The launch, the crash and the recovery of My School

Any index must consider how they were selected into the school, the size and location of the school, especially the proximity and nature of competing schools. We are supposed to be told about the resources of each school, something now promised for the future.

In addition to factors considered by ACARA, differences between schools are significantly created because some schools can largely choose who does walk in through the gates each day and others can’t. The dividend for those who can is quickly realised in school results and the boosted reputation of those schools which can import much of their success and, when push comes to shove, export their failures.

In walking away from trying to include such factors ACARA is not even get close to getting it right. The creation of school comparisons in spite of such differences between schools makes a nonsense out of the precise numbers, graphs and colours that will absorb our attention over the next few weeks.

This has reached farcical levels when you consider some of the schools that have emerged as “statistically similar”. Asquith Boys High School in Sydney apparently has much in common with MLC Burwood, until you remember that the “L” in MLC stands for ladies. One of Australia’s biggest schools, Cherrybrook High is apparently similar to Upper Sturt Primary (enrolment 37) in South Australia. But hope is at hand: the students at Malek Fahd Islamic School apparently have a lot in common with those at Immanuel Lutheran School at Gawler East, South Australia.

The serious point is this: it’s bad enough in this country that we have allowed our schools to increasingly form a social and academic hierarchy, one which has little to do with school merit. To then turn around and rank these schools, even against so-called similar others, amounts to a cruel joke.

Without doubt our parents and the wider community have a continuing right to know that their schools are doing their very best for all our students. But there is ample evidence to show that far better school performance and improvement is gained through independent appraisal of school progress to identify and improve areas of weakness. Far better system performance is achieved, not by ranking schools in some failed quasi-market experiment, but by co-operative development and commitment to quality teaching and learning.

Professional and independent appraisal and development of schools doesn’t resonate as well as the current rhetoric about “transparency” and “openness”. But the Rudd Government came to power extolling the virtue of evidence-based policies. It must take heed of the evidence and properly resource ongoing independent and thorough appraisal of our schools.

Trying to achieve quality schools and give assurance to the public by using student test scores to rank schools is quick, cheap, invalid, dirty and damaging. I really need convincing that it amounts to little more than institutionalised fraud.