STORY THREE: THE REWARDING PIZZA MAN

One year after NAPLAN details had been released, I had a visit from a man who owned a pizza shop. I knew him but not well. He wanted to shake my hand and in so doing, congratulated me on the stand-out success achieved by our year five NAPLAN cohort. They had ‘earned’ green bands for NAPLAN outcomes at the year five level. That compared more than favourably with many other schools where results were red banded.

The pizza man wanted to revealed our year five students with a pizza lunch.

I thanked him but declined the specifics of his offer. In doing that, I told him that all our students did their very best including children in classes not undertaking the tests. They worked hard to live our school motto ‘together as one’. We would be happy to take him up on his offer if it was available to all our students rather than a select group identified on the basis of test results. That was the arrangement put into place.

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