NAPLAN: School proves the old ways can be the best

“You’ll never see a child sitting at a desk and not knowing what to do.’’ How old-school teaching is helping students get ahead.

Students Annie and Shirley Chen enjoy an outdoor maths class at Sydney Adventist School in Auburn in the city’s west. Picture: Jane Dempster

Old-school teaching methods are driving student success at a multicultural Sydney school.

Every student’s literacy and numeracy has improved during the pandemic at the Sydney Adventist School in Auburn, where many children live in low-income migrant families.

Despite the chaos of Covid-19 closures, the school lifted the reading and writing scores for year 3 students in 2021, fresh NAPLAN data shows.

The school’s deputy principal, Jenny Hahnel said the school expected high academic standards from students, whose migrant parents value education and respect for teachers.

“Not one child went backwards during Covid,’’ she said.

“This is quite a low socio-economic area in western Sydney and 80 per cent of students do not speak English at home.

“They are very shy families and won’t come to speak to us, but they acknowledge that it’s quite a privilege to be in Australia and they want their children to succeed.

“They respect teachers and consider them to be almost up there with doctors. They’re incredibly grateful and appreciative of the learning their children get.’’

Ms Hahnel said the school used software to automatically translate website material and newsletters into multiple languages, including Chinese, Turkish and South American.

The school uses “explicit teaching’’, a method where teachers provide simple and clear instruction until each student has mastered the content of the lesson. The school teaches reading and writing using phonics, and children learn the times tables.

“Explicit teaching focuses on a lot of repetition,’’ Ms Hahnel said.

“Every day we start the lesson revisiting content we’ve already taught. We’re consistently checking for understanding during the lesson, and we focus on student engagement.

“You’ll never see a child sitting at a desk and not knowing what to do,’’ she added.

The school shuns work sheets in favour of hands-on practical lessons, such as learning how to measure objects in the school playground.

Students are tested on English and maths skills three times a year.

Sydney Adventist School is among 500 schools in which students improved their results above average, compared to students with the same starting score and similar socio-economic backgrounds, between 2019 and 2021.

They include 103 government schools in Victoria, where students endured the world’s longest spell of home schooling over the past two years.

Victorian Education Minister James Merlino said the state government’s investments in education – including $480 million for catch-up tutoring and $51 million for psychologists in high schools – had paid off.