School report card: Must do better

This isn’t a one-off. Results have barely budged in the past two years, since the NAPLAN scoring system was rebooted. And in the 15 years of data before that, improvements were modest at best.

It’s not just a problem in Queensland. Across the country, about one in three students fell short of the proficient benchmark. These children are falling behind their classmates and at risk of becoming frustrated and disruptive, and dropping out of school.

Top performers in Queensland are also too thin on the ground. In Year 5 numeracy, for example, only 1 in 11 students performed at the top level. That means most Year 5 students in Queensland can’t confidently tackle tasks such as adding and subtracting decimals (e.g. what’s $2.50 minus $1.25?), calculating the area of a rectangle (e.g. what’s the area of a garden that’s 5 metres by 2 metres?), or fill in missing numbers in equations involving multiplication and division (e.g. 5 x ? = 30).

The learning gap between the least advantaged and most advantaged children is also staggering – on average, Year 3 students whose parents didn’t finish school are almost two years behind in reading compared to students whose parents went to university. By Year 9, the gap is almost five years.

The statistics are bad enough. But behind the data are real children, whose future life opportunities are being cruelled by poor school results.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The best way to boost student performance is to boost teaching quality.

Research shows that almost all students can learn to read and do maths well if they are supported with great teaching and catch-up support from day one.

For reading, schools should have a strong early emphasis on systematic phonics, so all students learn to “crack the code” and read unfamiliar words. But reading instruction can’t stop there. Students need lots of opportunities to read quality literature and non-fiction texts, and they should have explicit teaching of vocabulary, fluency, and background knowledge. This work must continue right through the primary and secondary years.

For maths, schools also need a systematic approach. Success is fostered by teaching new concepts and skills explicitly step-by-step, and giving students plenty of opportunities to practice before they apply new skills to more complex problems. It might sound ‘old school’ today, but students also need to master their times tables and know other basic number facts automatically.

Many schools in Queensland are doing a great job and the Queensland government has committed to improving early reading instruction. But there is still a lot of work to do to make great practice common practice – every day, in every school, classroom, and lesson.

Here are three things the Queensland government should do now.

First, Queensland needs to mandate better early screening of student progress. This year, Queensland is rolling out the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check in government schools. This is a great way to test if students have mastered the early decoding skills they need.

But the government should also mandate the test in non-government schools and introduce a Year 2 resit process for students who fall behind, so that it knows whether struggling students actually catch up.

Getting a consistent, high-quality early-years numeracy screener in place is just as important. More work is needed to identify the best screening option, but once that is done, it should be mandated in all Australian schools, with the results published nationally.

Second, the Queensland government should make sure all teachers have the basic tools they need to teach well every day. Access to high-quality curriculum materials, catch-up learning programs, and quality assessment tools to monitor student progress is essential. Queensland should contribute to a new independent curriculum materials quality-assurance process, so their teachers have the information to make the best choices.

Third, Queensland should get more serious about building teachers’ professional expertise. This strategy has reaped huge benefits in high-performing education systems such as in England and Singapore. Queensland should invest in a robust set of micro-credentials for teachers in maths and English. To help make learning as practical as possible, Queensland should also establish nine primary English and maths hubs across the state. Each Hub should be co-located with a high-performing primary school, and should be responsible for showcasing exemplary practice, delivering practical training, and working intensively with lower-performing schools.

NAPLAN results don’t need to tell the same dismal story every year. If Queenslanders want to hear a better story, it’s time to get serious about lifting the quality of teaching.