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Volume 7, Wednesday February 3, 2010
Starting the first day of school at St. Barb’s Catholic School last week are Nelly, Jess, and Alex.
Our schools are graded
T
he commissioning of the My School’s website by the Federal Government last week, has teachers, parents and school councils polarised about the results.
First day New teachers to join the staff at the Roxby Downs Area School are Samantha Thompson, Rikki Weaver (former RDAS student) and Kylie Ingram, all newly graduated from college
Two local schools, the Roxby Downs Area School and St. Barbara’s Parish School received differing report cards but did show improvement on the 2008 National Assessment Program. Roxby Downs Area School generally came in under the national average, although there was an improvement in the grades for literacy and numeracy in year nine level. Those tested in years three, five and seven were all below the national and similar school averages. Students were tested in the skills of reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation as well as numeracy and in the Roxby Downs Area School Report only year nines performed better than the national school average in reading, writing, spelling and grammar, but fell short of the average of all schools and similar schools in the numeracy test. While the tests are causing controversy among teachers, parents now have an idea of how their schools are performing in the national average and can make better judgements about the education of their children. Roxby Downs Area School Principal Kath Macalister told the Monitor, “Literacy, numeracy, attendance, retention and science are fields that will be focused on for improvement in the far north and aboriginal lands area this year for the first time. “They are state government priorities and regional priorities, our priorities. “Our data in literacy, numeracy and attendance have improved over the last four years. We’re on the improvement journey already and are already quite pleased with what’s happening.We are putting a heavy focus on numeracy” She said, “The Naplan website serves a purpose but the parents need to understand that there are lots more sources of information that can be accessed.” For the St. Barbara’s School their score in the 2009 NAPLAN results showed that in most areas for all three grades, three, five and seven the results were above the national average and above similar school averages. The only exceptions were in numeracy in year three where students were well below the averages and again in year seven where students were below the national and similar school averages. While teachers will argue there can’t be too much read into the results, the facts are the schools that perform below average now have a benchmark and measures can be made to improve in the areas of weakness. Some will say and rightfully so, that children perform better at different times of the day and different days of the week, and some of questions asked in the NAPLAN tests are ambiguous and difficult for even some parents to understand. Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Julia Gillard said last week that within hours of the site being commissioned some 1.5 million people had tried to access the My School site. ‘‘We know that parents are hungry for this information,” Ms Gillard told reporters in Sydney. But what about the parents of Roxby Downs Area School students? According to number of parents surveyed by The Monitor last week the large majority did not check the website but had intended to at a later time. Asked if they are worried by below average results all but one said they were not. Mrs. Linda Evans said, “If kids want to learn and their parents are supportive they should be fine.” On the question of whether they thought the school and teachers were being branded unfairly, again all said no. “It will make me probably look closer into the education of my children, however I am of an opinion that some do not want to learn and no matter how hard you drive them they can’t, won’t , and will not succeed at what they are asked to do in that field but can, will, or want to succeed in another field. I don’t feel it could be an accurate report as such.” Continued on page 2
IN THIS
edition
Local young
Bash
Page 3
Pages 8 and 9
people on their way to the top
team raises awareness