NAPLAN and ideology.
It's not about evidence.
Rather than NAPLAN and MySchool reflecting an abstract version of Australian schooling, they are perhaps remaking Australian schooling in their image - Radhika Gorur
17 years of NAPLAN reporting, approximately $1.7 billion of taxpayer spending1, teacher bashing and misrepresentations of educational quality in Australia.
You might want to reflect on that for a minute.
Reporting time for NAPLAN routinely becomes an important opportunity for politicians to justify reform through the construction of a crisis narrative in Australian education, as think tanks and education ministers across the country seek to capitalise on the media cycle to present solutions to the constructed problems extrapolated from these results.
What the recent reporting of NAPLAN has done has highlighted how the nation’s results are interpreted in particular ways by various actors as a means of pursuing specific ideological agendas for Australian education.
Let’s go.
Pre-packaged answers.
The reporting of NAPLAN across the country this year has made something bleedingly obvious to educational researchers.
NAPLAN is ideological territory.
The extremely quick turnaround of articles following the release of Australia’s NAPLAN results, including the “misguided and unhelpful” interpretations of the data, give us the impression that NAPLAN reporting is not as factual as we might hope.
This gives an indication of just what kind of pressure our journalists are under in our current way of consuming news. Larson (as cited in Apple, 2012, p. 122) wrote in the 80’s that the intensification of reporter’s work had led to an increase in dependence “on prescheduled, preformulated events’ in which they rely more and more on bureaucratic rules and surface accounts of news provided by official spokespersons.”
Arguably, this is what we’re increasingly seeing in Australian news reporting on education, as important voices become sidelined in favour of prominent think-tanks and selected voices. Not only do these voices seem to be ready to have the first say on what NAPLAN means for Asutralian education, they also seem to have the answers ready for our politicians to run with.
For example, following the recent NAPLAN results the Grattan Institute and the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) have teamed up to call for more tests to label students “struggling” with numeracy. Both groups are keen to denounce the government’s increasing investment in education yet ask for the government to pay for a screening test that:
Has no evidence base that it will improve student outcomes.
Assumes teachers are not already identifying these students.
Has nothing to offer to support (very) young children that have difficulties with mathematics except a label.
These articles conveniently came out a month after CIS released a paper calling for early numeracy screening.
It should come as no wonder why CIS wants NAPLAN to be taken seriously.
We must critically consider why this might be so.
It’s never just about the evidence.
Although NAPLAN reporting is relatively short in the scheme of things, it is used as a basis for advancing particular ideological agendas that can have lasting effects upon our students, teachers and school communities.
This is true for every side of the argument.
In order to ensure we’re making the most informed decisions in regard to the education of our future generations, it is my argument that we first acknowledge the way that NAPLAN is used as a tool for ideological agendas in education. After all, even the National Assessment Program (NAP) advise that “NAPLAN results do not measure overall school quality”. These agendas are based on ideological perspectives of how schooling in Australia ought to function, what the problems are, and their solutions.
The reason I am highlighting the ideological nature of this reporting is not to argue for another way that is not ideological, but so that we’re clear that when it comes to making decisions about what ought to happen in Australian schools, we are making ideological decisions. The evidence used to justify such claims are often cherry picked on ideological grounds to suit a specific agenda for schooling and rarely represent an “objective” picture of what schooling in Australia looks like.
The evidence is clear.
A recent opinion piece by the Grattan Institute claimed that the evidence was “clear” that synthetic phonics will improve the reading of our most disadvantaged readers. Yet, there is no mention of the way that the imposition of synthetic systematic phonics in disadvantaged schools in the Northern Territory made no improvement to NAPLAN reading results2.
Take for another example, the way that Australia seeks to emulate “top performing” countries in PISA tests, such as Singapore. Singapore interestingly (at least from an initial glance) describes teaching as the “facilitation of student learning” and does not mention explicit or direct instruction as part of teaching practice, which is currently being pushed as the “saviour” for schools following NAPLAN reporting. Furthermore, Singapore doesn’t have any census assessments for literacy and numeracy. Often, these important practices of countries that we are convinced we need to emulate are left out of the discussion.
This is another reminder that it’s never just about the “evidence”, but about the ideological desires that actors in education seek to have upon our schools. There is always the problem of whose evidence is presented, how the evidence is chosen and what evidence is left out.
Making decisions about education should reflect the complexity of the project itself, inclusive of the diversity of practices that make it happen. Presenting supposedly definitive solutions to educational problems (however defined) is always going to leave us disappointed.
If the evidence is clear about anything, it’s that we still can’t agree on how educational change needs to happen.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.
Till next time,
References
Apple, M. W. (2012). Knowledge, Power, and Education : The Selected Works of Michael W. Apple. Taylor & Francis Group. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/deakin/detail.action?docID=1101370
Before you go.
Are you a teacher in Australia?
If you enjoyed reading this post and would be keen to join a group of other like-minded teachers interested in investigating the ideological nature of their work, I am facilitating a project in 2025 where a community of teachers will meet together to do this very thing!
If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to me via email, or have a read of the blog post below 👇
Something a little different.
Critical reflection is not a remedial tool; it’s a stance of permanent inquiry - Stephen Brookfield
This is based on a figure that has often been quoted that NAPLAN costs Australia approximately $100mil per year. Happy to be corrected!
Thank you to George Lilley who highlighted this important study to me.
Nicely said Tom. Long ago I wondered about why we should seek to emulate Singapore which is quite socially different from us, yet not emulate Finland which is more similar socially. And once again, I am heartened to hear someone pointing out how much of what is imposed on schools is used as ideological tools. The problem is systematic and I am not sure any more if the politicians who get involved are even aware of what they do. Perhaps it is the bureaucracy below political level that maintains that ideology. I wondered in my last years of teaching if there was a feedback loop of upper bureaucrats and politicians who maintained what I regard as poor beliefs about teaching, that kept those beliefs alive despite evidence, similar to what was so humorously portrayed in the BBC TV program 'Yes minister'.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and the roll out of the new curriculums.
There is so much focus on content and ticking off what students need to be able to do, but surely we should be looking towards skills such as curiosity, problem solving and critical thinking just to name a few? Reading and numeracy is important but should be informed by different means of real life data collection.