Making a difference: Sacred Heart principal David Austin and Olive Woods. Photo: CECG.
A focus on foundational skills has reaped rewards for students at two ACT schools – one Catholic and the other government.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)’s MySchool 2025 update has charted student progress from Years 3 to 5, using NAPLAN results over the past two years.
Sacred Heart Primary School in Pearce and Duffy Primary School have made the “made a difference” list for the improvement seen in student performance.
Sacred Heart has deployed the explicit, high-impact teaching methods of the Catalyst program introduced by Catholic Education Canberra and Goulburn, while Duffy initiated its own review of teaching practices, preempting the Strong Foundation reforms now underway following the ACT Government’s independent inquiry into literacy and numeracy.
The results point to the benefits of a more structured approach to teaching literacy and numeracy.
Sacred Heart principal David Austin said the school had done particularly well in reading, and the data validated what the evidence-based Catalyst program was trying to achieve.
Mr Austin said the most pleasing aspect was that the school was not stagnant, with student skills growing and enrolments increasing.
The school will go from 177 students in 2024 to 240 in 2026.
“It’s all high-impact teaching practices happening in the classroom,” he said.
“It’s explicit instruction. We have a structured literacy approach and systemic phonics. It’s all based on evidence, and that’s what we’ve been focusing on for the last few years, and it’s obviously making a difference.”
This involved a phonics program called InitiaLit in K to 2, and then in Years 3 to 6, the focus was on spelling and reading, with daily spelling mastery and explicit reading lessons.
Building a learning culture: Duffy Primary executive teacher Sarah Moore and principal Katie Smith. Photo: Duffy Primary School.
At Duffy, principal Katie Smith reviewed the data when she arrived three years ago, saw room for significant improvements and brought in two consultants, one of whom is now the school librarian, to work with teachers.
As well as tightening explicit instruction practice, they developed with staff their own literacy program that is used in other government and independent schools and also develops student inquiry skills.
“Our students here at Duffy are word noticers, they’re word namers, they can observe words, they ask questions about words, and that’s all come through the lens of English orthography where we look at morphology, phonics, etymology, and bring all that together,” Ms Smith said.
She said students were more engaged and there had been a real shift in their desire to learn in those lessons at a deep level.
Word inquiry at Duffy Primary. Photo: Duffy Primary School.
Building their foundational knowledge has allowed them to dig deeper and explore more challenging, complex concepts, creating a culture of learning.
“If they don’t have that, then they’re going to find things quite challenging,” Ms Smith said.
“One of the things that we noticed is that they needed those foundational skills, and even up in the senior years, where some of that was missing.”
Nothing could be achieved without dedicated teachers committed to the children and developing their professional practice, both school principals said.
Integral to their students’ progress had been conducive learning environments.
Mr Austen called it low variance, or consistent routines across the school and calm classrooms.
“They know that they’re learning, they know the routine, and they can see where they’re going and the growth that they’re making,” he said.
Ms Smith echoed this, saying her student knew the school’s routines and structures.
“When you’ve got a safe and orderly and calm learning environment, amazing things can happen with professional teachers and students, which is bringing back some of the joy as well,” she said.
Both principals also said they would not be resting on their laurels, noting that the NAPLAN results pointed to areas for improvement.
Other CECG schools on this year’s “making a difference list” are Merici College, Braddon; St Vincent’s Primary School, Pearce; Mother Teresa School, Harrison; St Benedict’s Primary School, Narrabundah; St Thomas More’s Primary School, Campbell; and St Clare’s College, Griffith.
The updated MySchool also includes other information such as enrolment, attendance and financial data, as well as NAPLAN results.
