A STRONG connection with families, and a clear, sequential plan for student learning, has seen Roseworthy Primary School ranked as one of the top scoring schools in literacy and numeracy testing.
The local public school achieved consistently high scores in the 2019 NAPLAN test, with the year 3 and 5 student bodies each placing the school in the top 10 South Australian regional schools results.
Principal Matt Saunders said the teaching team were really proud of the students’ ongoing performance in NAPLAN but recognised it as just one measurement tool for learning.
“We try and focus on having a broad curriculum that supports all children and we ensure that we don’t over play the importance of NAPLAN testing,” he said.
“We are pretty confident every year, as most schools are now, of what the result will look like based on all of our internal testing measures we have in place to make sure we know where children need to be supported individually.
“For us that’s one of the key things that is important for our school – to make sure we know very clearly where every student is at and what we need to be targeting to make sure they get their individual needs met.”
Mr Saunders said the school has a sequential and sustained focus in literacy and numeracy improvement, in line with the education department’s new school improvement model.
It also targets Literacy and Numeracy First funding on making sure students are achieving the standard for education but also challenging mid-to high end learners.
“We have a really strong connection with our families and annually run literacy and numeracy meeting to support our families in understanding the programs we are running, so they are able to support children at home also,” he said.
“We have a really clear literacy and numeracy plan for how we are going to sequentially learn across reception through to year seven and our teaching team implement that very effectively.”
Other local regional schools to achieve high scores (and place among the top 10 SA regional schools) were Tanunda’s Faith Lutheran College (year 3 and year 9), Sandy Creek Primary School (year 5), and Nuriootpa’s Redeemer Lutheran School (year 5 and year 7).