Students at risk and NAPLAN : The collateral damage

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.

This chapter reports findings from a project undertaken in 2013 and 2014 that investigated how schools and teachers were making use of NAPLAN data to improve student learning. It also investigates how well NAPLAN was serving the original purpose stated in national policies that introduced literacy and numeracy testing in Australia the identification of individual students at risk in order to provide early intervention. The current chair of the ACARA board has explained that the federal government's intention in introducing and reporting NAPLAN results was to provide a diagnostic tool for teachers identifying gaps in students. The data presented in the chapter result from a research project that set out to investigate how schools and teachers were able to use NAPLAN outcomes, at school, class and individual level, to improve student learning. If positive engagement with schooling and long-term retention are national goals, NAPLAN may well be working against these by creating broader characterisation of risk.

© 2016 Bob Lingard, Greg Thompson and Sam Sellar.