David French | 19/02/2010 11:23:24 AM

This article was first publihed in The Morning Bulletin dated 13th February 2010.

Rocky is the home of rumour. The town has made an art form of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Drug deals at schools, businessmen’s clandestine dealings, escaping students, we have it all. Evidence? Not much. Not surprising because many think that collecting data is boring. But data is the way to get facts, and facts empower people.

Detractors of the Government’s My School website say that it gives public school teachers a bad name. Proponents argue that it gives the ability for parents to compare performance between schools. As a widely available source of potentially sensitive data, those opposing views make My School interesting.

Superficially, a trawl through My School does nothing for the region’s claim as an educational hub. On many measures, most local schools score below average. A closer look at the data however, yields a whole world of questions - questions to be asked before reaching simplistic conclusions. What are some of the factors that might shed light on differences in performance between schools?

Parent involvement? Parents that respect education often become more involved in their children’s schooling, with positive results.

Socio-economic position? Being familiar with Sydney, Willoughby Public performs well, Normanhurst Public, not badly, while Mt Druitt Public poorly – results exactly in line with the economic status of those areas.

Peer group influence? The website reports a relatively high indigenous population for Central Queensland schools. Respected Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson says it’s no secret that many aboriginal kids are finding just getting to school pretty tough. It’s pretty difficult to perform if your support base is dragging you down. Perhaps Willoughby/Chatswood’s significant (unreported) Asian population yields the opposite result.

Smaller and specialist schools might affect measured outcomes. The Girls’ Grammar scores well in lower grades, but not so well later on. Is puberty affecting scores? Sydney’s prestigious Loreto shows no such pattern. More likely the larger size of Loreto means that the sample is more robust.

Finally, all grades will have good years and poor years depending on the cohort, robbing teachers of disciplinary action might compromise overall results and parents paying fees have a vested interest in positive outcomes.

In the end the data is the source of questions, not the answer - Making the data available means that issues can be identified and addressed. Determining to interpret the data to suit an agenda is the problem.

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