Parents to receive naplan report cards

Sydney Morning Herald, 12 May 2008; Media Release, The Hon Julia Gillard MP, 13 May 2008; The Age,
13 May 2008; The Australian, 13 May 2008; Courier Mail, 13 May 2008; The Australian, 14 May 2008;
Sydney Morning Herald, 16 May 2008

The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) has announced the format of the reports that parents will receive after their children have participated in national literacy and numeracy benchmark testing (NAPLAN).

MCEETYA indicated that the NAPLAN tests would consist of ten bands that would provide a continuous scale of achievement from Year 3 to Year 9. Each of the participating year levels would be reported across six of the ten bands.

Parents and schools would receive a report that demonstrated how their children compared to the national benchmarks, to their class and to their school, and in which band their children were located. The NAPLAN report cards would, over time, allow parents to be able to track how their children’s literacy and numeracy skills had improved.

The Federal Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Ms Julia Gillard, has indicated that the Australian Government does not intend to make details of schools’ performance on the tests publicly available. Ms Gillard stated that ‘at this stage, what parents are going to get is their own report card. We're talking to state and territory governments about the best use of this information.’ According to The Australian, the Queensland and New South Wales Ministers for Education had only agreed to provide national benchmark testing data to the Australian Government on the condition that it not be used to compile ‘league tables’.

The Federal Shadow Minister for Education, The Hon Tony Smith MP, claimed that Minister Gillard had ‘bowed to state pressure and broken an election promise’. He stated that ‘once again, the interests of the state education departments and unions have been put before the interests of parents’.

For further information on the NAPLAN tests and reporting of results, visit the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.

 

 

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