Should NAPLAN testing be abolished? Good morning/afternoon students and teacher/s, Today I’m here to tell you why the national NAPLAN testing should be abolished. NAPLAN stands for the National Assessment Program- Literacy and Numeracy and it is a test designed to assess the academic performance of students. Many people that NAPLAN testing should be called off; I also agree with this. Firstly, NAPLAN interferes with the school curriculum. So much importance is being attacted to this test that other subjects in the school course become forgotten as teachers focus more on NAPLAN.

In preparation for this ‘so important’ test, teachers centre their teaching around certain topics and other subjects that are just as essential to a students learning seems to be deemed as insignificant. Much time is also put into the preparation for NAPLAN. The national survey conducted by the University of Melbourne found that in four months before NAPLAN, teachers had already started holding practise tests, while some were holding DAILY tests. The time spent being wasted on NAPLAN could have been put to better use, such as focusing on the curriculum, and actually benefitting the students and their learning.

Restricting the time means that teachers are trying to force a large amount of content onto students without properly teaching it. The schools curriculum so that students are learning the correct and necessary material, but the interruption caused by NAPLAN means that teachers fail to do this. Secondly, NAPLAN does not aid children’s academic development. NAPLAN was designed to be an assessment test so that parents can gain an understanding of their child’s academic performance, schools can see an overview of how well their students are doing and what areas need attention and also provide the government with a report of Australia’s education.

Normally, being able to receive feedback like this should be beneficial to a students education, but not in the case of NAPLAN. The individual results from NAPLAN are usually released around September, and the overall results even later. At September, the school year is close to ending and teachers have generally covered most of the curricular. Receiving NAPLAN results at such a late date means that review of results and changing of content being taught is pointless.