The Teachers Federation have labelled this year’s NAPLAN results a “shamozzle”, and accused the federal government of “fiddling with and manipulating the results”.
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The organisation are also demanding the results be set aside until the entire testing and ranking system is reformed, labeling it as being “one of the lowest standards in the world.”
The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy is taken every year by students in years three, five, seven and nine, and compared against a benchmark set in 2008.
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While the program has always attracted criticism, this year the controversy first came to light when it was announced that while some students would take a ‘paper’ exam, others would take the test on computers as the government attempts to digitise the system.
A spokesperson for the Teachers Federation said “the organisation has been appalling” after the results showed that the two modes of testing gave two sets of results.
“The NAPLAN results were delayed a fortnight because the government had to find a way to put the two sets of results together, but it is completely unfair,” he said.
“It has never been done anywhere in the world, because it can’t be done.
“They are trying to solve a political problem and the disaster NAPLAN has become rather than placing schools and students first.
On average students in NSW that did the online test scored nine per cent better than those that took the paper test, while in Victoria that margin grew to 15 per cent.
“We can’t compare apples and oranges,” the spokesperson said.
“The results are a shamozzle and are not to be trusted – the My School program is a piece of fiction.”
While the NAPLAN results revealed some areas of improvement, such as in years 5 and 9 numeracy, and primary-level reading there has been no statistically significant gains in 12 of the 20 tested domains since the tests were introduced.
