Page 1063 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 5 April 2016
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This is a statement I believe in. As the Minister for Education I am pleased to be able to talk today about the new school performance and accountability framework that was launched on 1 April this year at the ACT education leadership summit, which will further drive excellence in our schools.
The leadership summit is held every two years and provides school leaders with both professional learning and networking opportunities. The intent and priority of the leadership summit is to build leadership capacity of current and future leaders in alignment with the directorate’s strategic plan and action plan and the Australian professional standard for principals.
The school performance and accountability framework sits very well with the aims of the summit and was developed by reviewing local and world-leading practice, research, evidence and consultation. In 2015 the Education Directorate engaged Professor Brian Caldwell, an internationally recognised academic and researcher in school improvement, to review our current practice and documentation and to provide new directions for our approach to school improvement.
In our public education system we need to ensure that we have the right processes in place to achieve high standards and support ongoing improvement so that the community can have full confidence in the schools their children attend. Following his consultation, Professor Caldwell noted some of the special characteristics of the public school system in the ACT. He said:
… it is the smallest and highest-performing system in Australia (as indicated in NAPLAN test results). It is also the most recently-formed system of education in the country. It covers a relatively small geographic area and relationships are strong—most principals and system leaders know each other. These are favourable conditions. These circumstances present an arguably ideal platform for further development to make it one of the very best systems of public education in the world.
Madam Speaker, I agree with Professor Caldwell. It is important to acknowledge that we have a strong track record as a high achieving school system. We have a strong college system with high levels of attainment in the senior secondary certificate and ATAR scores. In fact, the recent report from the Mitchell Institute Educational opportunity in Australia 2015: who succeeds and who misses out confirmed that the ACT has the highest proportion of students completing year 12 in the country.
Parent satisfaction in public schools in relation to the education our schools are providing has remained high across a number of years, and data from 2015 indicates that the ACT continues to perform well compared to other schools around the country, but there is more we can do to improve educational outcomes for all Canberra students. While I acknowledge that the ACT has a good report on education, we cannot and must not be complacent.
We need to make certain that we are increasing the number of high performing students, reducing the number of students who are not achieving, increasing the number of students who benefit from early childhood education and care, and increasing the qualification levels of the ACT community.
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