NAPLAN grading hides failing students

New Naplan structures have been slammed.

Illiterate students will suffer under a new “bewildering” NAPLAN grading system that sugar-coats their performance, experts say.

Education academics warn this year’s results, to be released in July, will fail to identify the thousands of struggling students who need urgent help with basic reading, writing and maths.

Students’ results will now be reported against four levels of achievement instead of the existing 10 “proficiency bands”, as announced by education ministers earlier this year.

Australian Council for Educational Research chief executive Professor Geoff Masters said the four new levels – Exceeding, Strong, Developing and Needs Additional Support – will stop teachers and parents from being provided with vital information about a students’ performance.

“A parent who is now told that their child’s reading is “developing” … is never likely to know what that means,” he said.

“Key stakeholders will no longer be able to use NAPLAN to track a student’s growth in these crucial areas of learning, or to evaluate the adequacy of that growth.”

The previous 10-band system covered the full range of achievement across Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, whereas under the new system the four achievement categories are for each year level.

There will also be a higher threshold for students to meet the new minimum standard, after an independent review of NAPLAN in 2020 argued the existing national standard was not high enough.

Swinburne University senior education lecturer Dr Catherine Hartung said the new system was “lipstick on a pig”.