“It was unacceptable. We can’t have children learning to read in high school,” stresses Gazula,the teacher-turned-principal who has spent 20 years working in south-west Sydney public schools. “I knew something had to be done.”
Principal Manisha Gazula with students at Marsden Road Public School in Liverpool.Brook Mitchell
Since 2016,the Liverpool primary school,which now has 730 students,has had a curriculum plan known as the “core program” that involves “explicitly teaching every component of reading,writing and maths” in a bid to turn around students’ stagnating academic results.
Last year 60 per cent of the school’s students made above-average progress from year 3 to 5 in NAPLAN reading,compared to just 37 per cent five years ago. In numeracy,70 per cent are now achieving above-average progress when compared to students from a similar background,up from less than half of the school’s students in 2016.
One in five students at the school are refugees – mostly from Iraq,Afghanistan and Syria – and more than 90 per cent have a language background other than English. Marsden Road Public was singled out by independent think tank the Grattan Institute in a report this month as a school that had successfully used a curriculum program that included sequenced learning plans for each subject,standardised assessments at the end of term,and some common textbooks.
“At the beginning of every term teachers come together to plan units of work using the school’s core program,so every teacher knows exactly what needs to be taught in each subject,in every year. That way students don’t fall through the cracks,” Gazula said. “All students in the same year level learn the same phonics sequences and grammar rules. It takes away a lot of guesswork.”
Teachers were given a clear plan of what punctuation signs should be taught to students in kindergarten,which included capital letters and full stops,all the way through to year 6,when students learn about ellipses for omission and semicolons.
Gazula,a former hospital clerk who started teaching in 2004,pointed out that the move to explicit instruction and use of a core curriculum program “hasn’t been easy”,particularly in the early years when “we had to upskill the teachers and get them familiar with the new approach”.
“We had to bring all 65 staff members along on the journey and help them understand the science of learning as we went about a systematic restructuring of how things work at the school,” she said.
“The syllabus can be quite confusing for a new teaching graduate,and setting up clear instructions and plans helps make it easier.”
Last year 60 per cent of students at Marsden Road Public made above-average progress from year 3 to 5 in NAPLAN reading.Brook Mitchell
A report released by the Grattan Institute this month found that just 15 per cent of almost 2250 primary and high school teachers nationally have access to a common set of high-quality curriculum materials for all classes,and teachers in disadvantaged schools are half as likely to have access to shared lesson plans than those in advantaged schools.
It found teachers were turning to YouTube,Pinterest and Facebook to help plan their lessons,creating “a lesson lottery” that could undermine student learning.
Jennifer Buckingham,director of strategy at literacy company Multilit,said Marsden Road was an example of a school that used “a really rigorous evidence-based approach to reading instruction across the whole school”.
“The school has really high expectations of what their student can achieve,and relentless focus on academic growth.”
Data from 2021 in Buckingham’s submission to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the National School Reform Agreement showed about 12 per cent of year 5 students in NSW students are reading at a level at and below the national minimum standard.
One in four year 9 students are either at or failed to meet the minimum standard for reading.
“In primary schools there has been improvement in reading in NSW schools,but it’s slow.[There is] no reason it can’t be accelerated if better intervention was offered. There are students who urgently need support,” she said.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories,analysis and insights..