Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This year Doonside Technology High School celebrated 50 great years. They were great not only over the space of that time but also in their current years, when they have been making great improvements. I want to reflect in my contribution today on their successes. There are 67 terrific schools operating in the Chifley electorate, but today I think it is important that we spotlight an achievement that Doonside Technology High School are right to be proud of.

This week they are sharing the limelight of an incredible result in their year 9 NAPLAN testing results. In every sector—in reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy—year 9 students at Doonside Technology High School have improved on last year's results, so much so that as a group, in the area of writing, they have moved from 44 points below the state average to be eight per cent above the New South Wales mean average, in one year.

Ms Ryan interjecting—

Thank you, Member for Lalor, because I think it will mean a great deal to them to know that not only can they savour the success of that huge bump in performance, but also they get recognised for it.

Last year, 30 per cent of the year 9 students at Doonside were operating at below the national average in numeracy. Twelve months on, it is now just seven per cent. So they are making great headway there. This is in a school where 14 per cent of the enrolments are Indigenous and six per cent are from the continent of Africa. As the great school principal there, Joe Begnell, puts it, they are arguably the most marginalised students in all of New South Wales. Another 10 per cent of the enrolments are students with distinct and measured learning disabilities. Almost all of them sat for the NAPLAN this year.

This year, the Aboriginal students in year 9 achieved a 30.9 marks growth in the writing category over last year's figure. That is against an overall New South Wales fall of 0.09 marks for Aboriginal students. It is a remarkable effort. Mr Begnell is a proud principal. He should be credited for his work. He has also modestly credited 'keen students who want to learn', and his great team of caring teachers have demonstrated great results in the first ever round of Gonski funding for these incredible improvements. Our kids, given opportunities, resources, keen teachers and incentives to succeed, will seize those opportunities and succeed. I certainly think it is important to recognise their efforts here today.