By Eryk Bagshaw and Education reporter
A parent at a western Sydney public school claims her child was asked withdraw from NAPLAN exams because it could affect the school's overall average mark.
In a letter to the NSW Department of Education, the mother says her child was "invited to withdraw" to "stop him from becoming stressed about the test". She elected for him to do the tests, which concluded on Thursday with maths.
The Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority strongly discourages schools from withdrawing students from tests as it prevents the individual's progress being measured over their schooling career. Since 2008, educators have been concerned that standardised testing could lead to increased competitiveness between schools.
The President of the NSW Teachers' Federation, Maurie Mulheron, said that concerns about students being asked to withdraw from testing had been bubbling around the private school sector for years.
"As a principal, I used to interview kids from private schools seeking enrolment who couldn't give me NAPLAN results as they had been told by their principal to stay home during the tests," he said.
The mother of the child in year 5, who asked to be referred to by her first name Gina, said that her son had been "singled out and specifically invited to withdraw from NAPLAN in 2014 and again in 2016". She said the situation was "very distressing."
"My son has learning difficulties, although he has not been diagnosed with anything other than mild dyslexia and dyspraxia," her letter to the Department of Education states.
"Earlier this year I was handed a form that 'invited to withdraw' him from NAPLAN. When I asked the teacher what the benefit would be for my son, I was told that it would save him 'becoming stressed' about the test.
"A public school ... should not be excluding students for the purpose of increasing their overall result," the letter states.
The school referred the Herald to the Department of Education. A spokesman for the department said the student had not been withdrawn.
"The Department of Education expects all NSW public school students to undertake the NAPLAN assessment unless they have been exempted or withdrawn through ACARA's guidelines and procedures," he said.
Overall, NSW has some of the lowest NAPLAN withdrawal rates in the country with the percentage of students withdrawing from tests across years 3, 5, 7 and 9 rising by only 0.3 per cent since 2010. At present just over 1 per cent of students in NSW are withdrawn from NAPLAN tests each year.
Attila Lendvai, the principal at a different school, St Anthony's in Girraween, said he was also aware of such incidents.
"We hear about things like that," he said. "That's not how we operate and even as a system, in our diocese, that's something we're actively against. We're not frightened of kids doing NAPLAN.
"NAPLAN should be reinforcing and maybe adding some greater depth but it should never be a shock to parents to open up and see my kid's results are through the roof, or languishing either."
A spokesman for ACARA said that NAPLAN was an essential tool for teachers and parents to track children's progress meeting the literacy and numeracy expectations of the Australian Curriculum.
"Participation allows teachers to validate what they know about their students' strengths and weaknesses in their class as a result of their own observations or in class assessments," he said.
- with Kelsey Munro