The My School government website

[Just Me]

I have looked at a few of the schools in Townsville and basically they show any of the public schools are falling well below average and most of the private schools are sitting on average. What it doesn't say is that private schools have the option to pick their students where public schools have to take any student that presents to them in their particular catchment area (if one exists).

My husband went to what would be regarded the best private school in Townsville and he said they worked the system as far as the QCS goes to ensure students sitting for it would get the best overall results - they kicked kids out of the school if they weren't performing to a standard and prevented others from sitting the QCS if it was perceived that they would bring the overall standard down.

I imagine that most schools do the same to manipulate their schools standing in the standard tests reflected by the My School website. All this data says to me is that private schools are very good at working the system to reflect what the parents that pay for these schools expect it to reflect.

I was actually surprised how badly some of the schools in Townsville did as far as statistics - especially in the absences. I have taught in Townsville for a couple of years (I have done most of my teaching in Brisbane) and I have had classes where there are children that are absent from school for most of the year (I am talking attendance rates of about 20 days a year, if you're lucky). This is not uncommon in Townsville schools. These kids are still accounted for in the testing although they have hardly attended school and their results affect the results of the whole school. Parents of students like this do not pay for them to attend private school as it is not something they value (and most private schools wouldn't accept them anyway) and they have to be enrolled somewhere by law (by law they should also be attending but that is very difficult) so they are enrolled in public schools who have to include their results with the other students.

The other point that I feel the need to make about these sorts of results - I have always found the idea of grading numeracy and literacy a bit comical. Like anything above 85% correct is a Very High (or an A) anything 65% - 85% is a High (or a B), anything 50% - 65% is a Sound (or a C - average). Honestly, if a child is only getting 50% of all maths questions right, I really do question competency. I think with numeracy and literacy, you either understand it or you don't. I really think it would be much better to rate kids on competency rather than a grading system. I think kids need to consistently demostrate ability to complete numeracy and literacy tasks in order to be graded competent. I think anything that falls short of competent should be labelled 'not yet competent' with the assumption that they will soon be competent, just not yet.

I think it is also truly revolting to judge a teachers' ability to teach on information on these websites. I have been to schools where teachers are running teeth brushing programs as part of a state government initiative to deal with the high level of tooth decay in those communities. Part of the daily classroom activity is that all students brush their teeth twice a day using their government issued toothbrush and toothpaste. These students probably weren't testing to the same level as kids their ages in other schools, but their teachers were working pretty hard and they are good teachers. They just have a lot of other issues that interfere with their students' ability to learn that need to be addressed before anything more could happen.

This website makes judgements that in many ways assumes that all kids start school on equal footing and they are all judged in exactly the same way.

I am aware of Julia Gillards reasoning behind publishing the results, I don't understand her need to make this information public. If she wants to use it to direct government funding then she should do that, I just don't understand why it has to be so public. She also stated on an interview for 'Insight' late last year that the information in this website could be used to close down persistently under performing schools - that just makes me sick! There is so much more to making a school great than a group of collective results that don't accurately demonstrate real student learning.

I had a look around this website and felt truly devastated for the the principals, teachers, students and parents of some of the schools I looked at. I have been in their schools, worked in some of these schools and I know how hard they all work and how much they put into making their school great and I found them great, supportive places to be where I thought the students were taught well with a wide variety of highly engaging activities and this website reflected none of that. It made these schools look like failures and it is just not true.

How can we expect kids to take pride in their school and value their place of education when there are websites such as these wrongly demonstrate that they are failing on so many levels? We want kids to attend school and see it as valuable - this is not the way to achieve it!

[toomanyshoes]

I personally think its a great tool to give parents more information when making up their minds about schools!

But no, it shouldn't be the deciding factor, it should be one of many things to look at when you make your final decision.

I think the more information we have as parents the better! I don't think its the big doom and gloom teachers/unions would like us to believe.

DS primary school is rated very very averagely, but having gone and talked to the teachers/principal its a good school and he is getting the help he needs, they have bent over backwards trying to help him get through everything we have had to deal with in the past 3 years.

So as I said, the website isn't the be all and end all but its definitely giving parents more information...and you know what they say, information is power.

[Lolli]

Hmmm. My mum is a teacher, so I'm biased by what she's told me. but there was an interesting article in the Sunday telegraph this morning (I know, Iknow, but I like my journalism sprinkled with tabloid ) stating that the exodus has already begun. Parents are already pulling kids from the poorer performing schools to the 'better' ones. So the balance is already going out of whack- the better performing students will flock to the better schools, and the divide will become greater. To pinch another BB's member saying (hi pixie)- bad, bad juju

[Jaycee]

I am so glad I found this thread!

I had a look at the local school I am thinking of sending DS to (we live in a regional town just outside of Adelaide) and it rated very poorly. I started panicking a bit as I really wanted to send him to this local school but was very hesistant to do so with such poor rankings.

I now see that there is so much more to a school than how the children performed in one test on one day of the year.

I am still going to do my research, but just not with that website alone. I will be speaking to the parents that send their children to that school and I will also visit the school to get a feel for it.

Thanks girls for opening my mind

[Pretty Butterfly]

I too have just looked it up.... and IMO it has to have some merit....

An average student should be able to do fairly well on the Naplan test, even on a "bad" day, and you would need quiet a few to do so so badly it brings the schools rates down. The test is of basic knowledge and understanding. How do they move on to high school, and be expected to do well, if their basic knowledge is bad??

If a school does particularly bad, then I would have to wonder why. I really wouldn't care that it excels in art or sport, if my child came out barely being able to understand very basic english and maths by year 5... thats a problem.

I looked up my kids schools, and wasn't surprised that they rate very well, we picked them for a reason, not just academically. I looked up schools I heard had a bad rep, and ones I know are pretty bad, and yep, REALLY poor results.

[Rouge]

From my own experience all the schools I went to scored very very badly. And so they should have they were some of the worst schools across Australia. So for me that was correct. I was very pleased with the results my kids school received, but to be honest the school as a whole and how they approach learning difficulties, excellerated learning etc I am not surprised. I have no doubt though that some of the results are skewed slightly and I hope they can rectify that. I also hope that with this information the government can put into those schools that obviously really need it.

[Indadhanu]

One example off the top of my head is that: a school that caters largely for hands-on type learners would have a very high proportion of students who would just crumble under testing pressure. I'm not saying all 'red' schools are good hands-on schools, or that 'green' schools don't cater for hands on learners, but this website doesnt tell you about their curriculum styles and teaching style. If you had a child with specific needs, and were trying to find a school that has a 'specialty' for, for example, a 'hands-on' kind of learner, this website is pretty much useless. That's just one example There is juat not information to make any kind of decision, I think too many people are placing too much value on these numbers.

My high school scored poorly, and yet it has many awards, back then and now (my brother still attends there) for being 'ahead' in technology, has been a 'focus' school that other schools 'study' and draw curriculum ideas from, and being extremely well eqipped for special needs students. They just didnt have a high number of 'good' test-taking students on the day they did the test I guess. I just hope parents aren't crossing schools off the list because of this website KWIM.

[BrightSparkles]

I think this site is one of the worst things out in terms of comparing schools in which to send kids to.
The site only compares results from the NAPLAN tests sat by year 3,5,7, and 9. It doesn't compare the type of teachers, the feel of the school, how different kids adapt to academic environments etc. Not all kids perform well under pressure (I was one of those) so things like that will also affect the results.
I also think that you can't compare schools that recieve allot of funding (gov or not) to those that don't.

I think the only thing it does benefit is those people who are working to create programs and gain funding for these children and young people to help them improve on these results

[*Ali*]

if my child came out barely being able to understand very basic english and maths by year 5... thats a problem

I absolutley agree with you, if I knew my child was capable of achieving better results and wasn't I would be into the school quicker than lightening demanding to know what was going on.
However, just because a school rates badly doesnt mean that all the students are failing, it just means that have a higher percentage of students than other schools sitting below the national standard.
There are various reasons for this- and I am not making excuses here for all the schools out there, however, from my experience though the schools that rank poorly do have reasons- the school I am at at the moment has a large number of students who have English as a second Language, we have a large transisent popluation (up to 25% turnover through the year), we are in a low socio- economic area, with high levels of unemployment, single parent families etc- for some children they are more concerned where there next meal will be coming from, or more concerned about trying to find shoes or a jumper to wear to school, or getting home and cooking dinner and looking after younger siblings because mum works 12 hours a day to make ends meet.
Having said that though, we also have students in all year levels sitting in the top bands, and we run extension programs for these students, we run focused literacy programs to help improve the literacy levels of students who are more than 2 years behind- which means we have great programs available for students who are struggling.

However, to look up my school on the website you would know non of that- there is no facilities available to communicate this information. Coupled with the fact that schools across australia are compared, when students in WA schools are up to 12 months younger than students in the eastern states because in WA they start year 1 between 5.5-6.5.

Just my take on it, not saying it doesnt have it place, and the NAPLAN results have been available for schools (at least in WA) for ages on the internet, you just have to look up the school on the Department site- so I dont have a problem with this imformation being available, I just have issues with how it is being used.

[Just Me]

I too have just looked it up.... and IMO it has to have some merit....

An average student should be able to do fairly well on the Naplan test, even on a "bad" day, and you would need quiet a few to do so so badly it brings the schools rates down. The test is of basic knowledge and understanding. How do they move on to high school, and be expected to do well, if their basic knowledge is bad??

If a school does particularly bad, then I would have to wonder why. I really wouldn't care that it excels in art or sport, if my child came out barely being able to understand very basic english and maths by year 5... thats a problem.

The problem is that the results are all comparative ... it's not that students aren't acheving in these schools or even a large number, it's that there are only so many places available to schools to be in the top 1%, top 2% and so on ... it means that at all times a certain percentage of schools will always show up as underperforming.

Private schools generally show up better on these tests because they are allowed to 'work the system'. Public schools have to enrol any student that turns up on their doorstep in their catchment area (and rightly so) but private schools can pick their students and many do. They pick students that they know will perform well on these tests so that when their school is ranked against other schools, they don't have any student who will pull their results down.

Many public schools may have just as many students doing just as well or better than students at private schools but they also have to take into account the results of students who aren't doing as well (in Townsville this is often caused by poor attendance rates on the part of the students NOT because the teachers can't teach).

I think in a lot of cases it is not because students aren't performing well in these tests, it is just that when comparing students someone always has to fall below average while there will always be others who perform above average.

The whole thing is so relative that it is impossible to even compare one years results to the next years results because the bar can be set in an entirely different place.

I really think this site is just a feel good for parents who pay a lot of money for their kids' educations to feel justified in that without understanding they are really just paying schools to work the system and as long as their child is performing, they can be a part of it. It is a very different story if you are a parent of a child who is not performing to a standard in these schools. This site provides no real valuable information and certainly nothing to judge a school's ability by.

I just hope employers don't take the same stand on schools as many parents are. It would be awful to miss out on a job just because a perspective employer misunderstood that this site is really about private schools having the freedom to work the system and judged the integrity of results achieved in school based on the information on this site.

Sorry, I will hop of my hobby horse now

[Just Me]

I was thinking about my last post and thought I should just point out that I am not opposed to private education (just in case it came across that way). I don't have a problem with it really. I do have a problem with money being invested by the government in a site that just encourages educators to work the system rather than reflect true results of students. I also think the results wrongly reflect the teaching ability of private education compared to public and I think private education should focus on teaching their students with equality rather than working the system and not valuing students with lower acheivements academically.

I think it is so degrading for students to have their results published on a website like this. Schools have always had to report to parents (which is why report cards are produced) which I think is far more effective reporting to individual parents of individual students in a far more detailed way about their student's results. The results do not need to be compared.

I am also not opposed to moderating results in some way so that the same grade reflects the same skill and ability across all schools. That is why I think a competency based system would be so much simpler though - either students can do it or they have yet to master it. Grading is a joke really. Unless a student is demonstrating consistent ability to complete a task, they are not competent even if they do get graded as a C. I fail to see how achieving something 50% of the time would be competent though it is still considered a pass.

Results of other professionals don't get published and compared publically - hospitals don't have to report how many failed resuscitations they have each year and get ranked against other hospitals. The information is so relative it would be impossible to compare, but people would probably chose not to go to certain hospitals if their resusciatation percentage was not great, even though the results would probably tell you nothing about the age and health of each individual patient and other vital circumstances. It wouldn't mean that hospitals hadn't done everything they could, it would just reflect results that were completely out of context. I don't see the My School website as too different from this.

Education is freely accessed in our country and I think that's great, but just because something is freely available does not mean that everybody has the skills to access it freely. If we come from families where going to school is seen as valuable and the skills we pick up at school are seen as valuable then I think we often take it for granted that everybody has those skills. I am not talking about skills to read and write here (though there is a pretty strong correlation between families that have lots of reading material in their houses and student's ability to learn to read), I am talking about the skill to get out of bed every morning, be at school on time, follow instructions and schedules all day, stay at school all day and learn in the very directed way that we teach. All those things are skills and while they seem simple, they are cultural abilities often ingrained in us from birth through practice and observation.

Lots of kids in Australia grow up with a different culture to this and find school very difficult because they don't learn those particular skills which make it very difficult for them to access education. Obviously, this is going to be more predominant in some communities than others. It does not mean these schools are not educating, it just means that schools have lots of different challenges to overcome and may have to find different ways to educate.

It does mean these kids won't do so well on tests because that is not how they are being taught. Also kids that struggle with the skills to access education will almost certainly struggle with the skills to sit through testing.

I think I just feel the whole thing is the government widening the gap between socio-economic groups further. They claim to be making school more transparent and offer parents information. If this site was going to solve all education problems then I would be all for it. Unfortunately, I don't think anything is going to be solved. I think it is just going to cause lots of issues for schools, students and teachers alike but nothing is going to be achieved out of it except to give people wrong opinions about what actually goes on in schools.

If this is the education reform we were promised, it is sadly disappointing and very lacking in any kind of reform. Nothing has changed, these results were always there, it is just now they are publically available for interpretation without all the issues needed to interpret them being also available.

[Pretty Butterfly]

I really think this site is just a feel good for parents who pay a lot of money for their kids' educations to feel justified in that without understanding they are really just paying schools to work the system and as long as their child is performing, they can be a part of it. It is a very different story if you are a parent of a child who is not performing to a standard in these schools.

I take extreme offence to this. My children do go to a catholic school. My daughter has many learning difficulties, and that has been posted on here numerous times.

And because I do pay these fees, she was VERY well looked after, having FREE tutoring in and out of schools hours. That is why I pay the money, not because it makes me feel good, but because the school IS good.

[AliBaby]

I read a great article in the paper the other day in the education section that said, if you were to take the teachers who teach in the high performing schools and stick them in the schools that are low performing, do you think that those low schools would then become the higher performing schools? The clear answer is no.

[Just Me]

Sorry PB - I didn't mean it as a go at parents, I meant it as a go at the website in general. I probably should have pointed out that I generally don't think that Catholic education does it at all and operate on a very similar system to public education, but many of the other more 'elite' private schools do not. I didn't mean to be offensive and should have worded that better (which is why I wrote the post after it to explain what I meant because I did wonder if I had written it in an offensive way). Sorry again.

[Pretty Butterfly]

Private schools generally show up better on these tests because they are allowed to 'work the system'. Public schools have to enrol any student that turns up on their doorstep in their catchment area (and rightly so) but private schools can pick their students and many do. They pick students that they know will perform well on these tests so that when their school is ranked against other schools, they don't have any student who will pull their results down.

Really? I have seen some pretty slow students at catholic/private schools. It may be different where you are, but we have 4 catholic schools, and 3 private here. They all take whoever pays the money, no test is sat at preschool to ensure only the best get in, and I have NEVER heard of a slower being expelled for being slower than the rest, and pulling down the schools marks......

[Just Me]

Really? I have seen some pretty slow students at catholic/private schools. It may be different where you are, but we have 4 catholic schools, and 3 private here. They all take whoever pays the money, no test is sat at preschool to ensure only the best get in, and I have NEVER heard of a slower being expelled for being slower than the rest, and pulling down the schools marks......

The ones that I have seen haven't had to sit a test, it is just over the course of time (and in one case the day before testing) where it is recommended to the parent that their child is not fitting in at the school and perhaps they would be more comfortable elsewhere or they have found an excuse to expel them, no matter how silly the reason.

It does happen and Queensland high schools in particular have it down to an art - mainly because of the OP system we have here. OPs do not reflect students results in a clear and performanced based way, they reflect how a students results compared to their school community taking into account how their school community fitted into their own community and how that community compares to the rest of Queensland. It is a long complicated process and all students come out in the end is a number showing how they compared with all the other schools.

Parents pay private schools and expect them to be offering something more than what a public school does (as with anything you pay for - private health etc) and I am not saying this is wrong. Private schools do offer lots of things that public schools can't offer because of the extra resources and I don't think there is anything wrong with this either. Unfortunately, even in private schools, they can't show all the extras they offer by the results of these tests so they have to work the system so that these results that their school is being judged on by parents that pay money to send their kids there reflect that they are worthy of being paid for and offering a better education to students than the free school down the road.

I think too that many private schools don't have students with difficulty accessing education in the first place because their parents obviously see some value in education to put money towards it and even in the Cath Ed system where parents who struggle financially can still send their kids to those schools, the parents still go to a lot of effort to go through the process and get their kids in which means they are more likely to value it and put effort into it.

AliBaby - I think that is an excellent point.

[Pandora]

Really? I have seen some pretty slow students at catholic/private schools. It may be different where you are, but we have 4 catholic schools, and 3 private here. They all take whoever pays the money, no test is sat at preschool to ensure only the best get in, and I have NEVER heard of a slower being expelled for being slower than the rest, and pulling down the schools marks......

PB, unfortuntaly some of the more elite private schools do exactly that, but I've only heard of it happening in high schools.
I know the local private school asks students to leave whenthey get to year 10 if they dont think they will pass VCE becuase they dont want their 100% pass rate to be affected as this is the basis of a lot of their self promotion.

I went to a Catholic primary and secondary school and if anything they were the opposite - it was very difficult to expel or ask a student to leave and thye had to give them an opportunity to come back and show they'd modified their behaviour.

I honestly think for the most part the the standard of teaching in Australia is very high regardless of whether its a public or private school.

One of the biggest issues that I see in the public system (because i think if you are paying private school fees this generally doesnt apply to you) is generational poverty. All of the learning for some kids happens at school, and none at home, to the point where schools are teaching these kids basic life skills that most other kids would already have. Some school run breakfast programs cos the kids paretns cant afford to give them breakfast.

Im 90% sure I will be sending my son to a private school. I've based my decision on what I've seen on the tours of the two schools Im looking at (one private on public), the class sizes, my sons discipline needs/teaching approaches and talking with other parents of children at schools.

Its helped that the school I like was green and the school dh likes was red. Its helped because after seeing both schools, its very apparent that these score dont give you a true indication of the school, the staff, and what they have to offer your child.

[Pretty Butterfly]

That is absolutly deplorable JM, and I hope I never see that here.....

Alibaby, I would love to see that, if you could link me??

To my understanding, half the reason they do better, and why I pay for catholic education, is because the classes are about half the size of public, and no one will convince that having TWICE the attention of a teacher isn't a good thing.

Any student in a class of 15 rather than 30+ has twice the chance of not slipping through the cracks, and a problem being picked up much earlier, like my daughter.

Also none of the public schools here go "after hours." Whereas both the infants, primary and high school I have chosen are open after hours for free tutoring. You can have one on one or group, and library stays open, with a teacher, to help with homework or assignments 2 afternoons a week, for 2 hours. My daughter, since being on the program has come leaps and bounds.

Does this actually help with their education, and help them be smarter than if I had sent them to public?

Yes, I do believe it does, otherwise I wouldn't be paying for it...