Page 3821 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 September 2018
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If further evidence were needed, the ACT’s own Auditor-General in May last year also came to the conclusion that ACT government schools on average achieve negative results on every measure. She found that:
ACT public schools are performing below similar schools in other jurisdictions despite expenditure on a per student basis for public schools being one of the highest in the country. Since 2014 reviews of ACT public schools have consistently identified shortcomings in their analysis of student performance information and their use of data to inform educational practice. These shortcomings indicate a systemic problem.
Three reports in three years, all ringing alarm bells and indicating that the oft-quoted claim about the superior performance of ACT schools is a folly. In fact, if you count the lengthy detailed submission to the ACT education committee inquiry by Mark Drummond, well known for his passionate belief in the importance of education, that makes it four damning reports.
How does the minister respond to these concerns from recognised, credible researchers? Well, like any poor workman, she blames the tools. She sticks to her prepared script, which the Canberra Times quoted in their editorial on Monday of this week, namely, that Canberra remains typically the highest or equal highest performer in the vast majority of assessment domains and year levels. When challenged about declining NAPLAN results she attacks the test as a trigger for stress, anxiety and depression among students. She is, not surprisingly, supported by the ACT AEU, who confidently assure me that NAPLAN is dead.
And if four damning findings were not enough, wait—there’s more. The ANU working paper by Professor Macintosh and Deb Wilkinson published last month makes a compelling case and confirms what the 2015 Australia Institute paper tried to tell the government. They point out that domestic and international research has repeatedly demonstrated that the academic performance of students is influenced by their socioeconomic background, that is, the occupation and educational level of parents and carers.
Owing to the influence of these factors, the NAPLAN performance of schools should be compared with other schools that share similar socioeconomic profiles. When you do that, and compare apples with apples, ACT schools are clearly not up to scratch.
Their 2015 report compared the performance of high socioeconomic status primary schools—government and non-government—in the ACT with statistically similar school groups and identified a pattern of repeated underperformance over the period 2008-16. The extent of the apparent underperformance was most acute in high schools and in writing and numeracy.
The 2018 paper found the same issues. The report says the analysis of the relative NAPLAN performance of government and non-government schools in the ACT supports the following conclusions: there was systemic underperformance in government primary and high schools in NAPLAN over the period 2012-16; the underperformance was most pronounced at the high school level and in writing and
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