Improving literacy skills in early high school
NAPLAN testing – Australia’s national testing in literacy and numeracy for students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 – began in 2008. Educators now have over 10 years of performance data for Australian students. Specifically, they can look at how the same cohort of students performed in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. The result is not pretty for Australian education.
10 years of NAPLAN data reveals that the number of students struggling with literacy increases over time, and the number of students doing exceptionally well decreases. We are losing the high performers and increasing the number of low performers. All while they are at school.
To give you an idea of how bad the numbers are, in 2017 a staggering 16.5 per cent of Year 9 students across Australia were below benchmark in writing. In 2011, only 2.8 per cent of this same cohort of students sitting their Year 3 NAPLAN tests were below benchmark. At the other end of the scale, 4.8 per cent of Year 9 students performed far above the minimum benchmark in 2017, compared to 15.7 per cent in 2011.
What is going on? Educators argue that ‘basic literacy skills’ are clearly being taught and absorbed by the vast majority of students across the system. However, by the end of primary school and the beginning of high school when ‘deep comprehension’ skills and other more complex literacy skills are introduced, we are losing them.
Widening participation programs are offered by universities to encourage and assist students from all backgrounds to attend university. At the moment, due to a range of funding and other pressures, typical university outreach programs target only the senior secondary years. But the NAPLAN data and other research led by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education show us that we need to be targeting these students much earlier.
University outreach programs also tend to focus on a select group of ‘gifted’ individuals, rather than seeking to engage the whole cohort. These individuals are often the standout students who are on track to university anyway, and their success does not reflect a broadening of access or participation. In addition, the traditional focus has been on ‘raising aspiration’ of students rather than raising capacity and removing barriers.
UTS, Macquarie University and UNSW are seeking to change that with the creation of the NSW Equity Consortium.
A new partnership
The NSW Equity Consortium is a new, voluntary partnership between the three universities. The Consortium – led by Mary Teague and Dr Sally Baker at the University of New South Wales – is seeking to change the way in which outreach programs are undertaken in schools with a new partnered approach.
The Equity Consortium outreach program was developed by academics, equity practitioners and teachers across the three institutions and engages Years 7–9 in participatory, longitudinal and mixed-methods teaching programs, targeting the whole cohort – not just a select group. The pilot is currently running in six Sydney high schools and focuses on literacy.
An evidence-based intervention
There is a large gap between evidence-based information about what improves literacy targets, so we are seeking to bridge that gap by bringing evidence-based teaching programs to the six pilot schools and evaluating their effectiveness.
In addition to delivering a Year 8 program across all partner schools, UTS purchased laptops for some of the schools, to help support students with the resources necessary to learn and thrive in the digital age.
Tracking results
The Equity Consortium will track students’ progress throughout Years 7, 8 and 9 while they participate in the program, and through their senior high school years all the way through to university. Some, we hope, will enter the U@Uni Academy program in Year 10 – our Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion’s alternate, non-ATAR entry pathway to study at UTS.
