Principal’s Update 2018 – 8

As students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 sit their NAPLAN tests this week the spotlight has yet again been placed on the value and indeed the future of NAPLAN. NSW Education Minister, Mr Rob Stokes, has been quoted as critical of the national testing regime, or at least of the uses to which it has been put.

Mr Stokes said NAPLAN, through its publication on My School, had become a rating tool rather than a measurement of student progress. ‘I am all for transparency, but this is not transparency – this is actually dishonesty,’ he said. ‘You now have an industry that’s grown up alongside it, where teachers are being encouraged to teach to the test rather than the curriculum. It’s become a vehicle for edu businesses to extort money out of desperate students and their family” (Sydney Morning Herald, 3 May 2018).

While I have written about NAPLAN in prior years, I think it is worth restating what the College believes about its value. At Santa Sabina, we use the NAPLAN data as a diagnostic tool (one of many) to help ensure that we are evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of individual students, but also to identify specific skills where whole cohorts might be under-performing. Over the past five years, we have become increasingly adept at using the data to inform teaching and learning, and individual learning needs. To that extent, NAPLAN does help measure student progress. But like any single instrument, it is limited, and it is certainly not a valid way of holistically “rating” schools.

In the 1990s when I was a member of the NSW Catholic Education Commission’s Assessment and Reporting Committee, NSW had state-based literacy and numeracy tests. These were the Basic Skills Tests in Primary school, and then ELLA (English Language and Literacy Assessment), and the unfortunately named SNAP (Secondary Numeracy Assessment Program).

These tests measured similar skills to those of NAPLAN, but the key difference was that the data at an individual school or student level was not shared with the media, the Commonwealth Government, or anyone beyond the school concerned, and the parents of the children tested. The Committee’s concern at the time was the way results could be used inappropriately to measure schools if data was not protected. That is of course what has subsequently happened with the advent of NAPLAN ten years ago. And what Rob Stokes has described as an “industry” built around NAPLAN is accurate. From schools with NAPLAN “training rooms”, to a plethora of NAPLAN practice tests, and the burgeoning tutoring industry, we are really placing undue importance on this one fallible instrument.

While we hear about Australia’s declining performance at a global level on PISA and TIMMS, we have to wonder what a 10-year regime of NAPLAN has achieved? Has the tendency for some teachers and schools to “teach to the test” backfired when it comes to overall student learning and growth? Do we really believe that we will foster a student’s love of writing, for example, by shoe-horning them into a limited repertoire of text types e.g. “persuasive” writing? I cannot remember the last time I have interviewed a prospective student entering the Middle Years where they’ve talked about writing poetry, for example. The skills-based system of marking writing reduces it to its constituent parts of sentence type and length, vocabulary, structure etc. – which are of course important – but do not add up to a quality piece of “writing’.

It is time to review NAPLAN, and it’s not just about the stress placed on students. It is a bigger issue as raised in the recent Gonski report on the overall direction of education, and whether or not we are identifying, and then supporting each individual student to achieve his or her personal best. We know that in an age-based system on which schooling has always been based, that there can be up to four or five years of difference in learning and development in any year group. Most teachers recognise this and try to differentiate their teaching to cater for these individual differences.

So the Gonski report’s suggestion that we are still working in an “industrial model” where we just move lock step in relation to the particular grade or year group does not reflect the changes that schools have made in relation to assessment and tailored learning. At Santa Sabina, we are continually striving to know our students – their academic, social, emotional, physical and spiritual needs. We have always had, and continue to embed, a student-centred approach to learning. This is aligned with both a Dominican approach to education, and an IB approach. It impels us to start where the student is and to tailor their learning accordingly. Providing appropriate “challenge” for students is one of core learning principles. Ensuring that students receive helpful feedback is equally important. We need to help them learn how to learn, and not just what to learn. So student-centred is not some fuzzy, “kids can do whatever they like approach” at all. It is about recognising, building on, and evaluating what students know and can do at every stage. To know our students means collecting more than a set of numbers about them. We learn about our students’ abilities, interests and passions through conversation, structured pastoral care sessions, and incidental classroom dialogue, homework, formative assessment, and importantly through our conversations with our parents as well.

American educator and publisher, Linda Darling-Hammond from Stanford University, argues that we need to move well beyond “bubble” (multiple choice), pen and paper tests, to “performance assessment”. Such assessment “includes authentic assessments that require students to develop a product, response or analysis, or problem solution that reflects the kind of reasoning or performance required beyond the classroom setting” (Darling-Hammond, L., & Adamson, F., Beyond the Bubble Test: How Performance Assessments Support 21st Century Learning, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco CA, p.12). This is the kind of assessment you see, for example, in the PYP Learning Exhibition, the new Middle Years research project, project-based learning, performances of drama and music, major works and extended research projects.

English educator, Barbara MacGilchrist, describes the interdependence of learning and teaching as a PACT between Learner and Teacher:

1.     The Learner brings their background, their capacity for, and experience of, learning; their prior and current knowledge, skills and understanding; their learning preferences; their current range of intelligence.

2.     The Teacher brings their understanding of the learning process; understanding of the teaching process; knowledge, enthusiasm, understanding about what is to be taught and how; ability to select appropriate curriculum and relevant resources; design for teaching and learning; ability to create a rich, learning environment.

“Together to the PACT they bring a sense of self as learner; willingness to continue to learn about learning; motivation; mutual respect and high expectations; active participation; shared commitment; willingness to learn from each other; reflection and feedback on learning.” (MacGilchrist, Barbara, The Intelligent School, 2nd ed., Sage Publications, 2004).

For an “intelligent school”, good relationships (as exemplified in the idea of the PACT) and exchange of experience do not stop at the classroom door but are positively encouraged across the school, and, indeed, are essential to building the school as a healthy, sustainable, community. Students develop the skills of learning to learn with each other and with their teachers and other experts, in a range of settings. In turn, their teachers continue to also learn about learning.

Senge (Schools that Learn 1999) says that there should be no one driving a school, rather there are many people tending to the garden. Let’s ensure that at Santa Sabina, our garden, flourishes with joy, enthusiasm, knowledge and compassion.

Our idea of the garden and the way it is tended is surely framed by our Christian, Catholic values, and as we approach Pentecost Sunday this week, may we be empowered by the Holy Spirit to take our faith to all corners of the College and beyond.

Jesus Christ, and the kingdom of God he announced, is the Christian’s first loyalty, above all others. We pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Our faith is personal but never private, meant not only for heaven but for this earth.

Dr Maree Herrett