NAPLAN shows SA kids are lagging behind
The state's Premier-in-waiting, and current Education Minister, Jay Weatherill, has defended the latest round of National Literacy and Numeracy test preliminary results, that show South Australian students scored less than the national average.
The NAPLAN test results also show South Australian year seven students scored results that went backward in literacy and numeracy categories, compared with results of students the year before.
But the biggest drop was in year three writing scores, which fell by 2.8 percent.
New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT scored the best amongst the states.
The Opposition Education spokesman, David Pisoni, slammed the state government and current Education Minister, Jay Weatherill.
"These are not good results for South Australia, and they’re certainly not good results for Jay Weatherill," he said.
"What we see here is in every category, all 20 categories, here in South Australia we’ve failed to meet the national average, and in some instances we’re as low as five percent lower than the national average," he said.
"We’ve gone backwards in many of our categories, about 14 categories we’ve gone backwards."
But Jay Weatherill has defended the results, saying the scores have mainly stayed the same since last year.
"There’s very little difference between the jurisdictions, the position last year is substantially replicated this year – that is there are three jurisdictions that are in a leading position, New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT,"
"Two at the bottom, Tasmania and the Northern Territory and South Australia sits with Western Australia and Queensland," he said.
"Of course though, these are important pieces of data that can be collected and allow us to understand what’s happening in our schools."
"And we’ve taken that material into account."
To view the full report for yourself, click here.
The final NAPLAN results, will be available at the end of this year.
