Page 885 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 20 April 2021
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measure. In 2017 the Australia Institute produced a report into the performance of the ACT education system and called for a public inquiry. In 2017 the ACT Auditor-General published a report on performance information in ACT government schools which found that the majority of ACT government schools’ NAPLAN results were lower than similar schools in Australia. It said that “since 2014 reviews of ACT government schools had consistently identified shortcomings” and that these shortcomings “indicate a systemic problem”.
In August 2018 two researchers from the ANU published a working paper on academic underperformance in ACT schools which found that, when NAPLAN results of ACT schools were compared with schools from similar socio-economic profiles, a large number of ACT students were, on average, more than six months behind the levels of learning.
Ms Lee, as the previous shadow minister for education, moved a motion in this place in response to those reviews, and to others, calling for an independent inquiry into underperformance in ACT schools to ascertain the reasons for academic underperformance. Unfortunately, the minister has rejected those calls, so here we are again, discussing the underperformance of what could be, in my view, and in the view of my colleagues, so much better. By not heeding the message in that motion from Ms Lee, in many ways the minister continues to let down our hardworking teachers and students. And there is no excuse, Mr Deputy Speaker, because the ACT enjoys the highest socio-economic advantage of any Australian state or territory.
Indeed, when ACT Labor came to power in 2001, and in their 19 or 20-odd years since, their stance has always been that the ACT has one of the highest performing education systems in Australia. But you need to look into the detail to really understand its performance. As early as 2005, the ACT government was aware that there were problems. Analysis of publicly available national and international standardised assessments for the last 10 years has enabled the real outcomes of the ACT government school system to emerge; that is, long-term underperformance and downward trends in literacy and numeracy at both primary and secondary levels, whereby ACT students can be up to six months or more behind achievement levels in like jurisdictions.
The ACT performance is not simply a reflection of an Australian trend of stagnation in literacy and numeracy outcomes since the start of NAPLAN in 2008. There are a number of important sources of evidence that support the claim of underperformance in the system.
The first piece of evidence is the most recently reported education performance indicators available in the ACT Education Directorate annual report for 2019-20. Out of the seven key performance indicators, only one was met. On their own measures, the ACT education system is missing its performance targets, in some cases by up to 30 per cent, even though none of these targets that were set were particularly ambitious.
Indeed six indicators were missed, and some by a mile. I refer you to that report, Mr Deputy Speaker. But it was not only literacy and numeracy targets that were
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