Recommendations

Recommendation 1

2.30    The committee majority recommends that ACARA and MCEECDYA explore and report publicly on ways in which to use below-average NAPLAN test results as a trigger for immediate assistance aimed at helping individual schools and students perform at appropriate levels.

Recommendation 2

2.45    The committee majority recommends that ACARA assess and report publicly on the potential benefits of moving to a system that reports the median rather than the mean school performance.

Recommendation 3

2.60    The committee majority recommends that MCEECDYA and relevant jurisdictional test administration authorities look at and report publicly on ways to ensure that children with disabilities are not discriminated against and denied the right to participate in national testing.

Recommendation 4

2.67    The committee majority recommends that ACARA analyse and report publicly on how NAPLAN tests are serving different groups of Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) students.

Recommendation 5

2.75    The committee majority recommends that ACARA investigate and report to MCEECDYA on enhancing NAPLAN to support the diagnostic needs of higher and lower student achievers.

Recommendation 6

2.80    The committee majority recommends that ACARA and MCEECDYA expand NAPLAN to include annual testing from years 3 to 10 in order to more accurately track student performance and give parents, teachers and policymakers a far better understanding of how students, teachers and schools, are progressing.

Recommendation 7

2.94    The committee majority recommends that MCEECDYA explore ways for state and territory test administration authorities to more strongly enforce security protocols.

Recommendation 8

3.36    The committee majority recommends that ACARA prioritises the improvement of the method used to develop like school comparisons and commits to the introduction of a method based on student-level SES data for all schools prior to the reporting of 2011 NAPLAN test results.

Recommendation 9

3.66    The committee majority recommends that ACARA and MCEECDYA examine and publicly report on ways to mitigate the harm caused by simplistic and often distorted information published in newspaper league tables.

Recommendation 10

3.83    The committee majority recommends that ACARA identify, analyse and report publicly on possible means of strengthening the relationship between NAPLAN tests and the wider curriculum. The committee majority reserves its support for any alignment between the tests and the new national curriculum until the quality of, and community support for, the curriculum become clearer.

Recommendation 11

3.99    The committee majority recommends that ACARA and MCEECDYA move to include more contextual information about schools on the My School website, reflecting the complex range of factors that affect schools, and acknowledge to users of the website their awareness of the limitations of comparisons based on raw performance data due to extrinsic factors. The committee majority further recommends that ACARA commit to ensuring this contextual information is available ahead of the reporting of 2011 NAPLAN results.

Recommendation 12

3.118    The committee majority recommends that ACARA and MCEECDYA comprehensively revise the type of information available on the My School website to shift the focus from raw school performance data to value-added measurement of school performance.

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