AUSTRALIAN schools need to better tailor their teaching to individual students’ needs.

A report led by the Grattan Institute’s Dr Peter Goss calls for more funding and training to allow teachers to better test a student’s individual progress and “target teach” students.

The report found the best schools in Australia were not necessarily those with the top ATAR or NAPLAN scores.

“They are those that enable their students to make the greatest progress in learning. Wherever a student starts from on the first day of the year, he or she deserves to have made at least a year’s worth of progress by the end of it,” the report said.

It recommends schools ­develop better ways to collect robust evidence to track student progress over time.

NAPLAN tests were too ­imprecise and infrequent to identify each student’s specific learning needs.

Woorana Park Primary principal Ray Trotter said: “I couldn’t agree more with the findings that streaming students and holding back low- performing students are not ­viable solutions for catering for the range of abilities in classrooms. They are devastating to many children.”