Online report card plan teeters

as posted here

State Education Minister Liz Constable has not ruled out rejecting Federal plans to introduce a new online school report card system, saying that she has to work through some "complex issues" before attending a national education meeting today.

Her support is crucial to the introduction of the report cards - one of the Federal Government's education changes - that have already provoked criticism that they would lead to so-called league tables that name and shame underperforming schools.

The WA State School Teachers Union and the WA Secondary School Executives Association are outraged about the online reporting system, which will group schools according to the socioeconomic backgrounds of their students, then rank them based on academic performance.

It is aimed at improving use of resources and will give parents unprecedented information on how schools fare. It could become a political headache because it will expose struggling schools without providing promised information on each school's resources or how it improves the lives of students affected by poverty or other disadvantage.

Dr Constable would not say whether she supported the system and had not yet decided what proposal to put forward because she was still working through complex detail. "There are a range of perspectives and options that will still be looked at before a final decision is made," she said.

Education specialist Barry McGaw, who designed the system, said schools would be grouped with about 60 other "like schools" with students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. An elite private school such as Presbyterian Ladies College could be grouped with King's School in Sydney and an indigenous school in the Northern Territory could be grouped with a similarly remote WA school.

Each school will be ranked according to how well students do in the national literacy and numeracy test done by students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

Union secretary David Kelly said the tests were a useless way of comparing students and ranking schools by the results was "farcical". "This is a form of league tabling and it is again the Government trying to abrogate responsibility and justify itself by showing the community that it is caring and is going to make schools accountable or responsible," he said.

The union would support any boycott by principal and teacher groups.

Secondary school Executives Association head Rob Nairn said he opposed the plan because of its "dangerous" simplicity. It had to have protections to prevent exploitation of the material for league tables.

WA Council of State School Organisations president Robert Fry said it was moderate league tabling that would encourage transparency and give parents important information


as posted here