A method of evaluating schools is to determine if student marks in a school are on average improving as the students in that school pass through their grades. I have seen evidence from a school to show that the marks being achieved by students in Grade 8 were almost identical to the marks being achieved by students in Grade 12. This was happening year after year for decades.

This was excused by the school by saying that “there will always be students achieving low marks”, but a good school (and not a lazy school) would isolate what problems each student was having, work on those problems, improve the marks for each student, and eventually improve all students.

The idea that schools should be continuously given more and more public money would need to be justified, and schools should become much more accountable in how they spend that public money, particularly when nearly everything purchased by schools is now imported, and this is everything from sporting equipment right through to computers

Schools should not be allowed to spend more and more of taxpayer funding on imported items with no accountability shown.

“In study after study, good teaching has emerged as the principal determinant of high performance. …It is achieved by attention to recruitment and training, by valuing teachers… and by “relational trust”, building relationships between community, school, teachers and students.”

A recent newspaper report about the lack of Maths specific trained teachers in Qld and the quote above reminded me of my teaching experiences in the Qld state school system.

Every Maths department in every state school in which I taught followed this structure:
• a HOD who had been appointed at a relatively early stage of their teaching career and had held that position for a number of years
• one or two teachers who assumed the role of the HOD’s deputies
• a core of teachers generally with 5 or more years of service and
• a number of teachers in their first or second year of teaching.

The HOD and deputies shared the bulk of the “good” classes – senior Maths B and C classes along with the top streamed classes from Years 8-10.

The second group of teachers shared the senior Maths A and “better” streamed classes from Years 8-10.

The third group of teachers shared the remaining students who were often challenging, unmotivated and described themselves as being in the “dumb” classes.

The idea was that the beginning teachers would soon realise that unless their moved on then all they could expect was more of the same. Most did and a fresh crop of bunnies would arrive at the start of the next year.

Strangely, about 15 years ago less and less bunnies arrived and those that did not only left sooner but left the teaching profession altogether.

The collective effect of this HOD-centric model over the last 20 years has irreversibly damaged state schools and the status of Maths and Maths teachers.

Sorry I was in a hurry, it should read:
The idea was that the beginning teachers would soon realise that unless they moved on then all they could expect was more of the same.

This reminds me of that part in Freakonomics where the teachers are caught out cheating. Be careful where your incentives lead...

The NSW D of E runs its own League Tables which measure academic achievements and changes in student outcomes based on the socio-economic level of the schools catchment. ie schools are already rated against each other within SE groups. Despite the dangers there are no good reasons why 'guvment' should hide this info. Despite the mad dog press, this data belongs in the public domain on FOI grounds alone.

Socio-economic levels are the biggest single factor in outcomes. The government does spend a hell of a lot of money trying to compensate for this factor. But nothing can fully substitute for a supportive and capable home environment.

Creating an environment of ongoing professional learning is crucial to improved educational standards, and shifting the TU's defensiveness has been crucial.

Getting rid of ineffective teachers remains a problem. The levels of protection afforded the incompetent and the ignorant are laughable. A teacher who doesn't 'get it' or who just doesn't care can survive for decades behind layers of union and departmental protection.

Since the Dept. already collects data into Tables they should publish it, and then fight the good fight.

The publication of official league tables would at least prevent the media from picking and choosing information to create their own, with rather warped representations of schools. Every year, QLD newspapers publish details of which schools had how many OP1s. They seldom mention the numbers of students who achieve high level vocational qualifications; they also seem to forget to mention the distribution of OP25s. While it is a bit of a reach to suggest that media sources deliberately misrepresent schools, it is certainly true that, with the limited information presented to them, they DO misrepresent schools. Perhaps a league table that presents ALL the information may set the record straight.

Pedagogy is the bread and butter of a teacher. Being able to teach, support and challenge students is why teachers do the difficut job that they do - especially in the challenging and complex schools that they work in. Today teachers are expected to parent, counsel, ensure students have proper nutrition, ensure students have 2 hours exercise a week, make sure there is a working flagpole on the school grounds and still teach literacy and numeracy and the rest of the cluttered curriculum. And now we have to drop other much more important things to teach-to-the-test - the NAPLAN - a test that has no meaning to the students sitting it.

The problem with student achievement levels is that teachers can't teach - they have to take on the roles of every member of society - and yes in a large number of cases, things that parents should do - on a dwindling budget from Federal and State governments. The situation is ridiculous.

Barack Obama has recently asked two places in the world to advise his Education Secretary about their education system - one of these places is Queensland, and yet we are now being forced to implement 'high stakes testing', something that the PISA data shows has brought achievement levels down in any country using it - especially America.

Why can't the government and society allow teachers to do the job that they signed up for?

The whole point about publishing league tables has nothing to do with education but capitalist ideology: it is to import marketing mechanisms into schools. This, in a time when the markets have patently failed!!

I remember seeing a documentary in the UK about the extreme lengths parents were going to to get their kids enrolled in a 'good' school. Camping out in school grounds to be first in, moving home to be in the right catchment area, coaching kids on the right things to say and making 5yos swat for tests.

School gets good marks, high demand follows, ridiculous behaviour from all and sundry follows. If you think we have 'good' schools and 'bad' schools now, multiply that by 10000 once league tables are the norm. It's effectively a way of robbing the poorer schools of their best teachers and students to create ghetto schools full of teachers and students who don't have the resources to move. So 20% good schools, 60% average, 20% poor turns into 40% good schools, 20% average, 40% poor schools. A whole bunch of rich smart kids and poor dumb kids who have never seen how the other half live. Rich kids with no empathy for people from poorer backgrounds, and poor kids with no example of what can be achieved.

I'd much rather let them keep school ratings in house, where they can direct resources to where they are needed without the irrational panic of parents creating a moving target.

Weaken the teacher unions in some other way.

There is just so much bull dust in the education debate, & it's all so easy to fix.

All we have to do is bring back external exams, for tears 10 & 12, & make the results of these exams determine the students final result. All results, of all kids published, state wide.

Then we will know who can do what, & our unis wont spend a year weeding out the dead heads.

This way we may have some kids who have some idea of what they were supposed to have studdied, rather than forget every segment the moment the assignment, often done by mum, or the after school tutor, has been handed in.

We might also get some indication of how the student will respond in the real world. As an employer I found the most useless bits of paper was the stuff handed out by schools, claiming to be school reports.

I am only interested in how a job applicant will go, when given 30 minutes to do a half hour job. The spoon feeding, avoiding any hint of stress in schools is totally unfair to both the kid, & the prospective employer. So many kids fold up like a pack of cards, when they find they no longer have 3 days to do that half hour job.

Hasbeen,

I think there is a lot to be said for your proposal. After all, despite our ideals and dreams of turning children into citizens, the ultimate purpose of education - and the one that parents expect us to achieve - is to produce employees.

I just have two concerns. They are both pretty well-worn arguments, but I'd be interested to see your stance on them.

1) The old argument that if kids have a bad day on exam day, they are doomed to a life of failure. That is, students can be top performers for 12 years and then bomb out on one day. Perhaps they have a cold; perhaps a close rellie has died (or is about to); perhaps . . . well, the list goes on. A single set of external exams measures a student's performance on a single occasion, rather than determining a pattern of performance.

2) The other argument that when students learn for an exam, they put information into short-term rather than long-term memory and forget it immediately after. Assignments, on the other hand, at least involve a lengthy process by which information can be internalised. They involve learning by doing, rather than learning by memorising.

Like I said, I'd just be interested to see what your opinion is in relation to these arguments.

The link that was provided in the article, showed fairly conclusively that teacher quality above all else has a direct effect on the results of the children.

The implications of this are without doubt that the quality of the teachers needs to be be controlled very carefully. This is probably why the private schools do so much better than the unionised "promotion on seniority" public schools.

Otokonolo. yes, I agree there can be a problem for a few that may be sick, or have another genuine problem on the day.

There are a couple of ways that this can be handled, but no account should be taken of nerves, or other such problems. This is one of the things we should be testing for.

The best way, I think, to handle a "on the day" problem, is to write 2 similar papers for each exam. Have a panel select the hardest, & then use easier one for the main exam. The second exam could then be offered to those genuine cases a fortnight later. Not perfect, but much better than the core skils test, teachers pet marking, & an OP generated on others ability, as used today.

Mate, your second argument is totally wrong.

With an external exam, all kids have to study the whole curriculum, which is not the case now.

With the exam set from the 2 years of 11 & 12, it will test what the kid learned of the whole course, & how much they retained. This is a true test of the result of 2 years schooling.

Currently, they study a segment of a subject, for a week or two, perhaps have a minor test, submit one of mums assignments, then never look at that segment again. For those kids, unlucky enough to not have mum [or their tutor] do their asignments, all this system tests is how good the kid is at rewriting what came up when they googled the subject.

If you want to use assignments, as part of the test system, they must be written in class, with no computers, unannounced, & a couple of weeks, or more, after the segment was finished.

The results may be a bit dismal, & a pass mark may have to be below 50%, but we would then know how much the kids had retained. Of course, we would also start to get a much better handel on the ability of each teacher, so unlikely to be popular.

My late father was an Inspector of Secondary Schools in Queensland in the sixties and early seventies. External examinations were phased out during this period and later Inspectors. In Queensland now there are NO external examinations and NO Inspectors. How does one then evaluate the performance of teachers and students today? Or perhaps that does not really matter?

Hasbeen,

I like your proposals about assignments. Especially the idea that they should have no notice, and should be completed a while after the unit has been completed. That would not only raise the stakes of the learning, but it would also hammer home the importance of retention.

As for external exams, I am actually a big fan. I was just throwing those arguments to you because they are the common ones that are thrown at me, and I can sort of see the validity of them. A third argument takes into account regional differences - in English and the Humanities in particular, what is relevant to students on the Gold Coast may be quite detached from what is relevant to students where I am, in Townsville. With Palm Island on our doorstep, the concepts of aid, poverty and development (part of the Geography program) would be taught very differently in Townsville and in Brisbane. Some people see this as an argument against external exams - I see it as an argument FOR such tests. While the teaching may differ, the end result must be the same. If it is not, then a Brisbane student and a Townsville student of Geography are not actually completing the same subject, despite what their QCE may say. An external exam, suitably constructed, would ensure parity across the state.

The same goes for English - while text selections may differ to account for regional differences, the basic content must be the same; external exams would help to enforce this.

I liked the article. I am now looking forward to the blanket testing of recently introduced curriculum items that have taken a great deal of primary school time...to see if they are worthy of taking up as much of the school time as they do. They include....Languages Other Than English, Instrumental Music, Drug Education, Choral Music, Road Safety, Environmental Education, Computer Skills, Learnings from Excursions, Sporting Prowess, Practicing for Third-party Tests and some from the list below.
Harold Boles once listed, in alphabetical order, some social concerns that High Schools need to face:- Abortion,aggression, birth control, communication, compulsory school attendance, conservation, consumerism, crime, discipline, drug abuse, ecology, economic policy, equalization of opportunity, euthanasia, family customs, farm prices, foreign relations, government controls, heterosexuality and Homosexuality, housing, inflation, intelligence tests, justice under the law, knowledge explosion, land use, law and order, marriage and divorce, media use and abuse, minorities treatment, open housing, penal reform, political ethics, pollution, pornography & obscenity, poverty, power differentials, privacy of individuals, quality of products, quotas, racial integration, religious training, respect for others, separation of church and state, sex discrimination, sexual mores, social responsibility, terrorism, urbanization, vandalism, venereal disease, violence, welfare, xenophobia, youth rebellion.
Filip

Des Griffin recommends league tables because, "Such a reform would bring us into line with Britain and the United States."

When the OECD compared 57 countries in 2006, Finland came first in reading and Australia came second. Second out of 57 countries! England and the United States did not come in the first 15. Why would Griffin recommend that we come into line with them?

David1946

The old saying is that you cannot control what you don't measure.

In the countries that do well, such as Finland the performance in each school is measured and used to improve. They just don't publish the results.

The smug complacency that in Aus we are doing well therefore we don't need to improve is misplaced. Considering that about 50% of the schools are independent, and they produce the best results, it would indicate that the public schools record is any thing but OK.

The teachers' union don't want anything to disturb their cosy promotion by seniority scam.

Um, Shadow Minister, who said we don't need to improve?
Who said we don't need to measure? We need to do BOTH of those things.

However, we should follow Finland's example -- they don't publish the results because they know they can't be interpreted reliably without a lot more information. We shouldn't publish data that can be so easily misinterpreted.

David1946

David,

In Finland, the need for publishing the results is not as marked, is because the Finns have a deep respect for learning (promotion is not based on seniority), and the teachers are convinced of the need to take action where necessary.

The need to publish the results here is because the labor govs are joined to the hip with the public service unions and aren't willing to take any action that might spoil that cosy relationship.

Publishing the results would force them to take actions unpopular to their supporters.