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November 12, 2009

True school performance levels at last

Adelaide Now:

BY promising basic information on the performance of our schools, Education Minister, Julia Gillard has landed a blow for common sense and for parents.

For too long, the argument about whether national testing on literacy and numeracy should even be done, let alone published, has been deadlocked.

Education experts, state education departments, teachers and their professional bodies, have long resisted the move arguing that such comparisons were worse than meaningless, they would be misleading.

The argument went that there were many more elements to the education of a young person than simply teaching he or she to read, write, and add up - the so called three "Rs". But while this argument may be true, it has never been a convincing argument against gathering good information on those things that can be measured well, and then providing it freely.

Acknowledging the "whole person" objective of school education, Ms Gillard says a fundamental prerequisite to becoming a productive community member is basic literacy and numeracy.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 12, 2009 1:52 AM
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