Indigenous-Education-Review_DRAFT

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Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson There should also be a mandatory more general reading assessment. The measure most widely used in the sample of schools visited was the PM Benchmarks reading assessment. The significant advantage of this instrument (and of other similar items) is that it enables the mapping and reporting of progress more widely and in a more fine‐grained way than NAPLAN. In many schools, PM Benchmarks levels for individual children were on display, progress was celebrated and children had target levels for achievement. This provided incentive and reward for children and teachers, and enabled the reporting to parents of evidence of progress even where children had not reached NAPLAN benchmarks. Such an approach should be linked with Territory‐wide age‐expected benchmarks for key areas including reading level, phonemic awareness and sight words. These could build on the T‐9 Diagnostic Net continua. There is a range of other general and specific literacy assessment tools and instruments in use in different schools. Despite some areas of success, this open‐ended approach is not supported. Instead, there should be a consistent approach in all schools involving: the use of a mandatory phonemic awareness test to diagnose student starting points and to monitor progress through the early years of schooling (T‐3); and the use of a mandatory general reading test to map student progress over time, set goals and report progress to parents. Numeracy Although the review has examined numeracy data and discussed progress with numeracy in school visits and interviews, this report does not address numeracy in any detail. The view taken by the review is that numeracy is not as urgent a priority as literacy, that literacy is more foundational (i.e. improvements in literacy will probably achieve a degree of improvement in numeracy) and that for bush schools in particular it is important to focus on a limited set of goals to achieve improvement. DRAFT The evidence for the view that numeracy is a less urgent task is presented in summary form in Figure 14. This is equivalent to the reading and writing graphs presented earlier in this chapter. The key points are: the provincial Indigenous student cohort sits within the at‐national‐minimumstandard band; the remote Indigenous student cohort sits within, though close the bottom of, the at‐national‐minimum‐standard band; the very remote Indigenous student cohort is below national minimum standards for each year level, but the gap is noticeably narrower than for reading and writing, and there is some evidence that the gap narrows during the years of schooling. 67
Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson Figure 14 – Northern Territory Government Schools, 2012 NAPLAN Results – Numeracy 14 600 500 Mean Scale Score 400 300 200 Other NAPLAN data confirm that the level of numeracy achievement for Indigenous students is generally higher than that for literacy (especially writing) and the gap between very remote Indigenous students and other students is materially narrower. While these results are still unsatisfactory, it is clear that the problem is much less urgent than for literacy. It is, however, our view that once the literacy initiatives are bedded down and showing improvement, a similar approach should be taken to numeracy: 100 0 Year 3 Year 5 Year 7 Year 9 +AANMS Very Remote Indigenous Provincial Indigenous ‐AANMS Remote Indigenous NT Total Non Indigenous DRAFT use data to identify the key area or areas of weakness; select the most practical, evidence‐based and easy‐to‐use means of addressing those areas and monitoring progress; mandate one or more approaches for all bush schools; and encourage town schools to innovate around those key interventions. Consistent with the pace of effective change and the need for strategic focus, however, it will not be feasible to start implementation of the numeracy process for a period of about two years. Preliminary research should be conducted during this period to map areas of weakness in numeracy achievement and identify intervention programs with a proven record of success for at‐risk students. 14 +AANMS represents the line above which students are achieving results above national minimum standards. ‐AANMS represents the line below which students are failing to achieve national minimum standards. Results between –AANMS and +AANMS indicate achievement at national minimum standards. 68
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