NAPLAN

NAPLAN came out on 5 August, and Numeracy up in Years 5, 7 and 9, reading down in all three, and Year 3 numeracy at its lowest since the new proficiency levels started.

About one in ten kids still needs additional support. It seemed to ahve the usual responses, and understandably. More explicit teaching, more funding, another curriculum review.

Yet nobody anywhere suggested that six hours might be the wrong number. We've run the same day for over a century, one teacher, thirty kids, one pace, and when results slide we stuff more into the six hours. The shape of the day itself is never up for discussion, it gets treated like the weather. I think two hours of properly one-to-one mastery work, where a child doesn't move on until they've actually got it, would shift that Year 3 number more than any review of the maths curriculum will. Maybe I'm wrong. But it says something that the idea isn't even on the table to be wrong about.