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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3506 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

all parents information which currently goes to the school board members about how individual schools have performed against system averages.

My understanding is that the New South Wales government is actually publishing a ranking for all schools in the state, government and non-government, listing the schools from the highest ranking to the lowest. There are some serious problems with that proposal, Mr Speaker. My understanding is that New South Wales looks at individual scores in the higher school certificate over 90 and does not make any acknowledgment of the difference in complexity of subjects being studied by students; it adopts a simplistic approach. Adopting that simplistic approach means that no weighting is given to the difference between, for instance, a student undertaking a four-unit maths course, which is the most complex maths course a student can undertake, and a student undertaking the lightest maths load in New South Wales, which is called maths in society but which the students know as maths in space.

Mr Berry, the shadow spokesman on education, has had quite a bit to say on league tables over the past few months and has a motion on it on our notice paper. He has a problem now. ACT Labor is opposed to league tables; I assume that they are or they would not have put the motion there. The government has indicated that it is not going to publish league tables. But, just across the border, Mr Berry's mates in the New South Wales Labor Party are proceeding now to produce league tables ranking government and non-government schools.

Mr Berry: Name them.

MR STEFANIAK: Aren't they your mates, Wayne? I am glad to hear that; they probably are, too.

Mr Speaker, there is another element to this issue. At lunchtime today I released the results of national benchmarking in reading of year 3 and year 5 students in our government schools for 1999 and 2000. They show that the ACT continues to produce outstanding results for its students.

Earlier this year, I was able to announce that for our year 3 students last year we had 89.9 per cent achieve the benchmark in reading. We now have the results for our year 3 students for this year and they are very pleasing indeed. They have gone up from the 89.9 per cent for last year to 94.8 per cent of the students achieving at or above the benchmark.

Mr Smyth: What was the percentage?

MR STEFANIAK: It was 94.8 per cent, an exceptionally good percentage. Unlike other states which have government and non-government schools involved in testing-I think that South Australia still does that-only government schools are in the testing regime here. That is of great credit to those schools, to the parents and to the teachers.

As well, we have the results for our year 5 students. Last year we had 90.4 per cent achieve the benchmark. This year the figure has gone up to 90.8 per cent, another improvement. I do not have the results for the other states, but I think that would put us in a very good position in comparison.

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