NAPLAN — COMPUTER-BASED ASSESSMENTS
603. Hon CHARLES SMITH to the Minister for Education and
Training:
I refer to my earlier question dated 10 April 2018, when I
asked the minister whether she would concede that NAPLAN was now no longer a standardised
test, to which she replied ''no''. I also refer to the minister's
comments in The West Australian, in which she stated that NAPLAN was ''incredibly
frustrating'', as she ''found the lack of clarity around reports
of possible discrepancies in this year's results''.
(1) Can the
minister now concede that the discrepancies in this year's results are
due to the test no longer being standardised, and impossible to correlate data
in any meaningful way?
(2) Is it now
time to scrap NAPLAN, as supported by the State School Teachers' Union
of Western Australia?
(3) Why have WA schools not been
sent their NAPLAN results?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I thank the honourable member for some
notice of the question.
To clarify, the article clearly
stated the lack of clarity around possible discrepancies in the results was ''incredibly
frustrating''. I did not refer to NAPLAN as ''incredibly
frustrating''.
(1) The
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has assured states
and territories that educational measurement experts have recently verified
that all results from NAPLAN 2018, whether a child took the test on paper or
online, are valid and reliable. I am waiting for the School Curriculum and
Standards Authority's analysis of the Western Australian results, to
confirm the integrity of the data that has been provided by ACARA. I am advised
that since the answer to this question was drafted, the Western Australian
results have come in, and I am expecting an analysis from ACARA very soon.
(2) The McGowan
government is committed to standardised and transparent national measuring of
student performance, so parents have easily accessible, timely and transparent
information available about their child and their school. NAPLAN is important
in providing that.
(3) Western
Australian schools have not been sent their NAPLAN results because, despite
previous assurances provided by ACARA that the results of NAPLAN Online and
NAPLAN pen and paper were comparable, states and territories requested further
analysis. This additional work has now been completed by ACARA, and WA data was
sent to the School Curriculum and Standards Authority yesterday. The authority
is now undertaking processes of due diligence and integrity checking of the
data.