Best and Worst Schools: Overview : SBS Insight

Overview

Should schools test results be made public?

Currently 666 comments

The academic results from your child's school will be posted publicly at the end of this year along with every other school in Australia.

This will, according to Julia Gillard, our deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, usher in a " new era of transparency".

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard will join our online Live Chat after the show. You can start asking questions at 8.30pm.

As Gillard said, "There's nothing more important in this country to the shape of its future than what's happening in schools today."

And the impact of this new transparency?

Opponents of this proposed system, say that it will only stigmatise the worst schools and demoralise the teachers and the students. The Minister says that this proposal will allow the government to identify and properly resource the schools that need the most help.

Join us as students, teachers and parents take this debate to Deputy Prime Minister Gillard and Joel Klein, the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, who takes a very hard line on poorly performing schools.

Meet the Guests

Julia Gillard

Julia Gillard is the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education. She plans to publish the results of all schools, both public and private, on a national website at the end of this year. Parents will be able to find out about the literacy and numeracy results of individual schools and compare that performance with schools of a similar profile.

Joel Klein

Joel Klein is Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. In 2003 he introduced a controversial new program to increase the accountability of schools by grading them from A to F and shutting down those who consistently performed poorly.

Roseanne McDade

Roseanne McDade is the principal of Bridgewater High School in Hobart, Tasmania. Earlier this year the local newspaper The Mercury published a league table listing the performance of all state high schools from the best performers to the worst. Bridgewater High School was on the bottom but Roseanne says this is not a true picture of what goes on at the school.

Matthew Meharg

Matthew Meharg, 15, is in grade nine at Sydney Secondary school. When all school results are published, he hopes to use the information to decide where he should study his HSC. In the future he hopes to be an actor and a politician.

Judy King

Judy King is principal of Riverside Girls High School in Sydney. She strongly opposes the Federal Government’s plans to publish all school results, saying it will name and shame, but won’t improve student performance.