Hi, just for the record. After initially favouring increased testing some years ago, after a visit to New York, I've consistently argued against standardised testing represented by tests like NAPLAN.

If teachers were to put even a quarter as much time into becoming better teachers, as they put into fighting testing to show up their inadequacies, kids would do much better in our schools.

Many would remember the old school inspector system. The one where inspectors sat in on classes to assess teachers. Those assessments had a great effect on the teachers place on the promotions list.

Do you remember the teachers trying to put the fear of god into the pupils, pushing the idea that the inspector was assessing the students, not the teacher? No worry about stressing the kids, just an interest in quiet kids.

Well the old inspector system has gone, & many teachers have been getting away with shoddy efforts for years. Along comes NAPLAN, teachers find themselves being benchmarked again, & they don't like it.

Thus we see this huge campaign to convince the public that it is bad for the kids. Sorry teachers, we see right through the plan. We know it is bad for bad teachers, & we love it. Not only will it help get rid of no hoper teachers, parents might get an accurate assessment of how their kids are going.

Now all we need is an external exam for university placement, & the whole system will improve.

I'm a teacher and uni lecturer. I find this article worrying and I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of NAPLAN.

There are many experts who keep telling us how wonderful Gillard has been for education. I don't see much to admire after a lot of money spent on consultants, enquiries, and the Building the Education Revolution which was a big disaster for NSW public schools. I suspect NAPLAN has been much the same. Teachers have to teach to the test. We have reams of kids (especially Indian and Chinese) being force-fed in cramming schools.

I'd like to see some decent educational expert do a thorough assessment of NAPLAN. I suspect they might agree with Phil Cullen.

I want to teach my children right from wrong. I don't want my children coming home from school believing things that I dis-believe in, extolling virtues that I believe are vices.

I want teachers to TEACH, not to indoctrinate my kids. That is why I love NAPLAN, it measures knowledge, it does not measure belief.

That is an important reason why teachers hate it. Because it restricts their power to indoctrinate and brainwash my kids

Thank you, Kevin. Should we form a club of ex-testucators? I was a crazed test-focussed principal until I realised how much stress I was causing. Convert Diane Ravitch would join. As Deputy Education Secretary for Education for the U.S.A. when they started blanket testing of the Klein-kind, she later awoke. She is much more high-profile than little down-unders like us, but we can only try for kids sake.
There must be more converts around.
By the way, Hasbeen, I became a School Inspector, so I do agree with you. Using long experienced, been-there-done-that people as guardians of the curriculum is a far, far better accountability arrangement than fear-laden NAPLAN.

xdope if kids fear NAPLAN it is only because teachers have trained them to fear it.

Kids did not fear exams when I went to school, as the less academic, & mostly their parents didn't care, & better students had no trouble with them.