Results are in: The public schools beating their private rivals

The Viewbank principal said she and her colleagues were “very purposeful” about pursuing academic outcomes for their students that would compare well with any school.
“One of the things that state schools probably grapple with is making sure that we are providing a program that engages kids,” Grimes said.
“That’s how we continue to build relevance in their learning and set those high expectations so that they’re raising the bar themselves.
“We do an awful lot of work on people being able to understand where they sit in their learning.”
The NAPLAN test, taken in March by all students in years 3, 5,7 and 9, assesses students’ reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy.
At Kew East Primary School, principal Matt O’Hern said his school’s great results were reflective of teachers who were “in education to see kids perform at a really high level”.
The school, which has 360 students, recorded well above or above average scores across multiple NAPLAN categories.
O’Hern explained part of the school’s success was routines established from when kids arrived in foundation, where they spent time learning about how a classroom works socially as well as academically.
He said students also weren’t limited by their year level. If a teacher believed a student has the potential to do high school-level maths or English they were encouraged to try.
“To do that, we really need to know the student and … that’s a real philosophy we have here, to know their capacity to work at a really high level,” O’Hern said.
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“Just because someone is in grade six, it doesn’t mean they can’t be exposed to [other year’s] curriculum.”
Following Wednesday’s release of the NAPLAN data, Monash University education expert Vanesser Fernandes called for the test result data to be used to improve educational outcomes rather than for ranking schools.
“We must shift the focus from a ‘league of tables’ deficit narrative to using this data at school and regional level for place-based improvement strategies that look at the needs of a cohort of students and provide the infrastructure to support them, their schools and their community through active, local-level improvement processes,” the senior lecturer said.
NAPLAN data weighted for a school’s socioeconomic status is available at the MySchool website.
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