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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1770 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Parents have a right to access information that will allow them to take part in discussions about the needs and programs of their school. If we go down Mr Berry's path, parents will not have that information. They will not know how their child is doing or how the school is performing. They will not know if there might be something wrong with the teaching methods. Their child might need some additional help; the school might need some additional help. Without this information they will be operating in a vacuum.

Parents are very interested in how their children are progressing. They are interested in standards. I do not know what Mr Berry is worried about. We have very good standards in this territory. We have seen from our testing program that the ACT is ranked, if not at the top, very close to the top. But usually we are ranked at the top in literacy and numeracy. At this stage we test only our government schools. We will see what happens when the non-government schools come on board, and I am pleased to see that that is happening. But apart from South Australia, where both government and non-government schools are tested, we compare ourselves with the other government school systems.

I think our government schools can take a lot of pleasure and pride from the standard. It is a good standard but it still can get better. We want to ensure that kids do not fall through the cracks. We want to protect our kids. If we do what Mr Berry wants, we will be operating in a bit of a vacuum. Parents will not know, the system will not know and students will not know. How is that protecting our kids? That is failing to protect them. Mr Berry's suggestion is the exact opposite of what we believe should be happening.

We agree that, as a result of consultation, parents and carers will receive more information on assessment results in the form of school and system averages and on the range of scores for each strand. That is really doing exactly what part (3) of Mr Berry's motion says we should be doing. We have consulted, we are responding and that makes everyone, including the government and ranging down to the classroom teacher, more accountable, as it should be.

There will be no reporting of aggregated scores that could be used to construct league tables. The government has deliberately limited the provision of additional information to ensure that such league tables are avoided. The decision to report school results to parents will help them understand their child's results in the context of the school and the system averages.

We have a draft policy and implementation guidelines for schools, which will be released shortly. There has been consultation and this work has been developed as a result of work we did last year. The results will be published in a purpose designed report and not in correspondence such as school newsletters. If the P&C councils are worried about it, I think they are totally overreacting. Mr Berry made mention of that and, yes, I think it is an overreaction. Schools will not be allowed to use their results for marketing or school comparison purposes.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, having said that, the government is continuing the momentum on supporting enhanced literacy and numeracy outcomes for students. Every year we commit more than $10 million extra for literacy and numeracy programs, and this is over and above normal classroom support for teachers in the normal curriculum. All primary school teachers have now done training in four components-spelling, writing, reading and oral language-of the First Steps literacy program. Teachers from

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