Page 1849 - Week 05 - Thursday, 6 May 2010
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The social indicator identified as most likely to have a negative influence on … educational experiences … was socio-economic disadvantage. Low socio-economic status will increase the risks that students will not fully engage with the education system and that opportunities to reach their educational potential will be reduced.
The Committee concluded that there is an education achievement gap in the ACT evidenced by subgroup performance in standardised assessment tests as well as by the qualitative experiences of experts working in the field and who have provided evidence to the Inquiry.
During the inquiry we heard from a number of groups, and I thank all those people who participated. We heard some excellent evidence in particular from Dr Ainley from ACER. That was extremely informative and highlighted a number of the issues which I have mentioned. Let me read an extract from some of the evidence that he provided to the committee, again on socioeconomic background. Dr Ainley noted:
For kids of low socioeconomic background in relatively deprived areas the importance of the quality of the teaching is even greater because there is less opportunity for those children to pick up the skills, to learn the skills, from other experiences. If you have a lot of books at home and your parents are engaged in reading with you then it is less of an issue what happens in the classroom than if you do not have those resources.
This again picks up on quality teaching, which Dr Ainley said is one of the key factors in ensuring that students receive a quality education and for students that have issues when it comes to achieving and education. That was one of the big issues. We heard about quality teaching from the education department and the minister. It has been a focus of the ACT government, and we acknowledge that. It is good that that issue has been recognised, but Dr Ainley noted that that was a key issue.
We also heard from Professor McConaghy from the Centre for Research on Education, Poverty and Social Inclusion at the University of Canberra. That was also about the importance of getting students who may have learning difficulties or come from disadvantaged backgrounds at an early age. It is important to get that. If you do not do it by a particular age, you may have lost them all and the ability to reduce that education achievement gap is going to be more difficult. Let me go to another extract from the report and the research from Professor McConaghy. She noted:
We have done some preliminary analysis of the K-5 literacy data. We have found that the results in kindergarten are predictors of the results in year 5, and the results in kindergarten are negatively affected by low socioeconomic status. So there is a correlation between the low kindergarten results and low socioeconomic status, and those results do not pick up by year 5. So we need to look at the types of schooling interventions that will address the disparities in kindergarten right through.
That was a really important point about needing to address that achievement gap at an early age to make sure that it does not have a negative effect later on in a student’s schooling years.
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