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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1764 ..

This is where all of this is heading, and that is the most distressing aspect of the government's attempt to introduce this regime in our schooling system.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I am holding up a copy of a Daily Telegraph article of 8 January 1997. Members will see a picture of a class under the heading "Class we failed".

Mr Stefaniak: Mount Druitt.

MR BERRY: Indeed. The article stated:

It went to all of the details about this school and how its TERs were low.

Mr Smyth: And because it was published they then did something about it.

MR BERRY: The article went on to deal with how those low TERs affected the school. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, Mr Smyth was getting a little agitated a moment ago, and his body language suggested to me, "That is not what we are doing." The point, Mr Smyth, is this: the way that you are collecting the results and providing them to teachers leaves an opportunity for people to gather them and present them in the form of league tables from which comparisons can be drawn between schools.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, this is an absolutely dangerous practice.

Mr Smyth: No, it is dangerous because it allows mediocrity.

MR BERRY: It is dangerous for students and it is dangerous for schools because it would cause a flight of students from schools, and if you cannot see that you are blind-you are blinded by your own ideology.

Mr Smyth: So you are willing to accept mediocrity.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hird): Order! The Minister for Urban Services will come to order. Mr Berry, I would like to ask you to take note of standing order 42 that requires members to address the chair.

MR BERRY: Mr Smyth is blinded by his own ideology if he cannot see the danger that this would cause to our education system and our schools. Imagine a school which had a poor result because somebody astute enough to gather this information from parents put together a package which demonstrated in some way that the school was underperforming compared to another school. Imagine the parents' feelings about that school. Imagine the feelings of students if it was, say, a high school, and I will come to that issue because it is extremely important that we fully understand the impact of this. This is something that Mr Smyth does not seem to understand.

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