NAPLAN test gets a pass

A CONFIDENTIAL report to be handed to education ministers today reveals the rollout of NAPLAN online was highly successful, despite staunch opposition from the Queensland Teachers’ Union.

In January, the union took the extraordinary step of calling on its teachers to refuse to participate in NAPLAN online testing, complaining there was uncertainty around the technology and teachers would be forced to do an excessive amount of work to prepare for the new testing scheme.

But a review of NAPLAN online in 2018 shows that the computer-based literacy and numeracy assessments had a 99.9 per cent success rate, with only 285 children in 10 schools having to switch to pencil and paper tests for one or more assessments, out of a total of 668,529 online tests.

Most of the issues related to local connection or device problems, but the report identified 41 notable incidents across the nine-day testing window.

The most serious incident related to teachers in NSW and Western Australia, who were tasked with overseeing the test, breaching protocols and tweeting the writing prompt.

“Moderate incidents” included a problem in Victoria around the lockdown browser, which prevents other material being accessed on the computer, 10-minute delays in starting the tests across some schools, and a small number of schools carrying out the tests in the wrong order.

But the report warns that with almost four times as many students expected to sit NAPLAN online in 2019, more work needs to be done to ensure a smooth transition.