Best Tutoring Services in Sydney
Each year hundreds of thousands of primary and high school students across Australia sit the NAPLAN. These standardised tests target children in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, assessing their abilities in literacy and numeracy.
While designed to raise the educational standard of students across the nation, the concept of your child sitting a national test can spark anxiety in adults and children alike. In a bid to alleviate any nerves, here’s a quick tutorial of NAPLAN and what’s involved.
Introduced in 2008 by the Australian Government, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy or NAPLAN, is designed to ascertain students’ and schools’ abilities in reading, writing and mathematics. The tests are sat on the same day across the nation and their purpose is to provide a snapshot of whether children are meeting predetermined outcomes.
The data collected about each school is available on the My School website, while individual results for each student are provided in a detailed report to the school, and parents have access to general feedback as to what percentile their child is in. The aim is to provide an indication, not a fine analysis of student’s abilities in a bid to improve teaching and classroom practices.
The Education Department notes: “NAPLAN tests are constructed to give students an opportunity to demonstrate skills they have learned over time through the school curriculum, and NAPLAN test days should be treated as just another routine event on the school calendar”.
The NAPLAN is undertaken around the second week of May each year and runs over three days. Day one focusses on literacy and sees students take a 40-minute language convention assessment and a 40-minute writing test. Day two involves 40 to 65 minutes of reading depending on their year level and day three comprises a 40 to 65-minute numeracy assessment.
All tests except the writing assessment comprise multiple choice questions, and examples of tests can be found here here. The tests relate to the four key domains of reading, writing, numeracy and language conventions including grammar and spelling.
Reading – The reading assessment involves students being given a series of texts and then answering multiple choice questions to illustrate their comprehension.
Writing – In the writing task, students are provided a concept to create a narrative or persuasive article. The narrative text involves character creation and imagination but students are also required to demonstrate sentence structure, punctuation and spelling. In the persuasive text they form an argument similar to an essay.
Language convention – In the language convention assessment, students are provided sentences and asked to select the grammatically correct missing words or find misspelled words and write them correctly. They are also asked to identify correct and incorrect punctuation.
Numeracy – For numeracy, children look at mathematical equations, sequences and patterns and are asked to calculate or fill in the blanks, dependent on their age group.
The results of NAPLAN are usually available around mid August to mid September. Each school will receive an individual report for their students which will then be provided to parents.
The reports indicate 10 bands of achievement with level 10 the lowest and level 1 the highest possible result. An individual student’s result will be indicated by a dot within these bands. Results are not detailed but provide a snapshot of where a student sits in comparison to their previous results, relating to their school community and in reference to the national standard. Further information about the format and band levels is available here.
The NAPLAN tests are devised to complement school assessments using a national framework. They focus on literacy and numeracy skills that students have been naturally acquiring as part of the school curriculum.
The best way parents and carers can assist students with the NAPLAN is by supporting and being active in their learning journey throughout school. This includes activities like regular reading, encouraging their writing and involving them in mathematical tasks and games in everyday life.
Parents are also urged to reassure their children that the actual NAPLN tests are a normal part of their schooling program and only one element of it.
For over 25 years Chalkwall has been assisting students confidently grasp the fundamentals of education with reading, literacy and numeracy assistance. To learn more about our services, see here.
