NAPLAN Anxiety?

NAPLAN causing anxiety?

Fairfax papers are today reporting new research from the University of Melbourne that suggests students are showing signs of severe anxiety both before and during NAPLAN tests.

Is this sort of student behaviour familiar to you? Do you think this is an accurate snapshot? Should some level of anxiety prior to testing be expected?

NAPLAN: is the pain worth it? smh.com.au

CHILDREN are suffering stress-related vomiting and sleeplessness as some teachers drill them for months prior to the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), according to the first national study into the...

28 days ago

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Tom Benjamin • I know we've had a lot of anti-NAPLAN sentiment in our internal departmental social networks but, like the study reported here, it may not be a representative sample. The Minister argued on ABC that it was based on the curriculum so there should be no conflict in 'teaching to the test' as he contends they're supposed to be teaching to this as a minimum in any case. I've always wondered whether the level of test difficulty and stakes are the issue rather than the content. A simple standardised test that allowed assessment of basic literacy and numeracy is an appealing idea. As a psychologist I would always argue against non-uniform methods as they allow no comparisons or planning. The elephant in the room with any testing is always whether we trust the uses to which the data will be put.

David Ball • Hype. There is more work for a student each year than can easily be done in a short time. This causes anxiety. It isn't the fault of assessment. Assessment is necessary. Naplan's framework makes it pretty accurate. This is why people look at shifting goalposts for an advantage. Naplan's effectiveness makes enemies. Note, there are results that are available to Naplan users not available to the Principals or parents .. and that is wrong.

27 days ago

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Nicole Feledy • NAPLAN in itself is probably not the problem but rather the hype surrounding it and the fear it generates within the minds of competition bound parents and principals. I accept it may be used as a diagnostic, but I tend to think there are better ways to gauge student progress than using multiple choice tests (with a few short answer) that assess skills in a 'floating' disconected sort if way. I guess what I am trying to say is that NAPLAN aims to measure and categorise rather than encouraging students (and parents) to understand why diagnostic assessment can be use1

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Bill Gillespie • @Tom Benjamin, I think I would have to disagree with the minister's comments. Every state and territory has their own curriculum at this point in time. This will change when the National Curriculum is adopted Australia wide, however, I do not believe that the current NAPLAN testing is an effective vehicle to determine how well curriculum is implemented within schools. I'm all for a diagnostic tool to assist us in improving the quality of service we provide to parents and students but why we we have to limit the effectiveness to Literacy and Numeracy?

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Tom Benjamin • Aren't literacy & numeracy the core? A high proportion of info we get comes via reading (even info about numeracy) and much later science/tech will depend on numeracy. If students get behind in those, especially reading, it is extremely hard for them to catch up. It hurts all their subsequent subjects. If we believe in minimalist testing those two areas would seem to me to be the core.

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David Ball • NAPLAN is politicised because ALP are in government and they are ham fisted. But that doesn't mean NAPLAN is a bad test without valid results. There doesn't need to be a national curriculum for NAPLAN to be effective and a national curriculum could be a way of making bad ideas national .. but the same argument may be reversed and it could improve bad state models. NAPLAN is a tool for administration and it has a sharp edge .. I feel we should use it. I feel parents and staff deserve to know the whole story of what NAPLAN measures.

21 days ago

David Ball • There are those who feel a test diminishes a student. It certainly quantifies a student's attainment of knowledge of a course. I don't think those who set coursework intend to measure a life's worth. Employers use public exam results as do schools which can lead to league tables. If there aren't league tables then there is rumour. Currently NSW schools are publicly compared to other similar schools. There is nothing wrong with parents deciding their child's future based on information. There is something wrong when that information is withheld from parents to suit narrow interests of bad administration and corrupt unions. Currently, NSW teachers are not told how they compare using the same tests used to compare schools and students. That sad state of affairs is entirely political.

2 days ago

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Lindorff Kevin • I don't have a problem with assessing students' literacy and numeracy levels. The real issue is how the results of such assessment are used. The raw score results certainly don't tell us anything about the quality of a school or its teachers. Fantastic year 7 results tell us only that a secondary school has been lucky to have gained a high-achieving cohort of kids from its primary feeder schools. Similarly, poor year 7 results tells us that the school has an intake of lower performing students. The ONLY meaningful measure of a school's effectiveness in improving students' level of literacy and numeracy is the value adding that can be ascertained from looking at students NAPLAN results in one year and seeing how these same kids are performing on the NAPLAN tests two years later. So if we are going to have so-called League Tables, let's have them based on this value adding. Anything else is a nonsense.

David Ball • I disagree Lindorff, as the year 7 results give a baseline for the students and their achievement can be tracked over time. Schools can later compare to see if they value add. But also student result are useful for their former primary schools assessment too. Further, the detail gleaned is so precise that some are capable of determining classroom practice like what texts have been set and what topics have been addressed. The sad fact is the entire results are not used. Teachers who can be challenged to improve aren't. Parents are kept ignorant.

21 hours ago

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Lindorff Kevin • David, in regard to "the year 7 results give a baseline for the students and their achievement can be tracked over time" - we are in furious agreement. To my way of thinking, this is the single most important use that can be made of NAPLAN results.
In regard to "But student results are useful for their former primary schools' assessment too" - well, no actually, since primary schools do not have access to the results of their former students once they are in year 7 at other schools. It would be a different story if year 7 NAPLAN results were made available by the NAPLAN Data Service to the previous schools of the students concerned ... but they are not. So, the primary schools have no way of knowing how effective they have been in value adding in the time between the year 5 testing and the year 7 testing.
In regard to the "the entire results are not used" - agreed. At the micro-detail level, the results on how students in a school or a particular class have performed on particular questions or question types can be very useful. One of the biggest issues cited by teachers at the coalface wanting to use such data to meaningfully adjust their teaching programs to respond to areas of weakness in student performance is that results are not available for almost six months after the testing - which gives limited time to make sense of the data, adjust teaching plans and schedules accordingly and work with these students (at least, in the same calendar year). The many teachers I work with overwhelmingly agree that the plan to have the testing done online and the possibilities for immediate feedback to schools on student performance that will create will be a very welcome step forward.
In the meantime, as I stated in my original comment, bald and misguided use of snapshot data to create league tables of the type we have seen thus far merely distracts from the real issues - and these are, firstly, to ascertain the level of effectiveness of individual schools in value adding to their students understandings and skills over time and, secondly, to provide them with the detailed data to take steps to adjust their teaching programs in a 'continuous improvement' process (so they can, in effect, further enhance the value adding they provide).

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David Ball • Not disagreeing with everything, Lindorff, but you wrote "The raw score results certainly don't tell us anything about the quality of a school or its teachers" and that isn't true. In fact my father related a story when the testing regime was launched (he was CEO of Victoria's Board Of Studies at the time) that certain Principals were asked about staffing issues the tests had highlighted and they had owned up to already knowing it, but were hamstrung by a host of special groups, like Teacher's Unions and activists, who resisted sensible action being taken. The problem is not the test, but the political application that the federal ALP (union patron) is currently using it. But even were the figurehead of the federal government removed, many patsies are in place to resist change.

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Lindorff Kevin • Happy to stand by "the raw score results don't tell us anything about the quality of a school or its teachers" since, as in my example of the performances of year 7 students who are still relatively new to a school when the NAPLAN tests happen in May, these raw scores are simply a reflection of the level those students have attained after years at the various primary schools they have come from.
In regard to "staffing issues the tests have highlighted", at the risk of sounding like a broken record, the only staffing issues that could possibly be highlighted with any validity would be issues predicated on the LONGITUDINAL data for any particular cohort of students being scrutinised (pointing to the degree of value adding that has happened in the school concerned in the two years between tests - e.g. in the time between when the students were tested in year 7 and when the same students were tested in year 9).
It's not rocket science: you test kids to see where they are at, you teach them, then you test them again to see what progress/incremental change has occured. It is not the absolute score that tells us anything about the efficacy of the teaching, its the size of the increment/change.