Secret education business

The bill also provides incentives for under-performing schools to improve.

First, under-performing schools receive additional funding; second, if results still do not improve, students receive funding to pay for private tutoring.

Finally, if particular schools consistently fail to meet the grade, students will be allowed to transfer to more successful schools. Again, this is unlike Australia, where education departments and governments allow failing schools to put students at risk year after year, without any attempt to address the root cause of the problem.

Of course, those most to gain from keeping Australian parents in the dark - teacher unions and faceless education bureaucrats - argue that test results or inspectors’ reports should never be released. Public exposure will destroy a school’s reputation and students’ self-esteem!

In answer to those resisting change:

First, comparing schools is not simply a matter of comparing apples with bananas. In England, research into how schools “value add” to student performance is based on comparing schools with a similar socio-economic profile. Thus, schools from a wealthy area, with good facilities and parents able to afford the extras, are compared against similar schools, and not against those in less privileged areas.

Second, making results public, in most cases, leads to under-performing schools receiving additional funding and to standards improving.

As parents will agree, there is also the reality that good test results, by themselves, are not the sole reason why they might choose one school over another. But when such results are made public, parents are in a position to make a more informed decision.

All Australian departments of education have been collecting data about school performance for some years. State and territory governments also have the results of literacy and numeracy testing, generally at grades three, five and seven for all primary schools, since being introduced over the last eight to ten years.

In addition, school Year 12 results are also available to rank schools. Given the rhetoric about accountability and empowering communities, one wonders when the Ministers of Education of the state and territory Labor governments will make such information freely available.