39 NSW public schools shine bright in NAPLAN

The NSW Government has congratulated 39 public schools, their students and teachers for showing big improvements in NAPLAN results.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Education Minister Rob Stokes made the announcement today at Picnic Point High School, which has achieved substantial improvements in its numeracy results due to the school’s focus on carefully analysing individual students’ work and tailoring support to suit their needs.

Ms Berejiklian said the results show the NSW Government’s huge investment in public education is bearing fruit.

“We have invested record amounts into our public schools to ensure students have the best learning environments while also providing them access to inspiring and engaging teachers,” Ms Berejiklian said.

“The Government is also enabling schools to tailor teaching practices around the specific needs of students.”

The 39 schools identified today as stars in the NAPLAN results follow excellent results overall in 2017. NSW was the top-ranked state in the highest band in Spelling, Grammar & Punctuation and Numeracy for all Year levels, except for Year 3 Numeracy and Grammar & Punctuation, where NSW was second.

These improvements in student outcomes are attributed to the NSW Government’s record investments in education including:

• introducing needs-based funding for schools so principals can target their school’s local teaching and learning needs, including literacy and numeracy support, professional training and speech pathologists;
• recruiting 50 literacy and numeracy advisors as part of the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy to support quality teaching of literacy and numeracy;
• investing $224 million over 4 years to directly improve the skills of classroom teachers under the Quality Teaching, Successful Students initiative;
• introducing the Great Teaching, Inspired Learning initiative to improve teaching quality and student learning; and
• hiring an additional extra 4,600 teachers and building more than 3,000 new classrooms since 2011.

Education Minister Rob Stokes said there was no magic formula for Picnic Point’s success, just a commitment to knowing which tools are available to assess students’ progress and which teaching practices are most effective in supporting them as individuals.

“The school has analysed individual student growth with NAPLAN data, pre-and post-tests, and used that analysis to realign teaching programs,” Mr Stokes said.

“In particular the school has taken up the University of Newcastle’s School of Education Quality Teaching Rounds, observing school and classroom practice according to a formal schedule and using that to improve how decisions are made about teaching practice.”

Mr Stokes said the Quality Teaching Rounds program, funded through the school’s needs-based funding, has been so successful that it has grown from a group of four teachers undertaking it at Picnic Point HS in 2015 to four groups of four teachers now being involved. Over 700 teachers across NSW have trained to deliver this program in their schools over the past two years.

“Combining the success of the program, the focus on the literacy needed for each subject area, and the capacity to know and meet each student’s individual learning needs has created an enduring culture of achievement at the school,” he said.

Member for East Hills Glenn Brookes also congratulated teachers, parents and staff at Picnic Point for their hard work.

“This is a wonderful school that is achieving big things. I am proud of the commitment to excellence by both teachers and students,” Mr Brookes said.

The NSW Government schools identified as “high gain” in NAPLAN in 2017