A state government plan to encourage NSW public schools to show parents how they will improve NAPLAN and HSC results comes as the 2014 NAPLAN results reveal a gulf between metropolitan students and those in the country.
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The proposed introduction of the School Excellence Framework will reveal to parents how schools plan to push bright students further and help the most disadvantaged students out of the cycle of under performance as well as improving grades, according to the Department of Education.
Dubbo College executive principal Ian Nebauer has praised the program for providing schools with an opportunity to self-identify what works well and what needs improvement.
"It's always good to look at what we might do better," he said.
"We can identify what other schools are doing well and learn from them.
"We can also look at what we're doing well and try and do it fantastically.
"It's the opportunity to make good practices better."
Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said the framework will be help to assess the performance of schools state-wide and ensure students are achieving at least a year's worth of learning.
"The new School Excellence Framework is a rigorous approach to checking that each school is delivering the best possible education," Mr Piccoli said.
"Every student needs to progress every year in order to finish school with the best possible educational outcomes.
"We are focussing explicitly on growth in learning in order to make that improvement a priority for everyone in the school system."
NSW Teachers Federation president Maurie Mulheron said the framework is a good idea, but may hit some speed bumps.
"There's no problem with the concept, but I'm worried with the government's attack on the Gonski," he said.
"The whole scheme is under threat if we don't get the funding from the Abbott government."
Mr Mulheron said the 'Local Schools Local Decisions' reform has cut some positions within the Department of Education.
He said he is not sure the Department will be able to monitor how schools are truly performing under the new Framework.
"We believe in a state-wide system with strong accountability mechanisms," he said.
"We believe the capacity to monitor this has been taken away because of the Local Schools Local Decisions reforms.
"The government needs to reinstate the roles within the Department of Education."
Mr Neubauer said the Framework will be a chance for rural schools to bridge the gap between rural and metropolitan schools.
"It give us the opportunity to bridge the tyranny of distance," he said.
"We can identify what is working well and use that to inform us what is good practice and what is excellent practice.
"Our city cousins might even see excellent practices are happening at Dubbo College."
That gap was highlighted with the results from the 2014 NAPLAN testing showing students in remote and very remote NSW performed significantly worse than those in metropolitan or provincial areas across all five testing categories and four year groups.
Dubbo falls in the provincial category. The group responsible for implementing NAPLAN, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority were unable to provide information on what towns in Western NSW fall into the remote and very remote categories.
On average more than 10 per cent of students in remote and very remote NSW fell below the minimum standard.
In the reading test, 16.5 per cent of remote students and 15.6 per cent of very remote students fell below national average. By year nine that jumped to 26.2 and 36.9 per cent respectively.