By Ashleigh Fielding | posted on May 10, 2018
AMIDST national critique of NAPLAN testing, a handful of Great Southern schools have jumped on board with the assessment’s latest development of adapting to an online format.
NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) is completed annually by grade three, five, seven and nine students across Australia and is composed of reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy assessments.
The test has been presented in paper booklet form but is now moving toward using online software.
Great Southern Grammar and Spencer Park Primary School were two of many Western Australian schools selected to participate in an online trial run.
Spencer Park Primary principal Jeremy Hadlow told The Weekender he was excited his school would use the new technology again this year.
“We were one of the trial schools in 2017 and, since then, we have given the kids lots of opportunity to practice using the site,” he said.
“We have the technology and have had the kids learn to log in and manoeuvre around the site without issues, which is very important.
“We want to ensure their experience is a good one, and we are very happy with the students’ progress.”
Mr Hadlow said one benefit of the NAPLAN online format was its adaptability, with the difficulty level of questions presented to students during the test determined by their answers to previous questions.
“You can see where their abilities actually lie, which is a real positive,” he said.
“We can also pause the test if we need to address ICT issues, and the timeframe for results should hopefully be shorter, so I’m excited for our school to participate as a way of stepping into the future.”
Great Southern Grammar principal Mark Sawle said the online NAPLAN format could create faster results and be a more sustainable way of creating test papers.
But he questioned the validity of scrapping pen and paper testing.
Mr Sawle confirmed Great Southern Grammar students would not use the online NAPLAN format this year.
“It is critical to ensure that online testing does not reduce the validity of the knowledge and understandings that are being tested,” he said.
“For example, in year three writing, do students have the typing skills to undertake the test? Are we testing the students’ capacity to type, rather than their capacity to create a narrative, for example?”
Mr Sawle also suggested schools more remote than Great Southern Grammar had issues with internet bandwidth and therefore there was an issue with equity.
“It has been suggested that in some schools, year 11 and 12 classes cannot use the internet on the NAPLAN testing days due to issues with insufficient bandwidth,” he said.
“Also, access to computer labs and one-to-one devices is variable across schools.”
WA Education Minister Sue Ellery confirmed $7.5 million had been provided for infrastructure upgrades and additional devices to help public schools prepare for NAPLAN Online, an amount she says will total $10 million by 2020.
Ms Ellery told The Weekender NAPLAN testing would be reviewed next month.
The online rollout comes amid recent statements by New South Wales Education Minister Rob Stokes that NAPLAN should be scrapped.
“The broader issue of NAPLAN is regularly discussed at Education Council meetings,” Ms Ellery said.
“It was decided at the last meeting, three weeks ago, to consider terms of reference for a review of NAPLAN, including reporting of NAPLAN results, at the next meeting in June.
“The feedback I receive in WA is that parents want to see published data about how their students, and how their schools, are achieving literacy and numeracy, and they want the information presented in a way that is easy to understand.”
NAPLAN will be conducted next week from May 15. Mr Hadlow said schools participating online would have a 10-day window to complete the testing, to “spread the load” on schools’ internet capabilities.
According to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority – the organisation responsible for developing NAPLAN and reporting the results – schools across Australia will start to move to NAPLAN Online from this year on an opt-in basis.
The Authority’s website confirms state and territory education authorities are responsible for determining when their jurisdictions move to NAPLAN Online.
The WA Department of Education website states that all schools will complete NAPLAN Online in 2019.
