Stories from another Canberra public school about NAPLAN tests.
• Reaction by one of our Year 5 Asperger’s students. A’s teacher noticed concerning behaviour (kicking playground equipment) and had a conversation with the student before school, asking how he was. He replied that he was worried about NAPLAN. He then continued running around, kicking posts and play equipment. The teacher asked what it was that was he was upset about and he replied, ‘Its NAPLAN, I just can’t deal with it. I get in there and my head gets so full, and I just want to run out. It’s like my heads just going to explode’.
• Another female year 5 student, after having a go of the Language conventions test and finding it hard, cried at her table through most of the test. The facilitators got her a drink of water and tissues. After the 40 minutes, the student needed consoling by her teacher and LSA. This took about 15-30 minutes to calm her down and stop her crying.
• Various other students with learning difficulties appeared to struggle throughout the Language Conventions test, leaving many answers blank.
• If we continued to do things to stress and upset students in our schools like this on a daily basis we would lose our job and learning would clearly stop altogether – why are we, as caring educators forced to continue to do this? I feel like we are in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Story from a Canberra private school
• A Year 9 student said that they were all told to take the test seriously (many had treated it as a joke in Year 7 and had not tried) and do well otherwise the Government would reduce the school’s funding if its results were not good enough.
A comment from a parent
• Private schools are requesting Year 3 NAPLAN results at the start of Year 5 when applying for a place for high school. Should poor NAPLAN results for a 7 year-old affect the school he or she can attend?