Principal

In a few weeks, NAPLAN results will be fully available to schools and then to parents. Around this time, the perennial topic of standardised testing resurfaces in the media. Much like the technology-in-schools debate, the extreme voices are often the loudest – either standardised testing, such as PISA and NAPLAN, is enormously important and indispensable, or it absorbs too much time and focus and is detrimental to young people. 

My view is that the useful truth is probably somewhere in the middle – our kids are strong enough to sit a few tests every two years, especially tests that provide helpful and specific data about what each student still has to learn. At the same time, however, neither students nor schools are the sum of their NAPLAN results. At College, we do not ‘teach to the test’, and we make every effort to ensure that students don’t feel unnecessary pressure about NAPLAN. This is simply another assessment that we use to plan for future instruction and nothing more.

2025 NAPLAN data will be available to families in a few weeks’ time. In the interim, the below is an interesting example of what standardised testing can show us. While the media often reports on Australia’s falling rankings in international league tables, the latest OECD PISA (Volume III) results show that Australia now ranks fourth in the world for creative thinking, after Singapore, Korea, and Canada. This is a heartening result and argues against the idea that standardised tests measure ‘the basics’ and encourage old-fashioned skill-and-drill teaching. On the contrary, standardised tests provide useful data about how well we are developing students’ skills, across a range of valuable and forward-thinking areas. If you’re interested, further information is available here; it’s interesting material – and all from students sitting some standardised tests.