from your link:
1. NAPLAN is too stressful for students, particularly young children
Tests were not invented for NAPLAN. Schools have been testing students since the days of chalk and slates. Nor are literacy and numeracy tests new. NSW has run a basic skills test of literacy and numeracy since 1990 and by the mid-1990s the other states and territories had followed its lead.
These tests were compared in order to compile an annual national report on children’s literacy and numeracy skills.
The difference with NAPLAN is that for the first time all students across the nation sit the same test on the same day, and the individual school results are made public on the MySchool website. It is the publication of the test results that is the major cause of the angst.
Verdict: Publishing the results creates an expectation of continual improvement, but this is what the community expects from its schools anyway.
NAPLAN is a snapshot of student and school performance. It’s not the definitive assessment of all that schools do, but an insight into how they perform in the most fundamental of skills. Without reading, writing and maths, any student will struggle to learn anything.
Randall puts it into context: “It’s only a few hours across three days at four points in a child’s schooling.”
The consequences for students of not having adequate literacy and numeracy skills lasts much longer. As literacy researcher Jennifer Buckingham, a fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, observed recently: “NAPLAN tests are much less stressful than illiteracy.”
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