Teaching and Learning News

Dear Parents and Guardians, 

The 2023 NAPLAN results have been distributed to parents via hard copy over the past week.  In 2023, there are new proficiency levels for NAPLAN based on a 4 point scale, replacing the previous numerical reporting method and national minimum standards.  These standards provide clear information on student achievement and are based mainly on what was taught in the previous year of schooling.  These are the four proficiency levels:

• Exceeding: Student’s results exceeds expectations at the time of testing
• Strong: The student’s results meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing
• Developing: The student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing
• Needs additional support: The student’s results indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing.  They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.

Today I would like to provide you with a summary of the proficiency level distribution percentages for SSPS and the state for comparison.  These results are extremely positive for the school as you will see below. 

ALL of our Year 5 students are above the state average for ALL tests! Our Year 3 students, in their first attempt ever for NAPLAN, were above the state average in most areas too.

One of the ways I like to look at how much impact a school has had on our students, is to see where they’ve come from and where they progress to. Unfortunately, due to a change in scale score, we cannot compare the same cohort of students. Eg. How did Jimmy go in Year 3 versus Year 5. We can however, use the % from Year 3 and compare to Year 5 results and easily see that we have become more successful in many areas, particularly spelling, Grammar and punctuation and Writing.

Another standout area in these results is Reading – Check out our percentages in strong and exceeding.

• In our Year 3 cohort – over 80% of our Year 3 students are strong or exceeding in reading, how exceptional is that?
• In our Year 5 cohort – 93.5% are strong or exceeding, just incredible!

While there are many things to celebrate overall with this year’s results, an area that stands out to work on as a school is around creating challenge and rigour for our high performing learners, particularly in writing. As you can see in Year 3 – we had 6.5% in exceeding, but a whopping 78% in strong. How do we support those strong writers to be even better? I think one way is through the work we are already doing around the learning pit and encouraging children to challenge themselves in their learning. What strategies can we use when we are in the pit to help add flare and more sophistication to our writing? Another way we might be able to show growth in this area is through our Learner Qualities. For example, Instead of settling with a first draft of writing, how can we collaborate with other learners and learn from them to better our own writing?

I hope you enjoy perusing the data as much as I did! 

Warm Regards

Nicki Prentice

Acting APA

Bolded % indicates higher than state average in the strong or exceeding area. Bolded % also represents lower than the state average in developing or needing additional support

Writing

Reading

Spelling

Grammar and Punctuation

Numeracy