2 February 2007
In the current debate about student benchmarks significant underlying structural issues are ignored and consequently Australians are being failed by this government.
“While members of the federal government and serial teacher critics like Mr Donnelly interpret student achievement data to score political points or promote their latest publication, it is disappointing that significant underlying structural issues are ignored and consequently Australians are being failed by this government” said Independent Education Union Secretary Lynne Rolley.
“Let us be clear that almost all students achieve the benchmarks” said Ms Rolley.
“Let us therefore acknowledge and celebrate at the same time the enormous efforts and success of the staff in our schools, including teachers, teacher aides, remedial staff and other support staff” she said.
“It is fundamentally important to recognize that some students in Australia continue to struggle with their learning and that more needs to be done to assist them. Teachers know this and teachers make enormous efforts, often unknown to the public and commentators, to give these students assistance and every chance to learn”
“Teachers have bemoaned for years the inadequate level of funding in education. A level of funding that is below the levels of most comparable OECD wealthy nations, like Australia” said Ms Rolley.
“What the commentary by Minister Bishop and more recently Minister Abbott conveniently seeks to ignore is the qualitative research about those students who do not reach the benchmarks”, she said. “Qualitative research that clearly indicates that student achievement and performance are directly related to socio-economic measures”.
“While this federal government exhorts the growth in the economy it fails to either recognize or address the growing inequality and the increasing gap between rich and poor in this country that reports by agencies such as St Vincent de Paul have highlighted”
“There is no question that it is unsatisfactory that some Australian students are not reaching benchmarks. What is irresponsible on the part of this federal government is its divisive political agenda and its continued use of the funding lever to force education authorities to agree to the federal government’s attempts to nationalize services.
“Minister Bishop claims that children are being taught an ideological agenda. However it is the Minister herself who has turned education into an ideological agenda”
“Unfortunately what we will likely find from a considered look at the qualitative data is that not only do some of our students have low academic achievement but they will also have poor access to satisfactory health care and other services that most of us take for granted. This is most evident in the government’s failure to address the critical issue of national reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous peoples and their educational outcomes – which have gone backwards under this government. ” said Ms Rolley.
“The 2000 large scale and authoritative OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that whilst Australian students did extremely well in comparison with other OECD countries, the gap between those achieving at the highest levels and those at the lowest was amongst the largest,” said Ms Rolley “In other words, Australia did not do well on measures of equity.”
“This study gave emphasis to the link between socio-economic background and achievement. The conclusion is clear. Both equity and the national interest require public policy to be directed towards improving the performance of those with lower achievement.”
“Schools are not failing. Our federal government’s failure to address social and structural issues in the economy should not be an opportunity to cast the blame on schools, teachers or the curriculum” said Ms Rolley.
Contact details
Lynne Rolley
Federal Secretary
Ph: 03 9254 1830
Fax: 03 9254 1835
ieu@ieu.org.au