ACT's plan for NAPLAN review still up in the air as ministers meet

After its push for an Australia-wide review was approved by the Education Council late last year, the territory government drafted terms of reference, which are understood to have already drawn criticism from some jurisdictions ahead of their release.

Fairfax Media understands the review would be carried out over a number of stages, to allow for policy change before the entire evaluation is complete, rather than one big "roots-and-branch" approach as suggested by federal Labor on Thursday.

First under the microscope will be the publication of NAPLAN results on the MySchool website, which compares school performance to the national average and to similar schools. Critics have characterised the presentation of the data as creating "league tables" that become fodder for the media, influence parent choice and even stratify some schools along socioeconomic lines.

It is understood a key question for the review will go to the balance between the public interest of the data's publication and its misuse, an issue ACT Minister for Education Yvette Berry has long raised as a concern.

The next two stages are expected to look at whether the test is fit for purpose, with a particular focus on the flow on effect for learning and whether or not students are being taught "to the test", as well as the new study-aid market that has sprung up around NAPLAN.

But it is understood the ACT's initial plan, which was developed alongside the Schools Policy Group, is not sitting well with some jurisdictions, who want to examine the test itself in more detail first off.

The original remit for the review placed an emphasis on how to best inform parents of their child's progress, while improving streamlining and transparency within NAPLAN.

When the ACT government proposed the review to COAG in December, it pointed to an apparent trend of school shopping within the territory, that had seen some schools with low results hemorrhage enrolments while those with high marks faced capacity issues from the surge of families outside their area.

The territory suggested scaling back public reporting from an individual school level to jurisdictional and national, as well as exploring formative assessment tools made possible through the advent of NAPLAN Online. Such smaller and more frequent tests, which would allow teachers to track student progress "in real time", were also put forward in the Gonski 2.0 report released in April.

Momentum for an overhaul of NAPLAN has been building amongst states and territories ever since, with NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes urging the national assessments be dumped post haste, and other states including Victoria and Queensland also calling for a review.

While federal education minister Simon Birmingham still argues NAPLAN is a "very important" checkpoint for parents, he has left the door open to improvements down the track.

On Thursday, Federal Labor threw its support behind a comprehensive review of the assessment, though stopped short of calling for NAPLAN to be ditched altogether.

Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek told Fairfax Media the tests - which students take four times in their schooling lives, in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 - were making children sleepless and "sick with nerves".

Federal Labor's position indicates it wants a deeper review of NAPLAN, rather than tweaking how results are presented.

A review should look at "what we test and how we test it, not just how we report it", a Labor source said.

In May, NSW Labor's education spokesman Jihad Dib called for NAPLAN data to be immediately removed from the My School website, and backed the state government's push to dump the test.

The final terms of reference and time-frame of the ACT-led review, as well as whether or not to bring in an independent consultant, will be determined after further discussion by the Education Council. It is understood the territory had initially hoped to finish up the review in time for the next cycle of NAPLAN testing next year.

with Michael Koziol