This week has seen our Year 3 and 5 children begin their 2024 NAPLAN testing.

NAPLAN is a period of mixed emotions for many teachers and indeed for many parents and children as well.

We have been incredibly proud of all our children as they have learned how to use the NAPLAN testing platform and as they showed great persistence, courage and determination in their Writing and Reading tests today. 

We also feel affirmed in our approach to teaching here at St Paul as we see the limitations generic tests such as NAPLAN place on our children’s learning and the limited ways this can measure their achievement. We value assessment and are always investigating how to better assess children’s learning. A key difference is that we assess so that we can give our children feedback and help them improve. Unfortunately, that isn’t the way NAPLAN is structured and it isn’t the way it is communicated about in the media. 

To the Year 3 and 5 children completing NAPLAN this week: We are already proud of your efforts and the way you focused, tried your best and persisted today was fantastic. 

To the parents of Year 3 and 5 children completing NAPLAN this week: We hope you and your child have felt supported by us and that you have felt clearly our perspective that NAPLAN is one test on one day that does not give a full picture of who your child is and what they are capable of. 

To all of our parents: We are committed to supporting your child to be the best learner they can be today, next year, into high school and beyond. These skills aren’t easily measured in a standardised test but they are essential to who your child will become. 

So while we will all support our children through this NAPLAN period, we refuse to spend weeks and weeks training children or to modify our teaching to maximise test results. We instead will continue to explicitly teach your child the skills they need but with a focus on developing your child’s love of learning in all areas: their love of reading, their love of writing and being an author, their love of mathematical investigations, a love of scientific inquiry and much more. Because a child who wants to learn, who loves to learn, will achieve more in the long run and much more than any generic test can measure.