Tamworth: St Edward's Primary School students embark on NAPLAN

Students in year 3, 5, 7 and 9 across the country were tested to kick off another year of the annual examinations on Wednesday, March 15.

Year 5 student Nash said he sometimes gets stressed, and likes some subjects more than others.

Fellow year 5 student Pyper Lace said she was asked to write a narrative about a certain text, and had to include a pebble, rock, and boulder.

READ MORE:

Children were tested on their ability to understand the core components of what makes a good piece of writing, St Ed's assistant principal and NAPLAN coordinator Alison Hatton said.

"Good pieces of writing have great structures, and they have great targeted punctuation, good vocabulary, all those key elements," she said.

Andrew Millman is also a St Ed's NAPLAN coordinator, meaning he floats between the classrooms during the testing to make sure everything is going smoothly.

Tests were brought forward to March this year, so schools can see results earlier, and get to work accordingly.

"In previous iterations of NAPLAN, you would wait till mid term three to get results back," Mr Millman said.

"And then you can't really act on that during that school year.

"From that perspective, we were very happy with that change."

Another change to the examinations is that results will be categorised into four bands. Those bands are: exceeding; strong; developing; needs additional support, which differs from the previous bands which were numbered up to 10.

"That is a bit of an unknown for all schools at the moment," Mr Millman said.

"We will wait to see the results and see how that changes those four levels that the children fall into."

But it could mean students, parents, and teachers could all have an easier time understanding the results, he said.

It would be surprising for a child to have a NAPLAN result that teachers weren't expecting, he said.

"We just want them to have their best go on the day and feel proud of their efforts," he said.

Ms Hatton said the best result is when NAPLAN cross correlates, and every other assessment throughout the year tells a similar story.

"Those conversations are the ones that we look for, not things so much in isolation," she said.

"It is one test on one day."

Year 5 St Ed's students will have their reading tested on Thursday, March 16, and the examination event will finish up on March 27.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: