Not so rosy?

A gain on league tables is a bright spot for embattled Australian educators, says former teacher Angelo Gavrielatos.

When New Zealand educators look across The Tasman they might feel envious of the much larger pay packets of their Australian counterparts. But take a closer look before you jump to conclusions.
For the last fifteen years we have been in the grip of “greater accountability and high-stakes testing” educational reform. Teachers have done their best to maintain high standards for their students – but national testing, league tables and a funding system that favours private schools over public are undermining a great system.

Falling PISA

Not surprisingly, this has shown up in Australia’s PISA results. Our rankings, while still high, have slipped in reading and maths. Our decline in reading is “statistically significant” and “occurred primarily because of a decline in performance at the highest level,” according to Professor Barry McGaw of Melbourne University. He says one cause is an over-reliance on basic skills testing. This is set to continue.
Under NAPLAN (the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy), Year 3, 5, 7, and 9 students are subjected to a battery of tests that are held on the same days all across Australia. They began in 2008 and last year the resulting data was uploaded onto the government’s MySchool website, enabling the media to construct for the first time league tables of primary schools.

Flawed data

The data was flawed and although the government gave assurances that schools would only be compared with like schools, this did not prevent, for example, a small country school being compared to a private school charging $A21,000 a year in fees.
As the Australian Education Union had predicted, schools from lower socio-economic areas were pilloried in the media, as were individual teachers and principals. Teachers in some states were also advised “to teach to the test”, resulting in a narrowing of the curriculum.

Illegal action

Teachers were so incensed by the injustice of it all that they voted to place a moratorium on the administration of the NAPLAN tests. In some states this was deemed illegal industrial action. Finally, the government woke up to some of the issues and a working party was set up. It has negotiated a compromise whereby data on the website is copyrighted so that the media cannot compile league tables.

The data is still of not much meaningful use to parents. It largely remains more an indicator of social privilege than school effectiveness, but by ensuring it is protected by copyright there is less chance of it being misused.

Our PISA results also show that Australia has a very high “social gradient” meaning that social background in this country has a well above average effect on educational outcomes.
This might have something to do with the fact, that under the Howard government, school funding was skewed to such an extent that a student attending a private school is now funded for thousands of more dollars a year than a student attending a public school. Around 30 percent of students now attend private schools.

The Labor leader, Julia Gilliard, has promised to review the funding system, but any changes will not be implemented until 2014. Gillard has also promised to introduce performance pay, school rewards and bonuses – based on the flawed NAPLAN data – when any superficial search of the literature shows that this will impair the provision of high quality public education.
Gillard says the implementation is some years away, and we can only hope that some sense will have returned to the debate before then.

Recanting

This might not be an empty hope. In recent weeks, there are signs of sanity returning. Dr Kevin Donnelly, the director of the Education Standards Institute, recently published an article in the Sydney Morning Herald basically recanting his support for the reforms: “As someone who has been a vocal advocate of testing and accountability, I might expect criticism for doing an about-face. But as John Maynard Keynes said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’”

Angelo Gavrielatos is Federal President of the Australian Education Union.

How Australia ranks in the OECD, on its PISA student assessment tables.

Rankings have declined following “greater accountability” reforms.

                2000  2003  2006  2009
Reading      4         4        6        6
Maths          5         8        9        9
Science       7         4        5        7