Page 50 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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interventions is needed to ensure that all students reach their full potential. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the strategy also values the critical importance of partnerships between home and school.
So what targets does this strategy set? By 2013 we will aim to increase the mean score in the NAPLAN tests in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 by eight points in reading, writing and numeracy. We aim to reduce the achievement gap for Indigenous students in reading, writing and numeracy by 25 per cent. We intend to go about this by ensuring that all ACT public schools include literacy and numeracy targets and strategies in their school plans and that these targets and plans will be based on NAPLAN data. Principals and teachers will use the SMART measurement assessment reporting toolkit. It is a computer tool to analyse NAPLAN results and to help develop school-based targets and strategies.
The My School website and all of the information that has become available as a result of its publication has shown that all of our schools can improve. Some need to improve across the board; others just in particular areas. What it does identify is that we need targeted strategies that work. Evidence and needs-based solutions are what we need and the government intends to implement those. It is my view that across the ACT education system in public, Catholic and independent schools we can set high expectations and we can achieve these goals.
We need to set high expectations of students, of teachers and of principals. As part of our literacy and numeracy strategy and a revamping of the education and training department, a new network school director model is being implemented to support and coach individual schools and principals. School leadership teams will establish a shared vision for literacy and numeracy teaching and learning in the school context. They will model and promote a professional learning community and promote common understandings of literacy and numeracy standards. They will develop teachers’ professional knowledge, teachers’ skills and teachers’ capacity to use research-based practices to improve their teaching of literacy and numeracy. Programs such as first steps and count me in too that have proved very successful in the ACT system will be rolled out. It is important that we have a detailed and considered response to the information that is available, but let us recognise the importance of this information being publicly available. It is crucial to reforming education.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Porter, a supplementary question?
MS PORTER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Could the minister provide details of the national literacy and numeracy partnership with the federal Labor government?
MR BARR: The literacy and numeracy national partnership aims to put in place the infrastructure and practices that will deliver sustained improvement in outcomes for all students, especially those who are falling behind. The national partnership supports reforms in schools that focus on effective and evidence-based teaching, strong school leadership and the effective use of student performance information to identify where support is needed.
In Canberra, 12 public schools, seven Catholic schools and six independent schools have been identified to receive support in the first two years of the national
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