Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise as Deputy Chair of the Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee to speak about its inquiry into the administration and reporting of the NAPLAN testing. The government senators on this committee provided additional comments on the NAPLAN testing and the MySchool website to clarify work underway and balance the views and conclusions in the committee majority report. Government senators also provided dissenting comments covering particular recommendations in the committee majority report.

Literacy and numeracy are the foundations for further learning. The government’s education revolution is driving a renewed focus on the foundation of skills in literacy and numeracy to lift student achievement across the country. The purpose of NAPLAN is to provide a snapshot of student performance in order to focus on improvement. It is not a diagnostic assessment which looks at the reasons why students are not performing and which requires immediate feedback. The limitations of NAPLAN, as with other testing, are acknowledged. It is a point in time test with margins of error and it should be seen as just one information source within the broader contextual information about a school. However, the committee also heard how NAPLAN represents world’s best practice in the measurement of student progress. The committee heard that NAPLAN testing has increased transparency and provided a rich information source for governments, education authorities, schools, principals, teachers and parents.

It is concerning that NAPLAN results show that there are still some students who have not attained the literacy and numeracy skills expected of students in their year level. To address this issue, the federal government has entered into national partnerships with the states and territories to address disadvantage, support teacher quality and improve literacy and numeracy. Through the NAPLAN assessment and MySchool website, the government has identified an additional 110 struggling schools that would have missed out on a share of the $2.6 billion Smarter Schools national partnerships and they will now share in $11 million in extra funding to ensure that students improve literacy and numeracy. In response to the committee majority recommendation to use below average NAPLAN test results as triggers for the provision of assistance to schools and students, government senators note that this is already occurring. The focus of NAPLAN testing is to provide assistance to schools and students that are identified as requiring it.

The committee was cautioned about what has occurred in the US and the UK systems, where penalties are applied for poor performance. It should be noted that NAPLAN is not the same high stakes test that occurs overseas. Dr Peter Hill, the CEO of the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority emphasised to the committee that Australia has not made the same mistake as the UK and the USA, which have negative consequences for their testing. Government senators emphasised that the intention here is to use NAPLAN to identify where support is required for students and schools and to ensure that they receive it.

Allegations of cheating on the NAPLAN tests have been thoroughly investigated and actions have been taken to stop any reoccurrence of security breaches. ACARA outlined to the committee plans to enhance the security of test administration, which includes strengthening protocols and embarking on a multilevel communication strategy for 2010 which will develop greater understanding of the required protocols to manage test materials.

While government senators are pleased to see that committee majority supports the importance of national testing for literacy and numeracy, we do not agree with the recommendations to extend NAPLAN testing. Further large-scale cohort testing is not the next step. The next step will be to provide teachers with better diagnostic tools to address the needs of individual students. The government has committed to developing a national online assessment and learning bank for students, parents and teachers to provide a sophisticated diagnostic assessment of each student’s strengths and learning needs. Regarding other enhancements recommended, I note that NAPLAN tests and the ways in which results are analysed and reported are the subject of ongoing improvements.

Turning to the MySchool website, it was always intended that the website would be developed in stages and that the subsequent versions would be improved by additional information as it became available. The substantial amount of work undertaken by a working party of stakeholders and the ability of version 2 to address concerns is given limited acknowledgement in the committee majority report, which instead recommends a substantial revision of the website. Evidence to the committee was very clear that many of the current concerns about MySchool will be addressed by broadening the range of information provided and increasing levels of user choice.

A working party of educational experts, including literacy and numeracy specialists, principal organisations and representatives from the Australian Education Union and the Independent Education Union of Australia, was formed. This working party provides advice on the use of student performance data and other indicators of school effectiveness. Recommendations from the working party were considered by the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs on 15 October 2010. A member of the working party confirmed to the committee that the recommendations developed by the working party will go a long way to addressing the concerns that have been raised about the website.

I will briefly mention the main changes agreed. First, measures to protect the integrity of the data and the collection of direct student data will be implemented prior to the release of version 2 of the website. Concerns about the index of community socioeducational advantage values used to compare schools have also been addressed. Education ministers have agreed to move from census based data to a model in which information is obtained from parents. The new formula will be used when the revised website is released. A number of measures to enhance reporting will be implemented. Contextual information about a school will be expanded by publishing the percentage of students with a language background other than English. Principals will also be able to include more information about their school. In addition, information on student absences, withdrawals and exclusions from NAPLAN testing will be more prominent. The website will show the growth in achievement for students who took the test in 2008 and 2009 and who remain in the same school. Schools will also be able to provide a commentary on their results. Comments will be collected and reported. Further enhancements are also planned for MySchool version 3, which will include enhanced search facilities.

One of the enhancements agreed by state and federal education ministers is requiring schools to list financial information on version 2 of the website. This will provide greater transparency. Work is underway to ensure that the data can be compared between schools before the website is launched. However, government senators believe that working towards full disclosure of financial assets, including accumulated surpluses, assets, investments, trusts or foundations should be the objective for version 3 of the website.

Government senators should note the committee’s majority recommendation to revise the MySchool website by publishing a value added measurement of school performance rather than the raw performance data results. The problems with this approach were explained to the committee by Professor Geoff Masters, CEO of the Australian Council for Education Research. There is a risk that you could potentially lose the performance of the students themselves as what becomes important is how much better or worse the school did compared with the predictions from your regression analysis. You may end up saying that a school performed as well as expected, but in an absolute sense the literacy and numeracy levels could be unacceptably low. So there is a risk in this approach of obscuring students’ actual levels of performance. Clearly, the solution to the issues raised with the MySchool website is to provide more information, not less.

It was always the intention to provide more contextual information about schools on the MySchool website over time. The launch of the MySchool website in January 2010 was an important step forward in reporting the measurement of student performance and progress, as well as increasing transparency and accountability. MySchool version 2 will be the next step in addressing these calls for more information to be provided. Importantly, the information provided by NAPLAN via the MySchool website is also acting as a useful tool for parents to engage directly in conversations with teachers and ask questions about what is happening in their school.

In summary, the debate on NAPLAN assessment and the MySchool website is just one part of the broader education reform agenda being addressed in partnership with the states and territories. These broader issues include the development of the national curriculum, the school funding review that is underway, the provision of additional assistance to disadvantaged schools and improving the quality of teaching. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.