Analysis of 2021-2024 Strategic Improvement Plan (SIP)
The key projects under the current school plan included PBL, improvement in writing and developing a better structure for wellbeing support and monitoring. There has been significant improvement in behaviour data with more consistency across the school. Structures and processes to identify students needing additional support have been streamlined with increased school resources provided to support individual students writing achievement, as measured from the school rubric. This has resulted in improvement, particularly with Year 3 girls. Our other improvement measures have not been achieved though, as our work we did didn’t target maths and reading as much as was needed. We are disappointed to see we have dropped in our results in both areas.
Future work needs to maintain and grow our gains in writing while targeting reading and numeracy.
Forums/survey
A positive from our writing professional learning from teachers asked us to keep the supportive structure including collaborative planning of lessons, peer and IL feedback, the use of the IL to do demonstration and team teaching lessons and the work to date on understanding and interpreting the data to match what each student needs next.
Teachers indicated that trained teachers in supporting or co-teaching roles were able to support students in their learning needs to a greater depth than through SLSOs. With an emerging trend for greater teacher collaboration and to lift results in reading and numeracy, the balance of SLSOs/ support teachers using needs-based funding should be realigned to deliver maximum benefit to students.
Other assessment data
Internal assessment data does not reflect external data. Our internal reading and comprehension assessments are showing students are being judged as working at a higher level than they are showing in external assessments such as PAT and NAPLAN. Further to this, consistency in analysing assessment data, such as running records, was not evident. Mathematics assessments have traditionally included SENA and class-based assessments. These rely heavily on the assessment of computation and there was little evidence of assessing problem solving strategies. Consistency across the stages is needed. A structured assessment schedule is not in place. Consistency across the stages is needed.
EAL/D and Community Languages
A self-assessment against the EAL/D School Evaluation Framework determined a baseline level of Delivering for Learning, Teaching and Leading domains, with some success criteria in Sustaining and Growing. The framework indicated that systematic collection and analysis of EAL/D student assessment data, (including sliced NAPLAN data for EAL/D students), professional learning and collaborative practice were key areas for development to improve student outcomes.
Executive staff, Community language teacher and Classroom teachers reviewed structure of CLP program. The temporary CL teacher and an executive member of staff recently completed CLP training and this highlighted the need for improvement particularly with curriculum integration and supporting the school to achieve Excellence on the EAL/D School Evaluation Framework with regards to Leading domain, Parent and community engagement. Given the value of this training, attendees have recommended a focus in the next planning cycle, more widespread teacher training, greater teacher collaboration and possibilities for curriculum integration.
Student voice
Sadly, though TTFM is reporting students feeling positive about success, most are reporting being ‘bored’ the majority of time in class. A significant percentage of students (40%) are disengaged. Most report not knowing what and why they are learning certain things and don’t see the relevance.
Literature and research
- SEF
- What Works Best – Collaboration and feedback
- Student-Centred Leadership Viviane Robinson
- WWB High expectations, CESE – effective leadership and 5 essentials for effective evaluation
- Vivianne Robinson: The impact of leadership on student outcomes: Making sense of the evidence
- Literacy and Numeracy Strategy 2018-2020 (and updated strategy once available)
- Curriculum review
- English and Mathematics Syllabus documents
- Simon Breakspear’s learning sprints
- What Works Best to Improve Student Performance including use of data to inform practices.