News from ACARA - Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority

ACARA provides information for parents through a monthly online newsletter. In this month's newlsetter, there is information about NAPLAN and understanding cross curriculum priorities and what they mean.

You can watch ACARA CEO David de Carvalho’s latest vlog post for his new video series, Fanning the flames of wonder, explaining the cross curriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures. In episode 2, David reflects on the second word in the ACARA organisation’s name – ‘curriculum’.

Read below for an exerpt from the latest newsletter;

This year's NAPLAN results will be sent to schools to distribute to parents in August or September, depending on your state/territory.

So, what should you do with the results?

Your child’s results are a good starting point for you to see what your child knows and has achieved in the areas of reading, writing, spelling, punctuation, grammar and numeracy. You can also see how your child has performed against the national average and the national minimum standards. NAPLAN is unique in that it’s the only test across the nation which gives teachers and schools an indication of how kids are progressing.

CSPV reiterate that NAPLAN is only one test over a specific time in the year with a focus on literacy and numeracy. It is not an indication of a child's progress for the whole year. You will receive a school report to indicate progress and most schools will invite you to attend parent teacher meeting or conversation to share progress. CSPV recommend parents inform their child's teacher if they have any questions about the NAPLAN results. 

A national webinar and Q&A will be held on 22 August 2019 to support the national consultations.

New report highlights disrepancies in Myschool comparisons

Catholic Education Commission of Victoria Ltd (CECV) recently released research demonstrating that the cultural background of a student (as reflected by the main language spoken at home) has an effect on student NAPLAN scores. There are questions remaining around how NAPLAN can be an accurate representation of our student population with so many diverse communities across our expansive country.

This report highlights that there is a major problem with misleading reporting and some might say the actual test itself is not an accurate representation in that it is not considerate of the diversity of children's learning and knowledge across Australia. Case in point; if there is a question about items in a city (eg. a traffic light or tram), how are students able to complete requests related to those items if they have never seen one or had any knowlege of them? Those children are instantly disadvantaged and are therefore not able to present answers that the assessment is seeking.

In the CSPV submission to Naplan in March this year, we explored the misuse or misunderstanding of information contained on the Myschool website and how it can be confusing for parents. Often the information is not able to be deciphered and is considered too complex, even more so now that we understand there are discepancies in the actual reporting itself.

The CECV Report highlights that "..students from East Asian, Mon-Khmer and Southern Asian cultural backgrounds tend to perform better than other students in NAPLAN, even after taking other key factors into account. Conversely, students from African, Indigenous and Polynesian cultural backgrounds tend to perform worse."

According to the report produced by the CECV, the My School website compares a school’s NAPLAN results to the results of other schools using a measure known as the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA), and rates each school based on these comparisons. Users of the website are told that ICSEA values enable ‘fair comparisons’ between schools, because they compare ‘like with like’.

The research shows ICSEA values fail to take into account the cultural background of students in each school. This means that comparisons of school performance in NAPLAN on My School are often invalid. Many comparisons are not ‘like with like’.

Of particular interest to parents of children in Catholic schools is this failing undersells the performance of many Catholic schools in NAPLAN. This is because Catholic schools tend to have a very low share of students from cultural backgrounds who excel in NAPLAN – in particular, students from East Asian and Southern Asian language backgrounds. As a result, on the My School website many Catholic schools with few enrolments of students in East Asian and Southern Asian cultural backgrounds have their NAPLAN results unfairly compared to those of government schools that have many of these students. Not surprisingly, these comparisons are unflattering to our schools. These comparisons are not ‘like with like’ and should not be made.

We recognise that issues related to race and student cultural background are complex and sensitive. However, the simple fact is that, at present, the government is operating a website that unfairly assesses the performance of Catholic schools in NAPLAN. This is not acceptable. We firmly believe that we must always stand up for our schools even if this requires discussion on difficult and sensitive issues.

(Reproduced with permission from Catholic Education Commission Victoria)