Whole-school Literacy Success Against the Odds

Abstract

Greenleaf Girls High School is a Priority Schools Funding Program (PSFP) school in a particularly disadvantaged area of Sydney. There were 680 students enrolled at the school at the time of undertaking the case study described below. 98% of the students were NESB. The largest cultural groups in the student population were: Arabic (56%), Vietnamese (12%) and Pacific Islanders (7%). There were 49 language groups represented in the school, with significant numbers of refugee children from Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The school was part of a three-year study into programs and Faculties which had achieved outstanding success in Years 7–10 in NSW DET high schools. The particular area chosen for study at Greenleaf was the school's literacy program – chosen based on 'value-added' data in the state wide English/Literacy tests and HSC English results. Even allowing for the school's high NESB population (which may gain the school good 'value-added' results simply through longer exposure to English between one test and another) the school's results were outstanding for all of the categories for which the DET keeps such results. In particular, the majority of students in the lowest band of ELLA in Year 7 are almost all removed from this band by Year 8. The school scores above the state average in the School Certificate and, in the year prior to the case study, above-state-average performances were recorded in the Extension 1, Advanced, Standard, and ESL Higher School Certificate English courses (i.e. in every English course offered). Hence, discussion of the school's literacy program needs to also acknowledge the highly important contribution of the English Faculty who navigate the perennially odd situation of teaching English in a context where state-wide testing is around 'literacy' (Years 7 and 8), 'English/literacy' (Year 10) and 'English' (Year 12). There was a strong and widespread belief in the school that strong competition from nearby selective and private schools had resulted in increasing proportions of 'needy' students in the school's student profile. At the time of our visit, half of each of the lowest two Year 7 classes were made up of students classified as IM. The school is also the local high school for students in a number of western suburbs IEC programs. Numeracy and Literacy, in particular, have been on-going whole-school priorities. The sense of struggle and of having substantial difficulties to overcome seemed to reinforce the school's sense of mission and encouraged development and continued commitment to innovation. A strong sense of social justice and equity drives the school. What contributed to the outstanding performance in literacy in this school?