This week, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sat the annual NAPLAN Tests. I am pleased that our students approached these tests with purpose and focus, without allowing it to become something more important (and perhaps more stressful) than it is made out to be by some of the media.
NAPLAN testing is important as it provides a point-in-time snapshot of how a child is progressing in some aspects of their education. The data from NAPLAN helps to shape the teaching and learning program going forward.
However, NAPLAN testing has a number of significant limitations. For example, they are pen-and-paper tests and cannot test the full range of the rich ways by which learners normally demonstrate what they know and can do. In addition, there is the over-weighting of literacy elements relative to numeracy and the ongoing inconsistency around the testing of writing reflects the constraints of all narrow, point-in-time, standardised tests. NAPLAN testing simply does not reflect the broad suite of skills in thinking, communication and metacognition essential to leading successful and fulfilling lives and careers.
For all its earnestness, NAPLAN testing reduces learning to a number. A number that has the potential to rob the essential curiosity, discovery, challenge, creativity and joy from the learning journey. A number that cannot possibly capture the richness of the depth and breadth of a St Peters education. A number that cannot possibly communicate the type of person St Peters students grow to become.