NAPLAN testing

NAPLAN is national, not just Canberra, and is designed to show how our kids are doing compared to the world.

I have a child that did it a couple of years ago, and is about to do it again. I think it depends upon the school. At my child’s school they don’t ‘teach to the test’, so it’s very low key. The grade 3s had a sheet sent home with some example questions, so you could let your child practice if you wanted. This year (grade 5 obviously) there has been nothing sent home. I think they just tell them about it so they know it’s coming. The kids have done it before, so know what to expect. My child hasn’t been at all stressed about it.

“Has anyone been through NAPLAN with their kids?”

I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see RiotACT users who have been through NAPLAN themselves! I only just predate its introduction, I think they started running it in 2008, so there would be 21 year olds who have done NAPLAN now.

I did ACTAP, which preceded NAPLAN, and I have reservations about these schemes, as I know many people who are very intelligent, however did not excel in the three R’s at school. On the other hand, I do agree that these skills are important and comparative data could be useful. I should hope that NAPLAN doesn’t pidgeon-hole students who perform poorly as “dumb kids”.

I’ve heard a little bit from people who have done NAPLAN, who have generally been annoyed at having to do it, but I have little knowledge of its difficulty and haven’t heard anyone complaining about the tests being too hard, but nowadays I don’t know many people young enough to have done NAPLAN recently.