SAINT Anne’s School in Harvey has achieved the highest level of improvement in NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) data in the period 2008 – 2010.
This achievement is all the more laudable given that St Anne’s has been recognised from amongst the 155 WA schools from all three education systems involved in the Smarter Schools National Partnership Programme in K–7 Literacy and Numeracy.
The news comes as Minister for Education, Early Childhood and Youth Peter Garret called for good news stories from each State in terms of top results by improvement across the three education systems, government, Catholic and Independent schools.
This was done in the lead-up to the launch of the new MySchool website 2.0, which features the addition of a third year of results for the National Assessment Programme – Literacy and Numeracy.
St Anne’s principal Phillip Rossiter attributed the improvement to the hard work by teachers over the past years as well as the additional support from National Partnership Programme (NPP) funding, a federal government funding initiative. St Anne’s Harvey has been using Raising Achievement in Schools (RAISe) strategies for the past four years. Under National Partnership literacy and numeracy funding, a Collaborative Professional Learning in Action strategy was implemented. This involved a whole school approach to literacy and numeracy. For the past four years, a Reading Recovery Tutor has also been employed to target early intervention in literacy.
Mr Rossiter also indicated that a key aspect was the support offered by the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia (CEOWA) regional School Support Consultant who visited the school around four times each term.
Parent information nights and parent newsletters targeting the school’s focus of literacy and numeracy were also integral to the school’s improvement.
Overall, St Anne’s School has been able to effectively use NPP funding to build on, and add significant value to, their existing literacy and numeracy programmes.
CEOWA director Ron Dullard reported that he was delighted with the results and that these strategies were being used successfully in 73 Catholic schools across WA that had access to the NPP funding.