Department of Education

Raising the Bar
Closing the Gap
(RTBCTG)
The Raising the Bar Closing the Gap (RTBCTG) initiative aims to raise the bar on key measures of student
literacy and numeracy and also close the gap between high and low achievers. The government initially
committed $32 million over four years (2008–11) for the RTBCTG primary school initiative. The initiative
will continue to be implemented from 2012. Additional funding of $9.975 million over four years enabled
the successful strategy to be implemented into 13 government secondary schools from February 2011.
The RTBCTG Indigenous extension initiative is funded at $1.9 million for two years under the Australian
Government’s Expansion of literacy and numeracy programs for underachieving Indigenous students.
Smarter Schools
National
Partnerships
The three Tasmanian schooling sectors (government, Catholic, and independent) have developed one Bilateral
Agreement and Final Implementation Plan, which addresses all three Smarter Schools National Partnerships:
• Low Socioeconomic Status (SES) School Communities National Partnership
• Literacy and Numeracy National Partnership
• Improving Teacher Quality National Partnership
Tasmania has adopted a multi-strategy approach to addressing the COAG reforms with a Low SES emphasis
interwoven with both the Literacy and Numeracy and Improving Teacher Quality National Partnership (NP)
initiatives. The strategies are to:
• prioritise support for low SES communities and students achieving at or below National Minimum Standard
in NAPLAN assessment, especially Indigenous and disadvantaged students
• focus intervention and provide explicit support for students at transition points – Years 6–7 and Years 10–11
• recognise that teaching is central to school improvement and student achievement and build capability in a
way that will be sustainable; beyond the life of the National Partnership funding
• develop the capacity of principals and teachers to effectively use student, school and system wide data to
inform whole of school/network approaches to improve student learning outcomes
• encourage schools to combine together as networks working, in partnership, with their extended school
communities to support students and their families in a holistic way.
Literacy
Grants
Funding of $2.5 million has been provided during 2010–11 to support literacy intervention for high Economic
Needs Index (ENI) schools.
Reading
Recovery
Reading Recovery is an early literacy intervention that provides specialist one to one teaching for students who
have made slow progress learning to read and write after their first compulsory year of school. Funding of
$608,159 has been provided during 2010–11 to continue this program.
Flying Start
Funding of $10.7 million was provided during 2010–11 for all schools to access the Flying Start program which
focuses on early intervention in literacy, numeracy and social skills from Kindergarten to Year 2.
Early Years
Literacy
Funding of $220,000 was provided during 2010–11 to improve learning opportunities for young people
through the provision of books for parents to read to their children.
Premier's
Reading
Challenge
The Premier’s Reading Challenge aims to improve the literacy of Tasmanian students, help raise awareness
of the importance of reading amongst parents and the wider community and give young students a love of
reading to set of them up with one of life’s most precious skills. The Challenge has been operating successfully
for the last five years.
Contribution towards the benchmark
Increasing students’ performance in literacy and numeracy is a key focus for the government and is reflected
in the Department of Education’s Learner at the Centre 2009–11 strategy.
Tasmania’s 2011 NAPLAN results for all year levels in Reading, Language Conventions and Numeracy were
comparable with its 2010 results, and over the longer-term, 2008 results.
Due to the change in the Writing genre in testing for 2011, a new Persuasive Writing scale has been
established by ACARA. This new scale is not comparable with the previous Narrative Writing scale.
Appendices – Tasmania Together Activity Report – Goal 3
137