Facebook indicates: students and staff oppose NAPLAN tests

May 10, 2010
Issue 

Thousands of anti-NAPLAN supporters outnumber solitary pro-NAPLAN person!

Resistance, socialist youth organisation

Despite the Australian Education Union dropping its boycott of NAPLAN testing, protest on the social networking site Facebook shows overwhelming opposition to the tests - from teachers & students alike. One group which has over a thousand supporters is calling on students to "strike" against the tests, which have been linked to the production of League tables to simplistically rank schools.

Over 4, 000 people on facebook are fans of “NAPLAN sucks”, while “Stuff the NAPLAN test, lets do the student strike” has over 1, 200 members, and another 1,000 are fans of "Ban NAPLAN". Meanwhile, the only pro-NAPLAN group on facebook "Teachers 4 NAPLAN" has one solitary member!

Almost 40 Facebook groups have been set up explicitly opposing NAPLAN testing and League tables. Other groups to challenge NAPLAN include School Students Against League Tables. We refuse to sit the NAPLAN! (143 members), Don't give Julia Gillard the NAPLAN DATA (50 members) and Getting rid of NAPLAN Testing (68 members).

The 'pages' section of facebook has more quirky groups including For once I agree with teachers!! NAPLAN SUCKS!! (218 members) and The Bench Mark Test and NAPLAN can go die in a hole. (207 members).

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