By Lucy Carroll and Nigel Gladstone
When Christine Taylor became principal at St Ives North Public eight years ago, she was told by several teachers that the school’s students were already reaching their full potential.
“They thought the school was doing well enough. They said things like we’ve got a good cohort, but we can’t get a lot more academic growth. I thought it was nonsense,” recalled Taylor, a public education veteran and one-time schools inspector for the Board of Studies.
Not content with the status quo, Taylor embarked on a mission which steadily raised the school’s NAPLAN results from above to well-above average scores in almost all domains tested. “Our kids deserve a year’s growth at least,” she said.
Taylor said the changes introduced at the 900-student school and were based on a 2014 NSW Education Department study, titled What Works Best, which outlined patterns of higher academic performance in schools when they focus on the basics.
“At first, it wasn’t necessarily well received, and some teachers left who didn’t want to get on board,” she said. “But eventually, we worked it all into our classrooms.”
Principal at St Ives North Public, Christine Taylor, changed teaching practices at her school eight years ago.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Over three years, the school embedded practices from that study, including explicit teaching, high expectations, giving detailed feedback on assessments and setting clear routines in the classroom.
“We also have teachers observe each other in classes to improve practice,” said Taylor, who also teaches an extension literacy class for years 5 and 6. The school has a long-running gifted education program, which began in the 1990s, for high-potential and gifted students.
St Ives North was among 53 NSW schools identified by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) as high-achieving this year’s NAPLAN results when compared with students of similar socio-educational backgrounds.
It also achieves above-average results against the department’s value-add index, which measures how much a school improves the performance of its students.
A separate analysis of this year’s NAPLAN results also reveals the school was among the top-performers when comparing the average year 5 scores across all tested areas: reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy.
The academically selective private boys’ school Sydney Grammar, all-girls private Abbotsleigh and Woollahra Public, which has an opportunity class for gifted students, were the highest performers in year 5.
But public schools St Ives North and Oakhill Drive Public School achieved similar overall score results to high-fee private girls schools Kambala and Ravenswood. St Michael’s Catholic Primary School in Stanmore was the highest-performing Catholic school.
More than 90 per cent of primary and high schools across all sectors which scored overall top results enrolled students from advantaged backgrounds.
Year 3 students at St Ives North Public School.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The top 20 performing schools for year 9 were all fully selective high schools, followed by high-fee independents, mirroring the top-rankings in the HSC.
At St Ives North, Taylor said whole-year programs, with lesson plans and resources, had lifted results.
“If you are beginning teacher or a casual, you have a good foundation and set of resources to draw on,” she said. “It isn’t a bible, but it has the essentials of what we want covered in classes.”
“Having that bank of programs and lesson plans helps with reducing teacher burnout and allows more time for feedback,” she says. It also allows teachers more time to analyse student data, which has been critical to catch students before they slip behind.
Intensive analysis of student data has also been key to well-above average NAPLAN scores at all-girls school Meriden in Strathfield, which also performs well in the HSC.
Meriden teacher Janani Eliezer with students this week.Credit: Steven Siewert
The high-fee private school was identified by ACARA this week as a high-achieving school in literacy and numeracy, with well-above average scores in years 3 and 5, and above and well-above results in high school.
Principal Lisa Brown said the school took a “data-driven approach” to analyse students assessments and tests, which works especially well in maths.
“We have done a lot this year on the analytics side of things, to be able to get a really clear picture of our students, not just academics, but also their attendance and across the wellbeing programs,” she said.
“It helps with identifying little shifts before they become a trend. When there’s a blip or a little hiccup in their results, we make sure we respond to that before it becomes something bigger.”
At Cranebrook High School, also identified by ACARA as high achieving compared to schools with similar socio-educational backgrounds, a whole-school focus on reading has contributed to above-average scores for years 7 and 9.
Students at Cranebrook High School achieved above average results in this year’s NAPLAN testing.Credit: James Brickwood
“What we’ve been able to do is grow students from year 7 to year 9 really well in across the board, but particularly in reading,” said principal Craig Dunne. “The students come to us with a strong set of skills, and then we look at what they can do and grow. Our goal is to move them higher between year 7 and year 9.”
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