After exam chaos, parents to get NAPLAN ‘caveat’ but no mark adjustments

Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority chief executive Stephen Gniel, whose organisation oversees the tests, said the agency is conducting further analysis to assess the quality of test data and its longitudinal value following the technological chaos dubbed a NAPLAN “nightmare”.

The major outage occurred for students in the eastern states about 9.30am on March 11 for students in years 5, 7, and 9, and lasted for two hours. Students were made to sit make-up tests. Students in Western Australia were unaffected.

Gniel said there would be no mark adjustments, noting some might have been stressed by the experience while others may have a different reaction to resit the test, often the next day. Students faced the same questions during the resit.

“One of those students may have been advantaged by that, by having the time to think about it and plan, and the other student may have stressed overnight about what to say,” Gniel told a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday.

Education Services Australia, a little-known Commonwealth government-owned company in charge of providing the online testing platform, has commissioned an independent review. Education Services Australia outsourced the running of the online test platform to a company called Janison, which was also affiliated with last year’s selective test disaster in NSW.

Department of Education deputy secretary Meg Brighton told the hearing investigations had found the NAPLAN outage was not a “capacity issue” but said the problem arose with a “component” of the test platform.

NAPLAN was introduced in 2008 when Julia Gillard was education minister. It has repeatedly come under attack from different groups, including teacher unions.

This month, the Australian Government Primary Principals Association called for the writing section of the test to be immediately stopped after “significant problems” in the past two years.

“It’s not actually getting our kids ready for today’s society,” president Pat Murphy said.

Calls to scrap writing tests triggered a sharp rebuke from former chief scientist Alan Finkel, who wrote in The Financial Review that it was a fundamental skill for composing a letter, an email, an article or an essay – and allows the individual to compose their thoughts into a logical sequence that constitutes an informed opinion.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said in response to the proposal to axe the writing section of NAPLAN, he would take advice from ACARA. Gniel told the hearing: “We haven’t been asked to provide any advice to ministers based on that.”