Test now pointless

I HAVE not lived in Townsville or North Queensland for more than four decades and thus would not normally presume to contradict local editorial opinion.

However the editorial in reference to the NAPLAN results, as not being exclusively a Townsville concern, did cause me to feel that a response was not overly presumptive.

I was a teacher for over 50 years, originally primary in Queensland from 1961 to 1967, with a short gap. During that time I taught, in 1966, at the then North Ward State School and in 1967 at Mundingburra State School. I had previously taught at Yungaburra, Maree- ba, Normanton, Mary Kathleen, Mt Isa and McKinlay. I then married a Townsville girl and moved to Sydney where I began teaching secondary school in the government sector, retiring in 2002 as an English Head Teacher. I requalified, while teaching as a “casual”, and was reappointed, as a permanent teacher, in the position of a Teacher Librarian. This boring litany/ history has been given to establish some credentials.

I think your take on NAPLAN has some minor, though widely held, flaws.

I could be wrong, though I don’t believe so, but NAPLAN was not originally brought in to enable comparisons between schools. Rather, a teaching tool called “The Basic Skills Test”, was purloined by Julia Gillard (?) while Minister for Education.

The original test was designed to inform teachers what specific minutiae of an extremely extensive, complex and broadly- based curriculum, they needed to reinforce or focus on in their class programming. It also allowed teachers to determine where some individual students may need extra or remedial tuition. As such, the test was a valuable teaching aid.

Once debased into a tool allowing the Government, and the media, to compare schools and teachers, it lost all educational effectiveness. It did, however, allow the authorities to threaten educators with spurious shaming. Consequently most schools now teach to NAPLAN, rather than to the future benefit of the students. The necessity to ‘ rank’ highly in order to be seen as one of the ‘ best’, thus attracting ‘ good’ students almost mandates this.

The focus on basic literacy and numeracy skills, and the ignoring of all other skills in the determination of schooling does a disservice to our nation.

Reading, writing and arithmetic are important but the acquiring of these skills should not be seen as the most important function of education. The tested skills, in fact, are the very, almost mindless, skills which computers are programmed to do more efficiently, though less imaginatively. The comparisons also never take into account the demographics of the schools.

I have no data on Townsville’s schools, but if the reason they are not achieving as highly in this artificial competition is because they are providing a more broad and relevant education to their students, then “more power to them”. NOEL MCDONOUGH,

Greystanes, NSW.