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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 770 ..

Mr Moore: I spoke to Mr Cobbold 10 minutes ago and he would still like to have the information.

MR STEFANIAK: That is interesting. I think this is something that the P and C council has been aware of for quite some time. As you are well aware, the P and C council did participate, I think very effectively, in the committee that looked at introducing the new literacy assessments for students in Years 3 and 5. One of the major benefits of that assessment program is that the procedures are standardised across all the schools and the students have the opportunity to participate in a nationally recognised procedure. That certainly was not the position with previous learning assistance testing. You would be aware, Mr Moore, that for the first time we will be providing ACT parents with a personalised report that will describe what their child can do in all the aspects of literacy.

Mr Moore: That is irrelevant. I want to know about the data.

MR STEFANIAK: I do not think it is. That is confidential to the parent and the child. The Council of P and C Associations was represented on that reference group. At the unanimous request of the reference group set up to advise the Government on the most appropriate procedures for assessments of our students, all achievement data which could identify individuals or schools will remain confidential. We agreed to that recommendation. The P and C council was part of that reference group and totally supported that confidentiality and non-comparisons of schools, as they recognised that in a small system we would be comparing small, identifiable groups of students and not schools.

The Government believes that it is inappropriate to release the learning assistance needs information in the form requested by the Council of P and C Associations, for that very same reason. The learning assistance needs information was provided by schools to the department as working documents which were designed to allocate teaching resources. The data was not necessarily generated in the same way by each school, as they used a non-standardised approach without moderation from one school to another. It was up to the individual schools as to how the learning assistance procedures were implemented. On this basis alone, public comparisons are inappropriate.

The release of the learning assistance information would not benefit a single child or school. You would be well aware, I hope, Mr Moore, that we have already stated that resources are allocated to the lowest achieving 20 per cent of our students, to assist them with their learning needs. The Government and the department have recognised the inconsistency of the information that was generated by the previous methods of learning assistance resource allocation, while acknowledging that it was the best available at the time. With the introduction of the standardised assessment program that I have already mentioned, we will have the opportunity to review our allocation mechanisms for special needs teaching resources. This will ensure that we are targeting our students with learning needs in a more effective manner. Mr Moore, I would be a bit surprised if Mr Cobbold or whomever you spoke to 10 minutes ago really had a problem with that. I think they had lengthy discussions with the department yesterday.

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