By Ross Fox
Executive Director, National Catholic Education Commission
National test results, known as the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy, or NAPLAN, will once again hit the headlines when the results of testing in numeracy and literacy for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are released.
The reactions to the results of the NAPLAN will be many and varied.
Some will celebrate the strong performance of their students; some will celebrate improvement by their students. Some parents will shrug their shoulders; some will scour the results to help them choose a school for their child.
The media will almost certainly try to create tables and ladders to devise simplistic comparisons of schools and judge school communities based on their NAPLAN results.
So, is there a “Catholic” response to NAPLAN results?
Any response must be shaped by this simple fact: assessments such as NAPLAN provide a useful, but clearly limited, understanding of how students and schools are performing.
One of the benefits of NAPLAN is its ability to supplement teachers’ and parents’ understanding of how a student is progressing in his or her learning. Where a student is struggling with a certain aspect of his or her education, additional attention can be offered in the classroom and at home to help lift ability in that area.
Catholic principals, teachers and school staff are undoubtedly committed to the learning journey of each child. However, Catholic schools, by virtue of being Catholic, subscribe to a broader view of a school’s role to enrich the life and learning of a student.
Catholic schools have a strong academic record, but the Catholic understanding of the transformative power of education extends well beyond student test results.
The purpose of Catholic schools is to deliver an education that forms a young person academically, spiritually, socially, emotionally and physically. Their explicit goal is to develop students equipped to make a difference in the world beyond school.
Reading comprehension, writing, spelling, grammar and mathematics are all tested during NAPLAN. Senior high schools students undergo a range of tests, both internal and external, to test their achievement in various subject areas.
But what of the other qualities, skills and even virtues we desire for students? What if, as well as asking students where an apostrophe fits into a word and how to calculate the length of a triangle’s longest side, Catholic schools asked students how they can be a better sister or brother?
How they can be a better son or daughter. How they can live a life that is inspired by the service and selflessness of Jesus Christ, of Mary of the Cross MacKillop, of St Vincent de Paul.
The current Young Australians of the Year likely asked those questions of themselves. The fact they attended a Catholic school is likely not unrelated.
Lucas Patchett and Nic Marchesi were honoured in January for their work starting up a mobile laundry service that provides a listening ear and a clean set of clothes to Australian women and men who are homeless.
They have credited their ministry to their exposure to the Church’s outreach work while they were in a Catholic high school.
The story of Nic and Lucas – realising an idea in a service that now reaches tens of thousands of people and is backed by a growing number of supporters – is an exceptional one, but not one that’s unique within the Catholic education community.
Australian and international research has found that students who attend a Catholic school are more likely to volunteer in their community than students from other schools. Students in Catholic schools are less likely to encounter bullying. Students from faith-based schools are more likely to contribute to social cohesion and to social stability.
Catholic schools provide a high-quality education, and parents rightly expect that from the school they choose. Families who choose a Catholic school also want an environment that models important values for their children, that challenges them to contribute to their community and that reminds them that they are so much more than a test score.
That’s the type of broad-based education Australian families seek in a Catholic school. That’s why hundreds of thousands of families are making that choice – and doing so in record numbers.
From page 24 and 25 from Issue 3: ‘Education: Teaching, Learning and Technology in 2016’ of The Record Magazine