Reflections on one school’s Essential Assessment journey and the new Australian Curriculum
Serving approximately 390 students, St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Cairns has a strong focus on literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking. The school integrates modern teaching methods and digital technologies to enhance learning outcomes. Six years ago, St Joseph’s embarked on a transformative journey by integrating Essential Assessment (EA), a move that revolutionised the school’s assessment cycle. Marita Brown, Deputy Principal, shares the school’s journey, from the initial implementation of Essential Assessment through the challenges encountered during the rollout of the new Australian Curriculum to the celebration of students’ impressive achievements in English and Maths.
Targeting student growth and achievement
In 2019, St Joseph’s teamed up with EA to better leverage formative and summative data to measure both student growth and achievement, with a focus on diverse learners. To ensure teachers made optimum use of the valuable student data, the EA team delivered a mix of online and in-person training. These sessions gave teachers the skills to analyse the data, track progress, and build a more consistent approach to assessment across the school. Regular termly meetings also became a key part of the process, allowing staff to share strategies and refine their approach. Marita reflects,
“A significant factor in the successful implementation of our new approach to assessment was the individualised and timely professional development (PD) provided by Essential Assessment consultants, who met our staff at their point of need. Our Essential Assessment consultant also modelled lessons (e.g. front-loading vocabulary) in our classrooms and led parent information sessions, which received very positive feedback.”
Essential Assessment facilitated the integration of various assessments and formative tasks to better understand and inform the learning progress. Additionally, classroom teachers began prioritising data literacy, reflecting this focus in their annual goal-setting.
By 2022, the school had seen real growth in achievement across all year levels. Teachers embraced data-informed teaching, setting goals based on student progress while introducing the parent update tool, which helped families stay informed and engaged in the learning journey.
“Essential Assessment was a game changer for us. This tool enabled us to provide differentiated and personalised learning for all our students, not only in Mathematics but also more recently, in English.”
The new Australian Curriculum
In 2023, as an early adopter of Version 9 of the Australian Curriculum, the school faced unexpected challenges. Despite teachers’ confidence with EA, the shift to the new curriculum initially led to a dip in student achievement, raising concerns. However, further research and the data collated by EA confirmed that student performance hadn’t declined; instead, the benchmarks had shifted. The new curriculum’s heightened expectations aligned with international standards and made an adjustment period necessary. EA played a key role in helping teachers and parents understand these changes while focusing on growth and achievement, helping rebuild confidence and keep learning on track. EA supported teachers in effectively differentiating explicit instruction aligned with the new curriculum.
“Essential Assessment provided data-informed insights that enabled teachers to effectively monitor and report on student growth throughout this period.”
Continuous support and reflection
The school continued to support teachers through professional learning communities, ensuring a consistent understanding of the assessment cycle within the new curriculum. Trust in the process – of pre-assessment, explicit teaching of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), formative assessment refinement, and post-assessment – became paramount. At the same time, the EA platform provided teachers with real-time insights and helped them to identify the next steps in learning. By late 2023/early 2024, teachers and leaders were able to reflect on and celebrate the overall consistent growth observed during the curriculum transition, as evidenced by EA. The data revealed a steady six months of growth across all levels. This was encouraging news, validating the effectiveness of the school’s positive assessment culture and the strategies implemented to manage the transition to the new curriculum, both underpinned by EA.
“Through our continual training, the updates to Essential Assessment were clearly explained and demonstrated, leading to our ongoing successful use of the platform. We highly appreciate Essential Assessment’s time and expertise, and without this, we would not have achieved the improvement in both PAT and NAPLAN data. We have a lot to celebrate.”
Conclusion
Building teacher capacity in the assessment cycle, leveraging EA for accurate and consistent data gathering, and promoting review and reflection were crucial during this period of educational change. Despite the increased demands and rigour of the new curricula, maintaining a cycle of monitoring student progress, developing informed individual learning plans, and aligning explicit teaching with curriculum outcomes ensured success. Essential Assessment supported data-informed instruction by seamlessly tracking student progress against the new curriculum standards.
