Pull the curtains on My School?

I'm no expert on education but there we were thinking the publication of school data on the My School website, now in its fourth year, was a great step forward for transparency and accountability, arming the community as well as policy makers and stakeholders with vital information about at least some performance indicators from all that money spent on school education.

Only to be corrected by the NSW Minister for Education, obviously a great fan of evidence based policy development, who apparently sees no benefits, only egregious impacts:

Mr Piccoli said he supported the continuation of NAPLAN testing but he wanted an end to the publication of its results because of the "unintended consequences" it created. "I've been told a story of a kid in year 3 throwing up on the morning of the NAPLAN test because of the anxiety surrounding the tests," Mr Piccoli said. "This stress never happened when we did Basic Skills testing in NSW because it was simply a diagnostic tool, it wasn't publicised."

My School "provides up-to-date quality data on the performance and resources available to more than 9,500 Australian schools. The site also allows comparisons to be made between schools. We acknowledge the strong interest in the site, as evident in the number of visitors each year to the site – over 1.2 million in 2013.." 

 Australian Information Commissioner Professor John McMillan may have been prescient last year:

realistically, open government can complicate life for government decision makers. Information available on the My School website for example focuses attention on political choices concerning funding and brings forward questions about priorities, comparisons and fair and equitable allocation of resources.

Education in the right place

Terrific to see education on the front pages across the country, and the interest in our schools such that there were 1.5 million hits (this was way off- some reports suggest 4 million plus) on the My School website yesterday. Long may it continue, and lead towards a real "education revolution" through better informed communities, better and better targeted funding, and voice and action to improve the quality of teaching, things that should flow from breaking the hold of public servants, teachers and politicians over the details of what goes in our schools. More transparency should act as an incentive for all to lift their game. It's far from perfect, and opinions including expert those of experts differ on what should be measured and compared, but it's a start. Congratulations to Deputy Prime Minister Gillard for sticking to her guns on this one- her only mis-step throughout was to say the information should be used to badger teachers about performance, which wasn't quite the way to get the school year off to a good start.

As to the NSW law banning publication in newspapers and magazines of anything other than the stats as they appear on the website-brickbats to the NSW Opposition and The Greens who foisted this upon us, and bouquets to the NSW print media for taking no notice despite the prospect of a $50,000 fine.

An offence to publish published information!!!

Only in NSW: in a class of its own as a result of an unholy alliance between the Opposition and The Greens that makes it an offence for a newspaper or magazine to publish comparative information about school performance. The Sydney Morning Herald breaks this absurd law today by publishing information comparing three schools - drawn from annual reports - and asserts "Publish and be damned".

Alice in Wonderland-not Julia Gillard- alive and well

It's hard to believe the troubled reaction to proposals for publication of basic information about school performance.

Deputy Prime Minister Gillard had a discussion with 150 school principals in Canberra this week . Here is what she told them. What is contemplated is that each school will have its own profile webpage that will contain a range of information about the school. The categories covered will include: information about the type of school, student and staff numbers, student attendance rate, socio-economic background of theschool student body, results from national literacy andnumeracy tests, and data about vocational education participation and Year 12 attainment.

Information will be available about how a school performs in literacy and numeracy, compared to other schools that serve student populations that have similar socio-economic backgrounds (known as like-school groups). A like-school group could include, for example, schools with similar proportions of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and comparisons would be made between these schools. Like-school comparisons will be the only form of comparison made. The website will include a list of schools in the local area of the selected school, but comparisons between schools in the same local area will not be undertaken.

Fairly modest really. And the reaction? According to the ABC, teachers and academics have condemned the move, saying the information could be misused to name and shame schools.

I'm no expert in education but I can only see good coming from greater transparency about what's happening in our schools, given the enormous investment of public money and the importance of the issue. A friend who has spent his life in the school system told me today the prime problem was most teachers haven't kept up with the world around them and those in NSW, at best would read the Daily Telegraph each day. If this is near true, no wonder performance measurement is a foreign concept and the reaction to publication of information on the situation in and some achievements of various schools is one of concern.

Transparency and school performance

Associate Professor Tony Taylor of Monash University in Crikey today on why we need more accessible information about school performance, and three spot-on suggestions about what can be done to combat silly sensationalism from some champions of the right to know (you know who they are):

"First, the authorities must publish reports that give accessible, clear and authentic information that paints a fair, a detailed and a broad picture, and Barry McGaw, the federal curriculum head honcho, has promised this. It may take time, since it has taken Ofsted eighteen years to get to where they are today (with some major diversions along the way), so be patient. Second, all governments, federal and state/territory, must educate parents and teachers so that they will actively look for the more complex backgrounding and make informed judgements about education, instead of just relying on banner headlines and crude rankings. This approach, presumably, is on its way and may result in an increasingly knowledgeable public disposition about schools and schooling. We live in hope. Third, tabloid journalists must change their ways, look for a deeper meaning in life and disdain league tables. Don’t hold your breath."

Two out of three's not bad.

"Interesting' Ombudsman report-a serious understatement.

Following on from the previous post, and thanks to James King for the comment and lead, those seriously interested in Freedom of Information processes will find the NSW Deputy Ombudsman's 120 page report on the handling by the Office of the Board of Studies (OBOS) of FOI applications for HSC marks and related documents, posted here not just interesting but instructive, and... well, shocking.

Words that stay in the mind after reading the report about OBOS handling of the matters are adversarial, defensive, combative, obfuscatory, technical, legalistic, uncooperative, and according to the Deputy Ombudsman's interpretation of the Act, plain wrong on a number of counts, including regarding the limitation on the need to search for computer records mentioned here the other day. The Ombudsman reports on a couple of firsts in 20 years experience reviewing FOI complaints - senior officers writing letters for more junior officers to sign, and a senior officer "independently" reviewing the exercise of his own statutory powers - twice.

The reported cost of employing the Crown Solicitor's Office, $15000 for representation of OBOS for a technical but in the end pyrrhic victory in the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, is just the tip of the direct and indirect cost of the exercise including loads of legal advice also from the Crown Solicitor (66 documents the Ombudsman's Office couldn't access because of claims of privilege) on the way through, not to mention his lengthy investigation and report.

Make what you will of the fine detail. The Deputy Ombudsman's findings were:

"19.1 I find that the OBOS’s failure to have a person with sufficient knowledge, skills and experience, in relation to the FOI Act and the relevant case law and government
policy, to make an appropriate determination in relation to the December 2005 or January 2007 applications, was unreasonable. (s. 26(1)(b) of the Ombudsman Act)

19.2 I find that the handling of the December 2005 application was unreasonable, based on irrelevant considerations and partly on a mistake of law. (s. 26(1)(b), (d) and (e) of the Ombudsman Act)

19.3 I find that the handling of the January 2007 application (including the handling of the ‘fresh’ FOI application) was unreasonable, based on a mistake of law and based on irrelevant considerations. In particular, I find that the OBOS’s actions in not treating the Lane letter as a determination were based on a mistake of law. (s. 26(1)(b), (d) and (e) of the Ombudsman Act)

19.4 I find that the denial of access to the documents sought in the January 2007 application constituted conduct of the OBOS for which reasons should have been
given but were not given. (s. 26(1)(f) of the Ombudsman Act)

19.5 I find that the handling of Mr Parsonage’s complaint of 15 January 2007 about the way his December 2005 application had been handled was unreasonable and
otherwise wrong. (s. 26(1)(b) and (g) of the Ombudsman Act)

19.6 I find that the handling of Mr Parsonage’s complaint, made at the end of his request for an internal review in a letter dated 12 April 2007, about having to pay another $40 internal review fee, was unreasonable and otherwise wrong. (s. 26(1)(b) and (g) of the Ombudsman Act)

I note that in its comments on a draft copy of this report, the OBOS stated that it does not agree with the generality of these findings with respect to the application of the law. However, during consultation on 2 September 2009, the Minister and the President of the Board of Studies accepted our findings. I welcome this positive and constructive response."

Roll on that culture change.

Here is an additional piece in today's SMH , and this from the editorial:

"To eliminate what it sees as needless worry ( over scaling) the board has turned it into what the Ombudsman describes as a black box: raw marks go in at one end, and final marks come out at the other, but as for what goes on in between, no one outside the board is allowed to know. To those who ask, ''But what if a mistake is made?'', the board answers only, ''Trust us.''

The board has said it will not release raw marks because they would only be misleading. Certainly, if people do not understand the process, the experience of having a raw mark scaled down to a lower final mark will seem baffling, possibly unfair and certainly suspicious - despite all the professionalism of markers and board personnel intended to ensure the opposite.

Will, as the board appears to fear, releasing candidates' raw marks give them the opportunity and motivation to contest the final mark - to kick up a stink and waste board resources in pointless challenges? Quite possibly. It comes down to a question, though, of how best to uphold the board's integrity. We believe transparency is more likely to boost public confidence than the present policy of keeping candidates in the dark.

The HSC is a public examination, and all results should be available to candidates. It is worrying that the Ombudsman found the board went to considerable, and highly questionable, lengths to keep the marks secret. The culture of secrecy runs deep in NSW. Constant vigilance is needed to ensure this oppressive instinct is kept in check."

NSW Board of Studies fails FOI test

The NSW Ombudsman's report of an investigation into the Board of Studies and scaled exam results sounds interesting, but given confidentiality limitations on the Ombudsman the report itself will only come into the public domain if the complainant or the Sydney Morning Herald posts the text somewhere.The (ex) student who pushed the issue, Hugh Parsonage, started this four years ago. The Ombudsman found the Office of the Board of Studies was wrong in rejecting his Freedom of Information application, saying its handling of the case ''from beginning to end, is of serious concern''.

Cloud cookoo still hanging over some in NSW Parliament

It's been on again this week as the NSW Government had another go at getting rid of the absurd law that would ban print media in NSW from publishing what everyone seems to describe as "crude league 'tables" of school performance. Here is some background if you missed it. It went down by one vote in the Legislative Council on Wednesday. The two Hansard extracts are here and here. . Government's role in all this is to publish and keep up to date accurate information on the best indicators of school performance, to tell us how to best analyse and interpret the information, and then get out of the way. The newly appointed head of the national body responsible for this sounds fully aware of the real issues.The mind boggles at what terrors some will see as Gov 2.0 moves forward and more data on all sorts of subjects becomes available.

Premier Nathan Rees told the PANPA newspaper conference yesterday that the ban on newspapers publishing information in the public domain was ''the greatest assault on press freedom in Australia in 50 years''- even allowing for a bit of rhetoric, it's up there with the best of them, in any event.

''The Greens-Coalition amendment undermines the capacity of our democracy to engage in healthy public debate,'' he said. ''It strikes at the very right of journalists and newspapers to report public issues without fear or favour …''This amendment may well be unconstitutional. It is certainly unethical and indefensible.'' The Herald understands the Government is considering seeking legal advice on whether the fines are unconstitutional. The Minister for Education, Verity Firth, said the Government had given the Opposition the chance to ''see sense on this issue, and they failed dismally''. The amendment would punish newspapers alone for republishing information that's already legally in the public domain''.

Alice in Wonderland: Alice wants to know about school.

The NSW Parliament yesterday also finalised the Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill with an amendment forced on the Government by The Greens and the Opposition in the Upper House and accepted by the Assembly (Hansard page 4).

Although it accepted the amendment with teeth gritted, I'm struggling to understand the Government's position on league tables, plain, simplistic or crude, or why those who pushed this think there should be restriction on media treatment of publicly available information. The effect of the amendment that The Greens and the Opposition have won in any event seems absurd, given the fact that anyone on-line or outside NSW will not be restrained by the prohibition on publication. But The Greens are trying to solve that problem too. Next they will be off to the UN.

And this in a law that is otherwise promoting more transparency for information about school performance.

(4) A person must not, in a newspaper or other document that is publicly available in this State:
(a) publish any ranking or other comparison of particular schools according to school results, except with the permission of the principals of the schools involved, or

(b) identify a school as being in a percentile of less than 90 per cent in relation to school results, except with the permission of the principal of the school.

Maximum penalty: 50 penalty units in the case of an individual and 500 penalty units in any other case.


(5) Nothing in subsection (4) prohibits:


(a) anything authorised to be done by or under a relevant national agreement, or

(b) the publication of the ranking of the schools in the top 10 per cent in relation to the results of Higher School Certificate examinations and related assessments so long as the information used to determine that ranking is information as to the results of students that may be publicly revealed under subsection (6) (c).

Today's Fairfax papers on the subject, and this Sydney Morning Herald editorial which concludes:

"Unamended, the bill was a grudging concession to Canberra's demands, allowing school results to be published but in as vague a form as possible. Thanks to the Greens and the Coalition, though, it is now an insult to the public. A Greens amendment bans newspapers and magazines - alone - from publishing school league tables. This attempt at suppression is as offensive as it is futile in the internet age. Its only positive achievement is to expose the Greens' fundamentalist and authoritarian streak. Worse, though, is the Coalition, for whom school league tables were once an article of faith. On Wednesday night it sided with the Greens, hoping to placate vociferous teacher unions and pursue votes by abandoning its own principles. The losers from this extraordinary betrayal are the public, sold out to special interests by the people who should defend them. Schools in NSW should be run not for teachers or bureaucrats, but for the children who attend them."

NSW acts on disclosure of school performance information

I'll leave it to the experts to make what they can of the NSW move ( presumably in line with what is happening in all states and territories) to legislate for the publication of information about school performance. Here is what Education Minister Verity Firth had to say in Parliament last week, making it sound like a big step forward, then claiming NSW has been publishing this sort of stuff for years; in any event amending legislation to permit disclosure of performance information to a national body and subsequent publication by others; and still retaining in the Freedom of Information Act for the time being, and in the proposed Government Information Act, an exemption to protect some information of this kind, and a provision that excludes information relating to relevant functions of the Department and the universities in processing this informtion from the legislation entirely.

On this last point, I raised the breadth of this exclusion, going far beyond the need to afford privacy to individuals, in my submission on the new bill, but vacate the space to James King who set out a strong and detailed case for change. King didn't get anywhere but the Government response to submissions acknowledged the strength of his argument.

Anne Patty in the Sydney Morning Herald says the NSW bill will " lift (the) 10-year ban on the creation of school league tables" but whatever else you make of the Minister's statement she sure didn't say that. The Minister again:

"All State and Territory Ministers have endorsed the important principle that public reporting should not be by way of crude league tables. Instead, the national agreement replicates the best features of the system we have developed in New South Wales—individual reports for each school, with rich information, rather than a single numeral. The protocols agreed by MCEETYA Ministers on 12 June specifically state:Governments will not publish simplistic league tables or rankings, and will put in place strategies to manage the risk that third parties may seek to produce such tables or rankings."

Maybe there is a distinction to be made between league tables and crude and simplistic league tables?

Sun set to shine on performance that matters in NSW Health.

Just to follow on from COAG's Communique on the publication of health and education performance information,the Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Public Hospitals by Peter Garling S.C was released on 27 November.

The Report runs to three volumes and over a 1000 pages - The Executive Summary and Recommendations is a little easier to navigate.

Garling proposes four pillars of reform to require NSW Health to change and adapt to the new, with a four year IT plan for up-to-date technology, and the publication of meaningful information on performance in the provision of quality safe care at the top of the list.

(It's wonderfully ironic that on the same day the report was released Ross Coulthart and Nick Farrow won the Gold Walkley for Journalism for uncovering earlier this year the deeds of "The Butcher of Bega" through "weeks of painstaking work ( that) uncovered dozens of victims, including fatalities, and the failure of the NSW health system to stop it." And that we had headlines like this " Butcher review kept secret" just last May.

On health information (Summary 1.53-1.60), Garling says:

"All of the leading world experts to whom I spoke, told me that understanding, analysing and publishing sensibly health information will lead to big improvements in health care. They are right. Information is the basis for knowing where health care in hospitals is at, where it has to go,and when it has arrived."

The current regime only measures how quickly people are seen in the Emergency Department or have their surgery. Garling recommends the establishment within three months of an independent Bureau of Health Information to identify, develop and publish patient care measurements on seven criteria designed to show whether patients were treated safely and properly. After a year, he recommends publication of quarterly reports on these criteria regarding performance of each unit or ward, hospital, area health service and NSW Health as a whole.

COAG on performance in health and education sectors

Here are extracts from the COAG Communique released after yesterday's meeting 0n agreement reached between the Prime Minister and the premiers regarding increased transparency and accountability in the school and health systems. I'll be interested to see what experts in these fields make of what the PM and others involved say are big steps forward.

Education

All jurisdictions agreed to a new performance reporting framework. COAG agreed that high‑quality accountability and reporting is important for students, parents, carers and the community. It is also important for tracking the achievement of the COAG targets.

The reporting agreed by all governments includes:

• streamlined and consistent reports on national progress, including an annual national report on the outcomes of schooling in Australia;
• national reporting on performance of individual schools to inform parents and carers and for evaluation by governments of school performance; and
• provision by schools of plain language student reports to parents and carers and an annual report made publicly available to their school community on the school’s achievements and other contextual information.

COAG agreed to a set of performance indicators to indicate progress towards achieving the agreed outcomes, with particular reporting on outcomes for Indigenous students and students from low socio-economic status communities.

COAG noted that funding for the non-government school sector is being appropriated through separate Commonwealth legislation – the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and that the accountability framework for non-government schools and school systems will be consistent with that of the new National Education Agreement.

COAG agreed that the new Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority will be supplied with the information necessary to enable it to publish relevant, nationally‑comparable information on all schools to support accountability, school evaluation, collaborative policy development and resource allocation. The Authority will provide the public with information on each school in Australia that includes data on each school’s performance, including national testing results and school attainment rates, the indicators relevant to the needs of the student population and the school’s capacity including the numbers and qualifications of its teaching staff and its resources. The publication of this information will allow comparison of like schools (that is, schools with similar student populations across the nation) and comparison of a school with other schools in their local community.

Health

The Commonwealth and the States have also agreed to the following objectives and outcomes for the health and hospital system. These are:

• children are born and remain healthy;
• Australians manage the key risk factors that contribute to ill health;
• Australians have access to the support, care and education they need to make healthy choices;
• the primary health care needs of all Australians are met effectively through timely and quality care in the community;
• people with complex care needs can access comprehensive, integrated and coordinated services;
• Australians receive high-quality hospital and hospital related care;
• older Australians receive high-quality, affordable health and aged care services that are appropriate to their needs and enable choice and seamless, timely transitions within and across sectors;
• patient experience: Australians have positive health and aged care experiences which take account of individual circumstances and care needs;
• social inclusion and Indigenous health: Australia’s health system promotes social inclusion and reduces disadvantage, especially for Indigenous Australians; and
• sustainability: Australians have a sustainable health system.

The Commonwealth and the States have also agreed to report against a number of performance measures to address these outcomes including: preventable disease and injuries; timely access to GPs, dental and other primary health care professionals; life expectancy, including the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians; waiting times for services; and net growth in the health workforce. The COAG Reform Council will report progress against these performance measures annually, commencing in 2009-10.

In addition, the COAG Reform Council will report performance against a range of measures, including:

• reduced incidence and prevalence of sexually-transmitted infections and sentinel blood borne viruses (for example, Hepatitis C, HIV) for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians;
• increased immunisation rates for vaccines in the national schedule;
• reduced waiting times for selected public hospital services;
• a reduction in selected adverse events in acute and sub-acute care settings compared to 2008-09 levels;
• a reduction in unplanned/unexpected readmissions within 28 days of selected surgical admissions compared to 2008-09 levels;
• increased rates of services provided by public hospitals per 1,000 weighted population by patient-type compared to 2008-09 levels;
• timely access to GPs, dental and primary health care professionals; and
• a reduction in selected potentially avoidable GP type presentations to emergency departments.

The Commonwealth and the States have also agreed to provide a basis for more efficient use of taxpayer funding of hospitals, and for increased transparency in the use of those funds through the introduction of Activity Based Funding. It will also allow comparisons of efficiency across public hospitals.