Improvements in student outcomes are due to additional resourcing won in the Gonski campaign, not because of NAPLAN testing.
According to media reports today, new research identifies improvements in NAPLAN results correspond with the resourcing of state government programs.
ABC coverage notes Kogarah High School as one of the biggest improvers in the country in the latest NAPLAN results, released on the My School website today, but principal Julie Ross tells ABC News that students' improvements had nothing to do with NAPLAN testing but rather specialist programs, conducted with increased funding.
In reference to the study of 10 years of NAPLAN data, the online article states: "Children from poor families, regional and rural areas, and those with learning difficulties, are struggling the most in their quest to improve literacy and numeracy."
The ABC's reports for online and radio quote NSW Primary Principals Association President Phil Seymour calling for a review of NAPLAN. Ms Ross also thinks it's time to review NAPLAN.
"It's not being used in the way it was intended. It's very narrow, it doesn't assess what we teach," she says for her online interview.
Ms Ross was also interviewed for the ABC's also interviewed for the ABC's AM program: "The kind of testing that NAPLAN has become doesn’t give us the information that we need about kids. It's used by the My School website inappropriately. It's used to promote school achievement and it's used to denigrate other schools and I just think that it's inappropriate."