Is NAPLAN really necessary?
Is NAPLAN necessary?
Stress. The thing that eats you up inside, like a ravenous, bloodthirsty animal. With an enormous appetite, this ruthless monster won’t stop until it’s satisfied, leaving your life in shreds. It’s the #1 factor of childhood anxiety, depression and other serious mental illnesses, and has one main factor. School; more specifically, tests. And what’s one of the biggest tests in your life that you take every two years, from Year Three all the way up to Year Nine? NAPLAN.
NAPLAN puts an enormous amount of pressure on young children to get unrealistically high results, and they will get extremely upset when they don’t do as well as they would’ve liked. It teaches them from a very young age that if they don’t get near - perfect scores, they’ve failed.
People always question you about your score. Grandparents, parents, siblings, teachers, classmates, they all are desperate to know how you did. The children can feel like they are being interrogated, and that everyone will be disappointed in them if their results aren’t faultless, even if this may not be the case.
Some people may say that NAPLAN lets teachers and parents know here their students and children are at. It’s a test to see if they’re having any learning difficulties, they insist. However, tests don't measure the academic ability of a child, just as a race doesn't prove the fitness of someone. They could be having a bad day or the idea of a test can put them off, and there are many other ways to see a child’s progress; for example, collecting samples from their past work.
In conclusion, NAPLAN shouldn’t be compulsory because it puts an unfair amount of pressure on children, people always question you about your score and it makes people hate tests for the rest of their life.
