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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1778 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

because then some action was taken. So, I guess he is also basically supportive of this public shaming response to inadequate support for educational institutions.

A very confused position is coming from members of that side of the house. Some members, like the minister, claim to be against league tables-the ranking of schools according to literacy and numeracy outcomes-as are the Labor Party, the Greens, the P&C Council, the AEU and countless educationalists. I won't spend much time in this debate justifying that position and explaining to everyone in this place, or putting on the record in detail, why I believe the publication and distribution of league tables is corrosive and destructive.

We are well aware of factors other than quality of teaching that would influence school scores: the socioeconomic background of the students, the incidence of disability and health problems in students and their families, the family history of positive engagement with education and the cultural and linguistic background of students and their families. Assessing the quality of education simply on the basis of literacy and numeracy assessment is ill informed, but that is exactly the problem.

Mr Stefaniak and others in the government confuse their stated intent with the reality. They are arguing that league tables will not be constructed from the reports circulated to parents. But, whatever the rules the government imposes, it is clear that informal league tables can be, and no doubt will be, put together once the reports are available. The devil, as always, is in the detail.

The government has said that it will not publish league tables itself, that it will not permit schools to use school results for marketing purposes and that parents will be warned of the dangers of giving too much weight to literacy and numeracy outcomes alone. Nonetheless, the information provided to parents will include scores on a number of literacy and numeracy strands for their children, an average score across those strands for schools and an average score for the government school system overall.

The government is correct to point out that it is hard to compare such complex assessments across individuals, let alone schools, and that the fabrication of accurate league tables would be extremely difficult. That is fudging the issue. The past few years of Commonwealth government and talk-back radio rhetoric has pushed a simplistic reading, writing and arithmetic agenda. However complex any real assessment may be, in the minds of many, reading is reading and writing is writing and, if people are interested in making comparisons, they will pick a strand that suits their purpose or their understanding or that has interesting figures and comparisons. It will not be hard for anyone to use reports on students from different schools to create de facto league tables ranking school performances relative to each other and to the system average.

Independent schools are to be brought into the same literacy and numeracy assessment regime over the next year. I can see no reason why those schools will not market themselves on the basis of school results, and that will further encourage odious comparisons. No amount of public statements warning parents of the danger of taking too simplistic an approach will redress the damage.

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