Wed Jul 30

NAPLAN is just one test. Here’s what to do if your child’s results were in the bottom bands

Written by Sally Larsen, Senior Lecturer in Education, University of New England

The latest round of NAPLAN results are out, along with a string of news reports about “students falling behind ^[1]” and “failing ^[2]”, and experts sounding the “alarm ^[3]” about school progress.

In March, all Australian students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sat tests in literacy and numeracy. There are four broad bands of achievement, from “needs additional support” to “developing”, “strong” and “exceeding”. The national results ^[4], released on Wednesday, show once again that about 10% of students need additional support and about 20% developing towards expectations.

Individual reports have also been going home to families over the past week. Amid the dire headlines, however, how should parents and students be thinking about their individual results?

It’s just one test

NAPLAN tests important literacy and numeracy skills and these are foundational to other parts of the curriculum. For example, students need literacy skills for history and numeracy skills for science.

But while NAPLAN results can highlight an issue that may have been missed in a child’s schooling, the tests are not very precise individual-level assessments.

Other school-based assessments provide teachers with more detailed information on students’ progress across a range of outcomes across the full school year.

NAPLAN also does not test everything in the school curriculum. It can’t tell you how well students are developing their knowledge in other subject areas (such as history and science). It does not say anything about the creative arts, physical education and social skills. These are also really important components of a well-rounded education ^[5].

Parents may also not appreciate that the tests get relatively harder ^[6] as students get older. Expectations go up. So if your child was in the “developing” band in Year 3 and then in the same “developing” band in Year 5, they have made progress.

Tests this year were completed primarily online ^[7] – younger children, particularly those in Year 3, may still be getting used to the technology. This is all part of the learning process at school.

Sometimes individual NAPLAN results may simply be a reflection of how a child interacted with the assessment on the day.

Teachers are always assessing kids

Another key thing to note is teachers are likely already aware if there are particular issues for any student. They are constantly assessing students in their classrooms – indeed, schools are awash with data these days ^[8].

NAPLAN results are designed to be interpreted alongside other school-based assessments. Results are supposed to provide ^[9] “additional information to support teachers’ professional judgement about students’ levels of literacy and numeracy attainment and progress”.

Teachers will therefore already be providing support in their classrooms to students at all different stages of progress – albeit often in environments impacted by teacher shortages ^[10] and funding limitations ^[11].

Families can talk to their child’s teacher to understand what the school is already doing to support progress and how they can support their child at home.

Families will have also recently received their child’s half-yearly school report. Parents can use this, together with NAPLAN and their own perceptions of how their child is faring, to talk to teacher(s).

It’s not a ‘failure’

There is often a lot of emphasis on standarised tests in education – governments and the media seize on them because they provide lots of data and easy comparisons.

If the results are not what you or your child hoped for, try not to catastrophise them. For one thing, NAPLAN was done about four months ago – kids will have made progress since then.

Schooling itself is also a developmental process ^[12]. It’s not just about getting certain results in standardised tests. If you do identify an issue, put the emphasis on “I can progress, I can improve”. It’s not a failure.