National Assessment Program Literacy And Numeracy

I. Introduction The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a series of tests administered annually to all Australian students. NAPLAN is divided into separate components for Numeracy and Literacy, including Reading, Writing, Spelling and Grammar. An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2013 reported that students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) were performing better than students from English-speaking backgrounds (non-LBOTE) in both literacy and numeracy. LBOTE category broadly encompasses all students who speak a language other than English at home, or whose parents speak a language other than English at home. For the purpose of this report, only the Literacy component will†¦show more content†¦The tests are normally composed of approximately 40 questions. Narrative, informative and persuasive texts are the three main genres focused on by NAPLAN. Generally, students are given a writing prompt with the expectation they wou ld respond to one of the writing genres given. This reflects the variety of writing forms taught at school . The purpose of the tests is to monitor Australia’s education standards and identify students which require greater assistant and additional support at school. The tests provide data on the achievements of the students. By monitoring the performance of different categories of students, Governments and schools are able to recognise who needs support and target policy, funding and teaching facilities so that all Australian students receive the same opportunity to develop successfully in their education . There are numerous stakeholders in the NAPLAN tests. The Primary stakeholders are students, parents and teachers whereas the secondary stakeholders are the Schools/ principals and Jurisdictions. The primary stakeholder rely on the NAPLAN to monitor their skill levels in different areas, whilst the secondary stakeholders take appropriate action to address any deficiency in skill levels on the basis of the NAPLAN results . III. Proposed Criteria For Critical Evaluation In constructing tests it is important to ensure that they accurately measure the factors required to be tested,