The case of a teenage student named Ji who murdered his mother to prevent her attending a parent-teacher night and seeing his results (which were actually quite good, but she was incredibly demanding) drew attention to this system, and much public sympathy for Ji from many South Koreans who understood the pressures a student faces in that country. (Ripley, 2013)
India recently experienced a number of suicides for the same reasons: ‘TWENTY students have died by suicide in India this past week after the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) announced their exam scores. The Khaleej Times reports the exams have been marked in controversy after there were discrepancies in the results.’ Nearly 1 million students took the exams between February and March, and nearly 350,000 failed, causing widespread protests from parents, student groups and political parties. One student named Sirisha failed biology and set herself on fire at her home in the Narayanpet district on Saturday after her parents went out to the fields, according to the Khaleej Times. On Thursday, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao ordered the recounting and re-verification of the answer sheets of all students who failed and urged them not to die by suicide, adding failing the tests didn’t mean the end of their lives. (David Aaro, 2019)
The pressure to perform academically is also high in Japan, with reports that in 2014, for the first time, the most common cause of death of Japanese aged 10 to 19 was suicide.
According to the cabinet office, September 1 is historically the day when the largest number of children under 18 take their own lives. Of the 18,048 children who killed themselves between 1972 and 2013, on average 92 did so on August 31, spiking to 131 on September 1 and reverting to 94 on September 2. September 1 is the start date for the second semester of the school year. In addition to the competitive nature of Japanese education and society in general, ‘The bigger issue is the competitive society where you have to beat your own friends’.
Sahlberg has a very different take on this type of competition for grades: ‘Many people think that in today’s highly competitive and fast-changing era, children need to learn how to compete and become winners. However, my point is the opposite. The best way for students to adapt to competition and change is to teach them to cooperate, because in such a complex and ever-changing environment, creativity and adventurousness are more necessary, and these qualities can be nurtured and born only in an environment that encourages cooperation. So as an educator, I would not encourage students to study for the sake of competition and to win. On the contrary, I want to give them a relaxed and cooperative environment so that they will have the precious qualities and opportunities to make mistakes as well that they need to face challenges in the future.’ (Sahlberg, https://pasisahlberg.com, 2018)
Pasi Sahlberg is aware of the stress problem related to Australia’s standardised NAPLAN tests: ‘I heard some teachers telling how children are experiencing stress-related crying, vomiting and sleeplessness over the high-stakes standardised tests.’
In September 2018 news surfaced at a government inquiry of a Canberra fifth-grade student attempting to take his own life during a NAPLAN test. Reports detailed how Shane Gorman, the principal of Wanniassa High School in the capital’s south, said a teacher had found the student attempting suicide in the schoolground after walking out of class during a NAPLAN test.
‘People don’t realise the stress it puts on kids,’ Mr Gorman told an ACT inquiry into standardised testing. ‘Indeed, principals across the country are reporting a rise in incidents of mental illness, particularly anxiety in students which the schools are not resourced to deal with.’ (Cook, 2019)
In a move that hopefully signals the start of a shift in attitude to the GERM in Australia, the ACT Government established the inquiry into standardised testing to ‘examine its effectiveness and how it affects the mental health of students as well as the morale of teachers, as part of a push to change how data from those tests is reported’.
Mr Gorman said the student walked out halfway through the test—leaving a note—and then went to take his own life.
‘He was going to end it,’ Mr Gorman said.
Mr Gorman appeared alongside the ACT’s education union secretary Glenn Fowler, who told the inquiry public reporting of NAPLAN data caused stress for students.
‘If doctors said, in near unanimity, that a practice did more harm than good for their patients, would they be ignored for nine years?’ Mr Fowler said.
‘NAPLAN data should be removed from the My School website now and in perpetuity.’ (Evans, 2018)
Without being overly dramatic here, it is worth remembering that the Australian Capital Territory is the smallest (in size and second smallest in population) state or territory in Australia and the only reason this case was brought to public attention is that the ACT held an inquiry into standardised testing.
The conclusions of this and other inquiries into NAPLAN and standardised testing will need to find a way around the Australian Council for Educational Research which administers, monitors and creates the materials for NAPLAN. For reasons many find obvious, it cannot be expected to oppose a system of which it is such an integral part.
I contacted ACER to ask about its NAPLAN review methods. There was no response. Their website makes it clear that their focus is on educational measurement: ‘Our mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the lifespan.’
It is a mystery that an educationalist of the standing of Pasi Sahlberg should be resident in Australia working at the University of New South Wales and as an adviser to the Gonski Institute yet not have any role to do with ACER.
It (NAPLAN) just wouldn’t work in our (Finnish) system. Stressed kids are not learning and stressed teachers are not teaching. I wish and hope [Australia] provides more room for teachers to do more of the stuff that teachers do best and remove a lot of the rote and mechanical assessments and grading papers.
— Linda Liukas, Finnish education author
1 The National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an annual national assessment for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. All students in these year levels are expected to participate in tests in reading, writing, language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy.
2 Educational neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath explains how long periods of stress (as a third or fifth grader might see the NAPLAN tests) impact learning. Cortisol, the stress hormone that kills neurons in the hippocampus, has free rein to damage our gateway to memory. This withers away our ability to access previously formed long-term memories, and makes it difficult to learn new information. Cooney gives the example of being trapped somewhere with no possibility for escape (a possible scenario for us in primitive times); in this situation it makes a lot more sense to block out as much of the negativity as possible and simply survive until the ordeal is over. This is what the long-term stress response does: it helps prevent memories from forming during helpless situations. (Horvath, 2019)
3 Despite this, I am aware of at least one school (and I’ve no doubt there are many others) which has developed rubrics based on the very same NAPLAN language analysis test Prof. Perelman was referring to in a case of not only allowing NAPLAN to dictate the curriculum (which it was never designed to do and it has never been suggested was an appropriate approach to take with it) but actually taking the worst elements of NAPLAN and introducing them into the mainstream curriculum.
