculum, the lesson plans, the learning objectives are covered and accommodated according to the Australian curriculum.’

In saying this, it’s important to remember that not every school is the same. Some schools may not share things like the same amount of student engagement and the same amount of resources.

NAPLAN is now starting earlier in the year after previously being run in May, and we said to Dr Bolaji, “surely everyone would love getting this out of the way in first semester!”

The annual tests were previously held in May but have moved to March from this year to allow parents, carers and teachers to identify students who need extra help and support services earlier in the year.

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It turns out that while it might be great to have NAPLAN over and done with, Dr Bolaji said that he doesn’t think first semester is the best time for students to take the test.

‘Students moving from Year 4 to Year 5 - they’re just starting to understand the rudiments of engaging in Year 5 activities in school, and introducing NAPLAN for them to do in Year 5 at the early stage of their engagement is not something that I think is important,” said Dr Bolaji.

It makes sense – students have a short time to grasp the new standard set of their year level before NAPLAN, so testing them early on in that year doesn’t seem too fair.

For those familiar with NAPLAN, they have now ditched the 10-band result system and instead have simplified it into four categories – ‘exceeding’, ‘strong’, ‘developing’, and ‘needs additional support’.

Dr Bolaji explained, “it's good to have such a new, robust ideas of how to measure performance, but there must also be resources to be able to support such ideas for them to flourish.”

He stressed that it’s important for results to have some kind of specificity, so it becomes clearer to identify and target areas students need additional support in.

Whether you’re sitting NAPLAN now or it’s coming up next year – do your best, and remember that your results don’t define you.