We live in an age saturated by information and knowledge, driven by digital technologies. This change is bound up with a changing economy and a changing society, offering mobility and opportunity to us as individuals and fuelling the growing exchange and interchange with the rest of the world. In our own communities, we are now able to access information not dreamed of by past generations, often at minimal cost. As the leading Canadian educationalist Michael Fullan argues, in today’s world ‘transparency rules’. Information is pervasive and the demand for more and better data keeps growing in every domain. Our capacity to find, sort and use knowledge in ways that create value is central to our success in the 21st century society. One consequence of this ongoing change is the growing importance of education. Having workers who can analyse problems and communicate through sophisticated devices is becoming a prerequisite for employers. As our world is increasingly powered by knowledge and information, the consequences of educational failure become increasingly severe. From 2001-2007 in Australian full-time employment among those who have post-school qualifications grew by 20.5 per cent. Over the same period, full time employment about those without qualifications rose by just 0.3 per cent. That is why, when we were elected two years ago, we promised an Education Revolution. We need to become a nation in which educational achievement is central to everything we do and those who contribute to educational excellence are respected and rewarded for it. Everywhere I go around the nation I am struck by what great schools, staffed and led by great teachers, are doing to lift achievement. But I am equally struck by how much more there is to do. There are too many schools that do not manage to get the best from their students and too many students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are not achieving what they should. A new era of transparency Our drive for improving every school and education for every child is driving our passion for school transparency. As a result of that passion, in the first months of next year, for the first time ever you will be able to access information on Australian schools through the MySchool website which shows achievement in national testing, Year 12 attainment, attendance and numbers of staff. This website will allow users to compare one school’s result with other local schools and with schools around the nation that serve similar student populations. It will show how a school’s test scores compare to those statistically similar schools and to the national mean. And it fits into the broader framework of accountability and investment that we have delivered over the last two years. Those reforms include the first ever national curriculum, so that every student can access a world class curriculum and every parent and every teacher can understand the levels of learning and excellence that should be an entitlement for every student. They include a National Education Agreement and School Funding Bill for non-government schools which, for the first time, require exactly the same accountability of all schools in all sectors. And they include implementing new measures to improve the quality of teaching and school leadership, new ways of teaching literarcy and numeracy. And these reforms deliver new resources and enormous new investments in creating 21st century learning environments. These reforms give us, for the first time in this country, the chance to build an approach to schooling which is genuinely, comprehensively focused on the needs and the achievements of students. The need for transparency So why do we need this data? When I was sworn in as federal Education Minister, I was not able to get accurate data about how our schools perform or how they are resourced across the country. The Australian Council for Educational Research has observed that the Australian school funding system is one of the most complex, the most opaque and the most confusing in the developed world. Although we have international data like PISA and TIMMS, we have never been able to examine how, or why, individual schools perform in relation to their students, to their overall resourcing, or to other schools operating in similar circumstances. Australia has a highly differentiated education system, with separate educational authorities for government, Catholic and independent schools in each state and territory. I believe that diversity is a great strength: but only if we can learn which approaches used under which circumstances are actually contributing to learning outcomes. Data about what students are achieving and how they are progressing must be the cornerstone of any strategy for improvement. Good teachers and school leaders need a constant flow of data about how and what their students are learning in order to diagnose learning needs

• published: 13 Nov 2009
• views: 0

We live in an age saturated by information and knowledge, driven by digital technologies. This change is bound up with a changing economy and a changing society, offering mobility and opportunity to us as individuals and fuelling the growing exchange and interchange with the rest of the world. In our own communities, we are now able to access information not dreamed of by past generations, often at minimal cost. As the leading Canadian educationalist Michael Fullan argues, in today’s world ‘transparency rules’. Information is pervasive and the demand for more and better data keeps growing in every domain. Our capacity to find, sort and use knowledge in ways that create value is central to our success in the 21st century society. One consequence of this ongoing change is the growing importance of education. Having workers who can analyse problems and communicate through sophisticated devices is becoming a prerequisite for employers. As our world is increasingly powered by knowledge and information, the consequences of educational failure become increasingly severe. From 2001-2007 in Australian full-time employment among those who have post-school qualifications grew by 20.5 per cent. Over the same period, full time employment about those without qualifications rose by just 0.3 per cent. That is why, when we were elected two years ago, we promised an Education Revolution. We need to become a nation in which educational achievement is central to everything we do and those who contribute to educational excellence are respected and rewarded for it. Everywhere I go around the nation I am struck by what great schools, staffed and led by great teachers, are doing to lift achievement. But I am equally struck by how much more there is to do. There are too many schools that do not manage to get the best from their students and too many students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are not achieving what they should. A new era of transparency Our drive for improving every school and education for every child is driving our passion for school transparency. As a result of that passion, in the first months of next year, for the first time ever you will be able to access information on Australian schools through the MySchool website which shows achievement in national testing, Year 12 attainment, attendance and numbers of staff. This website will allow users to compare one school’s result with other local schools and with schools around the nation that serve similar student populations. It will show how a school’s test scores compare to those statistically similar schools and to the national mean. And it fits into the broader framework of accountability and investment that we have delivered over the last two years. Those reforms include the first ever national curriculum, so that every student can access a world class curriculum and every parent and every teacher can understand the levels of learning and excellence that should be an entitlement for every student. They include a National Education Agreement and School Funding Bill for non-government schools which, for the first time, require exactly the same accountability of all schools in all sectors. And they include implementing new measures to improve the quality of teaching and school leadership, new ways of teaching literarcy and numeracy. And these reforms deliver new resources and enormous new investments in creating 21st century learning environments. These reforms give us, for the first time in this country, the chance to build an approach to schooling which is genuinely, comprehensively focused on the needs and the achievements of students. The need for transparency So why do we need this data? When I was sworn in as federal Education Minister, I was not able to get accurate data about how our schools perform or how they are resourced across the country. The Australian Council for Educational Research has observed that the Australian school funding system is one of the most complex, the most opaque and the most confusing in the developed world. Although we have international data like PISA and TIMMS, we have never been able to examine how, or why, individual schools perform in relation to their students, to their overall resourcing, or to other schools operating in similar circumstances. Australia has a highly differentiated education system, with separate educational authorities for government, Catholic and independent schools in each state and territory. I believe that diversity is a great strength: but only if we can learn which approaches used under which circumstances are actually contributing to learning outcomes. Data about what students are achieving and how they are progressing must be the cornerstone of any strategy for improvement. Good teachers and school leaders need a constant flow of data about how and what their students are learning in order to diagnose learning needs

• published: 13 Nov 2009
• views: 0