www.firstnationstelegraph.com
NAPLAN or is it NO PLAN?
by Frank Pearce 12 January 2014
U
sing NAPLAN as the sole basis for judging children’s educational abilities is extremely problematic especially in relation to Aboriginal students. It is in fact one hour of one day in a child’s school year. The basic skills test was only slightly better; this is borne out by many eminent researchers both here and overseas. In the case of both of these tests they are culturally biased as borne out by the Wii Gai or clever child program. The Wii Gaay (Clever Child) project began in 2003 and continues today. Aboriginal students in Years 3, 4, 5 are targeted who have been identified as underachieving in the classroom but have high academic potential. The students attend two camps per year (6 over their time in the project) 30 students per camp. The purpose of the camps are to address literacy and numeracy, with strong emphasis on scaffolding strategies to enable each student to achieve success on each activity before moving on to the next activity. Each student is also assigned a mentor and my wife and I mentored a number
of students each over a set period via email for a number of years with great success for all of us. Evidence has been gathered through research in partnership with the University of New England showing the students targeted in this program are doing well in classroom participation, Standardised Testing, classroom/school testing and through anecdotal reports from teachers , AEAs and parents NAPLAN testing is very educationally flawed. Just go to Google
go to school. After I had calmed him down I found out he had just sat for a pre-NAPLAN test. At the end of the test his teacher had told him he had got 3 questions wrong so he had “failed”. You should never tell a child they have failed at anything. In defence of the teacher it does show how much pressure they are put under in relation to their students NAPLAN results. The reason for this is that in many, many cases schools NAPLAN results are directly linked to how much funding the
Children at Doomadgee. Image: Courier Mail
and put in “NAPLAN is educationally flawed” and you will get hundreds of articles from highly credentialed academics to back up this statement. It is also in many cases emotionally damaging to young impressionable children as I can testify from very personal experience. My young grandson who was in year 3 at the time rang me completely distraught in tears and was refusing to
school will or will not get. The fact that the Federal and state governments determine school funding levels by the results of these tests can place a heavy burden on school staff because the focus of the tests are the better results a school gets the more funding and possibly staffing they will get. This is borne out by anecdotal confidential ( for obvious reasons) reports that in some
schools in some locations low achievers particularly Aboriginal ones are encouraged to stay away on NAPLAN testing day . The solution to all this is to rely on internal school testing. Who knows better than a student’s teachers exactly where a students at. We trust teachers enough to let them teach our children so why do we not trust them to test the results. Education is not just about the 3 R’s. We need to be looking at the whole child. I would also humbly suggest the following areas need to be included in these tests: Creativity Self Discipline Critical Thinking Discipline Resilience Leadership Motivation Compassion Persistence Courage Curiosity Sense of Beauty Question-Asking Sense of Wonder Humour Resourcefulness Endurance Spontaneity Reliability Humility Enthusiasm Civic Mindedness Self Awareness
Page 1