a The edges of the boxes represent school effects between the 25th and 75th percentiles. The ‘whiskers’ extending out from the boxes show the values for the 5th and 95th percentiles. b Estimated school effects are adjusted by the level of uncertainty in the estimates (annex A). Source: Commission estimates based on ACARA data (unpublished). Overall, school effects are reasonably large (according to the interpretation of effect sizes in box 2). This suggests that unobserved school characteristics do play a role in student achievement. However, the reason why some schools outperform others after their observed characteristics are taken into account cannot be identified in this analysis. The study also examined the consistency of schools identified in the top and bottom five per cent of the distribution for Indigenous and nonIndigenous students. For reading, only about 17 per cent of the top five per cent for nonIndigenous students were in the top five per cent for Indigenous students. For the bottom five per cent, the degree of overlap was 12 per cent. (Further details are provided in annex A.) The reason for the lack of consistency across Indigenous and nonIndigenous students could partly be because unobserved school characteristics that contribute to high achievement for nonIndigenous students may not necessarily work the same for Indigenous students, and vice versa. This highlights the importance of tailoring instruction to the needs of individual students (chapter 4). What are the observed characteristics of achievement outlier schools for Indigenous students? The following analysis defines achievement outlier schools as those that perform much better or much worse than expected, given their observed characteristics. Schools identified as achievement outliers can differ between analyses. The results indicate that some schools that perform within the top five per cent for a particular test domain in one year level are
a The edges of the boxes represent school effects between the 25th and 75th percentiles. The ‘whiskers’ extending out from the boxes show the values for the 5th and 95th percentiles. b Estimated school effects are adjusted by the level of uncertainty in the estimates (annex A). Source: Commission estimates based on ACARA data (unpublished). Overall, school effects are reasonably large (according to the interpretation of effect sizes in box 2). This suggests that unobserved school characteristics do play a role in student achievement. However, the reason why some schools outperform others after their observed characteristics are taken into account cannot be identified in this analysis. The study also examined the consistency of schools identified in the top and bottom five per cent of the distribution for Indigenous and nonIndigenous students. For reading, only about 17 per cent of the top five per cent for nonIndigenous students were in the top five per cent for Indigenous students. For the bottom five per cent, the degree of overlap was 12 per cent. (Further details are provided in annex A.) The reason for the lack of consistency across Indigenous and nonIndigenous students could partly be because unobserved school characteristics that contribute to high achievement for nonIndigenous students may not necessarily work the same for Indigenous students, and vice versa. This highlights the importance of tailoring instruction to the needs of individual students (chapter 4). What are the observed characteristics of achievement outlier schools for Indigenous students? The following analysis defines achievement outlier schools as those that perform much better or much worse than expected, given their observed characteristics. Schools identified as achievement outliers can differ between analyses. The results indicate that some schools that perform within the top five per cent for a particular test domain in one year level are
indigenous-primary-school-achievement-background-2.docx