THIS week saw the release of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results for 2022, with the average results per category for Hamilton students being lower than the state-wide averages.
NAPLAN sees students from Grades 3 and 5 in primary schools and Years 7 and 9 in secondary schools, complete a national assessment to provide comparable data about student performance in literacy and numeracy.
Students complete tests in five categories – reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and numeracy, with results reported on a common NAPLAN scale, making it easier to see their growth over time.
The reported outcomes of NAPLAN allow the Australian public to get a general national perspective on student achievement and, more specifically, understanding of how their schools are performing.
The most recent results were published on the MySchool website on Wednesday, along with information on each school’s profile, population, and attendance levels as of last year.
In Hamilton, the overall average scores across all five test categories for all participating year levels were lower than the Victorian averages.
Primary school students in Grade 3 in Hamilton received an average NAPLAN score of 444.33 for reading, which was lower than the Victorian average NAPLAN score of 452.8, but higher than the Australian average score of 438.
Local Grade 3 students were also in line with the country average score for numeracy (400), receiving an average score of 402.83.
Hamilton Grade 5 students kept with the Australian average scores for reading (510) and grammar (499), receiving average scores of 514.83 and 499.33 respectively, however, these were slightly lower than the Victorian average scores of 519.2 and 503.
The data for local secondary schools revealed similar trends, with Hamilton Year 7 students exceeding the Australian average scores for reading (543) and numeracy (546) by recording averages of 549.25 and 548.75 respectively, however these were still marginally lower than the Victorian averages of 549.8 and 551.3.
The average NAPLAN score in 2022 for students in Hamilton was 495.32, which was higher than the average score for students across the whole state (452.8) and the average score for the whole country (437.8).
Going forward, NAPLAN will have a new look after an announcement on February 10 revealed the national test would undergo updates, such as being brought forward to March instead of May, and providing clearer reports to parents and teachers on the progress of students.
Bringing the tests fully online will also be beneficial to schools as reporting can be done earlier in the year, with parents and schools scheduled to receive individualised reports in July 2023.
The updated NAPLAN tests will be set against a challenging but reasonable standard of literacy and numeracy expected for the child at the time of testing and benchmarks will be more meaningful to reflect the personalised online tests that students undertake.
Another update to NAPLAN will see the standards called ‘Exceeding’, ‘Strong’, ‘Developing’, and ‘Needs additional support’, which will be accompanied by detailed descriptions provided by a panel of teachers.
The names of the new standards will simplify reporting, replacing the current 10 NAPLAN bands and national minimum standard, allowing parents and carers to know at-a-glance whether their child is where they need to be in literacy and numeracy.
These updates to NAPLAN mean that students who need it can get more targeted support from teachers and parents, recognising that NAPLAN is only one of many ways in which schools track student progress.
Federal education minister, Jason Clare, addressed the new changes to NAPLAN earlier this week during a press conference in Sydney where he said it would be the biggest change to the national assessment in 14 years and spoke about the new standard names.
“(Needs additional support) identifies children who aren’t meeting minimum standards. Parents told us to call this that. They wanted to make it very, very clear that these are children who need additional support to catch up,” he said.
“There are always going to be children who fall behind at school, but our job is to make sure that they don’t stay behind, or they don’t fall further back.
“We’re going to help them catch up. And that’s work that teachers do, that’s work that parents do, but it’s also work that we can do here in this agreement to make sure that we’re funding the things that work.”
