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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1776 ..
MR MOORE (continuing):
So far it has not. We have been doing now it for now quite some time, and it certainly has not done so. The motion itself is fallacious and ought to be rejected just on that. The second point is:
rejects school league tables because they provide inaccurate and misleading information about school performance ...
Maybe league tables do, and maybe we are talking about something different. But the information that has been provided, which has been very carefully constructed from what happens in schools now, certainly does not provide misleading information about school performance or lead to greater inequities in schooling by unfairly labelling some schools.
We could all name one or two schools in this town that we consider at the lower end-certainly among our primary schools. None of us do it, but everybody in Canberra knows. Do you think that this is going to be any different? Maybe they will discover that that is not the case. Maybe what we will actually see is that something in particular is going on that will change that and we ought to say, "What's happening is good there. What can we learn from the other schools that are doing better?" The whole language of Mr Berry's motion is fallacious anyway.
Then we get to his third point:
calls on the Government to abandon its proposals to report school results and to engage in further consultations ...
Consultations have been going on since the process started five or six years ago. Further consultations no doubt will continue because Mr Stefaniak and his department are always consulting on these issues. But when we consult with people like the P&C Council-and we should continue, and I will continue to do it-that does not mean to say we take what they say as gospel, because sometimes they get it wrong. This is almost the only time I can remember, and it is only the one time.
Mr Rugendyke: I'll give you a couple more times.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Rugendyke!
MR MOORE: The point on further consultation goes on to say that that would be on ways to:
... improve reporting to parents and to increase Government accountability for improving educational outcomes for all students.
The most dramatic way to make government accountable is to know what is going on in those schools and to make them responsible for improving education outcomes for all our students. That is the part we all agree with. What we are interested in doing is improving education outcomes for our students. If we have the opportunity to do it, we should do it.
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