Choosing a school in a knowledge vacuum

A significant part of the current Australia-wide education discussion is centred on parental choice. Much of that discussion is focused on the issue of public versus private schooling.

 

It is axiomatic that choice involves decision making. It should also be axiomatic that all decisions need to be made in the light of good quality, reliable information. The poorer the information, the less likely it is that the best decision will be made.

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Unfortunately the information we have on a given school is poor, far less than we have on food items. Try an experiment. Pick any tin or packet of food from the cupboard and look at all the information that is there. It is detailed, giving not only what ingredients there are but numerical detail on various dietary issues. Now think about the secondary school down the road. How much do you really know about that school and the quality of education it provides? Do you really know anything at all about it?

 

And note, I don't mean rumour or scuttlebutt, but facts and solid reliable knowledge.

 

The decision as to which school to send little Joanna or Johnny to is important: much more important than what is in a tin of tomatoes, but the vast majority of us know much less about a school than we do about tomatoes.

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Above all else, do you have any evidence at all as to the improvements in individual student performance at the enabling subjects English, Maths and Science over time?

 

The odds are that you know absolutely nothing about what improvements are produced. Of course not, you can't because there is no relevant data.

 

Which raises the question, "Why do we know so little about a matter of such great importance?" In essence, the amount of measuring that is needed to provide valid information to everybody is not being done.

 

In the absence of real information it is inevitable that the void will be filled by rumour and or simplistic and false deductions from what little data there is.

 

We all know that people look at the results at the end of schooling (called variously TE Score, OP et al) and make conclusions about the "quality" of the various schools.

 

That idea is pure rubbish. It is obvious that if a school takes groups of students that are more gifted than average they should achieve superior results at the end of schooling. Prosperous private schools know this, which is why they offer scholarships to the very brightest children from other schools. Inevitably those students do very well - and the public are impressed. Unless the strength of the students on entry - the input data - is available, it is quite simply fatuous to judge a school by its output alone.

 

In many countries what we call the GST is called the VAT, the Value Added Tax. The name says what it is. Tax is levied on the value that has been added to the item.

 

A form of value adding is the way we have to think about "how good a school is". The trouble is that for a multiplicity of reasons there is no reliable data on the condition of the student(s) on entry to the school. In the absence of such input as well as output data there is no way to judge how well a school has performed. Until and unless the various entrenched groups - and there are many of them - accept, either by persuasion or by fiat and decree, that consistent, reliable data has to be obtained regularly, and each individual student's outcomes traced over the years, then we shall remain in the dark.

 

In terms of the debate about "public" versus "private" schools, there are some basic matters that need to be considered if we are to have any hope of having a discussion that might just help children in the long run

 

The first is the fact that the differences within any given group are always greater than the differences between two groups. The fact the differences within a group are bigger than differences between groups also applies to schools. There is very hard data showing "individual schools" are much more influential than "school sector" on the final ENTER/TES/OP results. In other words selecting or not selecting a school because it is (or is not) "Government" or "Catholic" or "Independent" is totally inappropriate.

 

It is the individual school that counts, nothing else.

 

A second thing that has to be remembered when choosing a school is that all the syllabi, including the complex, poorly defined and non-numerate assessment systems, are not a relevant factor. All schools, irrespective of type, must follow the syllabi produced by the State Board of Study (under whatever name). If a syllabus is a weak thin gruel then that's what is being dished out in all the schools irrespective of type. It is interesting to note that two of the most singeing criticisms of the Maths and Science courses that were published recently in The Australian were from a current student and one who left last year - both from "good quality private schools". The Principal of St Augustine's College in Cairns has stated that the curriculum "has degenerated into a confused and confusing morass".

 

The brute fact is parents have no real information, so they cannot make informed choices. However, collectively they have power, especially electoral power. They therefore should: