This is an insightful and clever expose of NAPLAN. Phil has summarised all that's wrong with NAPLAN. He's also coined some great terms.

While I agree with some of your concerns regarding NAPLAN, you do tend to generalise. The school at which I work does not allow NAPLAN to rule the roost. We prepare children for NAPLAN simply by familiarisation (i.e. We show them the test, so they know what it looks like!)
We have not changed how, or what, we teach to suit NAPLAN. For example, we teach Mathematics from a problem solving, not calculation, position. Children are encouraged to get out into the real world and see maths everywhere.
Our NAPLAN results are sound, not spectacular. Certainly above average in all strands but that's not what (most of) our parents care about. They love to see their children enjoying learning and enjoying coming to school.
Do I want to see NAPLAN gone? I don't really mind, as it doesn't impact on how we operate. I would encourage others to stop whinging about it and get back to teaching.

Thanks rational-debate. You have proved the point. If children are taught how to learn and to enjoy it, the world is their oyster. They will handle any sort of test with ease.
Your pupils [that's a word I use to describe a teacher with a child learning something], quite obviously don't need any test.
You think about learning...not about testing. QED
Why spend millions to try to get teachers to frighten kids into learning?

Children don't have to be taught "how to learn".

They do it as a matter of course.

They do have to be taught how to toe the line, value their abilities according to "tests", and shut down their own curiosities. They do have to be taught how to develop emotional and intellectual dependency from years of waiting for someone to tell them what to do, when they should do it and what they should be imbibing from it.

Being constantly evaluated and judged slowly whittles away self-esteem and the ability to self-direct inquiries, the perfect formulation for a world of drones.

NAPLAN is in place to service the education industry - not for the learning empowerment of children.

Yes for god sake lets avoid any external testing. Lets make sure we keep all assessment in class only, with no comparative scores ever given.

Hell if we go back to external testing we might actually find out which teachers are dead heads, & which are utterly hopeless. That would never do, we might have to sack a few of the useless, & they would then stop paying union dues.

Even worse, parents might actually get some idea of how bad some schools & teachers really are.

We might even have a fair assessment of kids applying for university places.

Just imagine a fair single test, at the end of high school, one externally set & marked, like the matriculation of old, set on 5 years work. We would would find which kids had learnt & actually retained something. These we could send on for further education, as the ones who might be wort the effort.

Even better, potential employers could get some value from school reports, when assessing potential employees. Kids would actually be judged on what they produced, rather than on what their parents, or a tutor did for them in an assignment, & be selected on merit.

What a revolutionary idea.

I actually quite like NAPLAN, though it's a dreadful drain on a whole week of teaching and learning time.

You see, NAPLAN - when used in what I consider the correct way - highlights what children can and can't do. It identifies areas of the curriculum that need tightening up, and it gives us an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back and keep doing whatever it is that we are doing well. It's a diagnostic tool that can be used to inform teaching.

My department does one practice test with the Year 9s each year, just to familiarise them with the process. We don't worry about what's actually on the test: that is covered in our classrooms. If it isn't, we'll soon find out. We tend to perform well, which is a tribute to the quality teaching that goes on in our classes. We have been tightening up that bottom end over the past few years, looking at what we can do to pull the stragglers up over the minimum standard, and it's been working marvellously.

NAPLAN minus the media-contrived league tables has its merits. Parents should have access to the information, and they should (and do) have a right to ask what is being done to rectify any 'black spots'. As a test of the curriculum, it's useful. As a test of students' last-minute cramming skills and teachers' last-minute patch-up skills, it's a waste of everyone's time. Sadly, I think the first scenario is only rarely true.

Otokonoko,

I appreciate your point of view.

However, it seems to me that a abroad and unwieldy entity such as mass education, formed on a factory model of processing, employs standardised testing as a form of quality control.

I understand that this model is useful for products, but I'm skeptical of its efficacy in promoting higher thinking and instilling meaning in the lives of humans.

I suppose a conveyor belt with mass-produced intellects stuffed with standardised, one-size-fits-all information and applicability is the place we're at.

It will be interesting to see where it takes us.

It is amusing that Naplan is so much a problem, it will be to the corrupted education insiders. Many teachers if they did not teach to Naplan would not teach anything; there are so many bad teachers out there.
This is based on 24 years of experience, my and my daughter`s education, I remember teachers who were mad, in the literal sense, moving to another school, not sacked and we had to move our daughter from a State "Centre of Excellence" from teacher brutality and incompetence.
Get rid of Naplan and watch the State system wither even more.

Poirot, surely the main reason for schools & education is to enable the student to operate in our society. This requires some level of practical learning.

First being able to read helps one get about, & get a job.

Second being able to work out the change from your bus ticket helps you control your wealth.

Before we can be capable of higher thinking, first we must be able to understand the basics of life. The only difference those head in the cloud teachers, dreaming of "making a difference" in kids lives, are likely to make is to make them unemployable, & unable to support themselves.

When it comes to meaning in kids lives, I'll thank teachers to mind their own business. You don't have to spend much time observing teachers to see that far too many have little grip on reality, & the last things kids need is their meaning guided by such people.

Teachers, most of whom have never left school, are the worst possible to start giving guidance to kids who will have to live in the real world.

If we could just manage to find teachers who could actually teach the 3Rs & do it well, our kids would be much better off. Leaving school with heads full of the ideas of teachers who have never had their results tested is a recipe for failure.

It is exactly this attitude in our heavily feminised education system that has our kids now at the bottom of the English speaking world in English, Math & Science. No wonder our teachers are terrified of any testing system.