Principal's Report 

Naplan

Naplan is a topic the gets a lot of media coverage and for good reasons.  Naplan is an assessment tool that allows parents and schools (and education departments) to get a gauge of how students are progressing in comparison of every student in the nation and the state.

National comparison is interesting as this includes very remote and high disadvantaged (in education terms) areas while state comparisons are more relative to us here at Windsor Primary.

Regardless of the high level of disadvantage that is part of our community profile, our Naplan goals are to strive to have our matched cohort meet or better the state average and to have a high percentage of benchmark growth when Year 3 and Year 5 Naplan assessments are compared.

In the year before I started at Windsor our matched cohort state average comparisons in the ten assessments (five Year 3 and five Year 5) were –

Well Below State Average – 7

Below State Average – 2

At State Average – 1

In 2019, the last year of pre-COVID normality our matched cohort state average comparisons were -

Well Below State Average – 1

Below State Average – 4

At State Average – 5

This has been a terrific improvement and credit to our teaching staff for impacting this change.  

Unfortunately, the events of COVID and a complete change to our teaching routine saw our 2021 matched cohort results took a step backwards.

Well Below State Average – 2

Below State Average – 7

At State Average – 1

While the high end of the scale scores returned to the 2017 status, we are proud to have avoided our low end status to do likewise.  It is our goal to have all ten matched cohort assessments average at state level or better and we will continue to work at understanding the needs of all of our students better in pursuit of this.  I say ‘all’ students as Naplan is tough for students who do not fall in the mainstream category and at Windsor we have large number of students who do not fit into this category.  Regardless of Naplan, we will continue to support these students and their families and celebrate every small achievement they make whether it is Naplan compliant or not.

The wonderful news from our 2021 Naplan results was the Benchmark Growth from Year 3 to Year 5.  

School high growth in Reading - 31% of students; State high growth – 27% of students

School high growth in Writing - 21% of students; State high growth – 21% of students

School high growth in Spelling - 33% of students; State high growth – 22% of students

School high growth in Grammar & Punctuation - 33% of students; State high growth – 23% of students

School high growth in Numeracy - 31% of students; State high growth – 22% of students

To have met or be above the state in these areas is another enormous credit to those involved.

While this year’s Naplan will provide no Benchmark Growth data (there was no testing in 2020) and our progress will be on matched cohort data alone, we will congratulate every student, family, teacher and support person each student had in reaching their 2021 Naplan result.

Peter Seddon

Principal