2019 NAPLAN RESULTS Concern bar set too low for kids

NAPLAN reporting faces a major shake-up in the wake of results showing Australian students’ basic skills haven’t improved in a decade.

Despite the lack of progress, this year’s figures found more than 90 per cent of Australian Year 3, 5 and 7 students met or exceeded NAPLAN’s national minimum standards across literacy and numeracy.

The numbers sound positive, but in reality parents whose child is at the minimum standard should be seeing that as a red flag and seeking help, one expert says.

Australian Catholic University Professor John Munro said parents needed to know the minimum standard was not the typical or average expected ability.

“They also need to know that if their child is at or below the national minimum standard for their grade, the parents should ask for educational intervention,” he said.

Even before yesterday’s results, testing authority ACARA had identified the limitations in NAPLAN reporting.

Chief executive David de Carvalho told News Corp Australia a new “proficiency standard” could give parents a more meaningful assessment of a child’s progress.

Details of what that could look like haven’t been released, but proficiency markers in other ACARA testing rate students across six levels based on their knowledge and understanding of a subject.

“In a National School Reform agreement that has been signed, one of the initiatives is to look at whether we should be moving towards the introduction of, in addition to the national minimum standard, a proficiency standard – so a higher level of standard,” Mr de Carvalho said.

“You’ve got the national minimum standards and across the country about 90 per cent of students meeting them, so if you’ve got a standard with 90 per cent of students are meeting the minimum, is that sufficiently informative about whether students, as a whole across the country, are doing better than just meeting the bare minimum?”

Peter Goss, The Grattan Institute’s school education program director, said the national minimum standard was “far too low”.

“A Year 9 student reading at that level is below the typical Year 5 student,” he said.

“The national minimum standard should be raised or removed entirely.”

But Professor Munro said simply raising the bar would be “very unlikely” to improve students’ outcomes.

“For this to happen, teachers would need to change what and how they teach,” he said.

Queensland principal John O’Connor said using the National Minimum Standards as an indicator of a child’s development was “arbitrary” and difficult for parents and schools to understand.