Have I mentioned previously that I hate NAPLAN? Perhaps one can detect a hint, here.
I loathe NAPLAN, and I loathe the reporting and commentary on NAPLAN. It is not quite as bad as my title declares but it is damn close. To do a Lincoln, some of the people are wrong about NAPLAN all of the time, all of the people are wrong about NAPLAN some of the time, and most of the people are wrong about NAPLAN most of the time.
Last week the MySchool stuff came out and we had the inevitable zillion articles on the “top” schools, the heartwarming stories of The Little Schools That Could, the “league tables” debate and the boys vs girls debate and the toffs vs plebs debate, and on and on. I was determined to ignore it all. But then, foolishly, I read an Age article that really got up my nose; I felt compelled to post on it. But, again foolishly, I did my usual thing of reading around to see if other Wise People had reported or commented in a similar vein, and it all pissed me off. There is so much NAPLAN crap and so little time.
I have thought about it and I have decided that I cannot be bothered. I will ignore the other madness that I have read and I will stick to the Age article, People can consult the archive for the background, for why I hate NAPLAN so much, and for why and how everyone keeps getting it wrong.
The particular Age article that got up my nose was titled,
‘It’s very hard for parents to understand’: The education trend defying official advice
The “education trend” in question is parents having their kids practise for the NAPLAN tests, including the hiring of tutors and so on, and the “official advice” against this trend is ACARA’s. The quote in the title is courtesy of something called the Australian Parents Council:
Bhavika Unnadkat, Victorian board member of the Australian Parents Council, said some parents were hiring tutors because they thought NAPLAN was an exam in which their children had to excel.
“It is very hard for parents to understand what NAPLAN is, why it’s important,” she said.
“We’ve shared it in multiple different forums, but it is a complicated topic for parents to understand.
“It should be managed in a way that they should just go and perform what they know.”
So, the kids should not prepare for NAPLAN, “they should just go and perform what they know”. Maybe, and we’ll get to that. But, before the question of whether the kids should practise for NAPLAN, we have the idiotic question of whether the kids can practise for NAPLAN. On this, the Age quotes our old mate, Honest Steve:
ACARA chief executive Stephen Gniel said the authority did not recommend excessive preparation for NAPLAN or parents and carers using coaching services for this purpose.
“NAPLAN is not a test than can be studied for, and it’s not a pass or fail test,” he said.
It is an open question of whether Gniel is stupid enough to believe this or whether he’s simply lying through his teeth. Of course NAPLAN can be studied for. And, yes, NAPLAN is in effect a pass or fail test.
That NAPLAN can be studied for does not imply that NAPLAN should be studied for, and it is the latter question that is the focus of the Age article. The question is tricky, and the Age gets the answer wrong. While framed as straight objectiving, the Age reporter puts her thumb heavily on the scale, and on the wrong side of the scale.
The main reason to not study for NAPLAN, of course, is that the NAPLAN tests, at least the NAPLAN Numeracy tests, are garbage, as “numeracy” almost inevitably is. Studying for NAPLAN then takes away time and energy from studying something useful: mathematics, for instance.
So why study for these garbage tests? Because these garbage tests matter. The reason why parents find it “very hard to understand” why their kids should not study for NAPLAN is because there are damn good arguments for their kids studying for NAPLAN. A private school typically requires a kid’s NAPLAN results as part of an application for entry or scholarship, something the Age article notes but in a voce way too sotto. Moreover, once in the school, the mathematics that a kid is directed or permitted to do – the good stuff or the pleb stuff – may well be determined in part on the kid’s NAPLAN results. VHAP, Victoria’s rickety but not useless port in our storm of educational mediocrity, chooses kids on the basis of SES and NAPLAN.
It is not that hard. As long as educational institutions treat these garbage NAPLAN tests as if they were other than garbage, parents have good reason and the responsibility to consider having their kid study for them. I am not sure if, in sum, NAPLAN is worth studying for, but I would not criticise any parent who took the NAPLAN tests seriously, and I cannot stomach the sanctimony of those arguing against studying for NAPLAN on the basis of utterly fallacious reasoning.
I am in general tired of hearing, over and over again, for all exams, from NAPLAN to selective school entrance exams – please do not “coach” or “tutor” children, please do not make them practice anything, please don’t take away their childhood by expecting them to put in anything like real work, if they are “naturally gifted” they will “automatically” do well on these tests. The other side too: your child will really struggle if they are not “naturally gifted” and you push them to do x, y, or z – without really the child in question ever having had any reasonable chance to even get to the said conclusion on their abilities. Who decides what “naturally gifted” means – and how? Can a child (most of them) have natural potential, but that is or is never tapped in the right way, and so the growth or no-growth becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy? Meanwhile, I cannot see how even the most tremendously gifted child can (a) just “re-discover” centuries math, just because they are deemed to be “gifted”, if they are not doing lots of preparatory stuff with careful guidance, or be lucky enough to be in the right kind of environment (not the kind they usually get in most schools and preferably the kind of guidance that gets them excited about the stuff, which also they don’t to get at most schools), and (b) the whole point of creating “class divides” in early or later childhood which I find deeply problematic (labeling a child as “average”, “normal”, or “gifted”). I think it is this that has bothered me the most as a parent – which I realise is kind of a different point to what you wrote – but I just wanted to share anyway, because this above argument is given as one of the primary reasons for kids to not prepare for tests like NAPLAN.
Thanks, SS. Yes, there is definitely an absurd Que Sera Sera attitude to much of modern education. I don’t think it’s the central nonsense in regard to NAPLAN but it’s definitely a part of it, and it is certainly central nonsense more generally.