Motions from the APPA Conference: Delay the NAPLAN Data

At the APPA National Conference last week, the following motions were passed unanimously by all delegates:

Motion #1

APPA urges the Government to delay the publication of school performance information on a national website until it is able to post on the website the total per student funding allocated to each school.

Motion #2

APPA urges the Government to post the reliability and validity of the NAPLAN tests on the website and explicitly state the margin of error that must be taken into account when comparing individual student results and individual school results.

The motions were sent immediately to the Australian Government, and the following media release was issued by APPA.

Click here to download the media release.

Call for delay of school test results publishing

More than 700 primary school principals will call for a delay to the publishing of NAPLAN test results amid fears schools will be unfairly judged if results are published next year.

The Australian Primary Principals’ Association (APPA) will put two motions about the publication of national test results to its national conference on Friday, calling on the Federal Government to make good on its commitment to publish schools’ levels of funding.

The Federal Government has committed to publishing national test results in 2010, but will not make school funding information available until 2011.

APPA will also call for the publication on the website of the margin of error of NAPLAN test results that would apply when comparing student and school results.

APPA president Leonie Trimper said that the Federal Government’s decision to publish test results without making these details available would lead to unfair comparisons between schools.

“There are huge differences in resource allocation between some schools and this is a critical factor in assessing performance,” she said. “We know from our research In the Balance that many schools with the greatest need receive less funding than other schools, with differences in funding of as much as $10,000 per student among low socioeconomic status schools.”

Ms Trimper said the delay would mean schools would be judged without consideration of differences in funding provided to each school.

APPA also called for the margin of error of NAPLAN test results to be published to provide a clear understanding of the reliability and validity of the results. The call followed the release of a paper written by Margaret Wu, Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, who found large scale assessments such as NAPLAN had large measurement errors in the interpretation of results. Associate Professor Wu found high stakes decisions should not be made on the basis of tests such as NAPLAN due to large measurement errors when interpreting results at the student and class levels.

“It’s unfair that schools are being asked to be transparent, but the Government is not following suit,” Ms Trimper said. “We must ensure that schools can be judged based on the full amount of information, not just the test results alone.”