Minister to meet on student reports

By Jennifer Leete

Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt has agreed to meet with the Public Education Alliance to discuss concerns about the new primary school reports which the Government released on August 15.

The meeting will take place on October 31. The Minister will be asked to reconsider the NSW reports in the light of unanimous rejection of them by the Teachers Federation, the Federation of P&C Associations and the three professional associations for principals in the Public Education Alliance.

The NSW reports arose from an agreement by the State Government to comply with requirements regarding student reports which were imposed by the Federal Government as a condition of education funding.

Education Ministers in Victoria and South Australia have rejected major aspects of the reporting requirements.

September Council strongly rejected the reports and called on Ms Tebbutt to review the NSW position.

Significant aspects of these requirements are educationally unsound as they, in concert with the Basic Skills, ELLA and SNAP tests will:

• necessitate an increase in standardised tests to establish position in class and across grade;
• fail to acknowledge the needs of increasing numbers of students with learning difficulties integrated into classrooms;
• create harmful competition between young students;
• lead to disengagement from learning by students who continually receive messages that they are failures;
• contribute to increased participation in coaching colleges.

Federation Council also directed members to refuse to cooperate in any way with the development of software or other attempts to trial the implementation of the NSW requirements.

Jennifer Leete is the Deputy President.

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