Repairing literacy and numeracy building blocks

The latest NAPLAN data, published on Wednesday, is highly significant because it reveals the impact of pandemic lockdowns on literacy and numeracy standards. Given the importance of such building blocks for further schooling, trades training and work, educators have warned of the need for intervention to help disadvantaged students, in particular those from poorer families and non-English-speaking backgrounds, to catch up on lost learning.

The NAPLAN data is telling. Between 2019 and 2021, the average NAPLAN scores for year 9 reading and numeracy both fell, and writing scores rose slightly. Some of the most serious falls were in disadvantaged areas. At Chifley College’s Mt Druitt campus in western Sydney, for example, where three out of four students live in the poorest 25 per cent of Australian households and half speak a foreign language, the year 9 writing results fell by 18 points.

What is interesting, however, is the ability of some schools to buck the downward trend, irrespective of location or students’ socio-economic status. In seeking to help students catch up after Covid, education authorities should look to the old-fashioned teaching methods and attitudes driving success at schools such as the Sydney Adventist School in Auburn. While 80 per cent of the school’s students do not speak English at home and many live in low-income families, every student’s literacy and numeracy improved during the pandemic, despite the chaos of Covid-19 closures. As deputy principal Jenny Hahnel told The Australian, the school expects high academic standards from students, whose migrant parents value education and respect for teachers. The school uses tried and tested methods, including phonics for teaching reading and writing, learning the times table and “explicit teaching” – a method where teachers provide simple, clear instructions and repetition until each student has mastered the lesson content. As Ms Hahnel said: “You’ll never see a child sitting at a desk and not knowing what to do.” That is the antithesis of student-driven, inquiry-based learning methods favoured elsewhere.

Compared with previous years, one of the significant problems with this year’s data is the convoluted reporting system on the My School website. Lack of transparency makes it harder this year for parents to compare schools’ performances or to access lists of the top and bottom performing schools. There is no justification for such secrecy. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is blaming the media for necessitating the changes. Too often, ACARA chief executive David de Carvalho said, media organisations had tried to construct “crude league tables” based on overall achievement.

If members of the public, who fund schools, want to know more than the site’s limited insights provide, they are entitled to the information. ACARA appears to be pandering to teachers unions, which have opposed NAPLAN testing and the reporting of results from its inception. Accountability is essential. The reporting should be clearer and more comprehensive.

While NAPLAN tests have been held every May for all year three, five, seven and nine students, we welcome the move by education ministers to fast-forward testing to mid-March. It will give teachers longer to address any problems the tests reveal. We also welcome expansion of the program in future to test students’ broader knowledge, including science, civics and citizenship and digital literacy. Testing prevents the vulnerable students falling through the cracks of underachievement and allows problems to be addressed.