SATURATION testing is seriously undermining the quality of primary school education and should be stopped immediately, parents and educators claimed yesterday.

Thousands of kids are subjected to trial exams every week in the lead up to the compulsory Naplan tests, as well as exams for opportunity classes or selective high schools, and coaching by private tutors.

But while Naplan, which forms the basis of performance ratings on the My School website, focuses on literacy and numeracy, experts claim they are being "taught to the test" at the expense of other areas such as arts, physical education and music.

With the barrage of testing beginning in kindergarten, education consultant and public schools principals' forum official Brian Chudleigh said the system was "out of control" and skewing education in the wrong direction. A former senior principal who is the education expert for The Daily Telegraph's People's Plan, Mr Chudleigh said the testing regime was contributing to a "massive dysfunction" in the state's education system.

"We have become a system that is manic about measurement - the main problem is that it is so convenient for the politicians," he said. "They want to reduce things to the value of a percentile or a number, and that has an impact on education.

"If a kid can't be measured they don't want to know about it.

"It reduces the value of anything that you can't measure and the curriculum becomes focused on the measurable stuff," Mr Chudleigh said.

"So the development of the whole child - including socialisation, emotional welfare, physical fitness and cultural factors - are relegated in importance.

"Many schools are having two or three lessons every week practising Naplan-style tests and that takes valuable teaching time away from other subjects. A lot of the best stuff we do with kids, particularly in primary school, is not measurable.

"It's out of control. But our universities are littered with these kids who don't do as well there as the generally all-round educated students."

Federation of Parents and Citizens' Associations spokeswoman Rachael Sowden said being taught to the test was "not what parents want".

"They do not want to know that their child scored three marks more than the kid down the street," she said. "Parents are as concerned about the whole child and how they are going in creative arts, physical education and music as much as in literacy and numeracy.

"Parents do want to know where their child is up to at school and they do that best by having a conversation with the teacher."

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Mr Chudleigh claimed the "manic" testing regime enabled politicians to measure the effectiveness of a school through the results and then rank it.

But Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said Naplan was "designed as a diagnostic tool to measure student performance, not to determine the performance of a teacher or school".

"That is why I have always opposed simplistic league tables and the misuse of Naplan data," he said.

Mr Chudleigh said the increasing focus on Naplan in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 and on HSC results to determine a school's effectiveness was having a "negative input on the quality of our school product".

"This is having the effect of restricting children's access to and participation in the wider curriculum of creativity, culture, social and physical development," he said.

"Testing and reporting on progress is a vital component of any effective teaching and learning program.

"However our new plan will see a much more balanced approach where we return to our aim of developing the whole child and valuing all aspects of the curriculum - not just those that can be measured by a number."

Originally published as Overtesting give system a fail mark