Page 2841 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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incentive for the school to continuously improve. However, measures must be based on quality outcomes so as not to discourage or penalise schools that require extra assistance.
Information gleaned from this data will provide accountability that encourages school communities to strive for better outcomes. That is a certainty. Information will also allow governments to have a greater understanding of the need for investment. Fundamentally, school communities do want to know how their school is performing. In the first instance, when families are looking for a school for their child, it is no different from shopping for anything else. Families need to be able to make an informed choice.
In relation to what parents really want, an interesting article came across my desk just this morning from St Edmund’s College, Canberra. It is in the newsletter called Vortex and it is an article written by the principal, Peter Fullagar, and I quote from this document:
On a related theme to reports, I was reading an article recently which focused upon research commissioned by the Australian Parents Council (APC) on what parents want from schools and school performance. It is worth noting that for parents of Catholic and Independent schools—both primary and secondary—the highest importance was given to ‘people related factors rather than to academic performance of schools. The happiness of students, the direction of the school, the quality of the relationships between staff and students, the quality of the teaching staff and behaviour management topped the list’.
The first of these—‘happiness of students’—is the most difficult to measure and no school report that I have ever seen reports upon it. As parents it is ultimately what we would want most for our children. In an era where outcomes need to be measured and reported, perhaps there are some things that are beyond our capacity to report and yet are really what is most important.
Choice, Madam Assistant Speaker; this is all about choice and transparency for parents. Information made public on schools will assist families to be better informed and enable them to better engage with each individual learning environment. We will not be supporting this motion today. We believe that the issues raised in this motion are already being addressed.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (12.21): Ms Hunter’s motion deals with one of the most important issues in education—the issue of how our students and schools are performing. There is much anxiety about these reforms that we are discussing today, and it appears that the debate has been polarised around the league table issue. But let us deal with the facts. Parents want more and better information about how their child is doing at school. I certainly did when my children went to school.
The evidence on this is clear. Parents want to know about their child’s education and about what kind of education their child will receive, as Mr Barr has said. So Australia’s education ministers have agreed to develop a system which allows parents and students to receive nationally consistent information about schools. Of course, we do not want to see this information misinterpreted. That is why Australia’s education ministers also agreed to national protocols around school reporting and data.
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