Canley Vale High moves to front of the class for literacy gains

Canley Vale High School has clocked above-average gains in the literacy components of the NAPLAN test each year since 2014.

Canley Vale High School literacy teacher Rhianna Lima with Year 10 students Rebecca Huynh, 15, Robert Bui, 16, Sean Huynh, 14, and Sally Tran, 14. Picture: Hollie Adams

When the bell rings at the end of the day at Canley Vale High School in Sydney’s west, almost every student heads home to a household where English is the second language spoken.

That’s if it is spoken at all.

But that hasn’t stopped the school from clocking above-average gains in the literacy components of the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test each year since 2014.

Canley Vale, which serves a ­socially and economically disadvantaged community in which 96 per cent of students come from non-English-speaking backgrounds, was previously performing below the state average in literacy.

Principal Peter Rouse puts the sustained progress since then down to a commitment to ­develop students’ literacy skills.

“It was a hurdle for us, but we really saw it as being a part of the broader social role and responsibility to the children and their families,’’ Mr Rouse said.

“We want our students to ­develop strong language skills and literacy by the time they leave us. It’s about turning students into engaged and successful citizens, who are able to go on to further study, work, pay their taxes and travel the world like everyone else.”

One of the key factors has been the introduction of a dedicated literacy subject for all ­students in Years 7 to 9.

Unlike an English class, which the students also study, literacy lessons focus on the development of the skills needed for proficient reading and writing, such as understanding the relationship between letters and sounds, ­vocabulary, spelling, comprehension and analysis.

The school building includes a dedicated literacy faculty comprising four specialist teachers.

“This is a long-term commitment we’ve made. There’s no ­silver-bullet quick answer to this,” Mr Rouse said.

 

NAPLAN data, based on last year’s test and published today by the Australian Curriculum, ­Assessment and Reporting Authority, ranks Canley Vale among the best-performing schools, in terms of above-average student gain, across the nation. It is also one of just eight schools to record above-average gains every year since 2014.

According to the authority’s My School website, student gain describes the average change in results for students who have taken consecutive NAPLAN tests at the same school and is one way to measure the impact the school has had on student progress.

The authority’s chief executive, Robert Randall, said ­although schools were “more than just their NAPLAN results”, literacy and numeracy were “fundamental skills all our children need to be successful in and ­beyond school”.

“The focus of My School is about enabling fair comparisons between schools and celebrating success where we see schools have achieved gain in results over time. It is not about league tables or ranking,’’ he said.

“By looking at what individual schools are doing at a local level to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes, those learnings can be used by other schools to lift achievement across the board.”

While there has been a general trend of improvement since the NAPLAN tests began 10 years ago, children’s writing skills have gone backwards in the past six years and other key literacy skills and numeracy have stalled, raising further questions about the academic benefit of the billions of extra dollars poured into schools under the first phase of the ­Gonski reforms.