THE Federal Government’s recently launched My School website shows a clear difference between Merredin’s public schools and the national standards.
The website shows the results of years three, five, seven and nine students in national tests in the five categories of reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy.
The website then uses colour coding to indicate whether the school’s results in each area are above or below the national average for all schools and schools with a similar socio-economic background.
Saint Mary’s Primary School outperformed the public schools, with above average or similar results to the national standards in most areas except year seven spelling and numeracy which were slightly below average.
North Merredin Primary School performed below average in all five categories.
Most year groups at South Merredin Primary School performed below average, except for year threes, who were above average.
Merredin Senior High School’s year nines returned similar results to other schools in the same socio-economic category but were below average when compared to all Australian schools.
The schools’ principals said the information was nothing new and schools already had programs in place to address the discrepancies.
“The Education Department has been publishing data from national literacy and numeracy tests (NAPLAN) online since 2006,” North Merredin principal Aaron Chaplin said.
“We already know who the students are that require extra support and we have been working with those students and putting programs in place.
“On the other hand we also have some excellent individual student performances within those results.”
Mr Chaplin said he didn’t believe the web site would have an impact on student enrolments in the school.
“The My School website is a useful tool for painting a snapshot of the whole year performance at a time, and parents have a right to view that information because it’s interesting and convenient,” he said.
“But ultimately it is much more important to go to the school physically and see how a school feels, what sort of values are there, and what policies they have on bullying and behavior management and see if it’s the right fit for your child.”
South Merredin principal David Watkins held a similar view.
“The website contained no surprises for us because we already have very good data about the school’s performance, and are already implementing programs to improve literacy,” Mr Watkins said.
“NAPLAN is just one set of data, whereas we have a wide range of data going back years which indicate we have good results historically.
“The best thing parents can do if they want to find out about their children’s performance is to come and talk to teachers at the school.
“We understand the context and demographics of the school and have first-hand feedback from our teachers about where our strengths and weaknesses lie.
“We have very happy kids, very stable staff, and a very positive learning environment at the school, and people like it here – you can’t put that in a website.”
Saint Mary’s principal Martin Major said the school’s good results reflected a three year focus the school had made on raising the achievement of all students within the school.
“The staff at Saint Mary’s are very happy with the results that the children achieved in the NAPLAN testing,” Mr Major said.
“However we are also aware that these results reflect the children’s performance on one given day of the year in the learning areas that are tested.
“I also think that the data contained on the My School website does not ‘tell the full story’ and by no means fully reflects the breadth and diversity of the education that is offered at a Catholic school.
“That being said, we will be working to continue to look at areas within the curriculum that we can improve to further increase the knowledge, development and achievement of all students within our school.”
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