From science experiments to movie reward days, Gowrie Primary School's year 3 students can list plenty of things they've loved about school this year.
"It's amazing," Evie Wickson said.
"Every teacher and the principal and deputy principals are amazing and are really nice and they all include us."
Her classmate Arjen Gosling said he enjoyed writing and learning how to solve harder maths problems.
"This year has been the most learning out of all my years," he said.
Rupert Buck, 9, said his favourite subject was science, where the class learned about the solar system, created a warm coat for penguins and did egg-dropping experiments.
The small Tuggeranong public school has seen solid improvement in NAPLAN this year and was identified as one of the high-performing schools in the ACT.
Room to improve
All data from the 2023 NAPLAN assessments has now been released on the My School website and shows a significant proportion of ACT schools performed below or well-below similar students.
Analysis by The Canberra Times shows about 30 per cent of ACT cohorts performed well below similar students in writing and grammar, while about 20 per cent of cohorts were well below in reading, spelling and numeracy.
Broken down by sector, Catholic systemic schools had the smallest proportion of cohorts well below expectations in all domains except maths, where independent schools performed better.
In ACT public schools, 41 per cent of cohorts performed well below expectations in grammar, 38 per cent were well below in writing, and almost 30 per cent were well below in reading, spelling and numeracy.
Canberra Goulburn Catholic Education director Ross Fox said the system had seen some improvement in NAPLAN results since focusing on high-impact teaching practices and direct instruction.
"We're really pleased with the progress. It's not everywhere. It's not what we want it to be, but it is showing that the hard work of our teachers, dedicated leadership of our school leadership teams is certainly having a result," he said.
Mr Fox said other measures had improved. In the 2023 phonic check, 70 per cent of year 1 students were on track, up from the 40 per cent when the test was first conducted in 2020.
Catholic school also used the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (DIBELS), which showed 82 per cent of year 1 students were achieving well and were at low risk of future reading difficulties.
An ACT government spokesman did not directly respond to questions about whether there would be any targeted programs to improve the weakest domains of writing and grammar.
Nor did they respond to a question about whether the directorate would learn from the Catholic systemic school's Catalyst program which introduced systematic, synthetic phonics to teach children to read.
The spokesman said NAPLAN was one data source that would inform the independent inquiry into literacy and numeracy in the ACT.
The directorate spokesman said the calculation of socio-educational advantage was under review and that the interpretation of "similar students" comparisons for all ACT schools should be done with caution.
Success story
Gowrie Primary School deputy principal Brooke Calvert said the school had a strong focus on collecting data which was then analysed in weekly meetings, known as professional learning communities.
"We'll use that data ongoing over time to inform the practices so we can actually teach individual students and differentiate the curriculum to help them move from where they started to where they end up being at the end of the year," Ms Calvert said.
The school began the professional learning communities three years ago and have since seen a lift in skills and morale among teachers.
"People are excited, more excited than they used to be, to be able to go, 'I'm succeeding with my children and I know where my children are' and having that collegial support and the discussions is powerful in the teaching'," she said.
The school has focused on explicit teaching strategies in every classroom, where the teacher demonstrates new concepts first, then the class does an activity together before the students are expected to do the new skill by themselves.
After an explicit lesson, students are grouped to differentiate their needs. Teachers then go around to each group to set goals and give feedback.
"There's no room for them to miss out or to fall behind because you're targeting their students at every every lesson or every week, when you have teachers having that opportunity and time to work with them," Ms Calvert said.
The school uses a reward system to reinforce the positive behaviours for learning programs. Each fortnight there is a specific focus, such as being kind to others, and students earn tokens for positive behaviour. These count towards fun rewards, such as free-dress days and movie days.
Ms Calvert said the school had been seeing improvements in its own data and would do even more coaching and mentoring in high-impact teaching methods next year.
"I feel like I've hit a bit of a jackpot here," she said.
"The children, they're just keen to learn. They're so open to wanting to know more and the opportunities that present so it's almost like you can't keep up."
