Ban on newspaper league tables under threat

The Greens have vowed to fight a new attempt by the State Government to overturn controversial legislation banning the publication of school ‘league tables’ in newspapers.

The Government’s amendment to the Education Act would remove provisions introduced in June which impose a $55,000 fine on newspapers that publish statistics ranking the performance of the state’s schools.

Greens NSW MP and education spokesperson John Kaye, who moved the ban on publication, said the Government’s Bill would lead to “open-slather league tables in NSW”.

Speaking last Friday at ‘Politics in the Pub’, a community discussion held each week at The Gaelic Club in Surry Hills, Kaye said: “The reason why we did this in the first place is because we were concerned about comparing schools based on their years 3, 5, 7 and 9 literacy results, their Higher School Certificate results and their School Certificate results. Ranking schools from top to bottom, from best to worst, from most successful to ‘failed school’.

“[That is] what we tried to stop and it’s what the Government is going to try and reignite.”

As a condition of federal funding, the State Government is now obliged to pass school performance data on to the Federal Government for publication online.

But Mr Kaye said that if the newspaper ban in NSW was lifted, media outlets here would be able to harvest the results from the Federal Government’s website and use them to create league tables that unfairly compare schools.

“What Julia Gillard and Verity Firth…are saying is: ‘this is accountability’. Well, we say back to them that this is accountability on the cheap,” he said. “If you really want accountability, put the money in; pay people to go and visit schools, talk to the teachers, talk to the students, talk to the parents, talk to the community.

“How can you possibly reduce the complexity of what goes on in a school down to a single number or even down to a table of numbers?”

NSW Education Minister Verity Firth has repeatedly said that the Government is opposed to simplistic league tables which rank schools without any other information.

“The Federal Government intends to publish the information in ‘like school’ groups so that schools serving similar groups of students will be compared with each other,” a spokesperson for the Minister said.

“The reports will contain information about [the school’s] socio-economic status, indigenous population, student’s language backgrounds, disabilities, attendance and sources of income.”

But according to the president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Bob Lipscombe, there is no effective way of identifying ‘like’ schools.

“In most cases, league tables provide nothing more than a list based on socio-economic advantage and disadvantage,” he said.

Last week the debate over school league tables in NSW descended into a mud-slinging match between the Greens and the Government, after the Upper House passed a censure motion against the Education Minister for misleading parliament.

The motion arose out of Firth’s comments that the Greens’ newspaper ban was putting $4.8 billion in federal funding in jeopardy.

Firth has since labeled the censure motion as nothing more than a stunt.

“The Minister was not arguing the censorship amendment could affect the funding as was falsely claimed by the Greens. What she was pointing out was the stupidity of their amendment,” a spokesperson said.

“Parents want more information about their children’s schools, not zero information. That’s what the Federal Government’s reforms are all about.”

Striking back, Kaye said that the Minister had been embarrassed by the motion.

“She might call it a stunt, but I actually think truth and reality are more than a stunt. I think they’re a very important part of the debate,” he said.

“She was thoroughly exposed trying to bully people into accepting her legislation.”

by Christopher Paver