Parents’ Expectations Vs. Reality- NAPLAN

NAPLAN (The National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy) is a nationwide measure introduced to Australian schools in 2008, through which young Australians’ literacy and numeracy skills are determined and standardized. 

The program started as a form of promoting quality education to students in Australia through accountability and transparency. Under NAPLAN, students participate in tests developed by ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority), where skills such as reading, writing, language conventions, and numeracy skills for the students in 3, 5, 7, and 9 grades, respectively, are tested. 

NAPLAN writing, reading, language convention, and numeracy test results give a performance measure to parents, classes, and schools; these results report to the aggregate state and territory scores 

Even though it may seem early, many parents send their children to appear in NAPLAN at the early age of 3. Many parents consider NAPLAN as a means to understand where their ward needs to improve, and they believe that it will also give teachers a chance to understand the level of each student and act appropriately.

It is not a compulsory examination; parents can withdraw their children from NAPLAN tests. There are several cases where the students are exempt from the test based on language background and vital disabilities. 

The My School website, managed by ACARA, started publishing school-level NAPLAN test results in 2010, which publishes information on approximately 10,000 schools across Australia. The website publishes comparisons between ‘like’ schools (those with statistically similar student populations) and tracks student progress over time.

Since the initiation of the My School website, the competition among students has risen drastically, and many connect this rise to parental expectations and adult anxieties. Here on this page, we will discuss parents’ various expectations about NAPLAN and how it differs from reality.

What parents expect from NAPLAN 

Being a nationwide examination, parents have varying expectations from the NAPLAN tests. Be it the NAPLAN writing test or maths tests, parents expect these exams to quantify their child’s academic growth and compare it with other children studying at other schools. It has become a crucial criterion for many parents to check the NAPLAN average of any school before they consider enrolling their children there. 

Parents believe that if they can provide their children with better study materials, they will be able to score better on NAPLAN exams automatically. After the advent of the MY School website, there has been a sharp rise in the number of sample NAPLAN writing example papers and numerous study materials for NAPLAN. 

Every parent expects their child to be academically better than, or at the very least, on par with their peers. For such parents, NAPLAN gives a small report on how their children performed in the exam nationally and compares it with their peers. It also acts as a benchmark for parents while selecting the schools for their children to enroll in; schools with a higher average of students scoring top positions in the NAPLAN test are more acceptable to parents.  

To many parents, NAPLAN is a form of feedback on their children’s academic development and diagnoses the knowledge and skill gap to improve upon. They also consider it a tool that keeps their ward’s schools accountable for their academic growth and how they implemented and assisted their children to improve from the last NAPLAN test. By looking at the score difference in NAPLAN writing year 3 and NAPLAN writing year 9, parents can easily understand how their child has grown academically in the field of writing. 

One of the most critical factors for most parents regarding NAPLAN is that it is not a high-stakes exam, but it proves to help keep records of students’ academic development. It has become a method to keep the parents and teachers accountable for any changes in the ward’s academic discrepancies without affecting primary school education. 

The Reality of NAPLAN Exams 

NAPLAN exams have been a crucial criterion for many parents to calculate the accountability of schools and their teachers in Australia for some time. The reality of this test came to light under the call of NSW Education minister Rob Stokes, who petitioned to dismantle the test as “it is used dishonestly as a school rating system” and has grown into “an industry that extorts money from desperate families.” 

Even though Naplan tests have become widely accepted throughout Australia, educational councilors and ministries are not recommending parents and schools send their students to the NAPLAN test as they affect their academic, economic, and psychological well-being. 

The writing topics of NAPLAN are so advanced in years that schools and teachers have had to change the teaching method and curriculum to keep up with the NAPLAN writing topics. The NAPLAN writing topic year 5 consists of narratives, and NAPLAN writing year 7 consists of persuasive topics, which is not something we should expect a child of 7 years to create. The advanced writing and numerical topics of NAPLAN have created a sense of anxiety and pressure in students to score higher, and they all turn to NAPLAN writing example collections; the collection of study materials provided by NAPLAN, which creates a vicious cycle of money extortion from desperate parents and students. 

While NAPLAN suggests a high-precision result report to the parents, the reality is quite different. NAPLAN tests its examinees with minimum questions in each section and then uses those results to assess the child’s performance, which is such an impractical approach because the assessment of a child’s performance is supposed to cover a larger area than those tested. While the reports given to the parents portray precise student performance, it differs widely in reality.  

Another significant reality of NAPLAN is that the results published on the MySchool website are not a good assessor of a teacher or school’s ability. Parents have started to spend money based on the information presented on the website to choose tutors, transfer schools, and new admissions. However, it is visible that a teacher who continually engages with their students to assess and collect evidence of student performance is way better than any NAPLAN ratings at assessing student ability. 

A large industry has risen around selling NAPLAN writing examples, study materials, programs, and tutoring services. Parents and guardians should choose whether it is necessary to prepare their wards for NAPLAN and build up pressure on them every two years or believe in schools and teachers to conduct rigorous tests to have detailed academic development charts.  

It is not necessary to completely abandon NAPLAN tests. There are various advantages and disadvantages of this type of test. The crucial criteria are to select only the necessary advantages and leave all those practices that burden the children’s psychic and parents’ economic backgrounds. Even though the reality and expectations of parents regarding NAPLAN may differ drastically, the exams have advantages that parents can utilize as they see fit, and as ACARA reports say, more than 50% of parents accept NAPLAN as a necessary test.