Identification of whole-school areas of strength/success in literacy and numeracy
Scout provides information reports that, when used together, support the identification and ongoing progress monitoring of school priorities. This could include strategic directions included in school plans.
Strategic Direction: Every student, every teacher, every leader and every school improves each year.
In schools that excel, student assessment data is regularly used school-wide to identify student achievement and progress to reflect on teaching effectiveness and inform future school directions.
The Value Added report can be found in the NAPLAN (DoE) App. It can be used to understand the progress of student scores between each pair of assessment years, e.g. 3-5 or 9-12. Executive Teams can use this report to gain an overview of changes in reading and numeracy performance over time and consider the programming, assessment or teaching/professional learning practices, which may have influenced the trends.
Refer to Value Add video.
Note: It is important to consider the value added for the school in conjunction with other measures of student performance and growth found in Scout, internal measures within a school and specific demographic characteristics of the school.
School Level Growth Report
This report allows schools to analyse their NAPLAN performance in each domain and compares the school
to both the SSSG and State.
Steps:
- Open the School Level Growth report (found in the NAPLAN (DoE) app under the heading School vs SSSG & State).
- Look for trends in data by selecting 2018, 2017 & 2016 Years.
- Select NAPLAN Assessment.
- Use Gender, Aboriginal, EAL/D slicers to look at student performance.
Use the report to:
Analyse the Average NAPLAN Growth Score of the school, percentage of students whose growth is at or
above Expected Growth to assist in developing enriching learning activities.
Refer to NAPLAN Expected Growth webinar.
Band Distribution report
This report can be used to illustrate the performance of a school’s cohort percentage in each NAPLAN band and compare it to the SSSG and State. Executive Teams can use this report to identify shifts in bands over time and consider what practices have impacted results.
Steps:
- Open Band Distribution report (found in NAPLAN (DoE)).
- Select Year(s).
- Select NAPLAN Assessment.
- What bands are 50-60% of students achieving?
- Use Gender, Aboriginal, EAL/D slicers to look at student performance
- Compare the same cohort e.g. Year 3 2016 performances to Year 5 2018 performances
- Has there been a change in band achievement?
Scenario
The NAPLAN trend data indicates the school has been consistently achieving strong results in Grammar and Punctuation, Reading and Spelling when compared to SSSG and State. 70-85% of students are achieving at the top 2 bands. Writing results are not reflecting the same achievement levels as 50-60% of students are achieving at Bands 4-5 in Year 5. You decide to look at information across a number of reports in Scout relating to writing achievement across cohort, criterion analysis and the integrated approach of teaching writing.
Executive Team could consider:
- What programming, assessment or teaching /professional learning practices took place, which
may have influenced trends in Writing? - How does gender compare against the cohort?
- How does each equity group (ATSI & EAL/D) compare against the cohort?
Bands over Time report
This report is found in the NAPLAN (DoE) app under the heading School Results. It will help determine if there has been a change in the percentage of students in each band. Ideally a school would see a decrease in the percentage of students in lower bands and an increase in the percentage of students in higher bands over time.
The impact of programs and initiatives that have been implemented in the school can be tracked over time, by comparing post-intervention cohorts in the target area with pre-intervention cohorts.
Executive Team could consider trend data:
- What does the performance attainment for the middle 50% / top and bottom 25% of the cohort tell us?
- How does gender compare against the cohort?
- How does each equity group (ATSI & EAL/D) compare against the cohort?
NAPLAN Paper/Online Analysis – Writing Reports
Use these reports to analyse students’ performance in each Writing criterion, and compare this to SSSG and State performance. This can pinpoint strengths and/or gaps in the school’s teaching strategy, for example the average school score may have been quite high for some criteria, indicating a strength in the teaching and learning of that skill.
Steps:
- Open Paper Item Analysis or Online Item Analysis and choose School (Writing) (found in the NAPLAN (DoE) App).
- Select focus Criterion.
- Sorting by school correct will enable differences to State to be seen as a way of pinpointing areas of strength and areas for development.
- Use Gender, Aboriginal, EAL/D slicers to look at student performance.
Executive Team could consider:
- Effectiveness of professional learning for staff in the teaching of writing.
- Involving all staff in analysing writing criterion to build data literacy skills.
- Where is curriculum differentiation needed?
- Are assessment tasks targeting all students, or just some students.
Once you have the data
You can then use this information to determine areas of Literacy/Numeracy support and extension. In order to accurately determine a school’s overall strengths and areas to develop, we recommend using Scout data in conjunction with internal data sources.
Where to next?
Resources relating to literacy and numeracy:
CESE – How schools can improve literacy and numeracy
You can access resources and information relating to differentiation here:
Download the printable PDF of Identification of whole-school areas of strength/success in literacy and numeracy (PDF 760.67KB)