NAPLAN Reveals Canberra Schools Are Behind, Experts Say Results Are Flawed

Yet there are still no plans to scrap NAPLAN.

There have been some serious discussions over the past few years about NAPLAN, and whether it is still (or ever was) a suitable means of testing students for their levels of numeracy and literacy.

While there has been some heavy criticism about the test's archaism, the (now former) Education Minister, Simon Birmingham, reiterated that the NAPLAN would remain.

"I don't understand why anybody would want to undermine what is fundamental in terms of the way in which students achieve and build their knowledge and skills," former Minister Birmingham explained.

"We won't succeed at school without basic literacy and numeracy skills and NAPLAN is certainly a good check to make sure that those skills are being developed."

But there are renewed calls for the testing mechanism to be reconsidered, with two U.S. professors and experts in the field of student examinations, Professor Les Perelman and Professor Walt Haney, calling for the results to be scrapped.

Professor Haney argued to the ABC that the marks from exams completed on a computer should not be compared to the marks from pen-and-paper examinations.

"If the administration there is trying to claim that the results of the computer tests can be reasonably compared with the results of past tests, I would say that on the basis of research that I've done and that I know of, that is potentially very misleading," Professor Haney explained.

Australian National University (ANU) has also revealed that a study of Canberra's NAPLAN results over the past few years shows students are lagging behind.

One of the authors of the paper and a law professor at ANU, Andrew Macintosh, told The Canberra Times that they're pushing for the government to open up a public inquiry into the matter.

"This is a really interesting research question. 'Why the hell are we seeing these results every year?' We are so far behind in writing and numeracy," Macintosh said.

While the relevance of the NAPLAN continues to be debated, students all over Australia will continue to take the test each year.

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