It is sad that what most people realise is common sense gets changed for no reason and without scientific basis. The world is competitive, University where most students end up at the students get ranked. So why we do not measure and compare a persons development early on to then find the strengths and weaknesses (we all have them surprisingly) and to help or encourage where appropriate.

I have to say that ranking against other students in the class is of little or no value. Does it matter if you are the top student in a class full of students who are years behind? Does it matter if you are the bottom student in a class of high-achievers? No, it does not. The system proposed of ranking against the class means that someone always has to be the 'dumb one' and someone the 'smart one', even if all students were either streamed into advanced or 'behind' classes.

I have to say the Victorian idea of ranking against state averages seems much more likely to produce a real result that actually means something.

Plain English Report Card:

Dear Parent/s:

Your son Johnny is a little turd (because spell-checker won't let me say s#!t). He is stupid, he wastes time, he antagonises other children. He is illiterate and lacks any academic motivation. As far as I can ascertain, his only academic interests are the linguistics of female anatomy and the bits of the Bible where someone 'begat' someone else, so Johnny can let us know what 'begat' means.

At lunchtime he is a standover merchant, bullying younger children into buying him lunch or giving him money. I believe his going rate is $30 per joint, or the girls may pay in other ways.

Johnny should be encouraged to go full-time into his part-time business of holding up petrol stations and TABs as quickly as possible so as to allow the rest of the students in his class to learn in a harassment-free environment. Next year, may I suggest he undertake Legal Studies so that he knows his rights in Australia, rather than knowing his rights if he lived in New York.

I am so glad I spent five years at university and $20,000 worth of HECS fees to try and 'engage' the atom of Johnny's brain that contains intelligence.

Sincerely,

Johnny's favourite teacher (wait till you read the metalwork teacher's report on Johnny's sword-building and the chemistry report on Johnny's bomb-making!)

(As Jack Nicholson beautifully put it in 'A Few Good Men', "You can't handle the truth.")

Ah, measurement, beloved by those who believe there is a black and white universe, that certainty exists and that people with merit are people just like them.
Pity we have destroyed the comprehensive school so, um, comprehensively isn't it Kevin? Because when you had a school of kids with mixed abilities and backgrounds, you could get some kind of realistic idea of where your kid sat, at least academically. Now that our school system is so segregated, as one poster has pointed out, being at the top of a school that is full of disadvantaged underachievers is going to give you a false idea of where you are at, just like being at the bottom of a selective school will also make you feel bad unnecessarily.
I always thought the road to true happiness meant accepting that there would always be some who were smarter than you and some who were less smart and not worrying about it. Most of us can see if the lights are on and someone is home in our kids, and how well or badly they do in exams (state wide or otherwise) often has little or no bearing on how they do in life. In my experience, those with social skills and self confidence out perform the rest in work and in relationships, but, unfortunately for the literal-minded like Kevin, there ain't no measures for that.
As Donald Horne put it, we now live amongst fantasies of exactitude, even at school.

Kevin Donnelly's constant bellyaching about education should get a F. Education evolves around student's needs and not the rantings of a few malcontents. Dr Donnelly obviously has some deep-set mis-givings about his own schooling to need to vent his spleen ad nauseum on issues that he has no control over. If parents want to know how well their children are going at school just ask the teacher, check their homework, read a book with them..etc. Become involved! It's easy as A,B,C.

Always suspicious of Donnelly's claims because they don't seem evidenced based. I just typed a few words into Google and up popped a report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (very reputable) which says:

"In a recent international study of reading,
mathematical and scientific literacy among school
students, Australian students had a mean score
significantly higher than the mean score for all OECD
students (OECD 2004)."

I seem to read fairly often that our students are doing well by international standards ( surprises me too), so maybe our teachers aren't doing too badly after all. Will Donnelly ever give credit where it's due?