By Lucy Carroll
The NSW Education Department will stop setting ambitious HSC and NAPLAN performance targets for every public school and instead give principals the power to nominate their own reading and numeracy improvement measures.
Department secretary Murat Dizdar told the Herald that under changes to how public schools report on school improvement, principals would no longer be given specific targets for lifting the number of pupils in the top two achievement bands.
NSW Education Department secretary Murat Dizdar said schools will no longer be given top two band NAPLAN targets, but will be asked to include “growth measures” in school improvement plans. Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
“Having targets for the top two NAPLAN bands did not capture improvement of all students. A growth measure will better capture if all children at a school are moving forward,” Dizdar said.
But critics warn allowing principals to choose from a range of assessment metrics to set their own improvement measures could dilute accountability and make it harder for parents to track how schools are performing.
The top two band “stretch targets” were introduced as part of the School Success Model under the previous Coalition government in 2020. The policy was criticised by principals who said a focus on the top band targets was demotivating and failed to account for student complexity.
Under changes as part of the state government’s plan for public education, the model will be abolished and schools will now report on improvement – or growth – measures for four key areas: reading, numeracy, attendance and post-school pathways.
“As a former principal, the best measure of worth of an impact of a school is if they’re able to move every child forward,” Dizdar said.
Schools can choose from a range of metrics - such as check-in assessment data or student report data – to determine the improvement measures which will vary for each school depending on its circumstances. From next year, schools will have the option of including NAPLAN data in growth measures.
An OECD report published last year analysing the Schools Success Model found that some principals felt the model put too much focus on the top two NAPLAN bands, rather “than making sustainable improvements in teaching and the learning of all students”.
However, it also found many school leaders were supportive of the use of system and school targets to help schools pinpoint areas of improvement.
Some principals have warned removing clear and ambitious targets based on NAPLAN results risks improvement measures becoming too ambiguous.
“It’s a backwards step. The moment you take out specific targets based on standardised tests you remove accountability. We should be aspirational,” said one principal. Another said it risked leaving parents in the dark, and was concerned schools may have too much freedom to set their own measures.
Glenn Fahey, research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, said ideally school plans would include clear and explicit targets for improvements in standardised tests, which could include targets for the number of students achieving proficiency in NAPLAN.
But past president of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council, Craig Petersen, said a growth measure is more appropriate for a large system of schools.
“Overall, having a growth measure is better than focusing on the top two bands. We need to be ambitious, but you’ve got to trust the profession. The department will monitor how schools re-set targets and make sure they are valid,” he said.
Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Mitchell said the School Success Model expanded on the 2016 Bump It Up strategy that aimed to boost student performance in the top performance bands.
“Removing the School Success Model is a watering down of accountability and removes the opportunity for parents to have transparency around how students are performing. Schools should also report on phonics screening check targets.
“The success model wasn’t punitive. It was supposed to be that the department would intervene to make sure schools had the support.”
The department said schools could use a suite of assessments to set growth measures, including check-in assessment, Progressive Achievement Tests, HSC minimum standards or school-based grades.
“Most schools will also include NAPLAN once the new data is available. However, there will be some circumstances where this wouldn’t be the most meaningful or appropriate measure,” a department spokesperson said.
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