Community the key to school’s top marks

ONE of the best performing Territory public schools sits in a hamlet where locals wave at strangers, teachers know the names of their students’ pets, and the school bell is an old-fashioned hand-held one.

Adelaide River School’s quiet success was made clear after the launch of the My School website – it came in the top 10 NT schools in a number of 2009 national benchmark tests. In fact it beat all public and private schools to top Year 5 writing.

Principal Tony Clegg lives next door to the school.

He says the school – which has 43 enrolled students, aged 4-12 years – was an extension of the close community at Adelaide River, 115km south of Darwin.

“We know each other so very well – we don’t just know someone’s name, we know their brother’s name, their sister’s name, where they live, the name of their dog – the key word is family, family values are extended into the school here,” Mr Clegg said.

Nearly half of Adelaide River School’s students are indigenous.

It enjoys an attendance rate of about 88 per cent.

Talking to students, it’s clear they love their school.

Year 6 student Oneal Bautista came to the school in 2008 after his family moved from Manila, in the Philippines, which has a population of about 1.6 million.

He said he was worried at first how he would go.

“I (thought about) how am I going to do in the school – how I would fit in,” he said.

“But it was pretty easy because all the people here are really friendly, and I just got along with them.”

Mr Clegg credits a number of things that helped the school’s NAPLAN results last year.

STUDENTS taking part had very good attendance, English as their first language, and came from supportive homes.

LONG-SERVING school staff was very good at their jobs.

STRONG community support for the school.

But Mr Clegg warned NAPLAN results weren’t enough to evaluate how schools were performing.

“Particularly (with) remote indigenous schools,” he said.

“Quite often they’re doing great learning, but NAPLAN doesn’t show it.

“It only shows the step, it doesn’t show the journey.”

Source: NT News