Naplan- A Boon or a Bane for Kids

NAPLAN is also known as the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy. As the name suggests, this examination is conducted to check the children’s literacy and numeracy knowledge. This test is conducted for students aged 3, 5, 7, or 9 years. All of the students in the country who are lying under this age group will be coming up together for the examination. This examination helps the parents and teachers know how they could improve the learning and cognitive skills of every child. 

There are a total of 4 parts in which this test gets conducted. These four test sections are reading, learning, cognitive, and numeracy. All four provinces have equal weightage, and the candidates must prepare equally for the same. Many parents would be thinking about what they should do to improve their child’s performance in the exam. First of all, it should be noted that no such good preparation is required for the NAPLAN exam. It does not matter whether your child is failing the exam or passing it. In the end, your child learns about the improvements which would make them perform better in the next examination. 

About NAPLAN  

Let us now have a detailed look at the NAPLAN examination. Later on, we will also be covering the benefits of NAPLAN. It is the main examination given on the My School official website. This examination helps to assess the child’s abilities and social behaviour. And after evaluating the same, the teachers and parents can know how they would be able to make improvements to the learnings of their child. This examination helps the teachers and children make important decisions about the children’s learning.  

The teachers and parents should know that this examination is not connected to the Australian curriculum. So, the students would not be learning about this examination content daily. This examination is conducted on a single day in May. And it helps to know how the students of different countries would be able to answer questions of English and Maths. A specific time has been provided to the students for every examination. For example, in the writing test, the children are granted 40 minutes to complete the same. 

Several schools and teachers spend several days a week ensuring that their students are preparing well for the NAPLAN exam. But that is not how the preparation for this exam goes. The teachers must look at the previous results of the NAPLAN exam, which have been scored by the candidate. After having a look at the same, they would have to assess the effects and take necessary learning steps to ensure that the results of each and every individual student is improved from the next time. 

Why is this examination conducted? 

This would be a common question across the minds of every individual why the NAPLAN examination is being conducted yearly. The candidates and both teachers and parents need to know about the benefits of NAPLAN testing. There are various ways in which the NAPLAN examination would benefit the children, but it is necessary to understand why this examination is conducted. There are a total of two purposes listed to be known as the reasons this examination has been completed for a long time. These reasons are as follows- 

• The first reason behind the conducting of this examination is to know how each and every student would be able to get improvements among themselves. These improvements would be made in learning and teaching to ensure that the students have improved social and education skills. 
• The second reason behind the conducting of this examination is way too important. The results of this examination help the schools and teachers to analyze the performance of all the students through which they could make changes to the learning strategies of every individual. All of the students are not having the same learning strategies, and this examination plays an important role in finding out the same. 

 There are many reasons why people can only realize the second purpose of the examination. The first purpose is marked as unseen and mostly ignored. But this does not mean that the first purpose of the review is not completed. The first purpose of the investigation plays an important role in helping the students to improve their results when they appear next time for the review. The best part about this examination is that there is no intervention that would prevent an identified student from getting failed.  

NAPLAN benefits 

Finally, we will look at the benefits of NAPLAN testing. There are several ways in which the NAPLAN test would benefit the students, teachers, and also parents. But here, we would be looking at the most common benefits known and recognized for which people give the NAPLAN test. NAPLAN examination helps the students know what their learning skills are and how much time they would need to learn a specific thing that is being taught to them. 

 The benefits of NAPLAN are as follows- 

• When the results of the NAPLAN examination are given out to the schools and parents, they can analyze the performance of the respective students. This analysis helps the schools to figure out how much improvement would be needed for each student and how the learning and teaching strategies of the students should be changed for the same. 
• The best part about the results of the NAPLAN examination is that all the results are transparent. There is no such marking scheme that might keep the students and teachers in doubt. All the examination markings are kept transparent. The major reason behind the same is that the students would be able to know about their mistakes, and the teachers can make changes regarding the same. 
• The NAPLAN examination marks teachers and schools as accountable for the literacy and numeracy results achieved by the students. If the students are not able to achieve good results, then the school and teachers should be questioned regarding the same.