Page 3822 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 September 2018
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numeracy; the underperformance was relatively consistent across low, middle and high socioeconomic schools; and the performance of government schools did not show any signs of improvement over the study period, if anything, there was a slight deterioration in performance in numeracy.
More concerning is their claim that the ACT government has been aware of this underperformance of government schools in NAPLAN since at least 2015, and according to the Auditor-General perhaps even as early as 2014. However, the latest findings suggest that the problems are more widespread than previously thought, extending across the socioeconomic spectrum.
But before the minister gets up and starts her well-known disdain for NAPLAN and blaming it as the source of all ACT education failings, let me point out that NAPLAN is not the only testing tool used in ACT schools and not the only one that has shown declining performance.
On the international stage Australia has been ranked 39 out of 41 high and middle income countries in achieving quality education according to the United Nations Children’s Fund report card. They found that Australia is falling behind in basic measures of teaching and learning. Only Romania and Turkey were ranked below Australia in education in UNICEF’s report.
What does the OECD’s PISA testing say about Australian schools? PISA looks at the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science as well as quality and level of access to early schooling in 41 European Union and OECD countries. The 2017 PISA testing report showed that ACT students’ results are declining in real terms. Earlier PISA testing indicated similar declining results.
In December 2016 PISA, which is the major global test of students’ achievement, revealed just how far Australian high school students are behind their peers in the world’s best performing countries. The report found that only 71.7 per cent of Australian 15-year-olds are achieving baseline standards in the three key areas of education based on the latest PISA assessment, and only 80.3 per cent of children are attending organised preschool learning for at least a year according to 2014 figures.
The 2015 report showed the average ACT 15-year-old maths student was one and a half years behind where they were in 2003. In scientific literacy ACT students were eight months behind where they were in 2006. In reading they were one and a quarter years behind where they were in 2000. From 2003 to 2015 the percentage of high performers in mathematical literacy has dropped from 27 per cent to 14 per cent. These results are replicated in the ANU paper released in August of this year. So our declining NAPLAN results are echoing what other international testing is telling us.
Since the 2017 PISA report and following the ACT Education Directorate’s own commissioned research, what has the minister done? Well, Ms Berry outlined in the Assembly last sitting what she had been doing in her future of education paper. She said she had had thousands of conversations with students, parents and teachers, but what has she learned and what is actually being done? There is little evidence of actual substance in her strategy. She said:
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