It is superficially comforting to scan the NAPLAN results and note the high performance of ACT school students on the national stage.
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It is nice to hear that Canberra is the top or second-top performing jurisdiction in the country on most of the NAPLAN tests across numeracy, writing and reading and across the school years.
But when you delve more deeply you discover troubling and perplexing results. While the ACT government might run the most expensive public schools in the country, according to Productivity Commission comparisons last week, there is no room for complacency about the performance of those well-funded schools.
When you set aside the self-congratulatory hoopla and look only at the performance of students whose parents have a bachelor degree or above - the most highly educated Australians - the results are concerning.
ACT students of highly educated parents rank seventh of the eight states in mean scores for writing in years 3 and 5; that is, second bottom. By year 7 they are in sixth place and by year 9 in fifth place. The improvement is slight and can only comfort those desperate to find the good news.
In numeracy, ACT students rank sixth of the eight jurisdictions in years 3, 5 and 7, climbing to fourth place in year 9.
In reading, the picture is a little brighter, with our students whose parents have degrees ranking in fifth place in years 3 and 5, but rocketing to second and first by years 7 and 9.
NSW and Victoria consistently outrank the rest of the country, and it is with those two states that the ACT should sit in performance, just as it does in geography.
The only conclusion to draw is that at some level, the system appears to fail our children. Making sense of the reasons is not easy.
For many years the ACT has had school-based curriculum development, in the hands of teachers, moving more recently to the national curriculum, but never adopting a highly prescriptive teaching blueprint.
Critics of the ACT approach will point, in contrast, to the way NSW and Victoria have developed their own mightily robust and not highly flexible syllabuses. Teachers know what they must teach and how they must teach it. Whether that has contributed to the success of those school systems is a matter for debate.
Education Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry chose to welcome the Productivity Commission report as an endorsement of the ACT's performance in reading, writing and numeracy. She didn't address the more dismal results when the comparison is more fine-tuned, between the students of parents with degrees in Canberra and elsewhere.
Ms Berry attributed Canberra's success to its teachers, and she said the low ratio of staff to students in public schools - at 13.1 students for every teacher, against a the national average of 14.2 - gave teachers more time to prepare and for professional development.
Not only are we well served in teacher numbers, the system is very well funded. The ACT government spends an average $18,460 per public student, 28 per cent higher than the national average, and well above the $14,800 that NSW spends for a system that outshines ours.
Rather than congratulating itself, the ACT should be asking why its stellar spend is not reflected in stellar scores.