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MySchool wowsers trying to lock out parents

Kelvin Bissett

by Kelvin Bissett

03 Aug 05:45am

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Filed under: Education, League Tables, Myschool, Politics, Schools

22 comments

School league tables splashed across newspapers earlier this year, heralding an unprecedented era of education openness in this country, are on death watch.

What are they so afraid of? Cartoon: Warren Brown

A coalition of teachers unions, academics and public education advocates are well advanced with their mission to strangle through technological modifications any further league tables in 2011.

The tables ranking of individual schools for literacy and numeracy were the most sensational outcome the MySchool website, arguably Prime Minister’s greatest reform triumph as Education Minister.

The information they so succinctly presented in a ranking form offered fodder for a million dinner table and bus stop debates about education choice. Overnight, parents were empowered with knowledge, even if it was a brutal outing of school performance.

But the league tables, run in various forms in newspapers including The Australian, Herald Sun and the The Sydney Morning Herald, were not an authorised part of MySchool, more like its bastard child.

MySchool helpfully compares individual school results on national literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) tests to the Australian average and a group of “statistically similar” schools. It was the media that took the next obvious step of producing league tables ranking schools.

Many of the 1.4 million visits to MySchool in its first four days were due to teams of journalists and support staff making thousands of repeat visits to strip out its NAPLAN data to create their league tables.

While the MySchool website will be back in 2011, possibly with enhanced features that will be welcomed by parents, a new round of league tables may not be possible.

The website changes, should they not be stopped, could mean attempts to collect the data in 2011 for league tables will now take weeks or months of commitment, possibly putting their creation beyond the resource availability media organisations.

The tables were an extraordinary tearing to shreds of the secrecy shroud that hid the vast differences in the performance of individual schools based on national tests and between private and public systems.

As popular as the league tables were with parents, they also enraged teachers unions and the public school lobby which saw them as the education equivalent to opening the gates of hell.

Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said that the league tables were based on “simplistic” data that was highly damaging to individual schools, teachers and students.

It was never publicly stated, but there was a fear in the public school lobby the rankings might further encourage the flight to private schools.

Following threats of industrial action to stop the next round of NAPLAN tests going ahead in May, Ms Gillard appointed a working party of teacher unions, school representatives, academics and professionalised parent groups, to respond to their concerns about use of NAPLAN data.

That working party has already reported back to the national education watchdog, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), with a list of technological proposals to prevent league tables when MySchool 2.0 is launched in 2011.

The ACARA media unit has confirmed that work is progressing on making the NAPLAN data much more difficult to strip out of the MySchool website next year.

Under one likely change, anyone logging on to check a school in 2011 will be confronted by a lengthy “click wrap” of up-front terms of conditions banning commercial use of the data they must formally agree to every time they log in, slowing down all access to a crawl.

A letter by ACARA chief executive Peter Hill, dated June 21, outlines options for changes to the 2011 MySchool website to “address” concerns expressed by the Australian Education Union and other groups.

Along with other recommendations, like adding information on funding sources,  the document states that “Ministers have endorsed” investigating “action to minimise misuse” of the information on MySchool.

It is clearly stated that ministers had endorsed the working party presenting “ways of deterring or preventing automatic scraping of data from the website”.

A final decision on the measures would be presented to a ministerial council of education ministers in August and October.

Australian Parents Council Executive Director Ian Dalton, a member of the appointed working party, said technical changes would stop “unauthorised usage” of MySchool data next year.

Mr Dalton could not say whether the changes would prevent league tables, although he said it was important “to stop publishing data that misrepresented information included on the MySchool website”.

A spokeswoman for Education Minister Simon Crean, Ms Gillard’s replacement, would not comment on the proposal, referring all questions to ACARA.

Despite the move towards blocking league tables, there is strong evidence that the publication of league tables in NSW was handled sensibly by parents. There were no walk outs from schools that performed poorly, or any immediate flight to private schools.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act 1989 from the Department of Education and Training on enrolment changes on all schools between the period January 27 to February 28, 2010 showed no unusual enrolment changes compared to the same period in 2009.

Among those placed near bottom of league tables, Airds High School had more students withdraw in the 2009 period than in the 2010 period after My School was available and league tables were published. The school had 24 students leave in 2010 compared to 51 in 2009.

Another struggling performer, Lurnea High School had 84 students leave in 2010, compared to 100 in 2009, while another high school that was placed low in tables, Chifley College, Bidwill, had 52 enrolment withdrawals, down from 60 last year.

As well as no evidence of walkouts from individual schools, there was also no evidence of a flight from public to private schools. The documents showed there were 23,570 students who left the NSW public school system, about 2000 fewer than the same period in 2009.

But there were some parents who did react. Mum Gaynor Reid admits she quickly changed the kindergarten enrolment of her daughter Kiara Inman-Ried from Fort Street Public to Paddington Public after examining the MySchool website the night before.

Fort Street recorded results below the average of schools in the inner city area in the NAPLAN test areas, so she contacted Paddington public immediately the next morning.

Ms Reid, a public relations manager with a large hotel group, even had to borrow a school uniform from a friend for the new school.

“We literally had to change that very day. We had already bought the uniform for Fort Street and Kiara had even done an orientation and met a ‘buddy’ to look out for her,’’ Ms Read said.

Most commented

22 comments

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    • Michael K. says:

      08:33am | 03/08/10

      Kelvin, you’re speaking from an uninformed position. Any educator well-versed in international education policy can tell you that league tables (and its equally henious cousins, standardised testing and national curriculum) is just a very bad idea. There exists no peer-reviewed paper to suggest that league tables can positively impact learning outcomes in schools outside of tertiary education. Instead, there is a heap of evidence to support the argument AGAINST league tables (and no Kelvin, this isn’t a conspiracy by teachers). For an excellent analysis of lessons Australia can learn from England’s experiment with conservative education policies (back to “basics,” national curriculum, league tables) read P. Thompson, “Lessons for Australia? Learning from England’s curriculum ‘black box,’” English in Australia, 43(3), p.13-20.

      Your argument for why the MySchool Website IS a good idea isn’t entirely convincing: “Well, MySchool didn’t begin a mass walk-out from the public education system or from individual schools, so therefore the teachers’ union campaigns are just a big beat-up!” The potential for the fallout from MySchool to have been worse certainly doesn’t make Labor’s education policy a success. Kelvin, your analysis of the issue is as crude as the MySchool website itself. You do not take into account the unmeasurable impact the website has had on the self-concept and welfare of students and staff most at risk. You see, external scrutiny will not guarentee a “performance increase” out of the education system. SCHOOLS AREN’T BUSINESSES. It isn’t a simple case of “making them lazy, lying teachers work harder!” Every school has far too many variables and when they are compared based on simplistic, measurable data the results are not going to be representative of the school. MySchool does not take into account the varying roles of schools, the programmes schools run external to traditional numeracy and literacy education, and the socioeconomic area the school is situated in. As it stands, MySchool is a useless tool for parents and educators, not to mention potentially dangerous.

      The hard question Kelvin needs to ask himself is: Are simplistic and narrow public league tables worth negatively impacting the life of even one student?

      Reply

    • The Scarlet Pimpernel says:

      11:43am | 03/08/10

      Regardless of whether schools are businesses or not (and I think private schools ARE businesses), a few things apply equally well to any enterprise: 

      1. if it cannot be measured, it cannot be improved  
      2.  those involved in the enterprise cannot do the measuring, it must be independent  
      3. Comparisons to similar enterprises are a useful exercise, with caveats

      Unfortunately, point 3 often leads to vested interests massaging the data until it is meaningless, much like I suspect the teachers’ union would like to do with NAPLAN.  To cover some of your points, it shouldn’t matter what socio-economic area the school is in; if they do poorly and the results are out there, THEN you investigate and if the cause is lack of student interest due to coming from three generations of labor voters and dole recipients, you can put programs (and funding, perhaps) in place to overcome the lethargy brought on by the students’ home environments. As for your comment about ‘‘programs external to traditional numeracy and literacy’‘, I’d say that’s very commendable provided they still manage to cover those core subject areas. Not so commendable if they ignore the core areas, or give them reduced emphasis with a view to pushing their own version of the curriculum. Speaking of which; as a person who went to 11 different schools in four different states, I say a national curriculum is long past due.

    • Jack Thomas says:

      02:53pm | 03/08/10

      The improvement of education is a ‘good to have’ by product.

      Labor’s number one priority is a good results in the polls.

      These are always just about Labor spin. Computers for every school child (I think we are at about 1 in 20 still) is exactly the same.

      Sounds great to the Labor spinmeister who is only just out of Uni, or the woman without kids, or the man whose kids already go to a private school, but what exactly does 1 to 1 computer ratio do for education?

      Probably as much as Fuel Watch did for fuel prices…

    • Northern Steve says:

      10:35pm | 03/08/10

      Scarlet Pimpernel,
      1. What are you actually measuring?  There is a difference between measuring the skill and effort of the teachers, and the student results.  There are too many other variables to reliably measure the quality of teacher work and skill from student results.  You cannot look at student results and judge whether the teachers are working effectively or not.
      2. There is a difference between external, independent measurements, and public publication of such measurements.  Students will identify with public results, rightly or wrongly, and poor results at a school will result in students taking that personally, often resulting in worse results at the next test (plenty of evidence for that in UK and the US)
      3. MySchool fails dramatically to compare similar schools.

    • iansand says:

      08:38am | 03/08/10

      Maybe the parents are smart enough to realise that the stuff on the Myschools website was not a useful indicator of the quality of the school.

      Reply

    • Jason Borton says:

      09:00am | 03/08/10

      This article is a complete joke. You need to understand that League tables do nothing to improve students outcomes as they are based on flawed data that is a ‘once a year’ snapshot of student performance. The government should stop wasting taxpayers money on testing students and redirect it to helping improve their educational experiences.

      Reply

    • Doug Wilson says:

      10:59am | 03/08/10

      If a school shows year on year improvement within that “once a year snapshot” then it’d be a school I’d be giving a chance to educate children. If it shows a yearly decline then I’m going to consider sending my child somewhere else. That yearly snapshot is useful if you know how to use it.

    • Gregg says:

      11:28am | 03/08/10

      Too true Jason and Labor now also claim as new stuff to give more power to principals over various school management issues, using WA I think it was as a model but if they do some real research they may well find there is a lot that Principals already do outside of WA .

      And Doug, would you be able to adequately analyse the results and just how much impact there may have been from different students , different teachers year in year out?
      What if there had been no discernible improvement nor decline but just random variation?

    • Northern Steve says:

      10:42pm | 03/08/10

      Let’s talk about a ‘Year on Year’ improvement and how that can be gained.
      The headline percentage on the MySchool website is the percentage of students at or above national standards.
      The most effective way for a school to improve that mark, is to put all their effort into the students just below that cutoff.  You can do this by pulling out all the money and time spend on gifted and talented students, and on the bottom end of the cohort.  In fact, the high and low achievers could both end up with reduced marks, and it would have no affect on the school’s standing at all.

      Simple!  But then, that’s the problem with simple statistics.

    • Jolanda says:

      09:13am | 03/08/10

      Here is the thing as I see it.  Children come in all shapes and sizes, levels of intelligence and levels of ability.  Most parents understand that any good school will have students with a range of levels of abilities.  What parents want to know is whether the school that their children are at have other children who are performing and/or who are at a similar level of intelligence and ability as their own children as children do not just learn from the teacher, they also learn from each other.  So if you have a bright child you want at least a certain percentage of the year to also present as bright so that your child can be in a class with like minded peers.  This goes for average, below average and even struggling.

      Generally a school should have a range that should to a degree represent what one would expect.

      Education – Keeping them Honest
      http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/

      Reply

    • Dave says:

      09:29am | 03/08/10

      Teachers are the public face of education and therefore receive credits or criticism for outcomes that are often beyond their control. The Myschool website exacerbates this pattern. It gives an illusion of transparency. That being said I don’t think it causes any great harm either. It’s a popular gimmick so why get rid of it.

      Reply

    • Gregg says:

      11:31am | 03/08/10

      So then what is the cost/benefit of a poular gimmick Dave?

    • Dave says:

      01:05pm | 03/08/10

      “So then what is the cost/benefit of a popular gimmick Dave? “,

      Nil, because it does not add or detract from what we already know. NSW DET has had these statistics for years, now the public gets to have a look. More importantly will it affect educational outcomes, the school culture, motivation to learn? I would say no, because the idea of shaming people to perform does not work. However pressure to teach to the test and cheating will increase. That is what has happened overseas.

    • Gregg says:

      04:04pm | 03/08/10

      So, you being sarcastic Dave when you say ” so why get rid of it “
      Must be a cost to running all those tests and putting results into the system.
      With no benefits to learning….... ” However pressure to teach to the test and cheating will increase. That is what has happened overseas. ”  and this also happening here from some accounts
      Should we not just be dumping it as a Gillard gimmick.

    • Dave says:

      04:32pm | 03/08/10

      The diversion of resources is a non issue, My school costs very little. Beyond its effect of a specific schools, it’s been interesting to notice the performance gap between boys and girls in English and math. Boys have done consistently better in math and girls in English. We’ve also been able to see the effect of socioeconomic background. Essentially you can put side by side a socioeconomic map of Australia and a Myschool map and they will display the same patterns. I actually think the people who have the most to lose are the private schools who chargs large amount of money. Myschool website showed that they did not perform much better than similar public schools with similar student body.

      In the end the Myschool website is driven by politics not education. Now that the concept of transparency is up and running and popular with the public. a labor government will be able to ask top tier private schools to reveal their funding, something they’ve been very reluctant to do. Can’t the excuses schools will come up to procrastinate.

    • Helen says:

      09:44am | 03/08/10

      I hope you weren’t responsible for that laughable headline. A “Wowser” means an evangelistic person who opposes having fun. Perhaps you meant “naysayer” or something, because going on the MySchool website is about as much fun as cleaning the toilet, and not nearly as useful.

      Ms Reid pulled her daughter from a school because the average mark was lower. She should have considered whether Fort Street is bound to teach all comers including kids with learning disabilities and kids who are still learning English. The “average” mark is not necessarily what her child will end up with. This is the kind of nuance which is entirely missed by the flawed MySchool figures and the cretinous League Tables which the tabloid press gleefully and maliciously construct from them.

      Reply

    • Phill says:

      10:38am | 03/08/10

      The website was poorly designed and the statistics on it were suspect at best.
      If it is to be used you should be able to display the results of more then one selected school at a time to compare the results.  Results which should not be based off one test only.  Would you like your son/daughter to be graded for their entire grade 10 results off one test?.  The result should be at the minimum an average of the previous 3 years results.
      Poor statistics displayed poorly.  I looked once and that was enough.

      Reply

    • Paul the Programmers says:

      10:44am | 03/08/10

      I’ll be setting up a companion website that will allow users to log on and copy across the results from the Myschool data. It will open slather like Wikipedia. I will call it WikiSchools, it will automatically generate league tables from the data input by the myriad of users. thanks for coming

      Reply

    • Gregg says:

      11:34am | 03/08/10

      Kelvin
      ” The tables ranking of individual schools for literacy and numeracy were the most sensational outcome the MySchool website, arguably Prime Minister’s greatest reform triumph as Education Minister. “
      What was your literacy score?

      Reply

    • Stuart Dent says:

      02:06pm | 03/08/10

      Myschool seems to cause teachers to react like students - afraid of what mum will say when she sees the report. This only mirrors the transparency of judgement that our students suffer. ‘simplistic data’ (scorned by the union) is also used to mark a child’s performance.

      perhaps the teachers should be forced to agree to terms and conditions before marking homework, tests etc - any time ‘simplistic data’ is used to assess a student. the work is the intellectual property of the child and reporting to others - who may not see the whole picture - is a matter of privacy.

      Reply

    • Amy says:

      06:33pm | 03/08/10

      There are several major issues with this website that I’ve outlined many times in several comments on this website (mostly, that no amount of information on a website will make a statistically better but full school, open to new applicants who aren’t happy with their local school - it’s still full and the better school simply can’t take you), but I won’t go through that again.  My problem with this article is this quote “MySchool helpfully compares individual school results on national literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) tests to the Australian average and a group of “statistically similar” schools.”  Why, then, is my local school, a southern Sydney school of 430 children, compared on Myschool to a school on the Central Coast with 40 students.  How is that comparison even remotely helpful to a constructive discussion on the level of education in my local area?  NAPLAN is fantastic to monitor the individual growth of students, but not for the comparison of children according to the school they go to.

      Reply

    • Luke says:

      08:17am | 04/08/10

      kids have a poor attitude towards NAPLAN tests, they now spend about 3 years of their school life preparing for them - at the cost of other learning experiences or localised literacy and numeracy education (that has probably got a track record of being effective).

      NAPLAN nationalised testing means teachers have had to tailor their lessons to specifically target the type of test questioning. which means they aren’t as passionate about their lessons, and students pick up on it.

      the unions and schools don’t hate NAPLAN though, they think it’s a good assessment tool to measure individual results and give focus to those kids that perform poorly to ensure that they get the best outcome from their education. it’s a nationwide tool that can have a nationwide collaborative effort to work on ways to improve results.

      they don’t like how the total results are being pooled together to make blanket judgements about their school. this effectively destroys any relationship between schools to share resources as they are having to compete with one another for results. surely this can’t be a good outcome for students.

      i put it to all readers: if YOU were told that tomorrow you had to sit an all day exam, an exam which doesn’t count towards anything else in your academic career - would you think that you and everyone else would give it their 100%? how many people would spend tonight preparing for the exam and getting a good night’s rest?

      only a small percentage of kids (without being pressured by teachers and parents) attempt the exam at 100% effort. the rest just don’t give a rats.

      Reply
 
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