At Barbreck our focus is to nurture each girl’s ability and potential academically, creatively and emotionally. Our model of explicit instruction, personalised learning plans and a commitment to prioritise academic time for the development of skills in literacy and numeracy has seen some exciting educational outcomes for our Barbreck girls.

NAPLAN (National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy) offers schools an abundance of data to analyse for academic progress. Some of these aspects include: individual year level, subjects, the strategy utilised and individual student levels, all to determine the areas of strength and to identify areas for improvement.

Additionally, the results facilitate St Catherine’s School to identify the progress being made from year to year, and determine our results alongside the Victorian State and Australian results, and other schools in the district.

The table above sets out the five areas that NAPLAN assesses for each of the testing years in the primary Years 3 and 5. It also displays the mean scale score for St Catherine’s in each of those year levels, as well as the Victorian State Mean Scale Score and the Australian Mean Scale Score for the past two years.

Progress from Year to Year

By comparing the 2018 and the 2019 mean scale scores for St Catherine’s, it reveals that improvements have been made across all areas.

Comparison to State and Australian Mean Scale Scores

The mean scale scores at the state and national levels indicates a slight decrease in Reading across Year 3 and Reading, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation across Year 5. St Catherine’s students in contrast, have demonstrated exciting progress in the areas of Literacy and Numeracy.

Highlights to note include:

• St Catherine’s Year 3 results in Reading, and Grammar and Punctuation surpassed the Year 5 State and Australian results, and Year 3 Writing exceeded the Year 5 Australian result. (see green numbers)
• St Catherine’s Year 5 results exceeded the Year 7 State and Australian results in Reading, Writing and Grammar and Punctuation. (see red numbers).

As educators, we are heartened by these excellent results and are reflective of the hard work of the wonderful Barbreck staff and students. With a continuous focus on analysing student work, personalising learning by targeting their instructional level and tracking progress, our focus is to consistently strive to achieve good results.

Congratulations to both the students and their teachers. A fabulous achievement!