NAPLAN testing Ho Hum

 

The results are out!! Those pesky tests which every kid in certain year levels in Australia are meant to sit have been marked and calibrated and the results have been sent to schools and teachers and now parents.

I guess the Principals had a good hard look and worked out which teachers were to blame for shit results and which teachers they were gonna hang onto by hook or by crook.

The teachers will have had a look and decided which kids need extra help and how they need to moderate their curriculum so that results can be improved next year. They might also have spent time looking at how much ‘value adding’ has been achieved even if the results in their group were less than FABBO! This all in preparation for the ‘chat’ with the principal for a little ‘Please explain.’

What a shitful existence for these teachers, lurching from one statistic to another and trying to justify their methods and results based on a pretty perfunctory little exam. I mean the exam doesn’t measure joy or pleasure or anxiety or wonder or creative thinking. ( Is this a good time to admit that I haven’t seen the test so I am only surmising). It doesn’t take into account how well the teacher knows the kids’ circumstances and how the kids’ interests are met and explored. It doesn’t measure how happy the kids are in the room.

So I have always questioned the validity of these results and the testing. I have been long concerned that teaching will be targeted towards these tests rather than a more creative curriculum.

Now having said all this it’s time to boast!! Yeah to Ziggy!! He aced his test across the board with the highest possible results in every category except spelling... Bloody brilliant little man!! Ma is so PROUD.

In a utopian world his teachers would now take these results and cater learning tasks to his interests and abilities, so that his school results would reflect his capabilities, but we all know that the truth is that instead things will be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator and he will continue to be bored and always in strife.

His mum and I are pleased as punch....he’s not fallen far from his mother tree! I only hope that the insistent use of these bloody tests don’t become the impetus behind his whole education. I reckon I would not want to be teaching him in high school if that is the case.