While early NAPLAN results might show students are coping with the challenges of stay-at-home learning, at least one major school principal says the devil is likely to be in yet-to-be-released detail.
Mabel Park High School principal Michael Hornby says granular data to be released next month could show a disparity between advantaged and disadvantaged youth.
He said teachers had done a marvellous job to ensure students didn’t go without, but that didn’t negate the fact that 500 of his school’s 1500 students were without computers.
“I think we’ll see the students from families of good backgrounds are going to have done better, and the students from low socio-economic backgrounds go backwards,” he said.
Early NAPLAN results showed there was no decline in literacy and numeracy across the state compared to 2019, despite numerous lockdowns and increased pressure on students and parents.
But a full view of the data will be made public next month.
Mr Hornby said it is too early to tell how disruptions of the last year have impacted learning outcomes. This will not be clear until the full results are viewed in a socio-economic context.
“That’s something that doesn’t come until much later in the year, but that’s the bit that might be reflected in the NAPLAN when they dig deeper into the results later in the year and start grouping the schools according to their social disadvantage or advantage,” he said.
“As an average across Australia, they are saying things haven’t moved, but I think we’ll see the students from families of good backgrounds are going to have done better, and the students from low socio-economic backgrounds go backwards,” he said.
His greatest concern is the impact of mental health on student learning.
“The other side of it is significant escalation in mental health of our younger people, which has gone up since Covid-19,” he said.
He said the other concerning factor is technology access for home-based learning.
“As a microcosm at Mable Park, we’ve got 1500 students,” he said. “About 1000 could access learning material online because they had devices and internet access, but 500 didn’t, and each student that was disadvantaged because they didn’t have devices might have gone backwards.”
Mr Hornby said teachers did an incredible job to ensure students did not go without.
“What’s being done really well is the teachers have done a phenomenal job, going above and beyond to learn new technologies and deliver lessons through Covid-19, and having to differentiate the students who have laptops and internet, and produce other options for students who don’t,” he said.
The school ran a drive thru which enabled students and families to collect learning content if they did not have the right technology at home.
It also partnered with social enterprise Substation 33 to offer families affordable computer options.
Substation 33, based in Kingston, takes unused computer parts – considered as waste by corporations – and rebuilds them into working PCs, which families then buy for around $100.
Founder Tony Sharp has been inundated with requests from local families since Covid-19 hit.
“The problem was that kids were coming home and had to learn for school with what we thought was limited access to IT, so we then started building computers from the [computer] waste and produced 3500 devices and got them to the local community and beyond,” he said.
He said the demand around local schools has been particularly eye-opening.
“I know of schools in Logan where many students don’t have a device at home – I’m talking of schools of 700 kids, so it’s a big problem, it’s a massive problem,” he said.
Beenleigh State High School deputy principal Justin Howe is seeing promising signs of improvements from the last NAPLAN in the early stages of analysis.
“We’ve only been able to drill into some of our results with the limited time we’ve had them, but the graphs are definitely very positive,” he said.
“We’re very, very happy with the way that our trajectory and scores are still improving.”
