Naplan results show one in three students not meeting minimum standards
Naplan results have been released today revealing one in three students is not meeting basic literacy and numeracy expectations. Education Minister Jason Clare says it's a wake-up call and shows the need for serious reform of the nation's school systems.
Transcript
00:00One-third of Australian students are not meeting basic expectations in literacy and numeracy.
00:06That is a shocking statistic.
00:08This isn't Shakespeare or calculus that we're talking about.
00:11You know, these are skills every young person is really going to need after school, no matter
00:14what they go on to do with their life.
00:17NAPLAN tests students in years three, five, seven and nine on their ability to read, spell,
00:22write, use grammar and be numerate.
00:25And the results also show that 10% of Australian students, about almost half a million students,
00:30are so behind that they need catch-up help to get back up to speed.
00:35To bring it back to the individual level rather than the statistic, that's often heartbreaking
00:39for those kids as they go through school and they fall ever further behind and get more
00:43and more frustrated.
00:45And you know, we're seeing that in dropout rates.
00:48High school completion rates are down from 85% to 79%.
00:52We're really letting these kids down right now and things need to change.
00:55One system that's going really well is what's called explicit instruction.
01:00We spoke to a principal who's been using that at his school for the last five years with
01:04tremendous results and there's a real momentum and push for change with this style of teaching.
01:09Victoria's recently mandated it for all its schools, New South Wales has trained all its
01:13teachers in this method and a number of independent school systems who can go their own way have
01:18also gone down the explicit instruction path.
01:22I caught up with Damien Kitch, who's the principal at Upway South Primary School in Outer Melbourne
01:26and here's what he had to say.
01:29The school was teaching what's known as whole language or balanced literacy and in 2018
01:35we looked at making a move towards an evidence-based approach to early years literacy, which is
01:41commonly referred to as phonics.
01:44And since we've began that teaching we've just seen huge positive results across the
01:49school, not just in academics for English but also in mathematics, in the culture of
01:55the school, in children's engagement.
01:58That's Damien Kitch from Upway South Primary School and as you might imagine, Ross, these
02:02results have triggered a really fierce debate.
02:04Right now the debate is centred around whether or not what we need to do is those reforms
02:09or whether or not what we need to do is finally bring public schools up to their Gonski minimum
02:13funding levels.
02:14While people are locking into binary positions, I think it's pretty clear that we need a bit
02:18of both and hopefully we'll have some positive updates on that for you later in the year.