Canberra High School: how schools use NAPLAN to improve

Canberra High School principal Samara Chisholm says parents need to look beyond NAPLAN results to see success at schools

NAPLAN results for 2021 were released last week with parents naturally rushing to the My Schools website eager to see how their child’s school performed.

While those outside the education system tend to view NAPLAN results as a mark of quality, educators aim to use the results as a diagnostic tool to show areas in need of improvement.

Canberra High School is a public school inthe ACT's Belconnen regioncatering to students from Year 7 to Year 10.

Principal Samara Chisholm said NAPLAN is “just one tool” that schools use to support student learning.

“It’s useful for us in terms of giving baseline data around literacy and numeracy, “ she said.

“It allows for us to do a bit of drilling down in areas that might require some support.

“But it's one of many tools.”

Canberra High School Principal Samara Chisholm says parents should look beyond NAPLAN when judging academic success.

Mrs Chisholm said people had misconceptions about the purpose of NAPLAN.

“The biggest problem is that parents and the wider community look at NAPLAN results and think if that school hasn‘t got a really great overall NAPLAN result then they aren’t having success in their school.

“That‘s not the purpose of NAPLAN.”

Mrs Chisholm said she was proud of the strides her school had made to improve numeracy.

In numeracy Canberra High School Year 9 students moved from a ranking of 602 in 2019 to 617 in 2021.

The numeracy rankings for Year 7 stayed stable at 579 for both years.

Canberra High School began to focus on inquiry based learning to boost numeracy skills among students.

The rankings for both year levels are above the national average, yet below the average for schools with a similar socio-economic status.

Mrs Chisholm said in response to the 2019 NAPLAN results the school had changed how it taught maths and STEM subjects.

“We’ve shifted the focus from thinking about maths in a traditional manner to thinking about how we can use inquiry based model to actually engage students in mathematics in a more real and relevant manner.

“I think once you can do that then you see students engaging in a more positive manner with numeracy and mathematics.

“We’ve been done a lot of work for girls in STEM and we’ve introduced a new STEMelective for our youngest students.”

Canberra High School Principal Samara Chisholm says NAPLAN results don’t show the full picture of success and challenges of schools

Mrs Chisholm said Canberra High School and other schools had unique challenges and strengths that perhaps aren’t reflected in NAPLAN results.

“We have a large number of (English as an additional language) students and that certainly poses a challenge for those students,” she said.

“Just because they do English as a second language it doesn't mean they are not capable of doing the work or demonstrating or achieving outstanding results.

“But it does make it more challenging for them to access a test like NAPLAN.

“The most important thing for us is getting students engaged in the curriculum.”