Sydney Students Required to Retake the NAPLAN Test
Image: Photo: Flickr/Alberto G
Students at two Sydney schools were required to resit their NAPLAN writing exams after a technical glitch enabled predictive text and spellcheck during the test.
Year 5 students at Waverley College and Kambala were affected, with Waverley College immediately reporting the issue to the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).
The issue was discovered when a teacher at Kambala and students at Waverley noticed the Apple feature was active during the writing assessment. Predictive text, powered by artificial intelligence, can assist with spelling word completion and suggest responses based on a user’s writing style.
“The issue involved predictive text being inadvertently enabled during the test, potentially affecting our students’ submissions,” a Waverley spokesperson said.
Students were given a new prompt for the revised test but faced delays due to missing profile codes.
“Despite multiple requests, we did not receive the necessary student profile codes that would allow our students to access the test,” he added.
“We are aware that Waverley College is not the only school to have experienced these technical difficulties. Some schools may be unaware that predictive text features were enabled during their students’ assessments, and we hope that all students are evaluated under fair and consistent conditions.”
The students ultimately completed the test on Monday.
Kambala faces tech issue, Randwick High mixes up test order
At Kambala, the issue was limited to Year 5 students. A school spokeswoman confirmed the problem, stating, “A teacher identified the issue and reported it immediately to NESA and the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA).”
An ACARA spokesman emphasised that the problem was not widespread, noting that more than 880,000 writing tests had been successfully submitted. Schools had been instructed to disable predictive text before testing and were reminded again on the second day, NESA said.
In a separate incident, Randwick High students sat their literacy and numeracy tests out of order due to an administrative error.
“The school apologises for any inconvenience caused,” a NSW Department of Education spokesperson said.
Last year, 1.2 million students took NAPLAN, with only one case of cheating reported.
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