SA makes small gains in NAPLAN results but still trails

SOUTH Australian schools have made modest improvements in NAPLAN results, but still trail all states except Tasmania.

• Private v public: Outback school trumps pricey city institution
• Online tests can be compared with traditional ones

SOUTH Australian schools have made modest improvements in NAPLAN results, but still trail all states except Tasmania.

SA students achieved higher mean scores compared to last year in 12 of 20 domains, and Education Minister John Gardner said they were better relative to the national scores in 15 cases.

But SA’s mean scores were below the national marks in every test at every year level, as was the proportion of students who met the benchmarks known as the national minimum standard. Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 take the tests in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy.

“There are some encouraging signs in the results, but they also demonstrate that more work needs to be done,” Mr Gardner said.

He said the State Government’s “literacy guarantee” package would deliver further improvements.

It includes a phonics check for Year 1s, dyslexia workshops for parents, more school breakfast programs and teacher professional development.

This year’s NAPLAN has been mired in controversy over whether scores of students doing online tests are comparable to those sitting paper ones.

The Australian Education Union renewed calls for the 2018 results to be discarded, pointing to a report by two US-based experts who concluded “the design and execution of the 2018 NAPLAN make it so flawed that its results are of very limited use”.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority insisted the results were comparable but conceded Year 9s had done better in the online writing test.

Yesterday Australian National University researchers released a report warning comparisons of average NAPLAN scores between states and territories were invalid because they did not take into account socio-economic factors.

They found ACT schools, despite having very high mean scores, performed poorly against schools of similar socio-economic profiles.