Dear Parents,
All Schools, Government and Independent, are required by the Federal Government to participate in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Term 2. NAPLAN, which is a part of the National Assessment Program (NAP), is how Governments, Education Authorities and Schools can determine whether young Australians are reaching important educational goals.
In the lead up to NAPLAN testing students are being provided opportunities to familiarise themselves with testing conditions and types of questions they will be asked, to best prepare them to demonstrate their ability. These familiarisation tasks are particularly significant this year, as NAPLAN is moving to full-scale online delivery in 2021. In addition, all schools are required to participate in a Nationally Coordinated Practice Test (NCPT) in Thursday 25 March to test the operability of the online NAPLAN system at full load.
All Year 9 students will participate in the NCPT during lesson 3 on Thursday 25 March (Week 9). There is no need for students to prepare in advance; this session simply aims to test the various functions of the online testing system Anything the students write or answer during the practice test will not be recorded or marked.
Please note that adjustments for students requiring additional support, for example extra time or rest breaks, will not be required for the NCPT. These adjustments will however be applied as per usual to the May NAPLAN tests and Schools will be in contact with families regarding this. However should you be intending to withdraw your child from the May NAPLAN tests, please advise Ben Clark, Head of Middle School at bclark@stjohns.sa.edu.au as withdrawn students will not be required to complete the NCPT next week.
More information is available here: https://nap.edu.au/naplan, including an information brochure for parents. There is also a public demonstration site, which allows students and parents to experiment with the new online NAPLAN test format: https://www.nap.edu.au/online-assessment/public-demonstration-site
If you have any questions, then please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours sincerely
Nick Raimondo
Leader of Learning & Curriculum
