National testing from an Australian perspective

Over the last two decades, large-scale national, or provincial, standardised testing has become prominent in the schools of many countries around the globe. National Testing in Schools: An Australian Assessment draws on research to consider the nature of national testing and its multiple effects, including: media responses and constructions such as league tables of performance; pressures within school systems and on schools; effects on the work and identities of principals and teachers and impacts on the experience of schooling for many young people, including those least advantaged.

Using Australia as the case site for global concerns regarding national testing, this book will be an invaluable companion for education researchers, teacher educators, teacher education students and teachers globally.

The Australian National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), introduced in 2008, involves annual census testing of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in nearly all Australian schools. While this collection deals with the specific case of Australian national testing, the issues raised here have broader salience in other schooling systems around the globe. This program is managed by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), which was established to oversee national testing and the new Australian curriculum. NAPLAN is managed by ACARA, which was specifically established under national legislation to develop an Australian curriculum and the National Assessment Program. However, in this chapter the focus is on the perceived impacts of national testing on student wellbeing. Despite intentions for NAPLAN to help target educational interventions, Cumming, Wyatt-Smith and Colbert show that teachers in their study did not find that it aided timely identifications of, or interventions with, students at risk in literacy and numeracy.

© 2016 Bob Lingard, Greg Thompson and Sam Sellar.