It is a structural oddity that has placed Australia as an outrider on the OECD world stage.
Peakhurst Public School set out to improve its students’ writing skills and is now gaining a reputation for fostering young creative writers.
If federal Education Minister Jason Clare has one goal this term,it should be making sure all of our kids can read.
Student participation in NAPLAN fell to an all-time low this year,with COVID-19,flu and floods blamed for so few students taking the standardised test.
I love books – and I love kids reading – but not the angst and cost that this event puts on time-poor parents.
A study of imaginative writing skills among secondary students has found NAPLAN restricts how writing is taught in schools,favouring function but ignoring style.
Victorian lockdowns brought community team sports to a halt,and many adolescents turned instead to independent or even digital forms of exercise.
We now have a premier who wants to be known as “the education premier”. How about consulting those who do the job every day,premier?
Proposed changes to education policy - like performance pay for teachers - are unlikely to work if systemic problems and societal factors continue to be ignored.
Only 79.1 per cent of public school students reached minimum standards for reading and numeracy in NAPLAN,well below the target.
The new approach,however,left staff feeling better equipped to teach and increased schools’ ambition to ensure the growth of each student.