Darwin primary schools sharply divided along race, class lines, analysis of NAPLAN results reveals

AN NT News analysis of NAPLAN results has exposed a government school system divided along race and class lines in Darwin

An NT News analysis of NAPLAN results has revealed a family’s relative disadvantage as the single biggest determinant of student outcomes, followed by indigenous status

AN NT News analysis of the latest NAPLAN results has exposed a government school system sharply divided along race and class lines, revealing a family’s relative disadvantage as the single biggest determinant of student outcomes, followed by indigenous status.

Students at Darwin’s 10 most disadvantaged public primary schools — ranked by their students’ “socio-educational” status — are performing at “substantially below” average almost across the board, while only one school outside the four best-off achieved a single “above average” result.

The analysis shows the disparity in marks also runs along race lines, as the bottom five most disadvantaged schools were the only ones with more than 50 per cent indigenous students.

Meanwhile, the four most well-heeled schools charged parents a total of $818 per student in the most recent data period, more than double the figure charged by the bottom four schools at $346 per student.

The best performing public school raised $377 per student in “fees, charges and parent contributions”.

Those contributions almost directly mirrored student outcomes at the schools with the four poorest not achieving a single result better than “significantly below” average in any of the reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy categories.

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Of the public primary schools with the highest socio-educational status, only one performed below, or substantially below average in year 3 reading, writing and spelling, while the most well off school performed better than average in eight of the 10 categories across years 3 and 5.

Charles Darwin University College of Education dean, Greg Shaw, said the issues reflected in the statistics were a “perennial problem” throughout the world.

“Kids that are in communities with low socio-economic indicators tend not to perform as well in school as kids who are in a community with high socio-economic indicators because of the conditions of the school, the conditions of the family, the conditions of the community, which are less supportive of educational achievement than kids in the alternate position,” he said.

An Education Department spokeswoman said a school’s socio-educational advantage status did not “reflect the wealth of parents of students in a particular school” — but it does specifically take into account parents’ education level and occupation.

“The purpose of (the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage) is to enable fair and meaningful comparisons of the performance in literacy and numeracy of students in a given school with that of schools catering for students with similar backgrounds,” she said.

AN NT News analysis of the latest NAPLAN results reveals a family’s relative disadvantage as the single biggest determinant of Darwin student outcomes

“The Department of Education uses a needs based funding model to ensure that schools are funded to cater to the needs of their student cohort.”

The spokeswoman said NT schools had made “strong gains” between 2011 and 2017 compared to overall NAPLAN performance nationally.

“Schools use multiple strategies to deliver education to their students ensuring that they are engaging and responsive in meeting the needs of each individual student,” she said.

“We are continuing to enhance the support that we provide to schools in terms of funding.”

Berry Spring Primary School principal Hannah Zwitser said schools were now focusing on improving students’ writing and attendance figures to help those who were struggling.

“NAPLAN is a one point in time test and educators are passionate about improving outcomes for kids and I think before you make a judgment on how a school’s performing you need to take into account a broad range of data,” she said.

“Kids are amazing and there’s lots of wonderful things about kids apart from NAPLAN performance.”

CDU’s Prof Shaw said while there was “no silver bullet”, better outcomes could be achieved through extra funding and resources.

“It’s about then having a focused approach to addressing the deficiencies in the educational outcomes that are reflected in those schools which are not achieving well so it’s having focused programs on literacy and numeracy, it’s having better quality teachers, or better prepared teachers, in that community that can address a particular need,” he said.