This parent-led push had a big win for kids in ACT kids. But there's more work to be done |
The ACT public school system is beginning to shift in important ways - and while this progress is welcome, it has only come after years of advocacy by parents, teachers, professionals and community members who simply could not accept widening gaps in literacy and numeracy.
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The ACT is not alone in confronting these challenges, systems across Australia have grappled with outdated approaches to teaching and uneven implementation of evidence-based practice.
But here in the ACT, the combination of strong community voices, emerging national reforms, and lessons from other states has finally created the momentum for overdue change.
For too long, school autonomy in the ACT has meant that each public school could adopt its own approach to teaching, even when these choices diverged from contemporary evidence on how children learn to read, write and do maths.
Autonomy can empower schools in positive ways, but without system-wide guardrails it risks creating variation that is hard for students to overcome.
When teaching methods differ dramatically from one suburb to another, the system can unintentionally create winners and losers.
The ACT's literacy and numeracy results show improvement is possible. By year 9, around a quarter of students are below proficiency in spelling, one in three are below proficiency in reading and numeracy, and almost 40 per cent fall below proficiency in grammar and writing.
For a jurisdiction with such high levels of parental education and household advantage, these outcomes point to structural issues rather than individual shortcomings.
Students facing disadvantage carry an even heavier burden. When........