As things are at present parents in Oz are choosing achools for their children in a knowledge vacuum. The UK idea could have been of value but is horribly flawed, it seems, by the fact that 'independent' schools are not subject to the inspections that all public schools have to face. Clearly unjust and illogical.

For the idea to be used in Oz there would have to be major changes first. The plethora of different syllabi must be scrapped. That is essential. Secondly, because Oz has a far greater percentage of schools that are 'independent' (mainly religion based) the excising of them from the system would make the whole thing little short of farcical.

A further point is that although some attempt is made in UK to 'measure' the crucial matter of value adding, it appears to be done on suspect generalised ideas of the economic/social background of the school. For proper measuring of value added there must be regular testing of each child, that record following the individual so that the students own value add can be assessed. The schools value add would be a sort of integral of those individual performances. One thing is certain: the use of post codes as a measure is nonsense. Clearly there can be 2 or more schools in the same postcode but which have very different 'quality' of intake.
But at least this article faces the reality that something must be done. So a qualified pat on the head!

As a person who loves to learn I must say I am sad about the lack of innovation being shown by the major players in education.

I believe the school paradigm and all of its problems reflect the problem we are having in society as a whole.

Issues - The square cant seem to work with anything round, no matter that we carry the most up-to date knowledge - having all the buzz words in policy, it is a system run by a clone mentallity.

My greatest concern is not the learning standards at present, but the BULLYING issues. No one can learn when there is so much conflict and tension around the classroom.

a) among teachers
b) between students - see Western Australian report on Bullying. It appears it fell off the table.

I also believe that the school is acting out the poor governance or hopelessness workers experience out there in the adult world.To add depth if we can not help "kids at risk" how the hell do we expect to assist adults who suffer from a similar set of demographics.

We need to turn the lens back on community.

Australia needs to address these cultural issues. We are a strong nation and our strength can be as forceful for its negative performance as well as positive achievements.

I find many of the policies coming down to be empty. They lack the resources that are supposed to be in-built through their delivery.

I have personally tried as a small NGO here in Cape York to engage with education - especially to help with issues on community engagement. The result is that you cant do anything without respect. It seems they want the help - to build linkages that provide opportunities but there are no resources such as fuel, bus, incentives for work, program packages?

Until we get real, it is buzz - silo and apathy for anyone who cant overcome this kind of culture.

It appears this is the same for other departments promoting similar high standards that don't work.

We need a Mirror me thinks.

.

Well said. Transparency of what goes on in our schools is the first step to making sure the system works well. It may well be OK but wouldn't it be nice to know.

The article seems to fly in the face of the argument put (above) by Andrew Leigh and the research he musters in his bibliography which seems to support the generally known fact (PISA, TIMMS etc) that inter school differences are small compared to intra school ones. There is of course the "elephant in the room", that is the major difference in outcomes in education correlates to the parents. In fact here is strong evidence that (I exagerate slightly) it is over bar the shouting by the time the child is three. If we really wanted bang for our education buck we would do more in developing parents to improve the child's early language environment and show more parental warmth.

Incidently ther is good research from Chicago - as they had had a system of randonly allocating choice of schools to parents that exercising choice seems to make no difference to outcomes.

Graeden , I am all for having an open and accountable Public schools System in Australia with a fairer share of public funds .

Something that does annoy me however and that I find most distastefull ,is the now all too common use of the terms " Secret ....[whatever] Business" as seen in your article heading .

This term , once used to describe very important religious and cultural events for Aboriginal men and women, is now being used often in an indifferent, insulting, sarcastic and derogatory way for all manner of whitefellow affairs, as once again we display our abysmal ignorance of Aboriginal cultural life.

The argument against disclosing performance data on schools as being simplistic and dangerous, is itself simplistic and dangerous.

The term 'league table' is used to scare and panic and suggest that a so-called 'poor, disadvantaged' school will be compared with an allegedly resource rich school in the 'leafy greens'.

This is nonsense of course, and comparisons are made on the basis of similar characteristics through like-school cohorts so that apples are compared with apples.

The argument against public comparisons is that public education departments will find great difficulty explaining why so many schools are medicore, have been for years, and nothing has been done.

Great schools can't wait to advertise their success through prospectuses or annual reports - as they should.

Ordinary to bad schools should not have the option to invoke the Code of Silence.

Simon (the saint)
The three factors below are predictive to a child's success at school. Research shows a big difference between their effects.
Rank them in order of importance.

Parents
Intra school differences
Differences between schools

Not withstanding the above, rank the relative success at university of students from the following background who had equal TE scores

Public
Private
Selective public

What organisation runs PISA?

In PISA are Australian school students ranked high medium or low in ternational comparisons.
What was TIMMS ? what is its new name?

Richard
ACER research shows clearly that while home and demographic indices give a little clue as to a child's likely academic and educational achievement, the single greatest factor is teacher quality. That may be related to between class differences because it is measuring between teacher differences.

There is less difference between schools but enough to suggest that attention must be paid to good governance, good management, resource management and community engagement.

Simon can you provide a reference to the Acer research?

Fickle Pickle

Here are three key references but I can't yet find the URLs.

What matters most: Evidence-based findings of key factors affecting the educational experiences and outcomes for girls and boys throughout their primary and secondary schooling
Kenneth J. Rowe, PhD and Katherine S. Rowe, MD Principal Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research
Senior Consultant Physician, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne
Supplementary submission to House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training: Inquiry Into the Education of Boys May 2002

Submission to Inquiry Into the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Teaching Profession) Bill 2004 by the Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee
Kenneth John Rowe Australian Council for Educational Research

The importance of teaching: Ensuring better schooling by building teacher capacities that maximize the quality of teaching and learning provision – implications of findings from emerging international and Australian evidence-based research
Kenneth J. Rowe PhD Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
Supporting paper to invited address presented at the Making Schools Better conference: A Summit Conference on the Performance, Management and Funding of Australian Schools Sponsored by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, in association with The Australian and the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne 26-27 August 200

Simon thank you. I have found the following
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/edt/eofb/subs/sub111.pdf

and

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/edt/eofb/subs/subs111_1.pdf

This is compelling stuff

Fickle Pickle,
This is also interesting reading and I have included a snapshot from Chapter 7 which is relevant to this discussion.

http://www.dest.gov.au/nitl/documents/report_recommendations.pdf

7. Quality teaching and ongoing professional learning
The importance of quality teaching

Despite the focus on the relative effectiveness of instructional strategies in the present report, it is important to stress that teaching practices and instructional strategies per se are not independent of the teachers who deliver them to children, whether or not those children experience learning difficulties and behaviour problems. Effective schooling for all children is crucially dependent on the provision of quality teaching by competent teachers, especially in reading instruction. They must be supported by capacity-building to maintain high teaching standards via strategic professional learning at all levels of schooling (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Hattie, 2003, 2005; Kennedy, 2001; OECD, 2001, 2005b; Rowe, 2003b, 2004b,c,d).37 The summary of findings from evidence-based research for the effects of quality teaching on student outcomes provided by Linda Darling-Hammond at Stanford University (US) are pertinent and require emphasis:

Simon parents and their attitudes also have a significant effect on outcomes.

This reinforces the importance of the emotions and motivation of the student. Learning is something the individual does but the environment to allow it to happen is critical. Good teachers get the best from their students by setting the environment that has the most chance of motivating students and good parents do the same. This means making sure that the adults in society believe that education is "a good thing" and it is important for children to think the same.

If this is the case and if as a society we think it valuable for children to have good educational outcomes perhaps we concentrate on ensuring that when children have good educational outcomes then the adults responsible also receive rewards and not penalties. Making sure that people are not penalised for educating their children, by more support for child care, by making education almost free, by rewarding teachers whose students excel by increasing their status, by giving those children who excel educationally more privileges than those who excel at sport rather than the reverse etc. We can and do many of these things already but perhaps we should do more.

Who benefits by insisting that teachers make all the difference? Teachers. There is no way known that teachers are the main parameter in educational success.

PISA (but does not wholeheartedly agree with as it devotes a significant section looking at other home influences) "“National research also suggests that schools appear to make little difference in overcoming the effects of disadvantaged home backgrounds.” see PISA 2003 p174

Home background affects brain development. eg
Poverty, privilege, and brain development:
empirical findings and ethical implicationsMartha J. Farah, Kimberly G. Noble and Hallam Hurt http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~mfarah/farah_SES_05.pdf

THE seminal work on why kids need a warm parents and a rich language environment
Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American
children /Author: Hart, Betty, 1927-
Publisher: Baltimore : P.H. Brookes,Date: c1995.

Two good RAND pubication, amongst many others, that support my view.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG558/
http://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/2006/RAND_CP22-2004-12.pdf

Richard no one is saying that teachers are the only or even the main reason we have differences in education outcomes. (Perhaps native intelligence has something to do with it) What ACER says is that differences between teachers within a school are greater than differences between schools.

The way I interpret that is, within reason, it doesn't matter too much which school you go to what is more important is the teacher who ends up teaching you and that teachers make a difference.

Fickle pickle

Yes they are, I quote Simon Templar above:

"ACER research shows clearly that while home and demographic indices give A LITTLE (my emphasis - his words) clue as to a child's likely academic and educational achievement,..."

The question is it the major influence. I think the there is ample evidence that the most effective approach is to address parents of children pre birth to 3. see Hart and Risely

I also think that this constant harping on interschool differences is rather pointless as the effects of different schools is marginal (even if significant in the statistical sense) and much of it indirectly attributable to the cumulative SES ( as a proxy for other behaviours)of parents.

Much of education debate is like Marx's discussion on law and order. Who gains from Crime? Criminals, one assumes, but also law inforcement. More police more prisons do not seem to correlate with less crime but you have a group of advocates who gain from crime. Simplistic and derivative I agree but makes some sense. Equally in education both, teachers and those who attack them (eg there is a prominent educationalist in the Aust that obviously makes a good living out of it - his name escapes me) benefit from advocating that if schools /teachers only were better paid more etc the education will improve.

No professional group gains from addressing under 3 problems that Hart and Risely expose and yet the problem can be addressed as it is in some Scandinavian Countries.

My slogan would be parents are the key.

For some reason, Richard does not want teachers to 'suffer' accountability when it comes to student achievement.

Of course parents, home, family upheaval etc have an impact, albiet quite variably on different students.

One of the great excuses for poor student achievement is that 'we have a disadvantaged school". Somehow destiny is handcuffed to one's postcode.

But there are too many examples to show that if you up the quality of teaching and focus delivery on student needs, and demonstrate high expectations, then quite different results can be the end result.

Salisbury High School is one in SA that has shown that with good governance, innovative leadership and quality teaching with a program geared to meet expectations of achievement, students can benefit - in fact last I heard students at this school were getting employment at the rate of 98% as compared to 30% for the school down the road drawing its constituency from the same group of postcodes.

My question is , how often should we be looking in the staff room to determnmine disadvantage rather than the postcodes of families??

Richard it is not an either or case. Everything that helps should be looked at and included.

I am happy to reward children, parents, teachers, uncle tom cobbly and all if they can be shown to help children achieve better life outcomes. The key is to measure all the important things that are going on and to be able - where possible - to assign the rewards to those responsible. This will never be perfect and it doesn't have to be. We only have to make an approxiation to almost all variables and measures.

People want to know if they are helping and they want to be acknowledged for their achievements.

What they do not like is for people who do nothing or even worse are negative influences to get credit and rewards.

Simon, I am not sure if anything I have said is about teacher accountability or the lack thereof. I think it an almost barren appoach - a distraction - an opportunity cost - ie money that could be better spent

The law of marginal returns applies to education as to economics. Would it not be better to attempt to raise the standards preschool so that extraordinary efforts do not have to be made at school to remedy. I would postulate that some things can not be remedied if not achieved early in life. A classic example is the learning of languages. The 'fourth grade slump" is a good example of quality teaching some times being an illusion or short term and the reasons for it is well worth the attention of anyone interested in education

I really disappoints me that when we now are starting to understand what parent behaviours(it is not SES pe se, but it helps) increase the social and educational achievement of children.I love not teachers but in all seriousness folks we are hardly likely to attract talent if there is a strong social disinsentive with this pointless carping criticism of the poor sods. Have a good day.