David Bartlett, MP Premier Tuesday, 5 May 2009

Awards recognise school improvement

Three Tasmanian government schools have been recognised for making improvements across a range of education areas.

Premier and Minister for Education and Skills, David Bartlett, today announced that Rokeby High, Blackmans Bay Primary and St Marys District High had won the State Government's inaugural School Improvement Awards.

"A high school, primary school and district high school were each chosen for the awards based on data from the 2008 school improvement reports released today," Mr Bartlett said.

"The three award-winning schools showed the greatest improvement from 2007 to 2008 based on upward trends in some key measures in this year's school improvement reports including literacy and numeracy and student attendance and participation.  

"These results are testament to the enthusiasm, innovation and dedication of the staff and I'd like to congratulate the three schools on their commitment to continuous improvement."

Mr Bartlett said the individual school improvement reports for 2008 allowed parents and the wider community to see how individual schools were performing in government's priority areas of the early years, literacy and numeracy, student retention, school improvement and equity.

"For the first time, it will now be possible to compare achievement and improvement in individual schools for consecutive years.

"The 2008 school improvement reports feature the same information as last year as well as additional information on average class sizes in prep and year one, literacy and numeracy national testing results, school bank balances and the number of students and staff at each school.

"School reporting is not about making comparisons between schools.

"The results allow schools to compare their results against their own previous achievements to determine the progress that is being made.

"They also identify areas of strength and achievement so that successful strategies can be shared with other schools.

"I'm committed to ensuring that my Government, and our Government schools, are open and accountable and the release of this year's school improvement reports continues that commitment," Mr Bartlett said.  

He said that parents would receive a summary of the Tasmanian Education Performance Report and the school improvement report for their child's school within the next few weeks.

School improvement reports can be accessed from today by visiting the home page of the Department of Education's website at: www.education.tas.gov.au     

Summary of School improvement award winners:

Rokeby High School:  Success in lifting students' literacy and numeracy performance between Years 7 and 9 has led to a significant upward trend compared with results from previous years.  The school has also made a great improvement in lifting the rate of student attendance over the past two years.

Blackmans Bay Primary School: has shown high achievement, high upward trends and excellent overall progress in critical areas. The outcomes achieved in the Prep years in literacy and numeracy have shown significant improvement from 2005 to 2008. Improvement continues in student gain in literacy and numeracy scores from Year 3 to Year 5 which indicates that the school is adding real value to their students' learning in these areas.  All students are attending more, and their attendance rate exceeds the state average attendance rate for primary schools.  

St Mary's District High: has shown high upward trends in Prep literacy and numeracy. These awards are about improvement and over the last two years the school has managed to lift the literacy and numeracy performance of its Prep students compared with very low outcomes prior to this. The school has worked hard to improve the literacy and numeracy of all its students and this is reflected in the high gains which has led to high achievement and upward trends in student scores across all years from 3 - 9. There is also a trend up in the rate of students leaving year 10 and continuing with further education.


Further information:  Rod Scott - 6233 2170