Published on: 24 August 2023

  • NAPLAN – how Christ Church Grammar School uses the test results

NAPLAN can be seen by some as a controversial assessment tool that annually attracts comments about it being stressful for students, not indicative of a student’s overall performance and a test that generates data that isn’t used or useful.

At Christ Church, whilst we agree that NAPLAN is a moment in time, we willingly receive and review the data to generate information and then analyse this information to generate insights, make predictions and drive change. How do we know if this approach is working?

This year’s NAPLAN results indicate that the mean scores achieved by Christ Church students across Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are well above the state and national means in each domain of numeracy, reading, writing, spelling and grammar, and punctuation. We use NAPLAN results alongside other forms of evidence to inform teaching and learning, identify student growth and target intervention for learning. When NAPLAN results are used as part of a comprehensive data analysis process which includes school assessment and standardised test results, we are able to ascertain both broad achievement data for entire cohorts as well as track future learning growth for each student.

Please review the results document that includes the percentage of students in Years 3 to 9 who achieved results this year in the top two categories of Strong or Exceeding. It also includes the Christ Church mean, National mean and percentage of Christ Church students who are in the top 20% nationally. Below is the scale for NAPLAN results:

  • Needs additional support
  • Developing
  • Strong
  • Exceeding

It is also worthwhile reading the above information in the context of a recent West Australian newspaper article 23 August 2023, that found nearly twice as many boys as girls need extra support with reading, writing and other language skills in WA classrooms, and that this year’s NAPLAN results indicate that the gap is widening. So you could say, we are going against the trend.

We focus on reading, writing and mathematics in numerous ways that encourage students to learn and challenge themselves. The School also allocates time for staff to research new ways to teach boys, and we continually evaluate our pedagogy, the art and science of teaching, to ensure it is contemporary and prepares students for the future.

Alan Jones
Principal