skeptic,
Go for it, for those who don't understand the pointless but deeply satisfying act of voting informal, well, tough.

More importantly though is the complete load of subjective rubbish this whole article is. I have complained before and will continue to when this sort of complete crap surfaces. Journalists and journalism does it'self no favours when they right this crap. No wonder the general population has no idea what is going on around them, they listen to the media.

One of the more irritating consequences of NAPLAN has been the excessive focus on test-taking skills in schools. Rather than teaching students to read, write, spell, count, add, subtract, punctuate and construct meaningful texts, there is increasing pressure for us to teach students how to take tests on reading, writing, spelling, counting, etc. Almost every week, I am sent textbooks to review, each with the key selling feature that they include NAPLAN-style activities.

Just as Queensland high schools focus excessively on "teaching" the QCS test to Year 11 and 12 students, we are now "teaching" NAPLAN to our 3, 5, 7 and 9 students. It makes sense from a school perspective - after all, schools are judged (courtesy of MySchool and other similar initiatives) almost entirely on their performance on these tests. But the very process defeats the purpose of the tests: rather than testing literacy and numeracy, they are coming dangerously close to testing only the students' preparedness for the tests. It also (obviously) detracts from the purpose of education itself: let's focus on teaching students to read, write and do basic maths, rather than focusing on teaching them to "do us proud" in the tests. If everyone did that, the results would speak for themselves. Sadly, I doubt it will happen.