Legislation for League Tables to be Reintroduced

The Australian, 7 July 2009; Sydney Morning Herald, 7 July 2009; The Age, 9 July 2009

The Premier of New South Wales, The Hon Nathan Rees MP, has announced that the New South Wales Government will reintroduce legislation into Parliament after the Opposition and minor parties amended the Education Act 1990 to prevent newspapers from printing league tables of school performance information.

The New South Wales Government had introduced an amendment to the Act to remove a ban on the publication of school performance information, to ensure that the state could comply with Australian Government funding requirements. However, the Coalition and the Australian Greens amended the legislation in the Upper House, introducing fines of up to $55,000 for organisations and $5000 for individuals who publish tables that compare school results.

Premier Rees indicated that the Government would move to strike out the amendment in the next sitting of Parliament in September 2009. The leader of the New South Wales Opposition, The Hon Barry O’Farrell, stated that it was not Liberal Party policy ‘to stigmatise great teachers or great students’ and that parents were still able to obtain information on school performance through schools’ annual reports. He indicated that ‘we stand completely against crude league tables that don't reflect the differences between schools and that don't reflect the fact that, in some schools, the disadvantage that exists within the communities in which they operate will inevitably rank them at the lower end of any bureaucratic scale.’

The federal Shadow Minister for Education, The Hon Christopher Pyne MP, claimed that the federal Liberal Party also did not support ‘simplistic league tables’, but that they believed in providing parents with useful information about school performance. He claimed that ‘whether a newspaper or a media outlet chooses to take information and produce a table by itself is a matter for them and not a matter for us’.

The Chairman of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, Professor Barry McGaw, argued that ‘it can be damaging if people make unfair comparisons [between schools]. But the point is, comparisons are being made anyway, and often on very informal and incomplete data. So it's got to be done carefully.’

The Victorian Shadow Minister for Education, The Hon Martin Dixon MLA, indicated that the Victorian Coalition’s education policies were still to be finalised.

 

 

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