Principal 25/3/22: A clearer picture of success

After a number of quiet weeks, sections of the news media have seen a rush of stories and opinion pieces regarding the process, value and meaning of external testing like NAPLAN and the Higher School Certificate. These formal assessment tasks involve so many people and carry importance to many people. As such, these two sets of examinations have a great deal of weight in the eyes of politicians and many families. Hence, they make good fodder for journalists. For Schools, the greatest value is what the data reveals about how students are progressing and how we can refine our teaching and learning practices.

Most recently, the calls have been for greater transparency and an increase in the range of information available. For example, the only publicly available information about HSC results is for students who have gained 90% or more. From this information, news outlets create leagues tables and boil the performance of a whole year group’s performance to one rank position for a whole school. While we have celebrated the past three years as our best in the history of the school against this measure, it is such a narrow measure. A rank position is insufficient to understand everything our staff and students achieved over 13 years of school.

On that basis I fully support the improvement of public reporting of HSC and NAPLAN data so we can have a better understanding of what our students achieve each and every year.

An expansion of reporting will reveal the many students who achieve results in the high 80% band, but do not receive the same recognition as those who achieve 1 or 2 marks more. It will also capture the outstanding work that is done by students who work hard at their studies and gain a personal best, but not necessarily gain high ranking results. A full and clear picture of success, at what ever level it maybe, will be a definite improvement.

The role of the HSC is to provide a final indicator of achievement and an indicator for future pathways of study or work. What is does not provide is a measure of progress. Progress is the best measure of effective teaching and learning and currently, there is no external measure to do this for our graduating students.

What is available to our students, and even more powerful, is the regular feedback provided by teachers. This is available each and every day of learning. As I am currently meeting with each of our Year 12 students to discuss their goals, progress and opportunities, I tell them to keep asking their teachers every time they submit some work – “How can I make this better?”

This question is the key to progress and must focus on small improvement steps, so students know what to work on next. I also love this question because it can still be asked no matter what mark the work has received. This key question helps establish the plan for the next step in improvement and sets the goals for future and ongoing success. Finally, a mindset of learning progress is relevant no matter what age the learner – 5, 16 or 52 years old!