By ALENA HIGGINS
A LOCAL teachers’ union head has called for NAPLAN tests to be scrapped, claiming ratepayers money could be better spent on extra resources.
Queensland Teachers’ Union (QTU) acting Southern Queensland organiser Stephen Dunne said the costs involved in rolling out the point-in-time test could be used to employ an additional 1100 teachers.
“We should really be taking stresses away from teachers and students and spend more time on the curriculum and how the syllabus looks at each school,” Mr Dunne said.
“There is an enormous amount of time currently being spent by teachers and kids practising for the test and worrying about what kind of genre is going to be in it.”
The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an annual assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, which tests skills in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy.
He said NAPLAN results were “dubious to say the least” and condemned the erroneous use of them to rank schools.
“They are ranking state against state, but it’s quite irrelevant as there is not much between Queensland, the ACT, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, with the Northern Territory the outlier there,” he said.
Meanwhile, the QTU has chalked up a significant win against a state government initiative “bordering on the insane” to allow parents and children to appraise teachers as part of its Great Teachers = Great Results action plan, Mr Dunne said.
“We objected to that whole notion for a period of eight months and had 24 meetings with the Department (of Education) and came to a joint agreement on a new teacher appraisal tool that is rolling on next year, which has none of that in it,” he said.
NAPLAN tests have been in existence since 2008 and are sat in the second week of May, with results released mid-August.
Have your say. Should NAPLAN be dumped? Do your children stress in the lead up to the tests? Tell us what you think at newsdesk@freetimes.com.au
