You can see how different the studentpopulations are at a sample of ACT schools in Table 1.Īccording to ACARA, who run the My School website, "simple 'league tables' that rank and compare schools with very different student populations can be misleading." They compile and print a list of all schools ranked by average NAPLAN score, regardless of the schools having very different student populations. This is, however, exactly what The Canberra Times does every March after NAPLAN data becomes available on My School. "It just isn't fair." Misleading league tables "It's not fair, comparing schools with different backgrounds," he told me. "We use lots of methods and calculations to make valid comparisons only between schools where the kids have similar backgrounds." "We don't endorse that at all," the help-line attendant told me. We rang the My School website parent information line and asked about compiling league tables of schools. The website will only compare schools with a similar ICSEA scores, so comparing your school's average results on My School using their 'similar schools' feature is widely regarded as a valid comparison (although parents should still be mindful of factors which could affect the school's average results, such as a high proportion of special needs students, a small year-group and so on). The value of a school's ICSEA score represents the influence of educational advantage at the school and takes into account both student-level factors (parents' occupation and education) and school-level factors (geographical location and the proportion of indigenous students). The website uses a complex measure of student advantage/disadvantage called the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) which was created specifically to enable fairer comparisons of different schools in Australia. The My School website carefully takes students' backgrounds into account when the 'similar schools' feature is used to compare the performance of one school with others. They can tell us where students are, but do not tell us where students have been, where they started, or how far they have come.Īnd because the playing field is not level – a student's background dictates their starting point – a school's results make no sense without knowing the background of their students. Test results give a one-day snapshot of the performance of students (or average performance of all students at a school, as published on My School). This means that when parents, or the media, examine the NAPLAN results of schools, available on the government's My School website, some careful thought is needed. And more so in Australia than in many other countries.Īccording to international test results, indigenous students are three and a half years of schooling behind well-off students, students from remote areas are three years behind, and poorer Australian students are about two and a half years behind their advantaged counterparts in reading, mathematics and science.
Whether their parents went to university, work as professionals, or whether they live in a rural area or are indigenous, all help to predict a student's performance. Is it a sad fact, but true, that in Australia a student's background greatly influences how well they will do at school.
0 kommentar(er)
