Dear Santa families,
I wish to extend our very best wishes to Year 12 students as they commence their HSC exams this week. For many parents, it may feel as if you are also sitting these exams as you have walked the journey with your daughters over the past twelve months. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.
For parents and carers of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, your daughters’ and sons’ NAPLAN reports have arrived and will be posted early this week. As a whole staff, we had a very engaging professional learning session last Thursday devoted to the NAPLAN results, and what they tell us about areas of focus. The diagnostic value of NAPLAN is very valuable. It allows us to ‘drill’ down to the level of the student and the cohort to critique student growth, school growth, and trends within or across the different year groups. Teachers experienced some of the pressure of NAPLAN as we asked them to read excerpts from the literary and numeracy tests and to answer some questions. This was an interesting exercise and generated debate, as we readily understand why students might have chosen wrong responses. In multiple-choice style questions, there is not always an obvious answer. Responses often made sense but may not have been sufficiently precise in the context. Apart from the subtlety of the choice, there is also the time pressure. Students have approximately a minute to answer each multiple-choice question. Following this professional learning session, all teachers will engage further with the data to help inform both understanding of individual students, as well as implications for teaching and learning practices.
Finally, I want to apologise to any families affected by our online ‘absence’ last Friday. There had been a significant power outage in Strathfield the previous night, and our servers were damaged as a result. Our IT team worked all day and into the night to rectify the situation, and I thank them for their commitment and persistence.
Dr Maree Herrett
