Page 2695 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 15 August 2017

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year—a fiscal position in balance, and we are delighted with this outcome. We look forward to continuing the government’s fiscal policy settings into the future.

Auditor-General’s report No 4 of 2017—government response

Paper and statement by minister

MS BERRY (Ginninderra—Deputy Chief Minister, Minister for Education and Early Childhood Development, Minister for Housing and Suburban Development, Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Women and Minister for Sport and Recreation) (3.41): For the information of members, I present the following paper:

Auditor-General Act, pursuant to subsection 21(1)—Auditor-General’s Report No 4/2017—Performance information in ACT public schools—Government response.

I ask leave to make a statement in relation to the paper.

Leave granted.

MS BERRY: I am pleased to table the government’s response to the ACT Auditor-General’s report, Performance information in ACT public schools, report No 4 of 2017. As members will be aware, on 31 May 2017 the Auditor-General tabled her performance audit report. The report contains seven recommendations to build on existing work and to improve outcomes for children in our public schools.

National and international assessments of student achievement across Australia have shown little improvement despite an overall per student increase in expenditure. The ACT has not been immune from this trend. The ACT is traditionally reported as the highest performing Australian jurisdiction in international standardised testing, and at or near the top in most domains for Australian standardised testing, such as NAPLAN. At least some of this achievement is due to a generally higher socioeconomic demographic than other jurisdictions.

The Auditor-General utilised analysis, commissioned by the Education Directorate in 2016, to obtain a more detailed, like-for-like analysis of the performance of ACT public schools, to find that ACT schools are performing below similar schools in other jurisdictions, particularly in relation to numeracy.

The Auditor-General found that the Education Directorate has recognised this and commenced initiatives to improve the use of student performance information in schools. Initiatives include developing sound principles for school improvement, identifying better ways to manage and use student performance information and developing systems and tools to support student performance information collection and analysis. The school improvement model identifies the importance of using evidence to support school improvement and the need for systems to collect and analyse school-level data. It also identifies the need to provide accurate, accessible and consistent information about students’ achievements to families and carers.


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