NAPLAN SHMAPLAN

In the past few years the repetitive refrain has been that educational outcomes in Australia are stagnant; and the policy response has been to ramp up the focus on standardised testing.

It is not just the outcomes that are stagnant but the education debate itself.

The problem is that NAPLAN has moved from being a mechanism to check the pulse of one part of the education system, to being the reason that schools exist.

Improved NAPLAN results have become the purpose of education.

Despite the fact that it only deals with literacy and numeracy, NAPLAN has become the surrogate arbiter of educational standards in all aspects of education.

As more NAPLAN-based targets are set each year, the focus on the annual standardised test becomes ever more intense, and the education debate is narrowed.

And as it narrows, we ignore some of the big trends that are causing considerable damage to our education systems, including:

• Inequitable educational outcomes – students in the bottom socioeconomic scale are falling further and further behind their more advantaged peers;
• A socially segregated schooling system – the proportion of students who attend a socially mixed school is lower in Australia than in most other comparable countries, including Canada, New Zealand and the UK;
• Downgraded systems of public education – through inequitable funding policies, public schools are seen increasingly as safety nets for families who can’t afford private schools instead of as the centre-piece of schooling provision;
• An impoverished view about the role of education in the 21st century – the richness of education is reduced to a narrow focus on literacy and numeracy, and the kinds of creative capacities needed for the future are ignored.

The response to these wide-ranging and damaging effects of current education policy cannot be addressed by simply modifying or even removing NAPLAN after a ‘review’.

The more we focus on NAPLAN in the name of lifting educational standards, the more we get away from what really constitutes a deep and enriching educational experience.

Clearly we need to expand our education horizons.

As more NAPLAN-based targets are set each year, the focus on the annual standardised test becomes ever more intense, and the education debate is narrowed.

And as it narrows, we ignore some of the big trends that are causing considerable damage to our education systems, including:

• Inequitable educational outcomes – students in the bottom socioeconomic scale are falling further and further behind their more advantaged peers;
• A socially segregated schooling system – the proportion of students who attend a socially mixed school is lower in Australia than in most other comparable countries, including Canada, New Zealand and the UK;
• Downgraded systems of public education – through inequitable funding policies, public schools are seen increasingly as safety nets for families who can’t afford private schools instead of as the centre-piece of schooling provision;
• An impoverished view about the role of education in the 21st century – the richness of education is reduced to a narrow focus on literacy and numeracy, and the kinds of creative capacities needed for the future are ignored.

The response to these wide-ranging and damaging effects of current education policy cannot be addressed by simply modifying or even removing NAPLAN after a ‘review’.

The more we focus on NAPLAN in the name of lifting educational standards, the more we get away from what really constitutes a deep and enriching educational experience.

Clearly we need to expand our education horizons.

For the past 40 years education policy makers have been in the grip of a standardising educational narrative of which NAPLAN is just the most prominent feature. It includes school choice, competition between schools in an education market, narrowing the curriculum, and mistrust of educators.