Revealed: The elite schools splashing $100k to lift NAPLAN results
A new program in some of Brisbane's top schools is giving them the edge in NAPLAN testing - here’s the full list of which schools are using it.
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As far as before and after transformations go, Hayden’s would be hard to beat.
When you read a sample of this nine-year-old’s writing in January, then another in September, you’d swear it was a different kid.
Words come together like old friends instead of mismatched strangers. Sentences are concise and compelling. Everything flows with an ease many adults have yet to master.
For this Year 4 student, writing has gone from a dreaded task accompanied by feelings of failure to an enjoyable outlet for sharing his wondrous thoughts and ideas.
His classmates, too, are on a dynamic learning journey.
Injune State School, 90km north-west of Roma and eight hours’ drive from Brisbane, is proving what can be achieved when children – and their teachers – are given the right tools.
Two years ago, this P-10 school of fewer than 80 students embraced a groundbreaking program that addresses a decades-long gap in teacher training: the ability to teach writing.
Since the 1960s, young people studying to become teachers have been let down in this critical area, according to the program’s founder.
The result? Many teachers lack the basics, he says, and are therefore incapable of passing them on to their students.
Australia’s writing crisis is felt across the board, including in large, cashed-up private schools.
And boys are hardest hit.
“If you ask a class of 30 students to put their hand up if they feel competent in writing, 16 hands will go up, and 15 of them will be girls’,” says Dr Ian Hunter, whose Writer’s Toolbox program is now in more than 400 schools across Australasia.
Dr Hunter, a New Zealand-based historian and former university lecturer, created the program after being dismayed at the poor level of writing among his tertiary students.
When word spread about the effectiveness of his 2007 book, Write That Essay, schools asked him to do a version specifically for them.
Today, Writer’s Toolbox has evolved into an extensive package of online and physical resources for students and teachers, covering all writing styles, from poetry to reports.
By giving students instant feedback via artificial intelligence assessment, Dr Hunter says it engages them in their individual improvement journey.
It also enables differentiated learning – where teachers can identify and respond to the needs of students at varying academic levels.
The toolbox comes with a range of daily tasks and was honoured in the 2021 Webby Awards for best user experience, alongside Google and Saks Fifth Avenue.
“Students who struggled to push past a C grade are now punching As and Bs,” Dr Hunter says.
“Schools are lifting their performance and teachers are lining up, saying: ‘Why wasn’t I ever taught this at university?’”
At one of Queensland’s biggest private schools, Brisbane’s St Joseph’s Nudgee College, the results have been dramatic.
After trialling part of the package in 2019, the Catholic school of nearly 1700 boys has signed up for the whole shebang, at a cost of about $100,000, and is running it through
years 5 to 9.
Principal Peter Fullagar says there is “an increasing challenge to engage boys in literacy and writing; they don’t naturally go there”.
“With this program, boys get feedback very quickly, which encourages them to keep going, and with that engagement there is a sense of enjoyment as opposed to thinking, ‘this is hard and I’m not getting anywhere’,” Mr Fullagar says.
“It’s also a positive step for teachers, with rolling professional development.
“We’ve been looking for an improvement over time, not a sugar hit or quick fix.”
Nudgee’s literacy program leader Bonnie Becker, a teacher at the Boondall school for more than eight years, says many students are now producing “really high-end writing pieces”.
In-house tracking has shown vast improvements, with students able to go from a mark of 60 per cent to 90 per cent within an hour’s revision.
Becker says for boys who’ve been using the program and are now in Year 9, writing with fluency and clarity has “become second nature, and they no longer need the hand-holding”.
In this digital age, some might question the relevance of writing, with emojis replacing adjectives and thumbs punching out characters on phones.
Technology could be seen to have diminished the need for written excellence, with brevity and speed defining 21st century communication.
Not so, according to Dr Hunter, who says sophisticated writing is as imperative as it ever was.
“Australia has the most writing-intensive curriculum in the world,” he says.
“A Year 12 humanities student will write about 22,000 words and a maths student 18,000-20,000. Those who struggle with writing are facing an uphill battle with their grades.”
Skilled writers are also better placed for success after school.
“It we’re serious about having a true knowledge economy and growing the wealth of communities and families, writing is part of that pathway, you can’t ignore it,” Dr Hunter says.
“Writing and thinking are powerfully connected. The sentence is the means by which you surface the thought. The paragraph is the means by which the thought is fully rendered.
“If you don’t have those two skills in life, you will sit there frustrated, wondering: ‘How can I get out the things inside that I need to say?’”
Dr Hunter is at pains not to lambast teachers for the current writing crisis.
“Here we have a community of gifted, committed professionals who are subject experts, yet we have not equipped them well enough when it comes to writing.”
In Writer’s Toolbox, Dr Hunter has tapped into instruction methods dating to the late 1800s – the “age of composition, which focused on style, fluency and vigour” – and post-World War II when spelling, grammar and structure were key. He says it was in the 1960s that things went awry.
“This was the rebelling generation, when out went the rules of grammar and composition, and it became about exploring your creativity as a writer,” he says.
“The mantra in Education Queensland at that time was ‘language is caught, not taught’, so we now have these generations of young teachers who have never been taught the rules of writing, and I think this a huge challenge.”
Among the key components of Writer’s Toolbox are “coaches” who conduct in-school workshops for teachers, then sit in the classroom and effectively co-teach, explaining how a certain sentence style might be used, for example, in a Year 7 science class.
Driving the program’s uptake in Australia is respected educator Julie Quinn.
During her 14 years as dean of studies at Brisbane’s St Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace, Quinn was the powerhouse behind the Catholic boys’ school’s strong performance in academic benchmarks such as NAPLAN, the Queensland Core Skills test and its related OP scores (now ATAR). A teacher at Terrace for 24 years, she resigned at the end of 2018.
No one in education circles was surprised when Quinn, who also previously taught in the state system, was quickly snapped up for her next chapter.
As Australian director of Writer’s Toolbox, she visits schools and introduces them to what she calls “a game changer”.
“Schools have had really amazing uplifts, with some NAPLAN results for writing improving by 40 per cent from previous testing,” she says.
With studies showing a direct link between Year 9 NAPLAN results and Year 12 leaving scores, she says it is critical to lift the generally poor NAPLAN outcomes.
Quinn was introduced to the earlier incarnation of Writer’s Toolbox, Write That Essay, in 2017 by veteran Terrace teacher Adrian Pauley (since retired), who was observing the writing revolution taking place across the Tasman.
Terrace embraced the program the following year, as did Ambrose Treacy College in Indooroopilly. From two schools, there are now 65 participating in Queensland.
Quinn says while very large schools have invested about $100,000 in teacher development, the average school spend is $36,000, with entry-level access to online tools from $1500.
“This works out to around $60 per student, so when you consider all the money we spend on education, this is a game changer,” she says.
It certainly has been at Injune State School.
Quinn will never forget her visit there in 2019 – and the smile on the face of that young boy who never believed he could be a competent writer.
“I asked Hayden: ‘How is it that I’m reading a January and a September that are so different?’ And he said: ‘Well, I have all these thoughts in my head, and I never knew the order to put them down.’”
Quinn says Injune State School was “very invested”, with parents raising the $20,000 program spend themselves.
“Here is a group of people who wanted to make a difference in their children’s lives, and for a little school a long way from whiz-bang things, that’s really inspirational.”
See the full list of schools here:
Albany Creek State High School
Ambrose Treacy College, Indooroopilly
Aviation State High School, Clayfied
Barrett Adolescent Centre, Tennyson
Brisbane Boys’ College, Toowong
Bellbird Park State College
Brigidine College, Indooroopilly
Cannonvale State School
Centenary State High School
Corinda State High School
Craigslea State High School
Dakabin State High School
Deception Bay State High School
Earnshaw State High School
East Brisbane State School
Forest Lake State High School
Glenala State High School, Durack
Helensvale State School
Holland Park State High School
Ignatius Park College, Cranbrook
Injune State School
Iona College, Wynnum West
Keebra Park State High School
Lourdes Hill College, Hawthorne
Ma Ma Creek State School
Mabel Park State School
Mansfield State High School
Mary MacKillop Catholic College, Highfields
Marymount College, Burleigh Waters
Mitchelton State High School
Mt Alvernia College, Kedron
Mudgeeraba State School
Nambour Christian College
Narangba State School
Noosa State High School
Our Lady of Southern Cross College, Dalby
Pacific Pines State High School
Padua College, Kedron
Palm Beach Currumbin State High School
Proserpine State High School
Rochedale State High School
San Damiano College, Yarrabilba
Sandgate District State High School
Southern Cross Catholic College, Annandale
St Augustine’s College, Augustine Heights
St Brendan’s College, Yeppoon
St Edmund’s College, Ipswich
St Francis de Sales School, Clifton
St James College, Fortitude Valley
St John Fisher College, Bracken Ridge
St Joseph’s College Nudgee, Boondall
St Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace, Spring Hill
St Mary’s College, Toowoomba
St Monica’s Catholic Primary School, Oakey
St Peter Claver College, Ipswich
St Stephen’s Catholic Primary School, Pittsworth
St Thomas Moore College, Sunnybank
The Gap State High School
Toogoolawah State High School
Trinity Anglican School, White Rock
Tullawong State High School
Villanova College, Coorparoo
Yeppoon State High School
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