The most improved schools of NSW have revealed

There is a dedicated study center and a coaching for HSC students, a reading program 7 and an explicit teaching in all subjects. Cell phones are kept in the lockers in the houses and laptops are reduced to a minimum.

Students of the year 7 and 8 are divided into teams and held together with the same teachers for two years to help track their progress and reduce anxiety in the start of high school. This approach was highlighted in the influential book by Steve Biddulph Raise guysWhich observed “the closest is the relationship between the teacher and the student, the more effective learning is”.

This year, the school launched a numbering program that tests the 7th year students of mathematical ability when they start. Teachers now perform lessons tailor -made to deal with gaps in basic topics such as fractions and geometry.

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“It might seem old style but all these factors that have contributed to the culture of improvement that lead to success,” says Hopwood. “What is rarely reported is our absolute decline in the results of the lower band. We had 124 students sitting HSC last year and only four gangs 1.”

At Cumberland High School in the north-west of the city, the percentage of students who achieve the results of the 5 and 6 gang grew from 29 % in 2017 to 41 % last year.

Over 80 % obtained band results 4, 5 and 6 last year, increasing from 58 %.

The high principal of Cumberland Luke Fullwood says that in the last five years, teachers have reset the students to lifting the bands of the middle in the 5S and 6s bands. “It’s something we worked hard. And we regularly report the first two bands rather than only the band 6.”

“We have autonomous literacy lessons twice two weeks for the 8th year students who involve the disappearance of the paragraph and the structure and understanding of the essays,” explains Fullwood.

“The teachers are also absolute experts in ensuring that their lessons are clearly identified to the results of the program. Students know exactly what they are learning in every lesson.”

At the Dulwich High School of Visual Arts and Design, the percentage of students reaching bands 5 and 6 went up to 50 % last year, compared to 25 % in 2018.

The school, which has a specialized selective creative arts of creative arts, has adopted explicit teaching in all subjects about three years ago, says the principal Josh O’Neill.

“It means that teachers clearly explain what will be taught in a lesson and results expected at the end. At this moment, we are examining the effective use of detailed feedback and high expectations,” he says.

“One of the things that makes us different is that we manage elective interest including painting, printing, comics, animation, philosophy. We focused on the evaluation of the talents and skills of students who fall a little to the left of the center.

“We also carried out a huge working corpus on explicit teaching for professional learning of 11 and 12 and 12 years that contributed to lifting the results”.

A similar approach has been embraced to Jannali High, in which teachers observe and regularly report the methods and techniques of education of the other.

The results of the band 5 and 6 of the school grew from 22 % in 2018 to almost 38 % last year. Just over 78 % of students scored in the first 3 bands last year.

The Dean Rick Coleman says that the school has focused heavily on the quality of the teachers. “We have seen a change in our demographic group and now more than half of our staff are career teachers. We have a strong personnel induction program and tutoring with more experienced teachers,” he says.

The school has adopted the quality teaching round program, which involves teachers who find each other lessons and there is a specialized HSC teacher training program in which expert exams markers share strategies for lifting results.

At Sarah Redfern High School in the south-west of the city, 52 % of students reached the first 3 bands last year, with an increase of 23 percentage points since 2018.

The principal Lyndy Clowry, who led the school for eight years, says that teachers manage an in -depth analysis to keep track of the results and models. “This is postponed to the staff of the Faculty so that they understand what it really works well and what we can do differently.”

Since 2019, the school has held lessons dedicated to explicit literacy and numbering twice a week in Junior years. The school has obtained a higher score of the Naplan average brings in most domains last year, compared to students with a similar background. “That program really contributed to developing the ability for students to face the challenge in recent years.”

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