NAPLAN as a Powerful Digital Learning Tool

It’s NAPLAN again and the conversation about its design, utility and intent is still contentious.

One way of underlining NAPLAN’s value is to use the results in real time. The narrative of Australian schooling could be shifted by transforming NAPLAN into a powerful digital learning tool by using the online test to provide immediate and ‘value-salient’ feedback to students.

“We know that emotions significantly impact problem-solving, critical thinking and academic confidence. Providing students with several answering opportunities in NAPLAN - known as ‘second-chance learning’ - enables students to rethink their response, which is the aim of feedback and the hallmark of learning,” AHISA’s CEO Dr Chris Duncan says.

“Second-chance learning eases the ‘sting’ or ‘taint’ of error that can now be detected by electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis and targets those cohorts of students most at risk of falling behind, a key priority of the Better Fairer Schools Agreement”, said Dr Duncan.

“Reforming NAPLAN in this way would also generate formative national data, enabling better insights into teaching interventions which reduce incorrect answering attempts.”
Policy makers have been slow to notice that performative, outcomes-driven models of schooling are failing children.

“The lack of a policy vision about the moral, human and civic purpose of schooling at the national level may well be contributing to the widening gaps in the achievement of Australian children that national and international testing continues to record.”

There is a need for a ‘values-based’ vision of Australian schooling that renews and re-articulates the moral purpose of schooling, more akin to the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (2019): ‘that all young Australians will become confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the community.

“The conflicting visions of education we have witnessed in Australian education policy over two decades have placed unwarranted demands on schools and school leaders as they juggle the polarising values and demands of policy,” said Dr Duncan.

A re-purposed NAPLAN provides a fresh narrative for Australian schooling, one that is ‘values-based’ rather than ‘outcomes-driven’, where care, trust and empathy are central to student well-being and academic achievement.

This year, students in Years 5, 7 and 9 will complete a second NAPLAN cycle since the annual test changed from being held in March instead of May and the introduction of the new proficiency levels. While proficiency levels become more demanding as students move through the NAPLAN years, this new data will give the opportunity to see how this cohort of students have progressed between 2023 and 2025.

Schools and education authorities will again receive preliminary school and student results from the assessments early in Term 2, around 4 weeks after the test period ends on 24 March 2025. This means teachers will have more time to review the results to inform their teaching and learning programs in the current school year.

“This year, you will be able to compare how the same cohort of students have progressed in their NAPLAN assessment results since 2023 when the annual test changed from being held in March instead of May and set against the new proficiency levels,” ACARA CEO, Stephen Gniel, said.

“NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide important additional information about a student’s educational progress.”