Did DI do it? The impact of a programme designed to improve literacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote schools

Abstract

Over the 10 years of ‘Closing the Gap’, several interventions designed to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have been trialled. In 2014 the Australian Government announced the ‘Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools Programme’ (FLFRPSP) which was designed primarily to improve the literacy outcomes of students in remote schools with mostly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. The programme, using Direct Instruction (DI) or Explicit Direct Instruction, was extended to 2019 with more than $30 million invested. By 2017, 34 remote schools were participating in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia. This paper analyses My School data for 25 ‘very remote’ FLFRPSP schools with more than 80% Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander students. It considers Year 3 and 5 NAPLAN reading results and attendance rates for participating and non-participating primary schools in the 3 years before the programme's implementation and compares them with results since. Findings show that, compared to very remote schools without FLFRPSP, the programme has not improved students' literacy abilities and results. Attendance rates for intervention schools have declined faster than for non-intervention schools. The paper questions the ethics of policy implementation and the role of evidence as a tool for accountability.

Direct Instruction in very remote schools: a rejoinder to Guenther and Osborne (2020)

“…A more thorough critique and comparison of Guenther and Osborne (2020) with the CPE reports would reveal more deficiencies in the former. And it may be the case that ‘big D.I.’ was not the best choice of program for all schools, for a variety of reasons.…”

“…These possibilities should be properly explored. Nonetheless, the basic fact that Guenther and Osborne's (2020) post-intervention data cannot in anyway be accurately described as such is sufficient to call their conclusions about the FLRPS program into question.…”

“…An article published in the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education purports to challenge the findings of the CPE reports. The article by Guenther and Osborne (2020) uses NAPLAN reading data for 25 very remote schools in the FLRPS program using DI. They averaged scores across schools and across years to conclude that the program was not effective and that ‘the intervention has a potential to be associated with educational harm to at least some students’ (p. 6).…”

“…There is also the issue of the comparison group. Guenther and Osborne (2020) compare the 25 schools in the FLRPS program to 115–120 very remote primary schools with high indigenous populations, providing no other demographic or educational information about their comparability to the intervention schools. Remote indigenous schools are not all exactly the same.…”

“…Guenther and Osborne (2020) also report attendance rates before and during the intervention, finding there was a greater decline in attendance in intervention schools than in comparison schools. The possible reasons for this difference in attendance patterns are not explored in the article, despite the authors' stated commitment to a ‘post-positivist’ approach to their study, which usually employs contextualised and qualitative information in the analysis of quantitative data.…”