schoolwatch

Will this apply to all schools and will it create a bigger between the haves and have not.

August 27, 2008

THE Federal Government's plan to rank schools on performance is aimed at distracting voters from cuts to public school funding, the Australian Education Union says.

Mr Rudd today announced individual school performance reporting will be a condition for reaching an education agreement with the states to begin in January.

The Prime Minister also pledged to establish new standards to reward school principals and the best performing teachers and fund teacher recruitment, development and excellence.

But AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos called it 'SchoolWatch'.

"We've had FuelWatch, GroceryWatch and now we have Schoolwatch," he said.

"If, as a nation, we are serious about lifting overall student performance and addressing underperformance and underachievement, what we would have seen today is a statement of certainty from the Prime Minister.

Mr Gavrielatos said a new study commissioned by the AEU concluded that unless there was increased funding by the Government, there could be a real cut in funding for public schools by 2011 which could see the loss of 1000 teaching positions around the country.

"The loss of 1000 teaching positions would put upward pressure on class sizes and see the collapse of educational programs. As a nation we cannot afford that," he said.

But Australian Secondary Principals Association deputy president Jim McAlpine said the plan was positive.

"In a broad sense, I think ways of rewarding high performance are welcome, but the devil is in the detail,'' Mr McAlpine said.

"So long as it's done in a way that reflects the genuine complexity and context of schools and the challenges of both leadership and teaching then I think it will be good thing.''

He welcomed Mr Rudd's suggestion that the average school needed an injection of $500,000 to "make a real difference'', but questioned where the funding would come from.

"I think it would be much better if the Federal Government could make direct funding to schools of an average of half a million dollars each and that funding be used to improve the learning in the school, rather than the state governments having to meet the Federal Government's commitments,'' he said.

Australian Council of State School Organisations president Jenny Branch said Mr Rudd should have consulted parents before formulating the plan.

"We are really concerned that this Government is really not talking to the people it needs to talk to before it's making decisions about what's best for Australia,'' she said.

"He's stating he knows what parents want, well we're not sure how he's actually engaged with the parents of state schools when he hasn't run this past the national body.''

Ms Branch said parents did not want to see schools ranked in league tables according to results.

"We don't support any league tables, we've seen what they can do in the UK, we've seen cases of parents fighting with each other, buying addresses, raffle tickets so you can get in the line to get into a school that's higher up the league table,'' she said.

"It's often based on incorrect information and there's much more to a school than the academic results for a start.''