NAPLAN doom and gloom unfair

The usual flurry of damning headlines accompanied the release of the latest NAPLAN results. What followed was the predictable commentary on what’s going wrong in schools.  

So let’s scrutinise what these NAPLAN results actually mean.  

In 2023, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) launched its refreshed NAPLAN regime, involving earlier testing and reporting so teachers and principals could take corrective action for students who have fallen behind. ACARA also reduced the number of proficiency bands from 10 to four with the labels “Exceeding”, “Strong”, “Developing” and “Needs additional support”. 

This year, one third of Australian students were in the bottom two bands with around 10 per cent in the lowest band. Unsurprisingly, these results are much the same as they were in 2023. 

Tracking student achievement over time is harder because of these changes to NAPLAN. However, the University of New England’s Dr Sally Larsen, who analysed the results from 2008 to 2022, found no long-term decline. She actually found some gains, particularly in Year 3 and Year 5 reading. 

So, the narrative about failing students and falling educational standards should rightly be corrected.  

However, the students who need additional support are disproportionately from disadvantaged circumstances, live in regional, rural and remote locations, or are Indigenous. These disparities between student cohorts have persisted for decades.  

They reflect our nation’s failure to reduce educational inequality. 

Put bluntly, this failure does not lie at the feet of our teachers and public schools. The root cause of underperformance is inequity in our systems of education and our communities. Given the challenges faced by teachers in complex schools, their efforts are often heroic. 

Education Minister Jason Clare is correct. We need reforms. The important thing is we get the reforms right. 

First, we need to fully fund public schools. After all, they serve the majority of students who need additional support. 

Second, we need to support teachers to deliver excellent teaching. 

Third, we need high quality evidence to inform policymaking. 

On the first point, report after report has shown that we are chronically underfunding government schools. While private schools enjoy the largesse of government funded capital works, public schools in NSW have had their budgets stripped and can’t afford needed classroom upgrades. 

On the second point, we need to avoid reactionary policymaking. The current push for explicit teaching and synthetic phonics, derived from cognitive science, can only be part of the solution. Students are more than their brains. They learn in social and emotional conditions that also need to be addressed. 

Explicit teaching and synthetic phonics might be useful in supporting some students, particularly those in the early years, who are struggling to read. Despite what we’re told, teachers already use these strategies in their teaching.  

Multiple approaches are needed for excellent teaching and learning. After a decade of explicit teaching and synthetic phonics, students in England are at an all-time low for enjoyment of reading, languishing toward the bottom of all OECD countries. 

An evaluation by England’s leading evidence broker, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), found much of the evidence supporting cognitive science comes from studies in psychology laboratories. It’s not based on research in schools but extrapolated to what might happen in schools. When examining studies conducted in schools, the EEF found many problems not encountered in the lab. 

To date, there is a lack of large-scale, robust, in-school evidence supporting explicit teaching, and serious questions about some of the evidence being relied upon. 

Our research at the University of Newcastle reveals a powerful alternative. More than 20 years ago, we developed the Quality Teaching Model for the NSW Department of Education based on decades of research on teaching that makes a difference to student learning. 

We also needed a powerful way to support teachers to embed this model in their practice. Quality Teaching Rounds brings four teachers together for just four days of professional learning to observe, analyse and discuss their lessons using the QT Model. It’s a process that treats teachers as professionals and builds on what they already know and do.  

Importantly, it doesn’t dictate specific teaching methods but focuses on improving the quality of pedagogy to ensure high quality student learning experiences. 

Between 2019 and 2023, we conducted a series of “gold standard” randomised controlled trials to investigate the impact of QTR on student and teacher outcomes. In total, our four trials involved 1,400 teachers and 14,500 students from 430 schools across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. 

Three of the four trials produced robust evidence of positive effects on student achievement in mathematics and/or reading. By the end of the year, the students whose teachers did QTR were two to three months ahead of those whose teachers did professional development as usual.  

Importantly, these effects were stronger in disadvantaged schools, signalling the potential for QTR to enhance equity. 

These trials also demonstrated that teacher participation in QTR improves the quality of teaching, morale, efficacy, and school culture. 

We also partnered with Cessnock High School, one of the most disadvantaged schools in NSW, over the past four years. In 2023, after engaging the whole school in QTR, Cessnock High achieved the most improved NAPLAN growth from Year 7 to 9 in the Hunter region and was 11th overall in the state. Simultaneously, teachers reported greater morale and improved school culture. These are both critical factors in addressing the current teacher shortage crisis. 

Based on this rigorous program of research, the Australian Government included expansion of QTR in its National Teacher Workforce Action Plan to support teacher retention.  

Which brings me to my third and final point.  

High quality evidence and ongoing evaluation must inform policy. Academic research comes with some important tests of rigour, including peer-review, independent ethics oversight, a global system of ranking journals to separate the robust from the “paper mills”, and editorial review boards.  

These quality hurdles sit in contrast to the so-called “quick and dirty” research sometimes produced by think tanks and other non-academic bodies, and often embraced by government and media. 

The first challenge for Jason Clare is to bring the states together to finally fully fund our public schools. The next challenge will be crafting effective policies. After that, we need to see successful implementation in schools. With all that done, maybe we’ll be having a different conversation in a few years’ time. Otherwise, we’re likely to see another generation of disadvantaged kids let down by a system in disrepair.