Legal liability and NAPLAN

No aspect of social justice was considered at the time of introduction of fear-based NY Kleinism by Education Minister Julia Gillard..... just dutiful mass compliance with her directions 'from above'. Despite the abundance of research and learned offerings about the deleterious effects on classroom learning and mental stability, it has continued under suspicious circumstances – the suspicion that it continues only because of the financial benefit to a few powerful people. Power politicians and naplanners, including some school-based personnel, who control its operations in Australia, continue to work to the satisfaction of the mega-rich publishing and android-program companies.

Who can restore learnacy without threats to basic schooling processes?

From the start, compliant school principals were marooned between the devil and the deep blue sea and remain there. It is unkind, perhaps, to suggest that their representative organisations and teacher unions were regarded as patsy groups and were easily rolled; but, as NAPLAN's central operators they now seem to operate with blind indifference....with a squawk or two, maybe. The situation has been described as eichmannism in an orwellian atmosphere.

Threats to child welfare are well known to the controlling body, ACARA. It disgracefully explains that 'being tough on kids' is part of the process of 'growing up'. It deliberately created an atmosphere that encouraged principals, teachers and the general public to believe this; and that the tests were mandatory....and that they were useful. Teachers knew that they shouldn't be cooperating, but the heavy, coercive and authoritative gestapo-like government controls [Federal over State, State over private and public schools], were compelling.

Principals were not allowed by state authorities to inform parents about the effects of high-stakes testing on classroom performance nor to generalise about the relative efficiency of various evaluation techniques. They were told, in many instances NOT to tell parents that they had the right to say "No"; and many senior officers wilfully interpreted this as being a compulsory direction to schools. Australian parents have never been asked if they would say 'Yes' to such a powerful intrusion into the normal school curriculum. No discussion has been allowed in any school with timorous leadership. Thousands of regional and state officers were told that they must comply and they did and passed the message along. Many state officers then ordered schools to include all children in the testing no matter what. Many naplanist officers even had the audacity to advocate that the purposes of the tests were learning-enhancing.

Teachers who show compassion to distressed kids during the tests have been shamed and even accused of cheating. There has been no limit to the spread of fear. 'Misdemeanours' are published as are school results.

Naplanists and neutralists seem to enjoy the distress of others. Meanwhile, teachers' unions and principal groups remain reluctant to stick up for kids and teachers. They have the power to stop the nonsense just by saying 'no' to the unethical and damaging assault on their professionalism, but they prefer to maintain the status quo. A ban on NAPLAN is not an industrial matter. It is a serious ethical one. Kids are victims of political assault.

Mr. Pyne, Federal Minister for Education, has been asked by members of the public to issue instructions to all Australian schools that a pro-forma be sent by each school to all school parents to seek parental permission for the school to include their children in the NAPLAN tests.

If no permission is received, no school really has any right to impose such external blanket stress-tests, as NAPLAN, on children under the age of 16 years.

He needs to do it fast.....or, preferably, ban NAPLAN.