An edited version of the following letter was published in The Australian on Wednesday 24 June 2015. Underlined words were delted and bracketed ones inserted. The paper's heading was "Could do better".
NAPLAN's limitations
Kevin Donnelly is right to draw attention to NAPLAN's limitations ("NAPLAN's flaws and limitations mean it fails exam", June 23).
If the program were genuinely beneficial for school education, we could surely expect to see the results trending up and our international performance as measured by PISA (the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment) doing likewise. This is not the case. Instead, NAPLAN results are stable and PISA results are trending down.
Part of the problem is probably that NAPLAN results are invested with more meaning than they deserve. In addition, the associated national obsession with school choice fuelled by the My School website, does not adequately focus on the quality of education received by all Australian students, as opposed to a privileged minority in a small number of so-called "top" schools.
In an ACARA newsletter earlier (The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority chief executive officer early) this year, its CEO opined that we should move on from the debate about NAPLAN. Better yet would be to move on from NAPLAN itself.
Garry Collins
President, Australian Association for the Teaching of English
Tags:Assessment |
Early Career Conference 2022: Writing our future?Writing our future? - a conference presented by and for early career teachers on Saturday 22 October at Wynnum SHS (tbc) | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
External Examination PreparationRegistration Scroll down to register - but please do read this information Schools should register each teacher who will be using the materials. Acting on feedback from last year, we will be making the materials available earlier this year. We will be running the External Examination Preparation as one package with more fl... | ||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
Register | ||||||||||||||||||
Writing our future in Essential English 2022Writing our future in Essential English - a community of practice especially for teachers of Essential English on Saturday 5 November. | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
Indigenous Perspectives in the Junior CurriculumAfter a work program review Town High explored ways to better embed indigenous perspectives in the year 7 program through a novella study of Black Cockatoo. The unit became our first taste of analytical essay writing in year 7, in preparation for subsequent years. We found greater engagement from students across the board. ... | |||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Register | |||||||||||||||
This is the first time I have been to an ETAQ conference and it was really sensational to get so much at all of the sessions.
ETAQ conferences always have sessions that make me excited to be a teacher.
I know that ETAQ conferences in the past have never disappointed - valuable, relevant, practical, inspiring so I came again.
Read AllConnect to a great range of people who are passionate about English and have their finger on the pulse.