Page 886 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 20 April 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
missed. None of the targets relating to students, staff or parents identifying with their school were achieved. That is concerning; it goes to cultural issues that we have seen in the past, and concerning issues of bullying and violence within the system.
The second piece of evidence supporting the claim of underperformance in the ACT school system is 13 years of NAPLAN. Compared to like jurisdictions, the ACT has been underperforming on these assessments since at least 2012, and that downward trajectory is continuing. No fewer than five independent reports examining ACT literacy and numeracy outcomes have concluded this. I quote from one of them, the Victoria University report, which says:
After taking account of intake and context differences, ACT government schools on average achieve negative results on every measure.
That is from a Victoria University report of 2017. These reports estimate that the deficit in learning can be up to six months by year 5, and it continues to get larger.
While NAPLAN is not perfect, and I recognise that, it is a very important tool to improve schools and teaching. It does provide transparency, and it does provide accountability. I am certainly open to reforms of NAPLAN, but I note that a recent report commissioned by the ACT and a number of other jurisdictions highlighted its worth. I note that in a number of reports that were done, including the Auditor-General’s, NAPLAN was strongly supported by ACT school principals as a very useful tool.
With such consistent underperformance in NAPLAN results, it is not surprising that the minister has sought to discredit it. I refer again, as Ms Lee has previously, to what Ms Berry said in 2019 to WIN News:
Data from NAPLAN is used to create league tables, and then belittles school communities and sort of points out dumb students, if you like, compared to the smart students.
That was a very disappointing comment. At the time, Ms Lee said:
NAPLAN isn’t an excuse to put insulting labels on our students, it’s an opportunity for teachers to assist our students in their learning.
I noticed that the minister did apologise for that, and hopefully we have moved on. We should not have a battle over NAPLAN; we should have a big fight about literacy and numeracy, and making that better. As I said, we are open to improvements.
The third piece of evidence supporting the claim of chronic underperformance in the ACT system is years of international standardised assessment of literacy and numeracy—PISA—and of literacy, numeracy and science—TIMSS. On the most recent PISA assessment, the ACT is below the average for comparably high Australian socio-economic advantage quartile groups on every indicator—literacy, maths and science.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video