Article published In:
Australian Languages: A challenge for applied linguisticsEdited by Michael Walsh
[Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 34:3] 2011
► pp. 320–343
Edited by Michael Walsh
[Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 34:3] 2011
► pp. 320–343
Naplan language assessments for Indigenous children in remote communities
Issues and problems
The National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) assessments are designed to assess literacy and numeracy of all Australian school children in years 3, 5, 7 and 9, and to act as diagnostics as to whether children are meeting intended educational outcomes. Tests began in May 2008, and have been run annually since then. Results of the 2008 tests indicated that Indigenous children in remote communities had the lowest test scores, and results were used to make a policy decision that effectively scrapped bilingual education in the Northern Territory.
In this paper, we evaluate the literacy component of the NAPLAN test for Year 3, and the language samples for each year level. Literacy components assess reading, writing and language conventions (grammar, spelling and punctuation), and we focus on the reading and language conventions components.
We argue that the NAPLAN tests need to be very carefully monitored for appropriateness for the assessment of children living in remote Indigenous communities. This is because tests are standardised on groups of English language speaking children. The content of some sample tests relies on cultural knowledge which Indigenous children cannot be expected to have. Spelling tests need to be monitored to ensure that they are testing spelling rather than grammatical knowledge. Finally, it is difficult to create language convention tests which are truly diagnostic because of the mixed test population of native English speakers, ESL learners and EFL learners in remote Indigenous communities.
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
References
ACARA (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority)
(2011a) National assessment programme: literacy and numeracy. Retrieved April 27, 2011, from [URL]/.
Berry, R. & Hudson, J.
(1997, October). The story of Feliks - bidialectal education. Paper presented at the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia Conference, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba.
Craig, N.
Elwell, V. M. R.
(1979) English-as-a-second-language in Aboriginal Australia: a case study of Milingimbi. MA thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
Genishi, C. & Brainard, M.
(1995) Assessment of bilingual children: A dilemma seeking solutions. In E. E. Garcia & B. O’Laughlin, (Eds.), Meeting the challenge of linguistic and cultural diversity in early childhood education (pp. 49–63). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Gutierrez-Clellen, V.
(1996) Language diversity: implications for assessment. In K. Cole, P. Dale & D. Thal, (Eds.), Assessment of communication and language (pp. 29–56). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Harkins, J.
(1993) Bridging two worlds: Aboriginal English and crosscultural understanding. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
Hudson, Joyce
1985 Grammatical and semantic aspeccts of Fitzroy Valley Kriol. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Kaldor, S. & Malcolm, I.
(1979) The language of the school and the language of the Western Australian Aboriginal schoolchild -- implications for education. In R. M. Berndt & C. H. Berndt, (Eds.), Aborigines of the west: their past and their present (pp. 406–437). Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Masters, G. N.
(2010, August). NAPLAN and My School: Shedding light on a work in progress. Teacher: The National Education Magazine, pp. 22–25.
MCEECDYA (Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development Youth Affairs)
McGregor, W.
(2004) The languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia. New York, Routledge.
Munro, J. M.
(2000) Kriol on the move: a case of language spread and shift in Northern Australia. In J. Siegel, (Ed.), Processes of language contact: studies from Australia and the South Pacific (pp. 245–270). Saint-Laurent, Quebec: Fides. [AGMV Marquis, Scabrini Group].
Ng, B.C. & Wigglesworth, G.
(2007) Bilingualism, an advanced resource book. London, Routledge.
Ovington, G.
(1992) Teaching English to Kriol speakers: the Kartiya game. In J. Siegel, (Ed.), Pidgins, creoles and nonstandard dialects in education. Occasional Papers No.12 (pp. 87–98). Toowoomba: Applied Linguistics Association of Australia.
Rhydwen, M.
(1996) Writing on the backs of the blacks: Voice, literacy and community in Kriol fieldwork. St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press.
Sandefur, J.
(1991) The problem of the transparency of Kriol. In I. G. Malcolm, (Ed.), Linguistics in the service of society (pp. 115–130). Perth: Institute of Applied Language Studies, Edith Cowan University.
Shnukal, A.
(1985) Why Torres Strait Broken English is not English. In M. Christie (Ed.), Aboriginal perspectives on experience and learning: the role of language in education (pp. 29–39). Deakin, Vic: University Press.
Siegel, J.
(2007) Creoles and minority languages in education: An update. Language and Education 21(1), 66–86. 
Simpson, J., McConvell, P. & Caffery, J.
(2009) Gaps in Australia’s Indigenous Language Policy: Dismantling bilingual education in the Northern Territory (AIATSIS Discussion Paper no. 24). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
(2011) Maintaining languages, maintaining identities: what bilingual education offers. In B. Baker, I. Mushin, M. Harvey & R. Gardner, (Eds.), Indigenous language and social identity: papers in honour of Michael Walsh (pp. 409–428). Canberra, Pacific Linguistics.
Thomas, W. & Collier, V.
(2002) A national study of school effectiveness for language minority students in long term academic achievement. Final report. Washington DC: Centre for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence.
Valdes, G. & Figuero, R.
(1994) Bilingualism and testing: A special case of bias. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.
Wigglesworth, G. & Simpson, J.
(2008) The language learning environment of preschool children in Indigenous communities. In J. Simpson & G. Wigglesworth, (Eds.), Children’s language and multilingualism: Indigenous language use at home and school (pp. 13–29). UK: Continuum International.
Cited by
Cited by 75 other publications
Adams, Emma K., Kirsten J. Hancock & Catherine L. Taylor
2020. Student achievement against national minimum standards for reading and numeracy in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9: A regression discontinuity analysis. Australian Journal of Social Issues 55:3 ► pp. 275 ff. 
Allen, Kelly-Ann, Margaret L. Kern, Dianne Vella-Brodrick & Lea Waters
2017. School Values: A Comparison of Academic Motivation, Mental Health Promotion, and School Belonging With Student Achievement. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist 34:1 ► pp. 31 ff.
Anderson, Peter, Owen Forbes, Kerrie Mengersen & Zane M. Diamond
2024. Patterns of educational performance among Indigenous students in Australia, 2010–2019: Within-cohort, peer matching analysis for data-led decision-making. Australian Journal of Education
Bell, Megan F., Leonie Segal, Susan Dennison, Stuart A. Kinner, Sharon Dawe, Matthew J. Spittal & David B. Preen
2023. Numeracy and literacy attainment of children exposed to maternal incarceration and other adversities: A linked data study. Journal of School Psychology 100 ► pp. 101241 ff.
Bianco, Joseph Lo & Yvette Slaughter
2016. Bilingual Education in Australia. In Bilingual and Multilingual Education, ► pp. 1 ff.
Lo Bianco, Joseph & Yvette Slaughter
2016. Bilingual Education in Australia. In Bilingual and Multilingual Education, ► pp. 1 ff.
Lo Bianco, Joseph & Yvette Slaughter
2017. Bilingual Education in Australia. In Bilingual and Multilingual Education, ► pp. 347 ff.
Brown, Natalie & Kim Beswick
2014. Policy and Curriculum Research in the Context of Change. In The Future of Educational Research, ► pp. 3 ff.
Brown, Prudence R. & Sarah A. Warner
2022. Is Indigeneity hidden in the shadow of Australian national school reforms?. Australian Journal of Social Issues 57:2 ► pp. 314 ff.
Buchanan, John
2020. Basic, Basal Skills and Their Effects on Higher Order Thinking. In Challenging the Deprofessionalisation of Teaching and Teachers, ► pp. 87 ff.
Carter, Don, Jacqueline Manuel & Janet Dutton
2018. How do secondary school English teachers score NAPLAN? A snapshot of English teachers’ views. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 41:3 ► pp. 144 ff.
Creagh, Sue
2016. A critical analysis of the Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) category in the Australian national testing system: a Foucauldian perspective. Journal of Education Policy 31:3 ► pp. 275 ff.
Creagh, Susan
2016. ‘Language Background Other Than English’: a problem NAPLaN test category for Australian students of refugee background. Race Ethnicity and Education 19:2 ► pp. 252 ff.
Devlin, Brian
2017. Sources of Evidence on Student Achievement in Northern Territory Bilingual Education Programs. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory [Language Policy, 12], ► pp. 185 ff.
Devlin, Brian
2017. Policy Change in 2008: Evidence-Based or a Knee-Jerk Response?. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory [Language Policy, 12], ► pp. 203 ff.
Disbray, Samantha
2014. Evaluating the Bilingual Education Program in Warlpiri schools. In Language Description Informed by Theory [Studies in Language Companion Series, 147], ► pp. 25 ff.
Disbray, Samantha & Gillian Wigglesworth
2019. Indigenous Children’s Language Practices in Australia. In The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities, ► pp. 357 ff.
Dixon, Sally
Dixon, Sally & Denise Angelo
2014. Dodgy data, language invisibility and the implications for social inclusion. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 37:3 ► pp. 213 ff.
Edmonds-Wathen, Cris
2015. Indigenous Language Speaking Students Learning Mathematics in English: Expectations of and for Teachers. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 44:1 ► pp. 48 ff.
Fletcher, Anna
2021. Australia’s National Assessment Programme rubrics: An impetus for self-assessment?. Educational Research 63:1 ► pp. 43 ff.
Freebody, Peter
2019. Afterword: Being Literate in ‘Australian’: The Future Can. In Literacy Education and Indigenous Australians [Language Policy, 19], ► pp. 313 ff.
Freeman, Leonard, Neil Bell, Tarna Andrews & Peggy Gallagher
2017. The Areyonga Case: U t u l u Kutju Nintiringanyi ‘Learning Together’. In History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory [Language Policy, 12], ► pp. 219 ff.
Freire, Melissa R. & Kristen Pammer
2020. Influence of culture on visual working memory: evidence of a cultural response bias for remote Australian Indigenous children. Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science 4:3 ► pp. 323 ff.
Freire, Melissa R. & Kristen Pammer
2022. Reading as A Cultural Tool for Neurocognitive Development: A Complex Interactive Relationship between Reading Acquisition and Visuospatial Development for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Journal of Cognition and Development 23:3 ► pp. 411 ff.
Freire, Melissa Renee & Kristen Pammer
2019. Reading Between the Lines: Neurocognition and Reading Acquisition in Remote Indigenous Australia. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 50:3 ► pp. 460 ff.
Godinho, Sally Caroline, Marilyn Woolley, Jessie Webb & Kenneth Daniel Winkel
2015. Sharing Place, Learning Together: Perspectives and Reflections on an Educational Partnership Formation With a Remote Indigenous Community School. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 44:1 ► pp. 11 ff.
Guenther, John
2013. Are We Making Education Count in Remote Australian Communities or Just Counting Education?. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 42:2 ► pp. 157 ff.
Guenther, John & Samuel Osborne
2020. Did DI do it? The impact of a programme designed to improve literacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote schools. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 49:2 ► pp. 163 ff.
Heffernan, Amanda
2018. The Queensland Context: A Site of Rapid and Urgent Reform. In The Principal and School Improvement [Educational Leadership Theory, ], ► pp. 51 ff.
Heffernan, Troy A. & Jacinta Maxwell
2020. The media’s coverage of ‘Closing the Gap’ in Australian education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 41:6 ► pp. 926 ff.
Hempenstall, Kerry
2015. Spelling Mastery and Spelling through Morphographs: Direct Instruction programs for beginning and low-progress spellers. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties 20:1 ► pp. 55 ff.
Heugh, Kathleen, Cas Prinsloo, Matthews Makgamatha, Gerda Diedericks & Lolita Winnaar
2017. Multilingualism(s) and system-wide assessment: a southern perspective. Language and Education 31:3 ► pp. 197 ff.
Kiernan, Rachael, Wendy Pearce & Kieran Flanagan
2023. Home language variation in the narratives of urban First Nations Australian children in their first year of school. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics ► pp. 1 ff.
Kral, Inge
2016. From the Local to the Global. In Beyond Economic Interests, ► pp. 61 ff.
Kral, Inge & R. G. Schwab
2016. A space to learn: A community-based approach to meaningful adult learning and literacy in remote Indigenous Australia. PROSPECTS 46:3-4 ► pp. 465 ff.
Kumar, Sanjeev
2024. Impact of Assessment on Childhood Education Theories and Practice. In Modern Early Childhood Teacher Education [Advances in Early Childhood and K-12 Education, ], ► pp. 84 ff.
Macqueen, Susy, Ute Knoch, Gillian Wigglesworth, Rachel Nordlinger, Ruth Singer, Tim McNamara & Rhianna Brickle
2019. The impact of national standardized literacy and numeracy testing on children and teaching staff in remote Australian Indigenous communities. Language Testing 36:2 ► pp. 265 ff.
Mantei, Jessica & Lisa Kervin
2021. Examining children’s interpretations of teacher expectations in the literacy classroom. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 44:2 ► pp. 37 ff.
McCallum, Kerry, Tess Ryan & Jo Caffery
2022. Deficit metrics in Australian Indigenous education: through a media studies lens. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 43:2 ► pp. 266 ff.
Menken, Kate
2013. Emergent bilingual students in secondary school: Along the academic language and literacy continuum. Language Teaching 46:4 ► pp. 438 ff.
Morgan, Anne-Marie, Nicholas Reid & Peter Freebody
2023. Literacy and Linguistic Diversity in Australia. In Global Variation in Literacy Development, ► pp. 203 ff.
Murphy, Annemarie, Benjamin Bailey & Joanne Arciuli
2023. Exploring the Effects of Literacy Instruction for Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 54:1 ► pp. 299 ff.
Nguyen, Bich, Rhonda Oliver & Judith Rochecouste
2015. Embracing plurality through oral language. Language and Education 29:2 ► pp. 97 ff.
Oldfield, Janine
2022. Racing neoliberalism and remote Indigenous education in the Northern Territory of Australia: a critical analysis of contemporary Indigenous education language policy and practice. Language and Intercultural Communication 22:6 ► pp. 694 ff.
Oliver, Rhonda, Honglin Chen & Stephen Moore
2016. Review of selected research in applied linguistics published in Australia (2008–2014). Language Teaching 49:4 ► pp. 513 ff.
Oliver, Rhonda & Helen CD McCarthy
2019. Using Facebook as a Conduit to Communicate: Translanguaging Online. In Literacy Unbound: Multiliterate, Multilingual, Multimodal [Multilingual Education, 30], ► pp. 183 ff.
Osborne, Sam
2013. Learning Versus Education: Rethinking Learning in Anangu Schools. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 42:2 ► pp. 171 ff.
Pammer, Kristen, Melissa Freire, Cassandra Gauld & Nathan Towney
2021. Keeping Safe on Australian Roads: Overview of Key Determinants of Risky Driving, Passenger Injury, and Fatalities for Indigenous Populations. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18:5 ► pp. 2446 ff.
Poo, Manono & Hamsa Venkat
2021. Approaches That Leverage Home Language in Multilingual Classrooms. In Multilingual Education Yearbook 2021 [Multilingual Education Yearbook, ], ► pp. 39 ff.
Reyes, Vicente, Louise Phillips, M. Obaidul Hamid & Ian Hardy
2024. Navigating datascapes: mapping testing practices within and across national and global contexts. Learning, Media and Technology 49:1 ► pp. 109 ff.
Rose, Judy, Samantha Low-Choy, Parlo Singh & Daniela Vasco
2020. NAPLAN discourses: a systematic review after the first decade. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 41:6 ► pp. 871 ff.
Schulz, Samantha, Melanie Baak, Garth Stahl & Ben Adams
2021. Restorative practices for preventing/countering violent extremism: an affective-discursive examination of extreme emotional incidents. British Journal of Sociology of Education 42:8 ► pp. 1227 ff.
Scull, Janet
2016. Effective literacy teaching for Indigenous students: Principles from evidence-based practices. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 39:1 ► pp. 54 ff.
Scull, Janet & Debra Hannagan
2019. Early Literacy: Strengthening Outcomes Through Processes of Collaboration and Engagement. In Literacy Education and Indigenous Australians [Language Policy, 19], ► pp. 203 ff.
Sellwood, Juanita & Denise Angelo
Shohamy, Elana & Kate Menken
2015. Language Assessment. In The Handbook of Bilingual and Multilingual Education, ► pp. 253 ff.
Solano-Flores, Guillermo, Eduardo Backhoff, Luis A. Contreras-Niño & Mariana Vázquez-Muñoz
2015. Language Shift and the Inclusion of Indigenous Populations in Large-Scale Assessment Programs. International Journal of Testing 15:2 ► pp. 136 ff.
Spillman, David
2017. A Share in the Future . . . Only for Those Who Become Like ‘Us’!: Challenging the ‘Standardisation’ Reform Approach to Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 46:2 ► pp. 137 ff.
Stacey, Meghan
2020. Teachers’ Work Within the Market: Cases from Schools in the Lower-Tier. In The Business of Teaching, ► pp. 59 ff.
Stacey, Meghan
2022. Deficit discourses and teachers’ work: the case of an early career teacher in a remote Indigenous school. Critical Studies in Education 63:1 ► pp. 64 ff.
Steele, Carly, Sender Dovchin & Rhonda Oliver
2022. ‘Stop Measuring Black Kids with a White Stick’: Translanguaging for Classroom Assessment. RELC Journal 53:2 ► pp. 400 ff.
Steele, Carly & Gillian Wigglesworth
2023. Recognising the SAE language learning needs of Indigenous primary school students who speak contact languages. Language and Education 37:3 ► pp. 346 ff.
Su, Jiunn-Yih, Steven Guthridge, Vincent Yaofeng He, Damien Howard & Amanda Jane Leach
2020. The impact of hearing impairment on early academic achievement in Aboriginal children living in remote Australia: a data linkage study. BMC Public Health 20:1
Thomas, Archie
2024. ‘The economic world of choice’: mainstreaming discourses and Indigenous bilingual education in Australia 1998–99. Critical Discourse Studies 21:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Thompson, Greg & Allen G. Harbaugh
2013. A preliminary analysis of teacher perceptions of the effects of NAPLAN on pedagogy and curriculum. The Australian Educational Researcher 40:3 ► pp. 299 ff.
Vaughan, Jill & Debbie Loakes
2020. Language Contact and Australian Languages. In The Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 717 ff.
Wang, Danping
2023. Integrating Indigenous epistemologies into mainstream foreign language teaching. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 46:2 ► pp. 186 ff.
Watts, Janet, Rod Gardner & Ilana Mushin
2019. Da Symbol Dat Under da Stuffs: Teaching the Language of Maths to Aboriginal Learners of Standard Australian English as a Second Dialect. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 48:1 ► pp. 66 ff.
Weuffen, Sara & Kym Willis
2023. The Fallacy of Cultural Inclusion in Mainstream Education Discourses. In Inclusion, Equity, Diversity, and Social Justice in Education [Sustainable Development Goals Series, ], ► pp. 91 ff.
Wigglesworth, Gillian & Rosey Billington
2013. Teaching creole-speaking children. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 36:3 ► pp. 234 ff.
Wigglesworth, Gillian, Rosey Billington & Deborah Loakes
2013. Creole Speakers and Standard Language Education. Language and Linguistics Compass 7:7 ► pp. 388 ff.
Wigglesworth, Gillian & Peter Keegan
2013.
Assessing
Australian
and
New Zealand
Indigenous Languages
. In The Companion to Language Assessment, ► pp. 1949 ff.
Windle, Joel, Kathleen Heugh, Mei French, Janet Armitage & Gabriel Nascimento dos Santos
2023. Southern multilingual moves in education: agency, citizenship, and reciprocity. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 20:3 ► pp. 279 ff.
[no author supplied]
2016. References. In Remote Avant-Garde, ► pp. 235 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.