If as you claim as oft times before Phil. NAPLAN is creating fear and anxiety, it's the resisting teachers, non compliant principles and school administrators creating it?

And, I believe, because they to a generic man, want to abandon a system that all but demands they be accountable for outcomes! And the whole of life outcomes that flow from that!

NAPLAN is not about argumentative noncompliant (rebels without a cause) "paycheque" teachers, but rather about our kids and their best possible outcomes and who is failing them in that quest!

As many who follow will argue, both exams and phonetics were part of a more successful FONDATIONAL education system; even with all its perceived flaws and capital punishment!

Time to end the obfuscation and BS campaign and just get on doing the job you're paid for! None of which is related to creating public policy.

If the same old same old, foundational teaching, is boring and passé? Not your cup of tea? Find another occupation!

If literacy and numeracy outcomes were an improving statistic, one might find some credence in your diverse arguments?

However given that the opposite is true and illiteracy and innumeracy is a growing comparative statistic! Your many counterproductive dissenting arguments have little merit and even less to recommend them!
Alan B.

Great stuff.
Some references which prove that a competitive environment is completely detrimental to every childs emotional state and thus their full-brain intellectual capacities.
On the function of the Precognitive Heart - which is instantaneously shut down in in the heart-stress inducing situation of competitive environments.
http://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/outcome-studies-in-education

The lesson from the proven Heartmath research is that a students availability to his or her own full-brain intellectual capacities is determined by his or her emotional state. Thus, the establishment of a nurturing, unthreatening ambient environment for students is the first and primary principle for any learning situation.
Thus a student, on being called to perform - that is, be tested - will have far less access to his or her own true level of integrated intelligence and actual capacity, and subsequently left only with the feeling of inadequacy that so many (most) students feel.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-competition

http://www.alfiekohn.org/standards-testing

http://www.alfiekohn.org/standards-and-testing/case-tougher-standards

Either Phil Cullen has a different definition of "bullying" to the rest of the world, or he's completely failed to explain what's going on.

This article is a joke right?
One test every two years is bullying?
Now I’m left wondering how previous generations not only survived but had better literacy levels after being subjected to exams at the end of every year. And no multiple choice! We had to write down answers to questions.
And back in my day the year ten and twelve exams weren’t even held at our schools, they were in a huge public building and every child from schools in the area sat the exam at the same time. In Adelaide the exams were held at the Showgrounds.
And we didn’t receive a school certificate for just attending. Our year ten and twelve certificates actually had our grades listed so prospective employers could see what level English, maths, history etc you achieved.
We are breeding a race of wimps!

Mental health and children were never mentioned in the same breath before Marxist teachers’ unions and manipulators started brainwashing them rather than educating them. Are these the “monumental changes” this teacher is referring to? Using kids to push the Left political agenda and filling their heads with dangerous garbage they are too young to understand and deal with?.

NAPLAN as an “ instrument of anxiety-creation” is hogwash used by rubbish teachers who don't like the test revealing how incompetent and/or ideologically driven they are.

“Keep bullying the brats”? What tosh! The bullies are the teachers, shoving non-educational SSM, gender-bending and Marxist culture down young throats. If that doesn't apply to all teachers, that's tough. Young minds are more important than the sensitivities and personal values of school teachers. This bloke and his colleagues are crapping themselves because NAPLAN is showing them up for the unprofessional political activists they are.

“Mass child abuse”? He would know all about that.

What complete & utter garbage.

The very worst thing schools can do by our kids is to mollycoddle them through 12 years, avoiding all stress & competition then chuck them out into the real world, where the competition for jobs & success is fierce.

We can't all go into the public service, or some soft cop like teaching, where incompetence is no hindrance to advancement so schools should get tougher, & really testing. Kids need to be made immune to testing, & able to handle a bit of stress, before they hit the nasty streets & job market.

We had school inspectors when I was a kid. Those with a brain knew the inspectors were there to test the teachers. The teachers tried to put fear of these inspectors into us, but we were tougher than todays petals. With this system, unlike today, the incompetent teachers were moved out of the job, before they could ruin too many kids lives.

We had real tests every week, & every month, plus the really serious ones biannually. Fail the end of year exams, & you stayed back in the same grade next year.

School sports were the same. Someone won, & someone came last. If it mattered to you, you did some training, & got better, but for most we simply knew that you can't be good at everything & many don't want to do everything. We got on with other things, but we knew we were going to do poorly at some things, & accepted it.

It could be fun too. I had a hand injury for the Intermediate history exam. Even I had trouble reading my writing. The History master marked my paper to 49.5%, a pass, not even looking at the last 2 questions. This must have taken some extra effort to do. Across the rest he scrawled, "If you want more marks than this, come back next year & interpret this rubbish". He was a good teacher & a great bloke. We all liked him.

Of all government initiatives in the last twenty years or so NAPLAN testing would have to be the one that stands out and Julia Gillard deserves great credit for it

Our entire country is now just a social experiment gone terribly wrong.

All schools that perform well regularly test their students and then focus attention on fixing their weaknesses.

Some schools in the US don't and end up graduating students that can't read.

Which do you want?

Exactly SM. Its been my sad experience to converse with highly rewarded Teachers who just treated the job as a pay packet! Did only a much as they absolutely had to, didn't bother to correct homework? Just trotted out impossible reading assignments etc. And cared not, one way or the other if the kids went on or failed. And at the end of the year or final term everybody got, a can do much better, pass. And because they had no foundational skills to build on or carry them through, just fell further and further behind. And even though comparatively bright simply gave up and walked away as soon as they were able. How many Einsteins might have been produced if they had a good foundation to build on. On notes that Einstein was the product of the old pre calculator, pre computer system! Or that the man with the highest tested IQ in Australia, was employed on the tail of a garbage truck? Some might suggest that's where he wanted to be/his choice? I say he and others like him are evidence of gross incompetency and failing within the, couldn't give a rat's, education system!? And are now fighting a rear guard action to preserve the highly flawed status quo and often highly privileged highly rewarded positions and patently unearned privilege! And now in the death throes of trying to preserve those privileges/entitlements, all while dodging any responsibility for outcomes. A recent study showed that those the system failed often went on to ad to the prison and divorce statistics and worse! Only those equipped with a good foundation go on to be able to build a later successful life, marriage and rewarding career! The study and the collected and very professionally collated statistics don't lie! Even if a few so called Educators do? The odd exceptions being those that invariably prove the rule? Alan B.

This article seems to point out that the concept and benefit of obtaining results from true testing is being overshadowed by attempts to achieve some kind of orthodoxy, conformity. As some posters have observed, the underlying importance of any form of education is the gaining of knowledge for its benefit in allowing students to choose exactly how they will apply that knowledge in their chosen occupations. The issue is about what is derived from test results. It certainly should not be some kind of social engineering.

This article has been a revelation. I've just realised that the reason Australia's primary schools are turning out kids who are falling further and further behind international standards is that there are too many teachers like Phil Cullen.

No only that CW, but former unchallenged teacher controlled outcomes is costing the nation many billions and further entrenching privilege based outcomes over benchmarked best practise excellence! XXX PARAGRPH BREAK.XXX And unable to withstand the spotlight of official inquisition. XXXX PB XXX While art is important, I clearly can't be made more important than STEM subjects and what flows from a general proficiency in those subjects! XXX Sorry for the (X) paragraph break but the app Microsoft? Have downloaded? Without my consent or permission has eliminated the usual method? XXX Why? Because I'm at 75 and still recovering from a stroke can't tell them the password to the program. Theirs, already installed on the new computer I was forced to buy, WITH MONEY I DON'T HAVE because "someone" or something resented the fact that I wouldn't pay a tech for a widows 10 download, given I already owned a code validated copy on an EXPENSIVE disc. XXXX Thus far I have been forced to install a brand new hard drive on my comparatively new HP laptop, and when installing my validated copy of windows 10, was asked to hit any key.XXXX Before I had time to comply with the imported by someone else, app. The app said wrong key and shut the machine down with my very expensive disc locked in its innards. XXX Forcing me to go and buy a brand new laptop from a local retailer. And even though I obtained word from the store. Unable to use it or paragraph separation! XXX WHAT'S NEXT? OBLIGING ME TO REGULARLY FREQUENT LOCAL LIBERIES TO COMMENT? XXX Microsoft won't even recognise my email account because it is on somebody else's site. This lowest common denominator crap is where we all go, if we concentrate on IT and art over STEML!

At 75, nearly, I'm old enough to remember, how the better off sent their less able kids to university, via a vastly less challenging arts degree course and after a year or so of just mucking about and endless partying etc? XXX Were able to transfer to other subjects and learn how to cram exclusively for exams? Just to get a passing grade? XXX Then with a degree in their hand promptly forgot what they crammed and even so, were able to enter a profession where they as hopeless incompetents bumbled through or opted for politics? XXX And or public service? Where they often arrived with a headful of untested intellectual concepts and the knowledge that entrenched privilege and the OLD BOY'S CLUB? Protected them from their own shortcomings economic illiteracy and ineptitude? XXX And so we had whole of language replacing foundational phonetics and calculators allowed. Even through too many students became over reliant on their electronic devices well before they understood the mathematical formulas!? Go into any shop and ask a young person to count the correct change back into your hand, if only to understand half the problem? XXX The other, their almost exclusive engagement with electronic devices to the exclusion of normal face to face socializing and with it the development of normal human empathy! XXX Alan B.

I am wondering if anyone else has picked up on the subtlety of how these changes were introduced. What I mean is, what if these changes are a smoke screen for inept or incapable teachers. It's much easier to dream up a scheme that allows children the opportunity to not have to come up to a certain level, but it is really a way for the teacher to hide their shortcomings, because it is in fact the teachers and their flailing performance who are afraid of being graded. This therefore throws the attention on the students ans not on the teachers.