Summarising the sharp swings in education policy over the last two decades, the paper highlights the need for a ‘values-based’ vision of Australian schooling that renews and re-articulates the moral purpose of schooling, more akin to the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (2019). The Mpartnwe Declaration renews emphasis on closing the gaps in educational achievement and preparing students for a rapidly changing and challenging world.

The paper calls for transforming NAPLAN into a powerful digital learning tool by using the online test to provide immediate and ‘value-salient’ feedback to students.

Findings

• Evidence suggests that current policy settings and policy approaches are not working.
• Two decades of education policy in Australia have been pulling in different directions.
• Current Year 9 NAPLAN data show that disadvantaged students are more than four years behind their advantaged peers and one-third of disadvantaged students don’t meet minimum literacy and numeracy standards
• In Australia, NAPLAN is now the key measure of the performance of Australian students and Australian schools: and by default, performance in NAPLAN has become the surrogate goal of Australian schooling – conflating means with ends.
• An increased understanding of the ‘emotional brain’ and the ‘intertwined’ nature of cognition and emotion suggest that the ‘propositions’ of knowledge and the disposition of the learner need to coalesce in a more expansive vision of schooling.