Achievements at Djarragun College

Results of the Years 3/5/7 National Tests

Class	Subject	% above national benchmark 2004	% above national benchmark 2005	% above national benchmark 2006	Comments
Year 3	Numeracy	10.5%	11%	47%	Great improvement
	Reading and Viewing	52%	26%	80%	Great improvement
	Writing	26%	21%	53%	Great improvement
Year 5	Numeracy	29%	41%	69%	Great improvement
	Reading and Viewing	25%	32%	72%	Great improvement
	Writing	50%	18%	47%	Great improvement
Year 7	Numeracy	9%	13%	15%	Slight improvement
	Reading and Viewing	46%	22%	21%	Slight drop *)
	Writing	54%	44%	86%	Great improvement

*) The slight drop could be due to a large cohort of students with a history of poor attendance and special needs.

The areas that marked improvements have occurred are in year 3 numeracy, reading and viewing and writing, year 5 numeracy and reading and viewing and year 7 numeracy and writing.
We believe that there are many reasons for the great improvements; some of these are listed below:
Attendance– attendance has greatly improved in many students and as a result they are making greater academic progress.
Reading Recovery– the Reading Recovery programme has allowed students right across the school to develop in the areas of fluency, accuracy and comprehension.
Reading Circles– a guided reading programme has been developed to ensure that students are being exposed to as many appropriately leveled texts as possible. They use a variety of genres and complete activities to develop their reading comprehension.

Individualised programmes– each teacher works closely with their assistants and tutors to ensure that the programmes meet the direct needs of the students. Students are tested regularly during the term to establish that they are making progress and to make any necessary changes to the programmes. Students are often grouped according to their academic needs and work in small groups or individually with a teacher, assistant or tutor.

Academic focus– we have a very strong commitment to achieving the best academic results possible for our students. They are required to complete homework each week, the teacher communicates with the parents through a communication book and they are encouraged to participate in academic challenges. This year the primary students participated in the Premier’s Reading Challenge (lower primary), Ian Thorpe’s Reading Challenge (upper primary) and many students were involved in the JCU Maths and Science Programme.

There are some possible causes for the year 7’s who have dropped to a lower level in reading and viewing. One of the reasons is that we have a large cohort of current year 7’s that have required a special learning-support class. They have been poor attenders over the years and have missed out on learning important foundation concepts. Another possible reason for the reduction is that because of our students’ ESL status, many of them find it difficult to analyse the texts provided. They are often culturally irrelevant texts that have no meaning to the students. It is difficult to critique a text that contains foreign material. As a result of these test results, we will endeavor next year to provide the year 7’s with a more focused approach to reading and viewing to ensure that they achieve the same successes that the younger grades have achieved in this area.