Page 4618 - Week 12 - Thursday, 15 October 2009
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Madam Assistant Speaker—go around and look at these refurbishments at the schools in our electorates.
We need to know how our children are tracking in reading, writing and arithmetic. We need to know that our schools are improving. We need to know these things so that our schools, our school families and our school communities can teach our children better and make sure that everyone is learning. As I said before, it is important that we provide the best education that we can for our young people and to make sure that our young people reach their full potential. Education builds skills, grows productivity and strengthens our economy, but it is our young people’s learning and reaching their full potential that we are on about. We must make sure that education provides an opportunity for our young people to have a better future. The ACT government will make every dollar count towards improving our students’ educational outcomes. In early childhood education, in literacy and numeracy, in teacher quality and in school capital works Labor is delivering policies and programs which advance education for all.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (4.53): I thank Ms Porter for bringing this matter of public importance to the Assembly today. I am sure members, and indeed all of Canberra, would have no difficulty in agreeing that we must invest in the future of our children through the best possible education system. It is a core belief of the Greens that everyone should have access to an education that meets their needs and aspirations and gives them the skills and capacity to participate in society. Part of this involves having an education system that attains standards of excellence and reflects the diversity of the broader community.
Since coming into this Assembly, the ACT Greens have, on a regular basis, put forward considered views on a range of matters related to delivering the best policy to advance education for all students in the ACT. We have raised, through a motion in the Assembly, the issue of the publication of information which effectively compares schools based on student assessment programs, attendance, student and teacher numbers—in what are known as league tables—and the significant impact this will have on our education system here and across Australia. Already, we have seen how easy it is to collect this data for each school and compile national and state-territory simplistic league tables.
On 6 May 2009, the Hobart Mercury published a league table of school results. The government had published results online and these were then converted by the newspaper to show school rankings. All of this was in spite of an undertaking by all education ministers that, in providing information on schooling, governments will ensure that school-based information is published responsibly so that any public comparisons of schools will be fair, contain accurate and verified data, contextual information and a range of indicators.
Like many educational organisations and commentators, the ACT Greens support the need for transparency in the education system and have no problem with the aims of education ministers or with the fact that many parents do want comprehensive information about the schools their children attend. However, unless measures are taken to prevent the publication of simplistic league tables, protection cannot be assured for students and teachers from the impact of these simplistic league tables.
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