Literacy researcher blames NAPLAN for poor student writing skills

The NAPLAN writing test has damaged students’ skills, cornered teachers into promoting formulaic methods and will soon be made redundant by artificial intelligence, a leading literacy researcher says.

Australia’s curriculum authority is reviewing possible changes to the way writing is assessed in NAPLAN, three years after Victoria and two other states called for the writing component to be overhauled or even scrapped.

The NAPLAN writing test is producing a generation of formulaic writers, a leading researcher says. Credit:Xaume Olleros

Dr Lucinda McKnight, a Deakin University education lecturer who is conducting a three-year federally funded research project into teaching digital writing in secondary schools, said the test was increasingly irrelevant to real-world demands.

“We know that NAPLAN has narrowed the teaching of writing, we know that it’s had a detrimental effect on teachers’ ability to teach,” she said.

McKnight participated in an expert panel on the teaching of writing at The Age Schools Summit on Thursday.

“They [teachers] have had pressure from parents and other people to teach in a very formulaic way. You only have to go to newsagents, you buy a book on how to write for NAPLAN in the most reductive formula, a dreadful sort of way,” she said.

Australian secondary students’ writing skills have gradually declined since NAPLAN was introduced, and McKnight said the test itself was contributing to the problem.

A landmark review of Australian students’ performances in the writing component of NAPLAN over more than a decade found that writing skills declined significantly since the test’s introduction in 2011.

The review, released late last year by the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), focused on the persuasive writing exercise in NAPLAN and found the decline in writing skills was worst in the secondary years. NAPLAN is taken in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

AERO chief executive Dr Jenny Donovan told the summit on Thursday that the teaching of writing had received less attention than that of reading, and the study showed this needed to change.

“Writing has had less attention; it needs the same type of explicit teaching that reading does, and that explicit teaching needs to happen throughout a student’s schooling,” Donovan said.

Without an explicit approach to teaching writing, she said too many students risked reaching secondary level without fundamental writing skills, such as the ability to structure a sentence.

But Donovan rejected the argument that NAPLAN itself was contributing to a decline in writing skills.

“It’s a really important tool and an opportunity to see how successful we are at teaching curriculum,” she said.

A major review of NAPLAN in 2020, triggered by the Victorian, NSW and Queensland governments, urged a total overhaul to the writing component of the test.

It found that the writing test was the most problematic part of NAPLAN because it encouraged formulaic writing and teaching. It found the writing test should be withdrawn and instead have students tested on a sample of their writing each year.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) is investigating options for reforming the writing test.

NAPLAN’s achievement bands have been simplified and cut from 10 to four this year.

ACARA has estimated 30 per cent of students who sat the test this month could fall below the new proficiency benchmarks for literacy and numeracy. This would be a significant increase in the proportion that fell below the previous national minimum standard.

Speaking at the summit, ACARA chair and Haileybury principal Derek Scott said it was widely agreed the national minimum standard was set too low when NAPLAN was introduced, and education ministers had “raised the bar on this” when setting the four new measures.

The proportion of students in the new lowest band – those who need additional support – “is likely to be higher than the national minimum standard, which I think most people would agree was set too low many years ago”, Scott said.

Last year, 84.1 per cent of year 9 students met the NAPLAN national minimum standard in writing, and 90.6 per cent of year 7 students met the standard.

In both year levels, the proportion of students above the minimum writing standard was below the figure achieved in 2011, when NAPLAN testing began.

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