NAPLAN results: Major education system overhaul after grammar, punctuation, sentence quality drops
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Major reform to Australia’s education system to ensure children can read and write correctly: here’s what you need to know about the changes
- Declining literacy skills in NSW schools has sparked a major educational overhaul
- The English curriculum will focus on grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
- Students are encouraged to form a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts.
- This year’s NAPLAN results saw teen literacy plummet to record lows
Weakening literacy skills in Australia have prompted a major overhaul of a state’s education system, with grammar and punctuation being the areas most in need of improvement.
The English curriculum has been redesigned in an attempt to improve the literacy skills of NSW students in Years 3-10 after a 10-year decline.
Grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure will be at the heart of the new curriculum to help students better express complex ideas and clear sentences.
A new math curriculum will also be released this week that will focus on improving students’ sequencing and reasoning skills.
The NSW curriculum update follows dismal results from NAPLAN this year, in which adolescents’ literacy skills plummeted to record lows.
One in six children did not meet the minimum standard in grammar and punctuation, while 12 percent could barely read at a basic level.
The English curriculum has been revised in a bid to improve the literacy skills of NSW students in years 3-10 following a 10-year decline (file image)
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet (pictured) said the new English and maths curricula were important milestones in the curriculum review.
This year’s NAPLAN results revealed that girls performed better than their male counterparts, especially when it came to writing.
According to the results, 81.6% of the boys reach the minimum level of writing, compared to 90.8% of the girls.
Teachers have urged parents who want to improve their children’s writing to encourage them to read more and more widely.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the new English and maths curricula were important milestones in the curriculum review.
‘If our NAPLAN results have shown us anything, it’s that we need to focus on explicitly teaching grammar, sentence structure and punctuation in secondary school. Focusing on those foundational skills is key to success,” he said.
‘It is vital that NSW students develop strong skills in both literacy and numeracy so that they can succeed in school and beyond.’
The new curriculum will be available to teachers during 2023 so they can prepare lessons for students and will be rolled out to all NSW schools in 2024 (secondary students pictured)
NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said the new maths curriculum would encourage students to form a deeper understanding of concepts.
‘In other words, students will need to not only know the Pythagorean theorem; they will have to be able to explain how it works in practice and why,” he said.
A new major pathways structure will replace the current three-tiered approach to better prepare students for HSC math, which will be required beginning in 2025.
The new curriculum will be available to teachers during 2023 so they can prepare lessons for students and will roll out to all NSW schools in 2024.