How To Impart The Right Knowledge To Students: An Analysis Of Victorian Primary School Performance

How to Impart the Right Knowledge to Students?

The primary school teachers are increasingly expected to have adequate numeracy skills so that they can impart the right knowledge to the students (Polesel, Rice & Dulfer, 2014). This is also helpful in teachers who aim to teach science or maths in the secondary courses in the future. It is important to understand the teaching quality and the subsequent performance of the students as far as the national schools are concerned. The other Australian schools would be used as a framework to understand the performance of Victorian school students. This essay would help in better understanding of the Victorian primary school performance as compared to the competitor schools in Australia. The relative performance of the schools would measure over a period of time. The performance of the same students over the years would also be assessed. The basis of the data interpretation would be the given NAPLAN data on the Victorian primary school. The second part of the assessment would discuss the effect of the NAPLAN data on the performance of the students in the school.

The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) investigates the students in terms of several parameters (Nap.edu.au, 2017). There are common national tests in the language, writing, reading, language conventions and the numeracy. The years covered are 3, 5, 7 and 9. The areas of assessment include the writing, reading, grammar, spelling and punctuation (Nap.edu.au, 2017). The single common scale helps in the convenient understanding of the improvement needs over time.

This particular data would be analyzed on Victorian primary school in the year 2014. The school runs in the government sector and it is a primary school. There are classes for students in the age group of Prep to 6 and the total enrollment of the school is 309. The school is located in the metropolitan area (Myschool.edu.au, 2017). There are 15 non-teaching staffs. There are around 10 full time equivalent non- There are approximately 26 teaching staffs along with 23 full time equivalent teaching staffs. teaching staffs. The school finances in the year 2013are around $3,753,757 and the total capital expenditure is $29, 596 (Myschool.edu.au, 2017). The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) values shows that this school has close socio-educational advantages as compared to other similar schools (Myschool.edu.au, 2017). In the bottom quarters, there is high percentage of students in this school as compared to the other Australian schools. However, in the top quarters, the distribution of the students in this school is low as compared to other Australian counterparts. The total enrollments in the schools in the year 2014 is 309, out of which 45.3% are girls and 54.6 % are boys, which clearly indicate that the number of boys is more in this school (Myschool.edu.au, 2017). There are 2% indigenous students in the school and there are around 74% of the students who have other language background than English.

Analyzing NAPLAN Data on Reading Achievements

The first reading achievement on Year 3 is concerned with the analysis of Victorian public school with the similar schools of Australia. The data on reading shows that in the year 2008, the average achievement of the students is close to the average achievement of the students from statistically similar backgrounds with a margin of error at 90% level of confidence. In the year 2009 and 2010, the average achievement of the students is substantially above than the average achievement of the students from statistically similar backgrounds. In the next three years, the achievement of the students of the school is very close to that of the other schools with similar students. In the year 2014, this school’s performance was substantially below the average student performance of Australia. The average of the year between 2012 and 2014 shows that the school’s performance was close to that of the performance of other schools. In the year 2008, there was full participation of the students of this school while 97 % of Australian students participated in it. In this analysis, it is clearly noticed that the average student performance was very close to the student’s performance of the other schools and in only one year the performance of this school was bad.

In the second NAPLAN reading, the Year 3 students are analyzed and compared with the students of all the schools. In the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, the average achievement of the students from the school is very close to that of the average achievement of the students in Australia. In the year 2011 and 2012, the performance of this school’s students was below that of the average achievement of the students in Australia. In the next year, this ratio was closer but in the next year the students of the Victorian school performed substantially below the national achievement of the Australian students. From this analysis, the Victorian School needs to focus on the poor performance causes in the year 2014.

In the third NAPLAN reading, the Year 5 students are analyzed and compared with the students of the schools with similar background students. The data shows that the school’s performance in the years 2008 and 2009 was close to the schools with similar students. The students who were in the year 2010 and 2011 in the school displayed poor performance as compared to the other schools with similar students. Only the year 2012 displayed excellent performance of the students and the years such as 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014 displayed sufficient low levels of performance.

Comparison of Performance with Other Schools

The next NAPLAN results show the readings of the Year 5 achievement of this school and the Australian schools. In the year 2008 and 2009 the school displayed average student performances as compared by all Australian schools. The school should be concerned about the low performance levels of the schools in the year 2010 and 2011. The school data has revealed that there has been extremely low performance of the school students in the year 2013 and 2014, which is subsequently below all Australian schools.

The next graph on the Year 3 and Year 5 on achievement of the students shows different percentage of the students in different bands. There are different bands in the year 3 such as band 1, band 2, band 3, band 4, band 5 and band 6. The Year 5 achievement would comprise of different bands ranging from 3 to 8. It is observed that the band 6 comprises of the 5% of the students from this school and 25 % of the students are Australian students. This shows that it is important to achieve more achievement for this school. In the band 5, there are only 12% attendance outcomes in Victorian school, which is less than the Australian schools and other schools which have statistically similar schools. Year 5 displayed some positive as well as negative performances of the schools. In the fifth band, there are around 28% performance of the students of this school.

The last graph showcased the different gain scores of the students in Year 3 in 2012 and Year 5 in 2014 for Victorian School with the schools with similar students, Australian schools and the students who have similar starting score along with all the Australian students. There was a sharp increase in the number of average achievement of all the students from 2012 to 2014. There was also a steep increase in the average achievement of the students in different schools with similar students. One of the most remarkable characteristics of this data is that there is overlapping of the average achievement of the students who have got the same starting scores and the average achievement of the students in the school in the year 2012. However, there was comparatively less increase in the average achievement of the students in the school in the Year 5 in 2014.

The school should be concerned about the NAPLAN readings since there are several instances in which the school has lower average performance of the students as compared to others. This study underlined the fact that it is important to maintain high-quality education in the schools of Australia and to ensure that the students give good performances. This would also ensure that there is increased brand image of the school as there would be higher performance of the students (Alwi &Kitchen, 2014). Research shows that the greater emphasis on the reading instructions in the primary schools, which was yielding higher returns (Foltz, Hidalgo & Van Moere, 2014). It is important to focus on the persuasive writing skills of the students so that they can score higher grades in the following classes.

The above analysis shows that there have been many years in which there has been lag in the performance as compared to other school students. There has been several years in which the performance of the Victorian school has been substantially below the national average performance.This needs to be improved by adopting careful approach. A careful market research should be performed in which there is in-depth identification of the lack of performance of the students. The reading performance would help the teachers in analyzing the actual capabilities of the students and decide on their areas of improvements (Nilson, 2016). This would help in the better understanding of the student’s competencies and how it can be developed for their better future.

Conclusion

This essay presented the NAPLAN reading data for Victorian public school. The data reveals that student performance of the school along with the other similar schools so that an in-depth comparison can be made. The school’s relative performance over time is assessed and the school’s relative values with similar schools is also assessed. The overall Australian schools is included in the analysis since it provides a benchmark to determine the school’s performance. The data reveals that there have been certain years in which the school has performed well and there are other years in which the performance has been low as compared to the Australian standards. The second part of the assessment has discussed that the schools should be concerned about the NAPLAN scores and should take effective steps to improve the student performance

References

Alwi, S. F. S., & Kitchen, P. J. (2014). Projecting corporate brand image and behavioral response in business schools: Cognitive or affective brand attributes?. Journal of Business Research, 67(11), 2324-2336.

Foltz, P. W., Hidalgo, P., & Van Moere, A. (2014, May). Improving student writing through automated formative assessment: Practices and results. In International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA) 2014 Conference (pp. 1-18).

Myschool.edu.au (2017). Myschool.edu.au. Retrieved 24 May 2017, from https://www.myschool.edu.au

Nap.edu.au, 2017. NAP - Home. (2017). Nap.edu.au. Retrieved 24 May 2017, from https://www.nap.edu.au

Nilson, L. B. (2016). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors. John Wiley & Sons.

Polesel, J., Rice, S., & Dulfer, N. (2014). The impact of high-stakes testing on curriculum and pedagogy: A teacher perspective from Australia. Journal of Education Policy, 29(5), 640-657.