Good article.
The terrible standard of maths/science education in Queensland up to about 2008 or so was a disgrace and an inevitable consequence of sloppy, poorly designed syllabi combined with faddish teaching ideas oozing from Education faculties and the QSA. Essentially there was no clear aim of the teaching (certainly up to Year 10 exit, There was no testing worth the name. Straight forward teaching and student practice (sneered at as 'tick and flick')was ignored. What NAPLAN has done is make it that there is some aim for the teaching. That has been a huge gain. The Education theorists and their acolytes complain about 'teaching to the test'. Well, yes; but although there is more to education than NAPLAN at least there is some aim and measure and I would rather schools aimed at a target which is not perfect than have no target at all. Of course there is squealing by people within the Education Establishment at having to actually do some teaching and having some idea of how successful the teaching has been.
The fact that there is some improvement is good. But the remaining vast problems in Maths/Science at all levels lie in the trendoid use of assignments as the major 'instructional' method. (Called Extended Experimental Investigations or Extended Research Tasks.) Inevitably standards at the basic skills/understandings and techniques are downplayed and at a very poor level.
So NAPLAN is a lot better than nothing - but it can be improved by the use of Value Adding ideas/techniques proposed by Dr Jensen of the Grattan Institute.
On a purely personal note I started OLO articles on the parlous state of maths/science (notably the numerical sciences) in about 2007. I also called for the abolition of the QSA. Well, they are gone, but all too much of the fanciful assessment et al is still in being. The big issue is whether the Minister has the determination to make real change. I'm doubtful, so NAPLAN is all we have. Hence the need for it to be built on to give measure of Value Added.

Yes teachers hate anything that can highlight so quickly their incompetence.

The union in particular hate that these test results should lead to more than a few teachers looking for another line of work, where they may be more competent.

It also highlights that all tests should be properly marked, & the results shown as a percentage of successfully answered questions.

Even more hated by trendies, we should have class & school positions on all report cards going home to parents. Without this information parents have no real idea of their kids progress, until it is too late to do much about it.

NAPLAN is a first minor step on the way to getting education & the 3 Rs back into our schools

At least Julia got one thing right.

WTF?
NAPLAN is an assessment of Numeracy not Mathematics. The sad truth is the teaching of Numeracy has been deliberately and actively rejected by most high school teachers for at least the last 30 years. Often those tasked with leading the school in curriculum advancement, HODs, are the very people who have been the most recalcitrant in this matter. The rejection of educational research in favour of the arrogance of anecdotal reference and personal preferences has lead us to this sorry situation. The reality is there is little, if any, change to the way Mathematics is taught in years 8 - 10 in Queensland schools. Typically, a lesson consists of a short recap, an example or two worked on the board and an expectation that students then work on the next exercise found on page whatever of the textbook. This lazy straight forward teaching and practice method is the problem not the solution. We have been doing this for 70 years. Bright strongly-motivated students endure it because they know they need to get through school to go to University. The vast majority resent the experience and cannot help but pass that resentment onto their children. Our Asian neighbours Singapore and Hong Kong know this and have moved on for the betterment of their students and their societies.

Naplan is a simplistic solution to a complicated challenge. Fifty years of research has informed us that tests like Naplan are useless for diagnosing learning challenges.We have the best trained and most experienced teacher force in our history who are quite capable of using professionally constructed(and, more importantly, field tested) diagnostic tools to assess individual children. These tools are far more sophisticated than Naplan and can be used as and when is most appropriate. Parents are increasingly appreciating this and realising that their children are being used as political toys - which is why so many are withdrawing their children from the archaic Naplan tests. The crime is that principals and teachers have been forbidden from informing parents that they have the option of withdrawing their children from what some have referred to as "legalised child abuse". Recommend the Treehorn site to all thinking parents, educators and children for a perspective on Naplan which is rarely aired but worth considering.

Which class do you teach Woolly?

Only a teacher could claim, "We have the best trained and most experienced teacher force in our history", when we look at falling standards, & teachers who can't even handle the work they are supposed to be teaching in all too many schools.

That so many incompetents are still employed is an indictment of the education bureaucrats & the union.