Its seems that the much trumpted NAPLAN system isn’t living up to the Governments expectations.
The report released Monday January 23rd 2012 shows while improvements we’re made were made in 2008 and 2009, improvements since have been slim.
It’s all a part of a much larger debate, but how do we help more children reach higher levels of Numeracy and Literacy. Talking Education would like your input through our online forum.
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NAPLAN is barely OK as an indicator of overall performance for individual schools. It is an atrocious and deeply flawed tool for comparing schools however. It is a ‘one-off’ test, and does not take into consideration anything like the individual student’s background or ongoing progress. It is increasingly losing any relevance as now schools are devoting so much time ‘teaching to the test’, and then it is delivered in a very ad hoc way. There are many incidences of weaker students being urged to not attend on the testing days, and the level of teacher assistance during testing has to be seriously questioned.
Now that the WA DoE have announced moves to begin full-time formalised learning at the Pre-Primary level, and moved Year 7s into high school with specialised education, the results will drop even lower.
The most successful education systems in the world (ie. like Finland, Norway) do not start formalised learning until the child turns six as it recognises that the brain is just not ready for formalised learning until then. WA used to be the envy of Australia with its informal pre-primary system where students were given all opportunity to develop brains through play and socialisation. We will now begin to see more boys failing and the need for more money being spent on remediation classes in schools to overcome the damage done by pushing formalised learning onto children too early.
At the other end, the most successful countries (ie. Finland, Norway) do not let students begin specialised education until they turn 14. By moving our Year 7s into secondary school a year earlier, this too will have a negative impact educationally on a lot of students who needed the extra year to consolidate in Year 7 at primary school. There are also the many issues emotionally and socially.
It amazes me that we are going down this track when we had it right, once! Why do we have to blindly follow NSW and Vic, and the UK and the USA, for that matter? Why are we allowing ourselves to be dictated to from a very questionable National Curriculum. And it’s going to cost our state an immense amount of money (about $1 billion) to make the shift into formalised PP and specialised Year 7). Why fix something that was clearly not broken? Imagine if that money was pumped into schools in WA minus the stupid, meaningless changes. We could have a great ICT program operating (are you aware that WA school still use Windows XP as the operating system!! And we are only permitted to use Office 2003!! Kids have to relearn these skills now as their home computers are all using Windows 7 and whatever the latest Office version is. We are forced to use a very redundant system in our schools). We could also pump more money into school student services and provide a much higher and more effective level of support. We could do so much with that billion dollars, and not just waste it in making structural changes to our system.
In regards to National Curriculum, who says that Year 7 has to be taught by specialists in high school? You could quite easily teach the curriculum in a shed on a farm. It’s all about the dedication and skill of the teacher – the content at Year 7 level is not rocket science!
I am just amazed and stupified at the people who make these terrible decisions.
And who will be left holding the can? The schools and the teachers of course! Everyone will conveniently forget that it was the due to the terrible decision making of our politicians.
Let common sense come back into Education, and stop wasting money and time on things that really don’t make any difference!