Grievance Debate

NATIONAL LITERACY AND NUMERACY TESTS

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:09): Last week, students and parents received the results of the NAPLAN tests that those students sat in May this year. South Australia's NAPLAN results have set new lows for South Australia, performing worse than all other states in grade 3 writing, grammar, punctuation and numeracy, and in year 5 grammar, punctuation and numeracy. South Australia did not reach the national average in any of the 20 categories this year or last year, and South Australia managed to meet the national average standard in only one category out of 20 categories the previous year. South Australia has once again performed much worse than our interstate counterparts.

The minister in her answer to questions today said that we have done better this year, but last year we went backwards in 14 out of 20 categories. In comparison, Western Australia went forward in 14 out of 20 categories. But we still went backwards in eight categories, on last year's results, in NAPLAN results this year. So it is a very poor outcome for South Australia's NAPLAN results.

Remember, NAPLAN results are about testing the system, and there is no doubt that the system here in South Australia, run by Labor, is failing. What is Labor's response? Last year, minister Portolesi said our poor results were due to the fact that we have a higher proportion of lower socioeconomic families in our state. Blame the families, blame the kids. That is exactly what Premier Weatherill said when he was education minister the year before. He used those same terms, that we have poor NAPLAN results here in South Australia because we have a higher proportion of lower socioeconomic families.

This year, South Australian students made no improvement or went backwards in 13 out of 20 categories: in 13 out of 20 categories there was no improvement or they went backwards. This is after going backwards again last year. What is minister Portolesi's response to that? She said that she would do things differently. A bit of déjà vu, as this is what the then education minister, Jane Lomax-Smith, announced after Labor was embarrassed about its poor NAPLAN results in 2008. She said:

Parents can be reassured that if their child is not performing at the national minimum standard, they will receive intensive support at school.

What did Premier Weatherill say when he was embarrassed as education minister in 2010 by the NAPLAN results? He said:

Students who achieved below the national minimum standard in these tests will be supported through their individual learning plans, which ensures ongoing targeted support.

This is a cut-and-paste of what the former education minister said just two years earlier. Then, of course, minister Weatherill, just a few weeks later, went on to cut $8.1 million from the numeracy and literacy funding for schools. If you do not believe me, minister Portolesi, it is all there in Budget Paper 6, page 115—$8.1 million. What happened to those plans, those intervention plans that the ministers have announced in the past?

This year, the minister has announced that she will be announcing—announced that she will be announcing—a new strategy in response to yet another year of poor NAPLAN results here in South Australia. That sounds to me that Labor has no plans for NAPLAN. Let us look at what has happened to NAPLAN results in South Australia under the Labor government. Madam Speaker, I have a statistical table, and I seek leave to have it inserted into Hansard.

Leave granted.

Mr PISONI: If we look at where we were with year 3 writing in 2008, we sat at 415.1 on the score; this year 403.1, a 3 per cent deterioration in the outcome in that area. What has happened at a federal level? We have seen some improvements in that area. We have seen year 3 numeracy suffer the same fate, down from 388.8 in 2008 to 376.8 in 2012, a 3 per cent deterioration in the outcome; but, in the meantime, we have seen the national average sitting at 395.1. So, where we have seen South Australia deteriorate in 10 out of 20 categories and not shift in three of those categories over the last four years, there have been improvements nationally in 13 categories.

Time expired.