NSW Might Be the First to Scrap the NAPLAN Test

We might finally be seeing the end of the NAPLAN.

After years of some pretty serious criticism, the NAPLAN test might be canned pretty soon in NSW.

Rob Stokes, the NSW Education Minister, has said in a press conference that he wants to urgently scrap the test.

"You now have an industry that's grown up alongside it, where teachers are being encouraged to teach to the test rather than the curriculum," he said.

"It's become a vehicle for edu-businesses to extort money out of desperate students and their family."

It comes in response to the second report released by David Gonski, which recommends a drastic overhaul of how students from primary to secondary school are assessed.

The NAPLAN would instead be replaced with more regular, smaller-scale testing that reflects the information that is actually learned in the curriculum.

But the Federal Minister for Education Simon Birmingham has disagreed with Stokes' views on Radio National, stating that "it serves a very important purpose for many Australian parents."

"Parents make clear they want to see how their children are progressing," Birmingham said. "They want to know whether their children are learning the basics of literacy and numeracy that Naplan assesses."

Just last month, Dr. Les Perelman, a renowned academic who has assessed other nations' school testing requirements, told the ABC that NAPLAN is "one of the strangest writing tests" he's seen and it's "reductive and anachronistic."

I'll guess we'll have to wait and see what the politicians decide on this because right now, it's anyone's call.