“Education for knowledge and skills is critical to understanding and addressing key social, political and environmental issues, and is crucial to future national economic prosperity” said Independent Education Union Federal Secretary Lynne Rolley.
“The ‘Future of Schooling in Australia’ report generally provides a sound framework in which to further build and enhance educational opportunities and outcomes for students and schools” she said.
“Quality of teaching is the largest in-school determinant of variation in student achievement.High priority should be given to capacity building of the profession and the development of strategies to recruit, retain and reward quality teachers” said Ms Rolley, “This means governments nationally must commit significant additional resources to education”.
“In relation to early childhood learning we know that access to good quality care is a priority for families combining employment and family responsibilities.And we know that good quality early child care and education sets the right foundation for children’s further development.”
Ms Rolley however expressed concerns about the proposed public reporting proposals.
“The primary purposes of student assessment is to provide information needed to improve student learning as well as report to parents and carers” said Ms Rolley “making direct comparisons among schools is not straightforward, and in fact can be misleading.”
“Indeed comparison of schools can be counter productive to both schools and the students” she said.
“What teachers and students need are timely diagnostic tools and the resources to help struggling students, especially intervention in the early years” said Ms Rolley.
Further the IEU believes that monitoring trends and system performance should be conducted through sampling processes. Full cohort testing to establish such information is wasteful of resources.
