College Head of Learning

2019 NAPLAN Results

Student reports detailing individual student results from the NAPLAN tests held in May for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 were made available to us by VCAA (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority) this week. Parents of students in these year levels should soon receive a Student Report by post; it gives details about your child’s performance in each area of reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy, and an explanatory brochure is included. Please note, however, that a small number of students were absent for all tests or have started at the school since May and therefore did not receive a report.

The release of NAPLAN results each year brings a flurry of media reports, many of which focus on the problems with NAPLAN and claim that the skills of Australian students are dropping. I would like to caution you about taking any of these articles at face value. NAPLAN data is very detailed and complex, and requires careful consideration. Some of the media reports this year have also included commentary about the outages during some of the online tests, arguing that the outages make the NAPLAN Online results invalid.

Our experience this year at Aitken College was that approximately 70 of the 360 students in Years 5, 7 & 9 were affected by technical disruptions of more than five minutes during the Writing test, but almost all of these students finished the test with time to spare. Students who were effected by disruptions of more than five minutes during the Writing test were offered the opportunity to re-take the test if they felt they had been unable to perform at their best, but all of those students reported that they felt they had completed the task and did not need to re-take the test.

A total of only 15 of our students were affected by technical disruptions of greater than 3 minutes in the other three NAPLAN Online tests; all of these students had either finished their tests well before their time elapsed, or were given additional time to compensate them for the time lost due to technical disruption. I would emphasise that this is a very small number of disruptions, given that our students completed approximately 1,600 NAPLAN Online tests.

Consequently, we believe that this year’s NAPLAN results are as reliable as they have been in any other year. I encourage parents to take them into consideration, and to balance them with other measures of academic performance, such as PAT test results in Reading and Mathematics, and the assessment work completed in all subjects through the year which is communicated to you via My Aitken and the Semester Reports.

NAPLAN tests measure student skill in numeracy and literacy, as they are designed to do. NAPLAN tests do not attempt to measure the happiness, self-esteem, problem-solving, collaboration, creativity, motivation, respect or resilience of the children in our care – all of which, I would argue, are at least as important for success in life.

If you have any concerns about your child’s performance in NAPLAN tests this year, please speak with the relevant Head of School. Questions about our experience of NAPLAN Online test disruptions can be directed to me.

Ms Kerri Batch

College Head of Learning