NAPLAN

I have just been going through my daughter’s NAPLAN results.

I think that stands for national assessment program – literacy and numeracy.

It’s an hilarious piece of political correctness. In each of the four reported results there are six bands and then a greyed out area which represents the middle 60% of the students in the year.

The grey 60% variably stretches across two to three bands so that tells me the bands probably aren’t statistically adjusted. They are probably representative of absolute results but the bands 5 and 6 stretch across around 20-25 marks each whereas bands 3, 4, 7, 8 are much smaller.

And yet they are labeled as band 3 to band 8, maybe to put us off the scent? These look like, and will be misconstrued as years three to eight in school. That’s what my daughter’s mum thought.

There are arrows at the either end of the bands suggesting that results could easily go off this chart. Funny but true. Maybe bands 1, 2, 9 & 10 are in the arrows. If so, the top and bottom little arrows must represent a tiny fraction of kids.

It’s designed not be reverse engineered. And to make most kids look near the average. Your kid could be right at the bottom 20% mark and still look OK.

I still don’t see what is wrong with giving us an absolute percentage out of one hundred. And also a position on the bell curve

I wonder if they are more worried about disincentivising kids on the lower end of the curve or copping blow back from their parents?

I seem to recall that these results have some input into school funding as well. In one scenario the better performing school gets more funds but that just increases the gap – like EPL. In the other scenario the poorer performing school gets more funding but that just encourages the wooden spooners to tank their games ahead of the draft to get the better picks. Nuh, it doesn’t work.

These results certainly do nothing to encourage my daughter to work harder. But nothing would anyway, so I can’t complain too hard.