‘If I do well in NAPLAN …’: Year 3 children’s perceptions of the tests as high-stakes

As debate surrounding Australia's National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests continues to rage, it is evident that the voices of the children, who are the primary stakeholders of this policy, remain silent. NAPLAN tests all Australian school students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9, with results published on the MySchool website. This policy emulates the neoliberal accountability agendas of English and US education systems, which are characterised by a political view that school improvement requires the articulation of higher achievement standards, the transformation of those standards into rigorous assessments and the modes of accountability based on test scores. Research on NAPLAN to date has focused predominantly on schools, school leaders and teachers. However, there is a considerable lacuna in the literature pertaining to children's experiences of the tests.This paper explores year 3 children's lived experiences of NAPLAN in a Catholic primary school serving a high SES community. The children drew a picture about their NAPLAN experience and wrote about their drawing after the conclusion of the tests. A focus group discussion was also conducted to gain further insights. While the study focused on the children's experience of the tests, it recognised that children's responses do not occur within a vacuum. Rather, these experiences are situated within multidimensional and complex relations between the various stakeholders of this policy. In order to explore this context, the teacher kept a diary and consented to the use of classroom observations by the researcher. Semi-structured interviews were also held with the teacher, one of the year 2 teachers, the principal and senior Catholic Education staff. Several parents contributed responses via email. Data were analysed utilising constant comparative analysis.The Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA) maintains that NAPLAN was not designed to be a high-stakes test. In addition, BCE attempts to mediate the potential impact of perceptions of NAPLAN as high-stakes testing. However many children in this class nevertheless perceived NAPLAN to be high-stakes, as they believed that their educational and economic futures depended on their acceptance into elite high schools and that their results on NAPLAN were an important factor in such selection