Save Our Schools has called for the Draft National Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians to prohibit the introduction of school league tables.
It says that the current Draft Declaration could lead to the introduction of forms of reporting on school performance that undermine the social equity goal, provide misleading and inaccurate information to parents and the public and unfairly stigmatise disadvantaged schools, students and families.
In a supplementary submission on the Draft Declaration SOS says that the National Declaration should incorporate principles to guide school performance reporting so that it is supports student learning and school improvement rather than undermine it.
These principles should include the following:
- Reports on school performance should be designed in recognition that student achievement is influenced by factors outside the control of teachers and schools. As far as possible, reports on school performance should reflect the ‘value added’ by the school.
- Summary measures of student achievement by school should not be reported in such a way as to facilitate the construction and publication of league tables of school performance.
- School performance reporting should not stigmatize students, families or schools.
- Measures used to report school performance should be statistically valid and reliable and measurement error estimates should be reported.