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Victoria’s underwhelming NAPLAN results for grammar and punctuation have exposed a decades-old issue for the state’s schools – teachers don’t understand the concepts they’re teaching because they were never taught properly themselves.
More than 30 per cent of the state’s students were below proficiency levels in the subjects in NAPLAN results released on Wednesday. It was worst at year 3 (40.1 per cent) but showed little improvement by year 9 (39.5 per cent).
Education academics say the results highlight the erosion of explicit instruction in Victorian schools from the 1970s, meaning many of today’s teachers were not taught the fundamental skills of grammar and punctuation.
La Trobe University school of education associate dean Pamela Snow said the lack of instruction in schools and universities had left many teachers struggling with grammar in the classroom.
“They’ve really got to go right back to go and build their own knowledge,” she said. “You can’t teach what you do not know.”
Snow said the Victorian government had given schools too much autonomy and there needed to be more consistent guidance on how to best implement the curriculum.
“I would prefer to see one national curriculum that provides not just a blueprint but really a detailed road map for how to teach in terms of applying the best levels of evidence, how teachers can optimally and efficiently teach the things that are included in curriculum,” Snow said.
“There are approaches that are diametrically opposed in use in schools that are only just down the road from each other. I don’t see how that stacks up from a logical perspective.”
Grattan Institute education program director Jordana Hunter said the NAPLAN result showed grammar and punctuation needed significant improvement, but there was a lack of clear guidance from the government on how to properly teach it.
“The Victorian curriculum provides very high-level guidance only, and we really need to be breaking that down into concrete guidance for teachers,” she said.
“Depending on the age of the teacher, a lot of teachers didn’t learn grammar through an explicit teaching model themselves. Sometimes there’s a knowledge gap for teachers about grammatical rules, which has an impact on the effectiveness of their own teaching.”
Education Minister Natalie Hutchins with prep student Henry at Moonee Ponds Primary School on Wednesday.Credit: Penny Stephens
Education Minister Natalie Hutchins said NAPLAN results helped teachers to focus support on students who most needed help and that initiatives such as the school tutoring program were useful to address knowledge gaps.
“There’s more work to do,” she said. “There’s no doubt about it. And we’ll continue to do that.”
Credit: Matt Golding
This year’s NAPLAN underwent a radical overhaul, introducing new higher benchmarks in line with international testing and replacing the previous minimum standards with four proficiency categories: exceeding, strong, developing and needs additional support.
Victoria led the country on average testing scores, recording first or second place in 16 of the 20 assessment areas, but just over a quarter of students failed to meet the new proficiency standards for literacy and numeracy.
Grammar and punctuation were problematic at all Victorian year levels, with about a third of each group falling into the bottom two proficiency categories. In year 3, 10.4 per cent of students were in the lowest category for grammar, while 29.7 per cent were marked developing and only 9.7 per cent exceeding.
If your child is in the developing or needs additional support proficiency levels
- Talk to their teachers about whether there should be additional screening to identify the specific nature of their learning challenges
- Put a plan in place to catch up to the standard level of achievement
- Consider a tutor, which can be effective to fill in the knowledge gaps
Opposition education spokesman Matthew Bach said the government needed to work harder to address the shortfalls in Victorian students’ literacy and numeracy.
“We now know for the very first time just how many Victorian kids are falling behind basic standards,” he said.
“We also know that the jobs of the future are going to require really high-level skills in literacy and numeracy. That’s got to be the focus.”
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