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St Joseph’s College Toowoomba was among the high-performing schools in the 2023 NAPLAN (NCEC)

A number of Catholic schools have been recognised by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) for the encouraging outcomes achieved by students in the latest NAPLAN results. Source: NCEC.

The information released last week on the My School website shows the latest school-level NAPLAN data, helping parents, carers, schools and governments to better understand student performance in the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy.

There were 17 Catholic schools listed in ACARA’s national high-performing schools’ list. While all states and territories were represented, nine were schools in the Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, reflecting its strong system-wide focus on literacy, which is showing signs of positive improvement in student learning outcomes.

Student attendance data also published on the My School website showed an improvement in attendance rates in Catholic schools to 90.3 per cent, up from 87.9 per cent in 2022, which is 1.7 percentage points higher than the national attendance rate of 88.6 per cent.

Catholic school levels of students who attended 90 per cent of the year or more increased by 14.8 percentage points to 65.4 per cent (50.5 per cent in 2022), and 3.9 percentage points higher than the national average of 61.5 per cent.

“NAPLAN results across Catholic schools are encouraging with schools performing above or well above the national average in all of the domains tested,” National Catholic education executive director Jacinta Collins said.

“However, we know there is still a way to go to lift results for all schools and all students, particularly those experiencing educational disadvantage such as students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and students with disability, as well as those from regional, rural and remote areas.”

Ms Collins said one of the great strengths of NAPLAN was its ability to highlight areas where students could be supported in their learning and where additional resources or early intervention could be applied to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes.

FULL STORY

Catholic schools achieve encouraging results in NAPLAN  (NCEC)