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Media Release
AUSTRALIAN STUDENTS ACHIEVING ESSENTIAL LITERACY AND NUMERACY STANDARDS
30 January 2003 MIN 598/04
Today’s release of the Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services provides further assurance that school students are achieving foundation literacy and numeracy skills.
The 2001 National Reading, Writing and Numeracy results for Year 3 and Year 5 students contained in the report confirm evidence from international studies that Australia’s schools are well placed to provide their students with the necessary skills to participate effectively in the workplace and community.
The 2001 results show the overwhelming majority of students are performing over and above national benchmarks of minimum literacy and numeracy standards.
- Reading - 90.3 % of Year 3 students and 89.8% of Year 5 students achieved the national benchmark
- Writing - 89.5% of Year 3 students and 94.0% of Year 5 students achieved the national benchmark
- Numeracy - 93.9% of Year 3 students and 89.6% of Year 5 students achieved the national benchmark.
There is continuing concern for the small number of students still unable to achieve minimum national standards.
In particular, more boys than girls are failing to achieve minimum literacy standards in reading and writing. For example, 88.4% of boys achieved the Year 3 Reading benchmark in comparison with 92.3% of girls.
The large gap between the performance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students is of concern and clearly more needs to be done to address the educational needs of Indigenous students.
The Australian Government will provide more than $365 million to schools throughout Australia in 2004 to improve the learning outcomes of educationally disadvantaged students under the Strategic Assistance for Improving Student Outcomes Programme. It is important that the Australian Government, States and Territories continue to work together to improve learning outcomes for all students.
Parents and the community have a right to know information about the achievement of core educational standards. Parents want to receive as much information as possible about how their children are progressing in relation to national standards.
The next step now is to see that all parents receive information about the performance of their child against these national benchmarks.
Further information on these literacy and numeracy results is available from the website of the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs at;
http://www.curriculum.edu.au/mceetya/index.htm and from the Productivity Commission website at
http://www.pc.gov.au/gsp/reports/rogs/2004/index.html
Media Contact:
Dr Nelson’s Office: Yaron Finkelstein 0414 927 663
Dept of Education, Science & Training: Laila Lacis 0412 040 034
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