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Speaker 1: We've got some good news on the education front. For once,

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Speaker 1: the amount of kids passing NCA co requisite tests is

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Speaker 1: slowly improving. Now, these are the exam students must pass

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Speaker 1: in order to pass the year level move on up.

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Speaker 1: Fifty seven percent of students achieve maths up from forty

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Speaker 1: five percent. Sixty one percent pass reading up from fifty

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Speaker 1: eight percent, so just three percent there. Meanwhile, writing stayed

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Speaker 1: unchanged at fifty five percent. So Kate Gainsford is the

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Speaker 1: secretary principal's council chair. She's also a principal. She's the

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Speaker 1: principal at a college. And she joins her. Now, good

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Speaker 1: morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Kate, good morning, how are you today?

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Speaker 1: Very well, so fifty morning, it is a Tuesday morning.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, principal, and don't give me detention.

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Speaker 1: So a fifty seven percent pass rate for maths is

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Speaker 1: not great, but it is up, so I guess you'll

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Speaker 1: take that. Well.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it's really happening to see that after all of

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Speaker 2: the effort that has gone on into it. So what

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Speaker 2: we need to see, of course, is that effort continuing.

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Speaker 2: You know, there's been some things that have come together

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Speaker 2: very nicely around this. There's been cross party agreement on

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Speaker 2: the need to focus on these things, and we haven't

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Speaker 2: seen that for some time, so that has lent some

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Speaker 2: continuity to things. That's great. We've seen we've seen the

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Speaker 2: government and other agencies really listening to teachers and schools

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Speaker 2: and they feedback about some earlier poor performance of the

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Speaker 2: digital platform and even some of the assessments themselves, and

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Speaker 2: that's seen some improvements. And of course we've seen a

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Speaker 2: little bit of extra resource in some schools to pay

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Speaker 2: for some additional tutoring and support, but we've got a

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Speaker 2: way to go yet to improve that.

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Speaker 1: So the funny thing you say, cross party supports you know,

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Speaker 1: everybody's supporting this, but reading, writing, and arithmetic was always

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Speaker 1: the very basis of our education. Why do we let

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Speaker 1: it slip?

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Speaker 2: Well, it hasn't been resourced in this way, certainly in

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Speaker 2: the primary schools with a common practice model and then

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Speaker 2: the structured literacy and their approach to maths. It hasn't

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Speaker 2: been resourced in anything like this way before with the

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Speaker 2: all of the rest of the professional development that seaches

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Speaker 2: have received. So it certainly has been a significant investment

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Speaker 2: of money and that does make a difference. If you

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Speaker 2: put more into a system you get more out of it.

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Speaker 1: So is it the resourcing or is it the government's

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Speaker 1: new curriculum?

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Speaker 2: Well it is as I said, this government and the

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Speaker 2: previous government had reached agreement on some approaches to literacy

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Speaker 2: that I think are proving to be fruitful. So the

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Speaker 2: curriculum focus is useful. What we have to make sure

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Speaker 2: we don't do is make sure that we neglect other

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Speaker 2: parts of the curriculum. We have too much of a

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Speaker 2: focus on its narrow so that we because the focus

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Speaker 2: has not been spread across other areas like science and

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Speaker 2: technology and languages and so forth, and those are also important.

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Speaker 2: Of course access to those is helped if you had

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Speaker 2: illiterate and numerate. So looking at the basics as useful.

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Speaker 1: Well, well done to the teachers because all the past

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Speaker 1: all the rates are over the fifty percent pass rate.

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Speaker 1: But we can do better and we still get a

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Speaker 1: long way to go, and that is Kate Gainsford's Secretary,

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Speaker 1: Principal's Council Chair and principal at our Tear College. For

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Speaker 1: more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to

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