Page 2663 - Week 07 - Thursday, 2 August 2018
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A large contributor to societal inequality is inequity in education, beginning before children even reach school. In this regard, it is little surprise that some schools report lower mean scale scores in NAPLAN. Children do not start school at the same stage of learning and development. This effect is amplified through residualisation, where children who are starting behind become concentrated in some schools.
Of course it is important for parents to be able to make an informed choice about school education. However, it is also vitally important that parents make appropriate use of the right information, and that that information is properly understood. That is not the case for NAPLAN and My School as the situation currently stands. The purpose of data like this is to help governments identify where disadvantage and lower achievement are concentrated. Its purpose is to help to target resources, expand early learning and intervention and provide extra support for parents and schools that need it the most.
There is compelling evidence that marketisation of school education harms equity in education access and outcomes. Analysis of evidence about school competition and associated market mechanisms has shown that these things have negligible effects on education quality. Indeed, these approaches risk increased segregation based on the background of students.
Having not spoken in relation to the motion on the Space Agency yesterday, I thought I had missed the opportunity to quote my former boss Senator Kim Carr, but no. In 2004 Senator Carr said:
… the purpose of reporting is not to belittle people. It is not to set people up in rank order to set up leagues tables and the like. It is not to be used as a competitive device, as a marketing instrument, as if education was some sort of commodity that could be listed on a stock exchange. It is about advancing the educational interests of students. That is the first criteria.
The second is about providing information to assist schools and teachers to actually improve performance in developing teacher programs and meeting the learning needs of students.
It is wrong to simplify school performance down to a competitive exercise that ignores all of the factors that influence the different opportunity each student has to achieve at school. As Minister Berry has said, it is vital that parents have access to assessment data about their children so that they can support them through their learning and development. Teachers and individual students need this information too. But this information, particularly through aggregate measures such as standardised testing, is a poor indication of school performance and therefore not well suited to informing parent choice in the way that it is currently presented.
As others have said in this debate, children are individuals, and different schools will suit different kids. The best way to understand the choices available to a parent is to visit schools, talk to other parents and talk to the teachers. Teachers, of course, are the key to an excellent education.
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