Student objectives

Due to the disruption to education caused by COVID-19, school leaders and teachers are considering how best to meet curriculum and assessment requirements for the rest of the 2020 school year. Here, we look at the official advice given to educators across the country on where some flexibility would be appropriate.

St Helena Secondary College in Victoria embarked on a journey to improve the quality and accuracy of teacher judgements on their student reports, in order to better reflect student achievement. We’re joined by Kate Williams to hear about the process and where they’re at on their journey.

Teachers and school leaders spend considerable effort and time writing and checking student reports, but how effective are they in communicating student learning? We speak to principal Anthony Hockey about what he found when considering this question in his school context.

At this New South Wales secondary school for boys, a student survey revealed many students say they do not like reading because ‘reading is something girls do’. We speak to the Head of Library at St Joseph’s College to see how she changed these attitudes and increased reading engagement.

With staff and students returning to school in a matter of weeks across Australia, the time has come to begin brainstorming activities for lessons throughout the year. In this article, we take you through some significant themes and events to inspire some upcoming lessons.

Is it time to rethink the traditional end of semester report card? In the final part of a series on ACER’s Communicating Student Learning Progress project, Dr Hilary Hollingsworth and Jonathan Heard share findings from the three-year study.

Primary school principal Lorraine Evans believes every child can learn – maybe not at the same pace or in the same way, but everyone can learn. Here, she explains how this attitude to learning led to a dramatic turnaround in student results.

In the third article in a series related to ACER’s Communication Student Learning Progress project, Dr Hilary Hollingsworth and Jonathan Heard highlight some of the observations that they’ve made in their early analysis of teacher comments on school reports.

In the second article in a series related to ACER’s Communication Student Learning Progress project, Jonathan Heard and Dr Hilary Hollingsworth examine recent and current reporting trends and practices in schools, and the growing use of digital systems and tools.

In the first of a series of articles on how schools communicate student learning progress, Dr Hilary Hollingsworth and Jonathan Heard examine some of the recent history of reporting in Australian schools and highlight some of the competing forces that have influenced current practices in student reporting.