NAPLAN ONLINE —
TECHNICAL ISSUES
518. Hon SIMON O'BRIEN to the Minister for Education
and Training:
Can the minister advise us what went
wrong with the NAPLAN testing earlier this week?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I thank the member for the question.
''Connectivity'' is the word that was used most commonly to
describe what happened. It meant that students were not able to connect and
even when they were in the middle of progressing through NAPLAN Online, they
would lose connectivity; essentially, there would be dropouts. I am advised as
a result of a ring around of all the states today that the only two
jurisdictions where there were not significant technical issues were Queensland
and the Northern Territory. Therefore, every other state in Australia
experienced difficulties. Western Australia had the highest proportion of its
students impacted by those technical difficulties. The member will remember
that the trials for NAPLAN Online began in 2016 in Western Australia, so I do
not accept the notion that somehow we are still testing the system and
transitioning or that they have not had a reasonable period to get this right.