Calista PS NAPLAN results promising

Preliminary results for this year's National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy have highlighted "above expectation" results for Calista Primary School.

The school has leaped above the Education Department's expectations in all 10 tests compared to mixed results in previous years.

Principal Craig Skinner said he believed the strong improvement was because of a four-year focus on literacy and numeracy, and the introduction of explicit learning during the past 18 months.

"Explicit teaching is about having an intentional focus for every lesson, breaking the lesson down into a number of steps that students follow, followed by ploughing back at the end to ensure all students understand the concepts being taught," he said.

"That is accompanied by warm-ups which are lots of repetition of the things they need to know."

Mr Skinner said students had improved on all NAPLAN test results from last year and scored better than ever before in six tests.

"Year 3 students have achieved their highest score in numeracy and only 2 per cent fell below the bench mark compared to previous years showing four, 10 and 11 per cent falling below," he said.

"Year 3 also achieved their highest score in maths, with only 7 per cent below the benchmark and that's a work in progress after one year of explicit teaching."

A Department of Education spokeswoman confirmed the preliminary data for Calista indicated the school had improved substantially.

"This improvement relates to both Year 3 and Year 5 and the school has exceeded expectation on all NAPLAN tests," she said.

Mr Skinner said the results were "absolutely fantastic" and credited the teachers for their hard work in the classroom.

"I'm really proud of the teachers because they're working hard in the classrooms, making a huge difference for these kids," he said. "With success comes self-esteem and things like behaviour problems reduce because they are learning.

"Our aim is to have no students below the benchmark."

The department spokeswoman said preliminary NAPLAN data was made available to schools to use for school planning and to organise specific support for particular students.

I'm very proud of the teachers because they're working hard in the classrooms, making a huge difference for these kids. Calista Primary School principal Craig Skinner