Assessing MySchool
Media commentary on the 28 January launch of a Rudd Government major online component in its Education Revolution – Myschool.edu.au – has drawn battle lines between supporters and dissenters of this website development.
The Australian Education Union believes the site will provide media ammunition to pillory and stigmatise schools whose NAPLAN results either fail to meet national benchmarks or which compare poorly with statistically similar institutions or schools in regional proximity.
Behind the union’s bluster and media hyperbole AEU leaders are clearly concerned that Myschool data could be used to highlight teaching inadequacies. Serious reviewers of the logged data would find difficulty in making such judgement based on the comparative performance measurements being publicised.
Education Minister Gillard had staunchly defended the government’s right and responsibility to publish school test data.
The fact that the AEU threatens to boycott NAPLAN testing in May if the government publishes school results represents union concern not so much for the actual data itself but for the uncertainty how the media will utilise the information to devise what the AEU regards as ‘odious league table’ outcomes.
Perhaps AEU leaders should direct their anxiety towards journalistic voyeurism that highlights extreme school examples rather than the actual website data.
In its reporting role the media will uphold its freedom of information responsibility claiming the public has every right to know intimate details concerning school and student learning performance, especially where taxpayer funds are concerned. Independent schools take note.
While Ms Gillard has hit the media airways trumpeting the government’s Myschool initiative, will parents actually ‘be hungry’ - as she claims - to critically examine the website data?
Probably not.
By the Minister’s own admission, the website’s school details are broadly available already in a variety of forms that include publications, online data or individual school websites.
Ms Gillard has stated the website will include:
Individual school details for approximately 9,600 primary and secondary schools from all education sectors:
Number of teachers:
Number of students:
Number of non-teaching staff:
A school Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage value (ICSEA). Little is known what this value will actually measure or how it will indicate school performance.
Year 12 retention rates:
Student numbers achieving Year 12 or trade equivalent outcomes:
NAPLAN scores for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 – the most contentious data whose publication has riled the AEU.
The site will eventually publish each school’s sources of funding, an issue that will inevitably generate additional public contention when this information comes on line later this year.
To what extent will people ‘hunger’ for the website data when much is provided to parents anyway through student reports, parent interviews, prospectus information and school’s own websites?
What student re-location response could most families consider anyway knowing their child’s school performance data?
School boundary residential restraints provide an obvious limitation to enrolment choice.
Moving a student from a supposed under performing school, or moving addresses to secure a supposed better performing school for new students, may simply not be a viable option.
Furthermore, if a child goes to School A how many parents can genuinely respond to comparable data for schools in the approximate vicinity, let alone comparing School A's literacy and numeracy results with School B in another state?
If a parent undertakes such a comparison how will that information actually improve their child’s learning at a particular school?
Because the website is not designed, nor could it adequately codify the many qualitative, interpretative and inter-related measurements that practically contribute to primary and secondary learning (teacher dedication, class sizes, cognitive/learning differences, classroom practices, family background, etc.) will the publicised information actually improve student learning?
Probably not.
Many parents will wonder why the government has gone to the expense of such website development when the data cannot adequately encapsulate the intricacies that create a quality education for a single student let alone an entire school cohort.
The shadow minister for education dismissingly foreshadowed that Myschool will follow the demise of previous government petrol and grocery website programs that sought to highlight pricing variations for the Australian public.
Such shallowness fails to recognise that school students represent more than mere commodities to be priced on open markets.
Student schooling is critical to Australia’s national skills development within a worldwide employment network.
The federal coalition would achieve better electoral traction by devising alternate schooling policies that actually contribute to education reform rather than trivialising improvements for Australian school children.
While extensive commentary will no doubt follow the website launch serious doubt exists that the site will deliver anything more than a bureaucratic evaluation of school’s statistical records.
Despite the Minister's exhuberant predictions such an outcome hardly warrants a parental feeding frenzy.
If Myschool represents the aggregation of the government’s online education reform to measure and evaluate school’s performance its supposed ‘education revolution’ will neither strike fear into its opponents nor generate lasting benefits for its supporters.
The site’s long term benefit to school students is equally problematic.
Rather than providing a panacea towards learning improvement the Myschool website may merely deliver more statistical data simply to justify future school resourcing allocations by the Rudd Government.
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