Page 1128 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 April 2019
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used appropriately. There was much evidence provided that the ACT is indeed underperforming academically.
Professor Andrew Macintosh spoke to his ANU working paper on academic underperformance in ACT schools during the inquiry. He said in part:
Across the ACT school sector there was an alarming number of schools where the students were, on average, more than six months behind the levels of learning of students in other comparable schools.
The ACT Council of P&C Associations also highlighted the fact that data from standardised testing over the past few years indicated a decline in student performance, inconsistent with resourcing and educational advantage. The Grattan Institute’s 2018 report measuring student progress, a state-by-state report card, also noted:
… the ACT consistently makes the least progress of all states and territories, at both primary and secondary level, compared to similar schools in other states.
An analysis paper commissioned by the ACT Education Directorate by Professor Stephen Lamb, titled “Government School Performance in the ACT”, came to similar conclusions that, compared to similar schools in other states, ACT students in both primary and secondary schools made around three months less progress than the national average in a number of subject areas.
The committee had the benefit of the ACT Auditor-General’s Report No 4 of 2017, Performance information in ACT schools, and also the government’s response to the Auditor-General’s recommendations.
One of the recommendations emanating from the evidence taken is that the directorate initiate a public inquiry, in collaboration with the government and non-government school sectors, into the causes of the underperformance of ACT schools. Aligned with that is a recommendation that the education minister request the Education Council to commission research why some states make greater progress in some areas than others, particularly as the ACT is consistently making progress below the national average.
The minister has often suggested that it is merely a case of the other states catching up. Let us test that. In any case, we should never be satisfied to just sit on past performance or not give our children the benefit of achieving their full potential just to allow other states to play catch-up.
One consistent theme was the delay in testing results being returned to schools so that meaningful, timely interventions could be made to improve a student’s performance. The committee recommends that the Education Directorate work more closely with the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority on the development and delivery of NAPLAN online.
Other criticisms were the way results were presented and that data used for comparison needed to be presented in a manner that recognised factors that influenced results.
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