Your child’s NAPLAN results—what do they mean and should you be worried?     002

So the big envelope has finally arrived after what seemed like an impossible length of time. The good news is that your child has completed a very large scale government education test and you can have confidence that the test was very scientifically constructed, and the results very carefully processed and presented. Unfortunately you cannot have the same confidence in the case of your child individually. Your child’s results do need careful interpretation, actually by both you and your child’s teachers.

Write down the performance level for each of the four areas: reading, writing, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy. You can if you wish simply make a note of which bands your child’s performance falls into, or you can express your child’s performance as an approximate percentile rank. So if the dot representing your child’s result happens to be at the top of the middle lightly shaded rectangle this means that your child has performed at the top of the middle 60 per cent of Australian students. You can express this as being in the top 20 per cent of students. Of course if your child’s result is above this then your child could be performing within, say, the top 10 per cent. Remember though that there is no reported equivalence between bands, dot positions and percentile ranks. Reports to parents are not designed in this way. The distribution of student results above the lightly shaded middle rectangle, for example, would not be uniform, and further, in the case of Years Three, Five and Seven there are always some children within the very top triangle, children whose results are ‘well above the expected level of achievement’.

Compare your child’s performance levels with previous NAPLAN results, and also with school reports. What you are looking for is consistency across performance areas, and consistency across time. For example your child’s reading may always be better than his or her maths, and this has been a trend right since Year Three, and school reports indicate a similar situation. In such a case you can have more confidence that the NAPLAN results you are holding in your hand are fairly reliable.

Sometimes however results are particularly inconsistent and unexpected, or even suddenly shocking. In such a case parents need to look more closely for an explanation of what might be happening and speaking to your child’s teacher is one very useful source of information. Indeed for guidance in interpreting results parents can also visit the official website at www.nap.edu.au/results-and-reports where there is a great deal of information including a video clip.

Unexpected performance can be due to a decline in educational application, sickness and distraction, or sometimes misadventure during the assessment, for example, accidentally missing a section of the test paper. The reality of these situations needs to be established as far as possible so that future action can be taken. Parents though do need to understand that sometimes a child’s performance in writing can be seemingly unrelated to his or her performance in reading or in language conventions. The NAPLAN test provides only one item of writing assessment and it is very easy for even good writers to accidentally head off in the wrong direction. Performance on writing tasks is perhaps more susceptible to emotional states than performance in other areas. So if something happened on the day of the NAPLAN writing test and your child was particularly upset then a good writing result is less likely, especially with younger children. Spelling is a strange skill in that many children who are excellent writers can be consistently poor spellers.

The official NAPLAN website points out that “there are many reasons why students may not have performed to the best of their ability…”. Parents are advised to discuss results with the teachers if “results are either higher or lower than… expected”. Of course this is excellent advice but when you make an appointment to discuss the situation with your child’s teacher give the teacher sufficient preparation time.  If you simply turn up at school without notice then the assistance that you obtain will be commensurate with your level of thoughtfulness.

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, the body responsible for the NAPLAN assessment program, has designated a national minimum standard. In general students performing within the bottom band on the National Assessment Scale, which would be Band 3 in Year Five for example, are considered below this national minimum standard. Indeed any type of performance which parents are unhappy with is something that should be addressed at the school level. Sometimes special programs and extra assistance can be provided or arranged. Usually parents also can play a role in improving their children’s situation.

Oh, and one last thing. Put your child’s NAPLAN report away in a safe place. You’ll need it in two years’ time.

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services