Nearly NAPLAN time again

The NAPLAN encourages hollow writing that is no better than an internet rant, VATE president Emily Frawley argues.

theage.com.au/national/napla… via @theage

Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of the nation’s students, teachers and parents letting out a collective groan as the NAPLAN prepares to rear its ugly head once more. Now in its 11th year, the NAPLAN is an incredible feat for its ability to be both anxiety-inducing and blandly generic. As a teacher and previous examiner of the persuasive essay component of the test that targets students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9, I have first-hand experience with the negative emotional repercussions and limited academic benefits that the test produces.

Several years ago, writing in response to a prompt about "What is a rule you would like to change?" many students took it upon themselves to argue that they would like to abolish the NAPLAN. One student wrote that the test makes them want to “scream and shout and let it all out”, while another student finished their essay by reinforcing how much they hate the test and wished their humble examiner a “suckish time” in reading their “rant”.

In fact, the word "rant" is actually quite an apt categorisation of the kind of writing that the NAPLAN promotes. While the most valuable writing has "real-world" relevance to students, the genre that the NAPLAN most closely mirrors in the real world is the internet rant: writing that is uninteresting, un-researched, and under-informed. (Indeed, a report commissioned by the New South Wales Teachers Federation found the NAPLAN writing test rewarded students for using big words even if students don’t understand their meaning and is "severely defective both in its design and its execution".)

There is no time in an exam-style test to research or genuinely engage with a topic. Instead, students are drilled in slapping together half-baked ideas, maybe making up a statistic or two to "increase credibility" and structuring the whole sorry mess with pedestrian signposting.

The need to be able to present and analyse argument is one of the cornerstones of English education. Year 12 students each year must analyse the rhetoric of an issue – a skill that is a mixture of the close reading of poetry, and the critical literacy required to unpack how advertisements and propaganda attempt to position their readers. However, because this is a skill that tests all year 12 English students, it must be basic enough for all of them to have a decent crack at it.

Persuasive texts

The fact is that the persuasive genre of writing that is taught for the NAPLAN and the senior English exam has disturbing ties with much of modern politics, where you don’t have to believe in what you’re arguing, or even form arguments that are factually accurate so long as you argue your point loudly, forcefully and repeatedly. It is a genre of writing that encourages off-the-cuff grandstanding and hollow rhetoric.

The basis of so many of the prejudices in our society stems from a lack of education and inability to empathise with alternate points of view. Imagine a generation of students equipped to enter the real world with the skills to resolve conflict, de-escalate tensions and argue calmly and rationally for the best outcome. Talk about real-world skills.

Unfortunately, the point of the NAPLAN has never been about improving educational outcomes – it’s about measuring them. And that’s a different skill altogether.

International trends in education are increasingly moving towards top-down business models of success. Governments want a number put against student results so that they can graph them, compare them and figure out who’s to blame for the fact that students aren’t getting any better at spitting out rubbish.