AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

PRESS RELEASE 362

IT IS MORE THAN LEAGUE TABLES:

IT IS THE SURVIVAL OF THE CONCEPT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION ITSELF

23 February 2010

On February 16, the Australian Education Union called for the stopping of the publication of Damaging League Tables after revelations that online profiteers were naming and shaming schools in league tables.

AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the unidentified operators were selling crude, inaccurate league tables for $97.“Students in Australian schools are being named and shamed so somebody can make a

profit,” Mr Gavrielatos said.

“They have taken test scores from the My School website and reproduced them in crude

league tables showing the “top” and “bottom” schools.

“The question is when is the Federal Government going to act to protect school

students?

“Education Minister Julia Gillard says she opposes league tables because they are misleading and make the job of teachers and principals harder and yet she has facilitated their creation. Within 24 hours of the My School website going live we saw league tables in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and the Northern Territory.”

Given developments in Great Britain and the USA, the Teachers Union is justified in their concern about the League Tables. But teachers must not get distracted in discussions in the community about the value of MyScxhool websites, league tables or NAPLAN tests, They also need to articulate the ideology underlining this approach to education which closely parallels that of the private, religious sector in education. This places education in the market place, the domain of competition and consumerism.

Gillard’s neoliberal model of education shafts responsibility for the provision of quality education for all children in a free secular and universal education system onto individual schools, teachers and students. Educatioon should not be a contest, a comparison or a struggle between rival schools and communities for the best ranking in a medal tally.

The social and civic role of education as the basis of equality and opportunity is under threat as the current market model, the survival of religious and social elites exacerbates socio-economic segregation and stigmatization of public schools and communities. The objective of gradual privatization is central to the Gillard model. Meanwhile, the one system that always comes up the winner in the constant attacks on the public system is the highly centralized, excessively wealthy religious one.

This is the broader discussion teachers need to have with their public school communities.

DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STOP STATE AID TO PRIVATE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS.

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