Why is this important?
We are committed to lifting literacy and numeracy standards across NSW public schools to ensure students are given every opportunity to be their best.
A focus on literacy and numeracy skills helps to unlock children’s academic potential at school, improving their overall academic outcomes and increasing the likelihood they will attain tertiary qualifications.
Achieving this Premier’s Priority will mean at least an additional 18,700 students with improved literacy skills and 13,500 students with improved numeracy skills.
How are we tracking?
This ambitious target is designed to build on the success of the last Premier's Priority and continue to lift academic performance in our public schools.
The proportion of NSW public school students achieving results in the top 2 NAPLAN bands has increased for 3 consecutive years, reaching 32.2% in 2019.
Due to COVID-19 NAPLAN results will not be available for the 2020 cohort. Schools are undertaking alternative assessments to understand and respond to the impact of COVID-19 on students’ learning through 2020.
What are we doing?
- Curriculum changes to declutter content and focus teaching time on core concepts and skills.
- A new ‘Best in Class’ teaching unit has been established, made up of outstanding teachers who have demonstrated high performance in their subjects. This team are sharing their classroom skills in targeted high schools to lift performance, using proven and successful teaching methods.
- Pilots of the new Year 1 phonics check and reading improvement program are underway and will inform future approaches to support and assessment.
- The Centre for Education Statistics & Evaluation has updated its ‘What Works Best’ evidence guides identifying the highest impact teaching practices. An integrated suite of tools and resources is being rolled out to schools to help teachers embed these practices in every classroom.
‘What Works Best’ in Practice Coonabarabran High School
In May, the Department of Education released the 2020 update of What Works Best. Since May, the new resources have been downloaded over 60,000 times. What Works Best teaching practices are grounded in a strong evidence base for increasing student achievement.
Coonabarabran High School is one of many schools that has embedded What Works Best into its learning from home response to COVID-19 and has carried it through into Term 3.
“It was really good that you kept up those clear learning goals, so that we knew, even in the online space, what it was we were meant to be doing and what success would look like."
– Coonabarabran High School student
“As professionals, you always want to try and do it better and the What Works Best strategies align directly with why we're teachers.”
– Coonabarabran High School teacher
“The strategies are largely things that you could learn about one day and implement the next. It was easy for us to get that whole-school buy-in from our staff.”
– Coonabarabran High School, school leaders
Learn more about the NSW Government’s support for literacy and numeracy
- Schools assessing their teaching program against best practice to identify areas for improvement.
- Directly supporting school leaders from 450 schools in data analysis and effective teaching practice.
- All public schools have set targets aligned to the Premier’s Priorities and are supported with School Excellence in Action resources to put in place focused improvement plans to lift outcomes.