Latest NAPLAN results reveal growing regional and metropolitan divide

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The latest NAPLAN results are out, revealing a growing regional and metropolitan divide in student performance. The tests for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 show a third of students are failing to meet expectations for literacy and numeracy.

Transcript

00:00We need to have some really brave conversations about what our schools are doing and the way

00:07we're supporting them. We do have, as I mentioned, a very inequitable system in the ways we fund

00:12our schools and we need to keep talking about that and keep working on it. We also need

00:16to support our teachers, make sure we're having conversations that respect our teachers, that

00:22bring our communities together around the needs of our students and rather than kind

00:27of looking at something like the NAPLAN results and saying what's happening, what's going

00:31wrong, actually be having conversations about how we can come together to realise that there's

00:36a lot going on for kids and young people today and we all need to think about ways we can

00:40support them and teachers are at the front line of doing that work.

00:43The thing that we know hurts teachers is hearing conversations around these kinds of results

00:50that blame teachers or blame schools for what's happening with a test that measures

00:55a fairly narrow part of what they do in their work but we have lots of stories that come

01:00out that have this kind of crisis narrative around them, that plan's going down and it's

01:05a challenge and teachers need to fix it whereas when we look at the results we know it's beyond

01:10teachers to deal with regional differences and inequities. They're working really hard.

01:15They're working really hard.

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