“Pause and think of the children who are going to sit for NAPLAN this year.”
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That’s the message the head of the national parent body had for critics calling for the urgent scrapping of NAPLAN.
But Albion Park High School P&C committee member Shona Smylie believes NAPLAN should be scrapped sooner rather than later.
“I don’t rate it at all,” she said.
“It places unnecessary stress on children. The other problem is because of how the system works, teachers teach towards achieving NAPLAN results instead of what’s important.”
She’s not alone – with NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes using a meeting of education ministers on Friday to call on the federal government to replace NAPLAN in “haste” with a less high-stakes test that assesses each student's progress as recommended by the Gonski report.
Mr Stokes told the Sydney Morning Herald that the national test is being used dishonestly as a school rating system and has sprouted an industry that extorts money from desperate families.
His call has the support of teachers and the state opposition, with Labor's education spokesman Jihad Dib urging him to go a step further and ask for the NAPLAN data to be immediately removed from the My School comparison website.
But the Australian Council of State School Organisations president Phillip Spratt said the Education Council had already indicated a NAPLAN review was in the works.
“Speaking as a national parent body, what we would welcome, with NAPLAN week coming in the week after next, is if there is a chance to pause and think of the children who are going to sit NAPLAN this year,” Mr Spratt told the Mercury.
“Once NAPLAN week is over and done with and put to bed, can we have obviously and objective and rational conversation then.
“There is a lot of heightened interest….we would welcome all sides just to have a pause for the moment and think of our children.”
More than a million students will sit for NAPLAN tests from May 15.
Mr Spratt had a message for these students’ parents.
“NAPLAN is just a measure of where the children are as they are being taught against the Australian curriculum, so there really is no need to do any preparation, give [kids] any special breakfast or to buy any special packs. Ignore that,” he said.
“It is not a test. There is no pass or fail.”
But the NSW Teachers Federation disagreed and backed Mr Stokes’ calls to scrap NAPLAN.
“There is almost a universal consensus across the education community that NAPLAN is destructive, it’s crude, it encourages teaching to the test and it sits outside the curriculum and narrows what is taught,” president Maurie Mulheron said.
“It is time for an entirely new approach to such assessment. One that puts students and quality learning at the centre.”