Naplan Should Be Banned

Dear Editor,
I agree with the article “Testing times for NAPLAN” that the NAPLAN testing in which a million students in years 3,5,7 and 9 undertake numeracy and literacy tests should be banned . NAPLAN constricts teaching and learning, stifles creativity, pressurises kids and schools ,leads to comparison with other schools and does nothing to improve the students learning . NAPLAN will not improve Australia’s education system, indeed it is making it worse. Teachers do not get the chance to see the test papers of Individual students therefore the teachers cannot discuss results with students i.e. where the student went wrong and how they could improve . Parents, Teachers and students never even get the chance to receive the answers sheet so there is virtually no way telling were the student has gone wrong. Schools don’t know how to improve their learning problems to well after the NAPLAN results have been sent out in late September or October almost six months after these tests have taken place. Many schools spend the weeks prior to the test dates in preparing for the tests, stressing out students and stifling their creativity. This over preparing for the tests wastes the lessons time in which students should be learning other things. Schools and students must take time out of the school day just to complete the tests in which many students finish with plenty of time to spare. This just wastes teachers ,students and parents time .The NAPLAN tests are required to be taken at the same time this could interrupt many schools time frames with students doing the tests during their lunchtimes and before their school is usually meant to start ,and honestly what is the reason for this is it just so one student doesn’t text their friend at another school the answers to question 18 ?
Since the recent creation of the myschools website ,in which the government publishes the schools NAPLAN results online comparing it to other schools. This addition of a website now encourages many schools to cheat by having teachers change the answers or having a large class discussion about the questions or using a calculator in a non-calculator test this all just so the school can perform well. I’m pretty sure that the point of learning is not to be compared to others and just compare yourself to you so why compare a school to other schools?
Another point I would like to raise is that The Australian government says that the environment is important and that we should be sustaining it for future generations when about 12,000 trees are being cut down each year for these pointless tests I am honestly starting to doubt whether our government care about our precious environment after all. These tests cost the government around $100million each year ,this money could be spent on things like disabled people and hospitals. So why would you waste this money on something like pointless tests ?
In conclusion I believe that the NAPLAN tests should be banned because it stresses out students ,compares schools unfairly ,costs too much money and ruins our environment.