June 2010     The Australian Primary Principals Association’s (APPA) paper titled, Overarching Principles Governing the Reporting and Use of NAPLAN, was raised at the Ministers’ meeting yesterday.

“It is critically important that education Ministers curb any misuse of the NAPLAN tests”, said APPA President Leonie Trimper. “There is an urgent need for clear principles to underpin the reporting and use of NAPLAN. We continue to support the collection of standardised diagnostic information. But it is clear from research evidence in the United States and Great Britain that high stakes assessment can have an unintended, negative impact on the quality of teaching and learning. We need to avoid going down this path at all costs.”

APPA has put forward 6 principles and recommendations to be considered by all governments because it is
important that schools are protected from any negative consequences.

“Whilst the Australian Primary Principals Association supports NAPLAN, it remains concerned that problems can arise from using national tests when the stakes are too high. Some examples of perverse effects from the 2010 NAPLAN tests are a good illustration of what can happen when the tests become high stakes”, said Ms Trimper.

Some examples included:

• Media reports that some schools have encouraged parents to keep their children at home on test day if the school judged that the student would not perform well in the tests.
• Some children became anxious on the test days (in particular Year 3s). Some became stressed, ended up in tears, gave up, went home, were upset that they did not complete the task, reported they felt ill, etc. There may be negative, longer term consequences for these young students.
• Some line managers exerted pressure on principals to improve their test results at all costs without taking into account what the school has been doing to improve the students’ performance and the particular factors that have made progress so challenging. As a consequence, principals reported feeling unfairly "threatened" if they failed to treat raising the average test performance as their absolute goal. It was implied that their job would be on the line if the school’s results did not improve.

Ms Trimper said that while the NAPLAN tests themselves are not new, the circumstance in which the tests were administered this year were quite different. The introduction of the My School website and the $350m reward money for states and territories if they improve their test scores have lead to a situation where schools and school systems have focused excessively on test results.

“The 2010 tests highlight that we must arrest this direction we appear to be heading which could even have implications for the new Australian Curriculum”, said Ms Trimper.

From information provided by the Australian Primary Principals Association, June 11, 2010.

Register now to join the YourKidsEd e-mailing list for updates on new links and education information. It's FREE!!