Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill 2009

The Hon. PENNY SHARPE (Parliamentary Secretary) [6.17 p.m.], on behalf of the Hon. John Hatzistergos: I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

This bill will permit the public reporting of school results in new national student tests on a nationally consistent basis. This bill will further cement the Rees Government's policy of providing meaningful information to parents about school performance—and do so in a manner that is educationally responsible.

The bill is also necessary to implement the agreements reached by the Council of Australian Governments in 2008 and by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs known as MCEETYA.

All State and Territory Governments and the Commonwealth have agreed that for the first time in 2009 there will be nationally uniform reporting about the results of individual schools.

MCEETYA endorsed the principle that "The provision of school information to the community should be done in such a way as to enhance community engagement and understanding of the educational enterprise".

The capacity to report on the results achieved by schools in the New South Wales education system has been the subject of a Regulation since 1997.

This prevents the publication of school test results in a manner that ranks or otherwise compares the results of individual schools. It also protects the publication of results that reveal the results of particular students without their consent.

The Rudd Government was also elected on a platform of greater transparency about school performance.

In 2008 the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to implement a new school performance reporting framework from 2009.

COAG agreed that greater transparency and accountability for the performance of our schools is essential to ensure that every Australian child receives the highest quality education and the greatest opportunity to achieve through participation in employment and society.

COAG also agreed that high-quality accountability and reporting is important for students, parents, carers and the community.

This reporting framework encompasses:

streamlined and consistent reporting on national progress

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

plain language student reports to parents and carers and

an annual report being made publicly available to each school community on the school's achievements and other contextual information

performance indicators about progress towards achieving agreed outcomes and

specific reporting on outcomes for indigenous students and students from low socio-economic status communities.

This was a historic national decision, but it also reflects developments that have taken place in New South Wales over the past 10 years or more.

It is important to understand some of this history to appreciate why the Regulation on publishing school results—unique in Australia has been in place, and why this bill retains its best elements.

Since 1997 all public schools in New South Wales have been required to publicly report about their performance, and in particular to publish information about their performance in externally conducted tests such as:

the Basic Skills Tests in literacy and numeracy in primary school

the English Language and Literacy Assessment test and the Secondary Numeracy Assessment Program ELLA and SNAP—in junior secondary

The School Certificate and the HSC in senior secondary

The Basic Skills Tests, ELLA and SNAP have since 2008 been replaced by equivalent tests under the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy—or NAPLAN.

Since 1997 schools have reported their literacy, numeracy and other external test results in Annual School Reports that also let schools explain their performance in context.

Over time, a culture of frank disclosure of performance has grown.

So by 2007, every school Annual Report was required to include the school's performance over time, with optional reporting against the State average. More than 60 percent of schools also reporting their test results against a group of schools with similar background characteristics. And hundreds of schools proudly publish their reports on their websites.

A key concept in these reports is that of mandatory "value added" and growth reporting. If we examine the performance of a group of students in year 10, for example, how does the same group of students perform in year 12?

If a group of students in the bottom third of performance in year 10 reaches the State average by year 12, then the school has added value.

Take one example of a 2008 report from one Sydney high school without naming the school.

The report frankly illustrates both in text and in graphical form how students performed in the HSC in comparison with the same students' performance two years earlier in Year 10. The report clearly demonstrates that their average achieving students have improved the most by Year 12, while their higher achieving students performed at about the same level as they did in Year 10. Of concern, the report clearly indicates that the school's lower achieving students did not perform as well in Year 12 as they did in Year 10. This will be an issue of focus for the school over the next year.

There is frank disclosure of both good performance and lower than expected performance in the same school. That is vital for the school community to know in order to take steps to improve, without sacrificing what it does well. Such information would be completely hidden if all that were reported were a single number on a simplistic league table.

Over the last decade schools have become much more comfortable in understanding their performance using hard data.

In many schools, involving teachers, parents and students in analysis of the school's performance has become a very tangible way in which the school community can come together to support student achievement.

We have been able to achieve honest reporting to parents about the school their children attend, without allowing the potentially harmful and destructive effects of crude and simplistic league tables.

Since 1997 the Regulation under the Education Act has provided that school results relating to individual schools will not be publicly revealed in a way that ranks or otherwise compares the results of individual schools.

That is, the method in which a publication of school results will occur is not to be one that allows, in a single publication, direct comparisons between individual schools.

The publication of a single school's results in an annual report does not infringe this requirement. Nor does the publication of a school's results in comparison to measures like the State average or the average for a group of schools. But such comparisons differ from league tables. They do not allow a school's achievement to be whittled down to a single score.

What is wrong with a league table?

Well, we briefly went through that experience in 1997 here in New South Wales.

Following a Freedom of Information request, the Tertiary Entrance Rank of the top student in every school was published. (The Tertiary Entrance Rank was a predecessor of the University Admissions Index or UAI, now replaced by a national index).

Only one school in the list had a top student whose TER was below 50 percent.

A photograph of that school's Year 12 was printed on the front page of a metropolitan newspaper under the heading "the class we failed".

It was immensely hurtful and distressing to those individual students—to have their performance publicly revealed and criticised so that their identities were known.

This was not an analysis of their performance. It was public humiliation, pure and simple. That is the worst consequence for a school community if a crude league table is published.

The league table concept is one that labels whole schools as either winners or losers. It is unfair, damaging, hurtful, anti-educational and not in the public interest.

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 June 12 specifically State that "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."

The new Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority—ACARA, a body that works to MCEETYA direction—will be supplied with the information necessary to enable it to publish relevant, nationally comparable information on all schools. That body will be subject to protocols and directions endorsed by MCEETYA.

ACARA will make public information on each school in Australia Government and non-Government. This will include a page of information about each school's performance, compared to a grouping of schools with similar characteristics.

Information about the schools within relevant groupings would be separately publicly available.

It will include national testing results and school attainment rates, student population characteristics, teaching staff and financial resources.

The information will be published on ACARA's website.

This will not be a simplistic league table. Rather, it will be conceptually similar to information that has already been made public by New South Wales schools for some years in their annual school reports.

This has occurred consistently with the Regulation and without any of the undesirable effects of simplistic league tables.

Because an argument may be made that provision of the results to ACARA by educational systems may of itself amount to publication in a way that allows comparisons of individual school results, there is some risk that it would breach the current Regulation.

If the Commonwealth then went on to make the relevant results public, that Government may also potentially be in breach of the existing Regulation. There is doubt about whether ACARA would be constitutionally beyond the Regulation's reach.

This amendment will provide certainty by permitting New South Wales to provide such information to the Authority if it is done in accordance with a national protocol or arrangement to which New South Wales is a party.

A further constraint that the bill would overcome is a 1997 protocol as part of the New South Wales public school teachers award. This provides that the Department of Education and Training is not to "publish or broadcast, or aid in the publication or broadcast of any information or achievement which allows comparison between individual students or which will allow schools to be ranked in any publication or broadcast". That restriction may prevent New South Wales providing the information to the Commonwealth because there would be no absolute control over how third parties published or broadcast publicly available information.

The bill therefore overrides this provision of the award.

The bill will continue to provide protection to the results of identified individual students. Their results will not be published without the consent of them or their parents, except in the context of recognition of excellent performance as currently occurs for HSC results.

To be clear, the bill allows de-identified data about individuals to be provided to ACARA for the purposes of analysis. National discussions have confirmed that the information enabling matching of particular students over time will be destroyed after the analysis is performed. These security safeguards will guard individual students' privacy in accordance with the requirements of the bill.

The existing regulation also prevents third parties from obtaining information from Government in the form of a league table under Freedom of Information legislation. This will continue under the provisions of this bill. The Government has formed the judgement that this is one of the cases where the public interest in publishing the information in a particular form is clearly overridden by the public interest against this.

This information will be retained as an overriding secrecy law within schedule 1 of the new Government Information (Public Access) Bill 2009 introduced by the Premier yesterday.

Finally, the provisions of the existing Regulation, subject to amendment, are moved into the principal Act. This is to ensure they cannot in future be watered down by Regulation without the agreement of both houses of parliament.

This bill gets the balance right.

It builds on the record of increasing transparency about school performance. A record New South Wales is proud of.

Parents in New South Wales should have the right to detailed information about the performance of their child's school.

Information that presents a fair comparison of their school's performance against other similar schools. Information that will be used to drive continued improvement in school performance. And to target additional resources to the schools that need them.

And at the same time it leaves in place in New South Wales the protections that have been developed to prevent simplistic rankings that are not in the public interest. It is vital for the education of children across New South Wales that this bill is passed urgently by this Parliament.

New South Wales is required to provide this data to the Commonwealth under the terms of the national education agreement.

Tied to this national agreement is $4.8 billion in funding over the next 4 years.

That's around $1.2 billion per annum, or roughly 20 percent of the annual cost of employing public school teachers and other school staff.

It is necessary to pass this bill now to be able to provide the relevant data to the Commonwealth in accordance with the agreed time line. That information needs to be provided to the Commonwealth within weeks to enable national publication towards the end of the year.

If the State does not provide the data in accordance with the agreed time line, it will not satisfy the conditions for receipt of the funding. In short, failure to pass this bill would place this funding in jeopardy.

And more fundamentally, it would deny parents access to information about the performance of schools to which they should be entitled.

I commend the bill to the House.

The Hon. ROBYN PARKER [6.17 p.m.]: I speak to the Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill 2009 on behalf of the Liberal-Nationals. The Coalition supports wholeheartedly the efforts of our wonderful teachers in our schools. We support public education and choice. We support most passionately transparency in government and information. However, I stress at the outset that the Opposition does not support transparency with negative consequences—transparency that is not considered carefully. It would be negligent for us to support the publication of school league tables, to which I will refer shortly.

The Opposition supports this bill to allow funding to flow from the Federal Government to the State Government for our schools. We support the bill because we were given assurances in the other place from the Minister that the provisions of this legislation will not allow the generation of simplistic league tables. The bill will amend the Education Act by overturning an existing regulation prohibiting the Department of Education and Training from publishing data that could be used to generate league tables. The bill is introduced in response to the Commonwealth's requirements that more school data should be made available as part of the 2008 National Partnership Agreement.

The Opposition does not oppose the bill. We do not want to risk schools missing out on any funding, and there are serious funding implications that are attached to this bill. Some of those implications may impact on the flow of Federal Government funding. We are talking not about Rees Government funding of education but about Federal Government funds that are flowing into schools. We certainly do not want to get in the way of that money flowing to schools. In that context, I refer to the National Partnerships funding to New South Wales, which includes quality teaching, funding to low socioeconomic status [SES] school communities, and funding for literacy and numeracy. The Opposition does not want to get in the way of funds flowing from the Federal Government to the Rees Government, but we certainly want some assurances around the implications of supporting the bill.

The Opposition has serious concerns about the publishing of simplistic league tables and their ranking of schools. For the information of those who may not be aware of simplistic league tables, I point out that they are tables in which something is ranked, such as a football team might be ranked in a league table. They rank schools on basic information, not on holistic or complex information. The ranking is based on simple information that does not have any other context and the tables do not contain any other information. They simply rank a school in terms of performance. League tables and simplistic league tables are potentially damaging to schools, and they are opposed by almost everyone in the education community.

A democratic society that cares about the education of its young people should not be opposed to giving information that is transparent and based on a whole school community. Information should be available to governments so that schools and teachers can be supported in delivering the best educational outcomes for their school. However, meaningless league tables are the wrong way to obtain information. They do not inform the public or parents. The Opposition absolutely opposes simplistic league tables. It is important when discussing choice to establish that choice is available. We cannot say that we want choice and then create a situation in which choice is not available, which occurs in some communities in New South Wales. We must make sure that every school in New South Wales is supported in offering the best educational outcomes that are possible for the students and their school.

Openness and transparency are good concepts. Parents have a right to know about the school performance of their children and the performance of their school. Listing schools in terms of basic scores is not providing the right type of information. Parents need information to inform their decision on where they will send their children to school, but that information needs to be provided in a context. For some schools in some low socioeconomic or country areas, there are no choices. If a country community has one high school, that is the only high school that children who live in the community will be able to attend. What benefit is there in listing a ranking for that school? We know where the system can go wrong.

The legislation is necessary because in the past simplistic information has been produced that caused enormous anguish and heartache for students, teachers and parents of one particular school. The type of information that was published by the media was a discussion about a class that had failed, based on Higher School Certificate [HSC] results. That information led to legislation prohibiting the Department of Education and Training from publishing or releasing data that can be used in league tables. It also led to regulation that is one of a kind. The legislation was introduced for a reason—so that simplistic league tables could not be introduced. We are now in a position in which the Federal Government is demanding more information.

The Minister should provide ironclad guarantees that a repeat of that school's experience will not be possible. It is a bit of a hard stretch to suggest that the media will not look for data about students and schools in a search for the best and worst performances or that some schools will not be singled out. I cite the remarks of Brian Croke from the Catholic Education Commission in a recent newspaper article in which he stated that league tables "of some sort are inevitable once data for all schools is publicly available in a common format". The Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard, and her State counterparts throughout Australia say that they do not support simplistic league tables or rankings, but when data is collected from schools it seems to be inevitable that some organisations, perhaps the media, will make comparisons and judgements.

There is a capacity to prevent information from being produced and published, but how can we in New South Wales be assured that available information will not be published in some type of format? The New South Wales freedom of information laws and requirements are different from those of the Commonwealth laws and rules relating to freedom of information and the publication of information. It is important to not compare one school with another, and we should not compare this bill without discussing the unique situation each school is in. For example, is it fair to compare a school in a remote part of western New South Wales of low socioeconomic status with a school in metropolitan Sydney? If any comparisons are made, we should compare apples with apples. Professor Gordon Stanley told the Sydney Morning Herald that the experience in the United States of America shows "an enormous manipulation of data" since schools were asked to show "adequate yearly progress". The article also reported Professor Stanley as saying that "this made it difficult not to corrupt the professional process". He also stated:

We could well end up with a similar situation to the UK, where you get a whole industry created around improving performance on the tests rather than necessarily improving students' learning skills.

We know that with this type of regime, people tend to teach to meet the test so that good outcomes and scores are achieved. We find that teachers, instead of focusing on holistic education, quite understandably focus on the test and will not look at the broader education of the student because the test will be what the student is assessed on, and that also forms the basis of comparison between schools.

Recently I read an article about what goes wrong when crude or simplistic league tables are produced. In the United States of America a suburban Atlanta principal resigned recently because he was caught cheating in relation to student tests. He was jailed and fined. The student tests in four schools in that state were altered in an effort to boost the performances of those schools. That is a worst case scenario, but it shows the level of pressure and what might happen.

[The President left the chair at 6.30 p.m. The House resumed at 8.00 p.m.]

The Hon. ROBYN PARKER [8.00 p.m.]: Ranking similar schools is meaningless. Each child in each school is unique. Simplistic league tables show only one small aspect. Therefore the curriculum is often distorted to work towards testing, knowing that the outcome could be misrepresented and mis-presented in terms of a simplistic league table. Testing in schools has a valid role in an educative environment, but the role is that of a diagnostic tool. Testing enables us to assess a child's ability, a child's grasp of concepts. We can then use that testing as a mechanism for putting resources in place strategically and in the right way to deal with any problems that might be occurring, any gaps and any other issues.

Schools already receive data, and they present quite a lot of data to parents about individual children. Certainly, information to parents should be forthcoming. However, data that is not surrounded by other information is data only for the sake of data, and it encourages an environment of blame and shame. One person who is familiar with the negative impact of data publishing is the former New South Wales Director General of Education and the former Chief Executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in England, Dr Ken Boston, who said:

The UK Government's approach to the key stage tests has sucked the oxygen from the classrooms or primary schools. In all but those schools principled enough to resist the pressure put on them, the primary school curriculum has become a dry husk. The teaching program focuses on what is to be tested and on practicing for the tests, because the future of the school is dependent on the result. The necessary enrichment at primary level is impossible so long as the key stage tests continue in their current form and with such high stake consequences.

There is evidence in countries such as Chile, Denmark, England, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden and America of increased socioeconomic and/or racial segregation in schools that has resulted from competition. Interestingly, the Commonwealth's publication entitled "Principles and Protocols for the Collection and National Reporting of Key Performance Measures for Schooling in Australia" from July last year describes the importance of:

avoidance of harm to members of the community: this could occur where the privacy of individuals would be compromised or where the reputation of an institution or group of people would be damaged through the publication of misleading information or stereotyping.

How things have changed for both the Federal and State Labor governments since July last year! This raises the fact that league tables are based on a narrow part of the curriculum. There is no consideration of teaching students whose skills lie outside academia or teaching life or work skills that they can use once they leave school. Indeed, the former Minister for education was quoted in the Australian as saying that league tables were a "silly idea" and that using literacy and numeracy results to determine disadvantaged schools funding was too simplistic.

This bill also raises concern that the publishing of league tables or school data may result in the marketing of schools as either good or bad schools and the construction of a hierarchy of schools that are in competition with one another. Far from the ideal of all schools being resourced and supported equally, there is the potential for schools in the lowest socioeconomic levels not being able to lift themselves out of such circumstances due to the reputation and stigma associated with a poor league table result. The New South Wales Coalition will be holding the Minister to her word that this bill will not enable the publication of league tables in New South Wales. The Government needs to provide assurances that protections are in place in New South Wales to prevent the creation of simplistic league tables and that information cannot be constructed when that information is passed on to the Federal Government. Earlier today the Minister said:

The protocols agreed by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs Ministers on 12th 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."

However, we do not know what those strategies might be. We do not know what strategies will be put in place federally. We know what strategies are in place in New South Wales but we do not know what strategies are in place federally to prevent someone from the media, for example, making a freedom of information request for the information. We can only take the Minister's word—it is incumbent on the Minister—that league tables will not be able to be produced and that similar protections are available. We will be watching carefully because she and the Rees Government will have failed if that information is dispersed from the Federal Government.

The Minister could not have been clearer in her assurance to the Parliament that league tables are not a secret agenda. It was clear in her comments that that was not her plan or the Federal Government's plan. We certainly hope that the Minister's word on that is good; if not, the Minister, the New South Wales Government and the Federal Government will be exposed as failing the parents, teachers and students of New South Wales. Indeed, it will be too late because the information will be in the public domain and able to be misconstrued and misused. It is important to make it clear that New South Wales Liberal-Nationals will always support investment in our schools. The Rees Government must not misinterpret our support for this bill. We are supporting this bill because we support funding to schools, and we would not do anything to risk that funding. We certainly support investment in schools.

The investment in schools from the Federal Government will make up a great deal of the shortfall of the Rees Government in terms of its education failings, including poor teacher retention rates and the maintenance backlog in public schools. And I could go on! The New South Wales Liberal-Nationals oppose the publication of school league tables that unfairly compare diverse schools. While we support increased funding for public schools, State Labor deserves no credit at all for Federal funding flowing from this bill. It is Canberra's doing, without a cent being contributed by New South Wales Labor. Mr Adrian Piccoli, the shadow Minister for Education and Training, has been passionately engaged with this legislation and has supported education in New South Wales. He commented today:

Nathan Rees needs to guarantee the people of NSW that not only will there be no "league tables" but he won't use this money to cut his own expenditure on our kids' education.

Parents in New South Wales should have the right to detailed information about their child's performance, and indeed their child's school but that information should be used to improve performance, to effectively provide additional resources where they are needed. Teachers need information in order to produce better outcomes for their students, to assess learning outcomes and to teach accordingly.

The Liberal-Nationals Coalition supports this legislation to allow the funding of education in New South Wales and to make sure that the funding is not jeopardised. However, we will be watching this Government and this Minister and we will make sure she is true to her word and that negative outcomes do not flow with the information that is transferred to the Federal Government.

Reverend the Hon. FRED NILE [8.11 p.m.]: The Christian Democratic Party supports the Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill 2009. This bill will permit New South Wales school results from the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy, known at NAPLAN, to be provided to the Commonwealth for public reporting in accordance with national agreements. The Commonwealth has made this reporting a condition of receipt of Commonwealth schools funding worth $4.8 billion during the next four years. There was doubt whether the State Government would cooperate with the Commonwealth, and negotiations have been delayed that put at risk that very large funding for New South Wales. Thankfully, that funding will be freed up to flow to New South Wales schools and students with the passage of this legislation.

I congratulate the Commonwealth Government on its strong stand. The Christian Democratic Party has been lobbied very strongly by the Teachers Federation, independent education groups and parents and citizens associations who strongly oppose the publication of results from tests and any comparisons between various schools. Obviously the Federal Labor Government has also been strongly lobbied but has kept its nerve and put a condition on the funding, for which I congratulate it. I do not know why repeatedly in this House there is an almost irrational response to the publication of school results. The protocol relating to teachers awards in New South Wales prevents the Department of Education and Training from actions that would facilitate such publication. The opposition comes from many quarters but very strongly from teachers. Why are some teacher bodies and unions so strongly opposed to such publication?

In 1997 a comparison was made of Higher School Certificate results, and Mount Druitt High School was at the bottom of the list. We know that the headline in a newspaper, with a photograph of year 12 students from that school, was "Class we failed", which was demoralising. No-one wants to see such a blame-and-shame example. We should be more positive when looking at comparisons between different schools and ask what the results will help us determine. Like schools must be compared with like schools in relation to geography, socioeconomics, and whether students come from a non-English speaking background. For example, the Kings School, with its millions of dollars of resources, must not be compared with a public school in the western suburbs of Sydney. The publication of results can be used in a more positive way for education bodies, governments and others to study the results to determine the problems of particular schools. They can ascertain why schools have problems, whether it is evidence of insufficient resources—for example, insufficient teachers or additional staff—or whether it is because the school is run down and in bad shape.

We know of an almost anti-education environment in small schools with no air conditioning, portable buildings, hot and uncomfortable accommodation that does not provide a positive atmosphere for good education results. The Government can examine a host of factors and deal with them in a positive way so that struggling schools have the necessary resources to achieve greater success for their children. I believe positive results will flow from this legislation. From the time I entered Parliament I supported this in-principle approach, a position which most parents support but is strongly opposed by teachers or teacher unions. I hope this will not be an ideological struggle and that we can work with the Commonwealth and produce good results for the students of New South Wales. The Christian Democratic Party supports the bill.

Dr JOHN KAYE [8.17 p.m.]: The Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill 2009 is dangerous legislation. If this legislation passes in its current form, it will do massive damage not only to public schools but to private schools, not only to schools but to students, not only to students but to parents and communities. The proposed legislation is based on a series of false premises. It is legislation with a devastating outcome. This legislation is entirely unnecessary and has no discernable benefit. It is being driven out of an ideology that runs through the New York school system, imported into Australia by Federal education Minister, Julie Gillard, and blackmailed onto the States through a threat of withholding funding, all for one effect: so that Julie Gillard can launch her Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority website, which will damage schools.

There is no question. This is a gun held at the head of low socioeconomic status schools. The intent of this bill facilitates the handing over of school results to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority website, which was set up by the State and Federal education Ministers for the purposes of having a website that contains each school's results. What will happen is that on a single website there will be so-called rich information, which will contain the context of the school. It will also contain the simplistic information. "Simplistic" is a subset of rich in this case. It will contain school results on the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy. It will contain school results on the Higher School Certificate and school results on the School Certificate. Whenever we say that there are rich results on the website we have to remember also that those rich results can be ignored.

An inevitable consequence of putting all those results in one place is that, for the price of a very simple piece of software, at least one media outlet—if not more—will be able to harvest the raw school data results. It is a simple step from harvesting to setting up a database and creating a simplistic league table. It is a very simple matter to aggregate a weighted sum of the school results and create a ranking number, and from there schools in New South Wales will be listed from top to bottom—from one to about 3,000. There is no way that that can be avoided once those results are put on the website unless we take stern legislative measures. The simplest thing is never to put those results on the website. The more complex thing that I am going to propose if the legislation gets through to the second reading is to introduce bans on simplistic league tables in New South Wales. Remember that this is a listing from top to bottom. Remember what "bottom" means. "Bottom" means that you are the bottom of the list. "Bottom" means that your school has failed and that you are at the school that has failed. That is what this legislation will facilitate.

There is a key simple truth about the website that this legislation creates and that simple truth is that, once the results of schools are on one website, simplistic league tables will follow. The New South Wales education Minister, Verity Firth, and Julia Gillard can hardly talk about this topic without saying how opposed they are to simplistic league tables, but if that is true they are loading the gun. All that is required is for a media organisation to pull the trigger and out the other end comes a simplistic league table. It is one thing to say you are opposed to it, but it is another thing to make sure it does not happen. It is not just that they are not making sure it does not happen—this legislation, and their website, is establishing that it will happen.

They are washing their hands of the consequences. They are saying, "We are against simplistic league tables". That is fine. This is a hand-washing exercise that would shame Pontius Pilate. Nothing in the legislation says that there cannot be simplistic league tables. All the legislation says is that the Government cannot produce those league tables. But behind the legislation lies a collection of data, which inevitably will lead to media outlets stripping out the simplistic part of the data and creating those rankings of league tables. This is not just supposition; it is precisely what happened in the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom started with a set of achievement and attainment tables—all well and good—but within a year the BBC, one of the more reputable media outlets in the United Kingdom, was producing lists of the top 201 schools and, yes, the bottom 201 schools. I ask anybody who is thinking of voting for this legislation to consider what it means to be in the bottom 201 schools—what it means for the students, what it means for the staff, what it means for the parents, what it means for the principal and what it means for the community that supports that school, nurtures that school, depends on that school and loves that school to be told, "Your school is in the bottom 201 schools". There is no difference in substance between the United Kingdom's achievement and attainment tables and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority website being set up by the Rudd Government with the compliance of the Rees Government and with the compliance of this piece of legislation.

Why should we worry about league tables? What is wrong with simplistic league tables? I will give seven good reasons why we should not have them. The first is that it hollows out the curriculum by focusing schools on test results, away from education. Secondly, it damages schools that serve disadvantaged communities. Thirdly, it undermines confidence in schools amongst students, staff and the community. Fourthly, it is inherently unjust and misleading. Having that sort of data in public domain inherently leads to false conclusions about schools. Fifthly, it creates the false impression of accountability. It does not create accountability; it creates the excuse for not having school accountability. Sixthly, it puts pressure on low-performing students to shape up or ship out. In effect, that means to ship out for those students who simply do not have the talent to perform well in tests.

Finally, it is a failure in the United Kingdom and it is a failure in the United States—why on earth are we importing into Australia failed education models? There are successful education models. Countries such as Finland that do brilliantly in education do not go down the route of league tables. In fact, they do not even go down the route of common testing. They go down the route of putting their money, their resources and their focus into education. They do not educate to test; they test to educate. What leagues tables will do is create educating for testing—in fact, teaching for testing.

Let me talk about the hollowing out of the curriculum. The league tables, as I have said before, are based on the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy results, the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate. By allowing schools to be ranked on the basis of their common results in those tests, the tests become extremely high stakes for the schools. The National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy, as we know, was supposed to be a diagnostic tool for individual students. It was never designed to assess schools by aggregating student marks. Once tests become high stakes then inevitably schools seek to not be at the low end of the testing regime and they will teach to the numbers. No longer will schools be about education; they will be about testing results. Rumours are that a number of schools have begun to teach to the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy, spending months before the test teaching to the program. I am very proud to say that the rumours that have reached me are not about public schools but about non-government schools.

The Hon. Robyn Parker quoted former New South Wales Director General of Education Ken Boston. When Dr Boston left New South Wales after a long tenure as director general he went to the United Kingdom and he became the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. In effect, it was his responsibility to create the achievement and attainment tables in the United Kingdom. In his farewell media conference he said that the United Kingdom Government's approach to key stage testing had sucked the oxygen from the classrooms of primary schools, and he continued:

In all but those schools principled enough to resist the pressure upon them, the primary school curriculum has become a dry husk. The teaching program focuses on what is to be tested and on practising for the tests, because the future of the school is dependent upon the result

The necessary enrichment at primary level is impossible so long as the key stage tests continue in their current form and with such high-stakes consequences.

What Dr Boston is telling us—and this is a man whom this Government and its predecessor entrusted with running the New South Wales public education system—is that he spent 10 years in the United Kingdom setting up and running these league tables, data collection and data publication, and he is sounding a firm warning to Australia: "Don't do it, Australia, because if you do you are going to undermine educational outcomes". But it is not just Ken Boston. Professor Gordon Stanley, the former chair of the Board of Studies who has now gone on to be a professor at a well-known international university and is a well-known expert on education, said that national tests in literacy and numeracy should not be used simply to rank schools. The results should be used to rapidly diagnose and remedy any learning problems identified. He continued:

The interesting issue will be how much ranking of schools and how much focus there is on the national tests as an accountability tool. We could well end up with a similar situation to the UK, where you get a whole industry created around improving performance on the tests rather than necessarily improving students' learning skills

Testing is really only valuable in so far as it provides timely feedback that will help teachers working with their students.

In effect, what Professor Stanley is saying is that you may end up teaching for the assessment rather than having an assessment of learning. The reality is that high-stakes testing, as proposed, results in destroying the educational outcome. It is not just how things are taught; it is also what happens between key learning areas. Areas that are not part of the high-stakes testing—arts, physical education, and development of the student—will be undervalued and will wither and perish in our schools. Only those schools that are prepared to buck the system and deal with the humiliation will run the risk of not being part of the race for better common testing results. If we value our curriculum, if we value education, and if we value the outcomes of our schools, we will reject this legislation and the league tables that it creates.

In January 1997, Sydney's Daily Telegraph published a front page with a photo of Mount Druitt High School's Higher School Certificate class from the previous year under the headline "The class we have failed". The school's best Higher School Certificate students scored 44.4 out of 100. Three things happened as a result of that. First, the students sued the Daily Telegraph and won. I do not think you can say we failed those students. All we can say is that those students were wonderful kids who went on to do great things. They learnt how to stick up for themselves and not allow themselves, their school or their community to be bullied by Murdoch's media outlets.

Secondly, we learnt that we need to protect schools that do not do so well in test results. That was enacted through section 18A of the Act and clause 4 of the Education Regulation, both of which moved towards prohibiting the sort of naming and shaming that was created by the league tables in New South Wales. Thirdly, we learnt that testing results are useful only if they add value to education. They are of no value in assessing schools as a whole. For 12 years the State of New South Wales has worked hard to avoid humiliating schools because we know that humiliation does not help. When a school is down and gets poor results the last thing we want to do is publicly humiliate them. Those schools need help in the form of resources, teachers and more money. They need new teachers to help them break the bad cycles, but they do not need humiliation because it does not help.

We also learnt that humiliation is usually not justified. Schools do wonderful things. Sometimes the things that schools do that are so valuable do not show up in the common test results. That is not relevant here because life is not about Higher School Certificate scores or National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy scores. Life is about education and transforming students and young people into good citizens, into whole people who value themselves and their friends, colleagues and community. All schools work hard to achieve that. Some do better than others. Some start further up the curve than others. The reality is that humiliating schools because their students do not do well in the Higher School Certificate or the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy is no excuse for not helping those schools. It is no measure of how those schools are really performing.

If there really is a problem and a school is failing, why would we humiliate that school? Why do we not do what we ought to do, which is put resources into that school and give it more teachers, smaller class sizes and new programs? The evidence is very clear. The nation's education Ministers made it very clear what was going on, as the Opposition spokesperson said earlier. I refer to the July 2008 "Principles and Protocols for the Collection and National Reporting of MCEETYA Key Performance Measures for Schooling in Australia". MCEETYA is the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. It is the nation's peak council of Ministers who are responsible for education. In July 2008 education Ministers from around the nation were referring to "The avoidance of harm to members of the community. This could occur where the privacy of individuals would be compromised or where the reputation of an institution or group of people would be damaged through the publication of misleading information or stereotyping."

A core "do no harm" principle was sewn into the data protocols for the collection and national reporting of key performance measures for schools. Fast forward just one year to June 2009 and we get this document, "Principles and protocols for reporting on schooling in Australia". This is the running document for the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. A number of us have been through this document with a fine toothcomb and there is nothing in here that talks about "do no harm". It says reporting should be in the public interest and reporting on the outcomes of schooling should use data that is valid, reliable and contextualised, and many things like that, but nowhere is there any mention of "do no harm". The closest we get to it, which I will come back to later, is the third dot point under "Responsible use of data measuring in Australian schools". It says, "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."

The omission is an admission. The omission of a "do no harm" principle is an admission that what the nation's education Ministers have in mind here will do harm to some schools. Furthermore, it talks about putting in place strategies to manage the risk, not to stop it happening. That is the best they can come up with. They are admitting that there is a risk that third parties may seek to produce such tables or rankings. By their omission they have admitted that harm will be done to some schools. It is very clear which schools they are and what damage will be done.

The third reason for opposing this legislation is that it will undermine confidence in schools. Suppose your school comes out at the 50 percentile in a league table published in one of the major daily newspapers in New South Wales. What does that tell you? It says that your school is just average. The message that you receive from reading the newspaper is that your school is just average. All members in this Chamber know that no school is just average. Every school does extraordinary things. Every school is responsible for making citizens, for making whole human beings, and that is an extraordinary transformation. If we tell children that they go to an average school—or, worse still, tell children that their school is in the bottom 10 percentile—how can we expect students to have pride and engagement in their school when they are told that 90 per cent of schools are better than theirs. "You are going to a loser school." That is the message that the simplistic league tables developed from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority website will send to students around New South Wales.

Why is it that we are about to embark on a process that tells students that their schools are failing when they are clearly not failing? Why is it we are telling communities that their schools are failing when they are not? Why are we telling teachers that their schools are failing when they are not? The fourth reason for opposing this legislation—

The Hon. Catherine Cusack: Did you say there are seven reasons?

Dr JOHN KAYE: Yes, but more are coming to me as I speak. The fourth reason is that the league tables are unjust and misleading. Once the league table is set up, the context and like-school comparisons and all the nice words will be forgotten. All that will be hacked out of this website will be the data itself, leaving the simplistic rankings that do not do justice to schools and do not give adequate weight to the work that schools do. It feeds preconceptions and it is based on data that should never have been used to rank schools. The National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy test was designed to diagnose learning problems and learning achievements in students. It was never designed for the task to which the nation's education Ministers are confining it. The Parliamentary Secretary will say that the Greens are blaming Verity Firth for something she is not doing; we are blaming her for the league tables.

[Interruption]

No doubt the Parliamentary Secretary will say that but once this Parliament approves that data being put in place we have to take responsibility for it. These league tables will give a false impression of accountability. The numbers alone do not tell the story. Dollars are what are really needed. We will be taking away the real accountability, which should be to members of Parliament, the Government and the Minister for Education and Training.

The pressure on low-performing students would be inexorable. We have seen this in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America, where pressure was placed on schools to ease out those students who brought down school test results. Public education in Australia welcomes all students, regardless of their talents, abilities or interests. It values every student equally because it believes that every student is a young person who deserves the best go in life, and his or her inherent humanity is important to public education. We are placing pressure on schools to disregard their values and to focus purely on creating numbers outcomes.

Finally, the international experience shows strongly that we should not do this. It failed in the United Kingdom and in the United States, and it has caused appalling outcomes in the New York school district under the chancellorship of Joel Klein, who is so loved and supported by the Federal Minister for Education. All that it does is damage schools when they are down. Countries that do not do this perform perfectly well, or even better, in education. I have spoken before in this House about the success of Finland, which does not engage in the foolishness of league tables. Let me refer briefly to why that is happening and let me refer also to the justifications put forward by both the State and Federal Ministers.

The first justification relates to transparency and accountability. New South Wales already has annual school reports. The New South Wales Government should be aware of that as it passes legislation to create annual school reports. Most of those school reports are on websites—and if they are not, they should be. These annual school reports contain test results, like school comparisons—although the like school comparisons could be improved—and context. However, the big difference is that they are not on one website; they are on 3,000 websites around New South Wales. There is no invitation to harvest that data or to create simplistic league tables. But there is accountability to the community, accountability to parents, accountability to prospective parents, and accountability to politicians and bureaucrats.

If members wanted to find out what was happening in Sydney Girls High School or in Leeton High School, all they would have to do was go to their websites and have a good read. School websites make good and exciting reading because that is where schools have an opportunity to tell parents, the community and politicians what they really do. School websites do not contain only test results; they contain all the brilliant things that are done in art and drama, the fabulous things that are done in personal development, the amazing things that are done in sport, and the unbelievable things that are done for children with special needs—things that do not show up on the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy [NAPLAN] and things that are ignored on the website of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA].

The second reason that this has been touted as a good idea, in particular, by the Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, is that we need it to help struggling schools. I am dumbfounded for an analogy. This is a spectacular leap of logic. If we need to help schools that are struggling let us help them. There is no reason to put them onto a public website where they are compared against other schools and told publicly that they have problems. They know they have problems and the department and the Minister also know, so why do we not do something about it? Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile said in his contribution that we need to put them onto a public website.

Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile: I understand the logic.

Dr JOHN KAYE: It does not surprise me at all that Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile understands Julia Gillard's logic. It says a lot about the logic of Julia Gillard that it fits in neatly with the logic of Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile. Putting these schools onto a website will not help them. It will not help to identify those schools that have problems. Teachers, parents and the department know when a school has problems. The third reason that we have been given relates to money. We have been told variously that between $4.7 billion or $700 million—depending on those to whom we speak—will be cut out of education revolution funds if we do not pass this bill. Let us analyse that statement carefully. When did State governments start folding in to blackmail? At what point did State governments suddenly say to the Federal Government, "We will do whatever you want whether or not we like it. We will do it because if we do not you will take away our funds"?

The Hon. Don Harwin: There was a constitutional convention in the 1890s.

Dr JOHN KAYE: There are two key issues in this debate. Mr Don Harwin referred to a constitutional convention in the 1890s. Let us talk about former Treasurer Michael Costa. Michael Costa did not like the way in which New South Wales was being treated with respect to infrastructure funds for the Building the Education Revolution and the Digital Education Revolution. Michael Costa told the Federal Government, "Shove it; we will not play your game." Guess what happened? The Federal Government folded in and gave New South Wales the money. It did that for a really straightforward reason: New South Wales comprises one-third of the population of the nation. New South Wales has—

Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile: The Coalition Government was weak.

Dr JOHN KAYE: Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile said that the Coalition was weak. Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile is wrong. When that happened a Coalition government was not in power; we had a Labor Government in New South Wales versus a Labor Government federally. Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile is misleading the House. Let me return to the point that I was making. That happened because New South Wales comprises one-third of the population of the nation and New South Wales has more than one-third of the Federal marginal seats. I very much doubt whether a Federal Government would seriously withhold $4.2 billion from public education in New South Wales when it is only a year or so out from an election. In reality, no Federal government would do that. That is posturing; it is a game of poker. State governments play that game of poker exceptionally poorly.

It is time for State governments not to give in to bullying from the Federal Minister for Education and to stand up and say, "No, we will not play your silly game." It is not just the Greens who are saying that this is a bad idea; it is also the Teachers Federation, the New South Wales Federation of Parents and Citizens, the Primary Principals Council, the Secondary Principals Council, the Public School Principals Forum, the Independent Education Union, and the principals representative from the Independent Education Union. But they are just markers for the 60,000 public schoolteachers and the 20,000 private schoolteachers, the 2,200 public school principals and the 800 private school principals, the two million parents and the 2½ million students around New South Wales who are saying with one voice, "We do not want simplistic league tables. We do not need the ACARA website. We do not need this legislation to go through."

Those who vote for this legislation are doing so against what every education expert is saying. They are doing so against what the students, the parents, the teachers and the community are saying to them, and they are doing so against the best interests of the students. They are doing so based on fuzzy logic and misrepresentation of international experience. They are washing their hands of the appalling consequences for low socioeconomic status [SES] schools, and they are washing their hands of the consequences for educational outcomes. I urge all members to reject this legislation.

Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES [8.57 p.m.]: It is with some diffidence that I speak in debate on the Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill 2009 after Dr John Kaye, who is passionate about this issue. The object of the bill is to amend the Education Act 1990 and to amend provisions that are currently contained in the regulations under that Act relating to the prohibition on the public release of school results, including results of national basic skills testing and the School Certificate and Higher School Certificate examinations that disclose the results of particular students or rank particular schools. The amendments will authorise the State to provide school results to the Commonwealth or an authority established by the Commonwealth in accordance with any national agreement to which New South Wales is a party, and for the publication of results relating to particular schools in accordance with any such agreement.

The Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill will implement the agreements reached by the Council of Australian Governments in 2008 and by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. All State and Territory governments and the Commonwealth have agreed that, for the first time, in 2009 there will be national uniform reporting of the results of individual schools. Since 1997 all public schools in New South Wales have been required publicly to report on their performance and to publish information about their performance in externally conducted tests, such as the basic skills tests in literacy and numeracy in primary schools, the English language and literacy assessment test [ELLA] and the Secondary Numeracy Assessment Program [SNAP] in junior secondary. There is also the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate in senior secondary schools.

Since 2008 the Basic Skills Test, the English Language and Literacy Assessment test and the Secondary Numeracy Assessment Program have been replaced by an equivalent test under the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy [NAPLAN]. In 2007 every school annual report was required to include the school's performances with optional reporting against the State average. I checked a number of schools via their websites and established that most schools found a great deal to comfort them; they were proud of their standing and the way their students and teachers had performed. More than 60 per cent of schools report their test results against a group of schools with similar background characteristics, and hundreds of schools proudly publish their reports on their website. I think what they do willingly is altogether different to what may be done by other people with schools that are unwilling partners.

We are at a critical time in Australian education. Educators, students, parents and policymakers all agree that schools should be accountable, that students should have access to the best possible education and that reporting should be subject to greater transparency. The Federal Government was elected on a platform of promising an education revolution. I support the Rudd Government's commitment to delivering first-class education to all Australian children and to enhancing accountability and transparency in our schools, but I cannot support the creation and publication of simplistic league tables, as they have come to be known. Australia, in particular New South Wales, has the chance to maintain our first-class education among OECD countries, or we can follow the United States and United Kingdom models of publishing league tables, as outlined in detail by Dr Kaye.

My first concern relates to the potential misuse of this data by third parties, particularly by the media and other commentators, who may be tempted to misleading conclusions and build fictitious league tables that unfairly denigrate the performance and operation of particular schools and the work of their teaching and leadership teams. I took the opportunity today to indicate to one of the advisers to the Minister for Education and Training how, if I were a journalist, I could compare schools and publish the results. The adviser indicated that it is possible using the plan I outlined to publish such fictitious league tables. This was clearly evident in the Hobart Mercury of 6 May and the Brisbane Courier Mail of 23 May. While the Mercury issued some cautions, nothing alerted the reader to the errors and false assumptions underlying the printed rankings—for example, the averaging approach the paper took to squeeze the district central schools into the list. The Hobart Mercury scored three Hobart high schools exactly the same, yet ranked them differently.

Professor Gordon Stanley, former head of the New South Wales Board of Studies and an educator of outstanding note, said that in the United States data had been manipulated enormously since schools were asked to publish adequate yearly progress. The possible misuse of the data is detrimental in protecting the privacy of individuals and preventing damage to the reputation of an institution or group of people. The publication of league tables creates an environment of winners and losers, which brings me to my second concern. Competition and choice between schools exacerbates achievement gaps between the rich and the poor and along racial, religious and ethnic divides. All they will do is give us a socioeconomic map of a city like Sydney. International studies show that students from schools of low socioeconomic backgrounds fare worse when there is high social segregation.

When published school results appear, competition between schools heightens and markets rise. Winning schools can then choose which students they will have; losing schools have few means to lift themselves out of the mire. Simple comparisons based on results such as National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy tests affect staff morale, teaching and learning. Rankings like these do not assist students, teachers, parents or schools. My third concern relates to the fact that league tables are based only on test results from a narrow part of the curriculum, such as English and mathematics. Simplistic league tables overlook achievements in the arts, music, science, humanities and social sciences. Hence, we will have an education system that does not foster creativity or critical analysis. We will simply have an educational system that encourages teaching for the test. All my life I have been a strong believer in and committed to what is called a liberal arts curriculum—broad-based education designed to equip a person for a living, not just for a job.

Dr Ken Boston, former Chief Executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in the United Kingdom and former outstanding New South Wales Director General of the Department of Education and Training, found that many young people are poorly equipped for employment, and that these young people generally have good General Certificate of Secondary Education [GCSE] results and come from schools at or near the top of the United Kingdom league tables. Speaking in the United Kingdom Dr Boston stated:

Employers find that, despite their formal qualifications, many young people are unable to communicate simply and well; they cannot work in teams; they lack initiative, enterprise and the capacity to foresee and resolve problems; and they lack a thirst for continued learning and personal growth. They are deficient in the soft skills that form an essential component of each individual's human capital, some of them to the extent that they are in fact unemployable. This situation is not a figment of employers' imagination. It is real and it is a crisis.

Dr Boston criticised the United Kingdom Government's approach to key stage tests, which, as mentioned by two previous members, "sucked the oxygen from the classrooms of primary schools". I ask members in this House: Do we really want New South Wales classrooms to just focus on learning simply for the tests or do we want classrooms that produce creativity, innovation, enterprise and communication? The damage to curriculum provision, students and entire school communities resulting from league tables is well documented in international research and evidence. In the interests of time I will not refer to all the negative experiences in the United States and the United Kingdom. Dr Kaye and other members have outlined those negative experiences. League tables are overtly simplistic and potentially damaging to many schools.

I am amazed at the breadth of opposition in the education community to league tables. As mentioned by other members, they include the Federation of Parents and Citizens Association of New South Wales; the New South Wales Primary Principals' Association Inc.; the Public Schools Principals Forum; the New South Wales Secondary Principals' Council; the New South Wales Teachers Federation; the Australian Education Union; the Australian Secondary Principals Association Inc.; Art Education Australia; the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia; the Australian Association of Christian Schools—Christian schools in Australia oppose this and expect members in this House to support them in this process; the Association of Women Educators; the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers; the Australian Association for the Teaching of English Inc—

Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile: It is not on my conscience at all.

Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES: No, it is not on your conscience because the Bible tells us that a conscience can be seared. That is what happens when sometimes you get carried away with other objectives. Other educational organisations opposed to league tables include the Australian Council for Education Leaders, the Australian Literacy Educators' Association, the Australian School Library Association, the Australian Science Teachers Association, the Australian Society for Music Education, Business Educators of Australasia Inc, Catholic Secondary Principals Australia and the Independent Education Union of Australia. Could there be any other organised educational gathering or group of people who actually support league tables? I think not.

In conclusion, I support parents and children having choice when selecting schools and in the scrutiny of information about school results. However, I believe league tables are the wrong way to inform students, parents, educators and policymakers. If we go down the path of publishing school league tables, willingly or unwillingly, we should do the same for medical practitioners. Should we not do the same for law firms? I have even considered league tables for members of Parliament. For example, what kind of league tables could be drawn up for members of Parliament? Would all those who expend their logistic support allocation accurately and effectively, and not overspend it—as Stuart Lowe makes sure we do not—get high marks? Would members who talk the most, even if they say little and do not add to the common good, get high marks? Would those who spend the most hours in Parliament House but little time in their electorates get high marks? Are good marks given to those who spend their electorate allowance in the Parliament House wine cellar? It is fitting that I conclude with a quote from Ken Boston in a United Kingdom Times article, in which he stated:

You fatten a steer by providing a full and nutritious diet not by constantly weighing it.

This bill does not have the paramount interests of students, parents or educators in mind. We must not denigrate the lower-scoring schools; we must support and encourage them. Because of the arguments I have outlined, I cannot, in good faith, support this bill.

Ms LEE RHIANNON [9.00 p.m.]: The Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill 2009 is loser legislation and we need to turn the tables on it. It is dangerous legislation, as my colleague John Kaye has succinctly set out. The role of the Minister for Education and Training, Ms Firth, is of great concern. Certainly other factors are at play here, but she must remember that this legislation will dog her career; this will frame her work for years, and decades, to come. That is how serious the impact will be on public education, and indeed the education of all young people.

The Minister has tried to duck and weave; she has used various word formulations to try to make out that the bill is not what it appears. These are just machinations. The real intent is serious and she will be ashamed of the legacy of this bill—if she is not already. The legislation sickens me. It is vital to have an education system that allows all young people to gain an education without being labelled winners or losers. When considering this legislation, I thought of the public schools that I attended: Newtown, Kangaroo Valley, Nowra, Bronte and Sydney Girls High. My children also benefited from a public school education. People know the dangers associated with ranking any public school, and they know that this policy is a setback.

It is hard to comprehend that any government, let alone a Labor Government, would push this bill forward with such zeal. League tables are not just an attack on education; they actually damage the very fabric of our society by creating divisions. They pit students against students, and teachers against teachers. There is always a bit of cynicism about the way in which schools in other areas work. That is part of the competitive spirit and how life plays out, but good teachers can play it down. However, when that is the framework and everything fits into that competitive model—with schools ranked from "A" to "F", for fail—it is unacceptable.

It is worth noting the tactics of the Federal and State education Ministers, Ms Gillard and Ms Firth. They must know where the system is leading. They have tried desperately to make out that they have good intentions of improving the education system. It is worth examining Ms Gillard's language. She said that she is out there "to identify the most disadvantaged", that "no-one will be left behind", and the aim is "to compare similar schools to identify those in need of further assistance". At all times she makes out that this is about improving the system when in fact it is the very opposite. The other justification is that there will be "a new era of transparency". It will not be transparency; it is a simplification of the whole notion of education to the point where the divide in our society will be so damaged that it will be hard to repair.

Ms Gillard often talks about the New York experience. Those who back the New York system say in its favour that only 50 of the 1,400 schools in New York were actually rated an "F". In the education system one immediately thinks of "F" for failure; one cannot get away from that. It may be only 50 out of 1,400, but 50 schools still received an "F" rating, and those schools are immediately stigmatised. When Ms Gillard and Ms Firth argue the case, they again speak about wanting to lift student performance and address underachievement. We all seek to do that but this system will not achieve that aim. Those phrases are deceptive about the real outcome.

Although I am concerned about the role of the New South Wales Minister of Education and Training, it is the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who are the flag bearers of the league table push. It is insidious because once that information is on the Internet, as my colleague John Kaye so clearly stated, programs can be used to take that information off the Internet and it can be printed. Schools will be tagged as losers for time immemorial. As to the concept about sharing good experiences and ensuring achievement across the board, teachers already share good teaching practice between schools. That is done regularly. We do not need a ranking system to achieve that goal. I have read speeches from earlier debates on this issue and note former Premier Morris Iemma said that comparing schools in different parts of the State could be quite problematic. I do not think he changed his position. Widespread criticism by many respected educators has been detailed, particularly by Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes. I want to add one more voice to those who have given an important critique of this very dangerous legislation. Dean of the University of Melbourne, Professor Brian Caldwell, accused the Federal Government of being hell-bent on creating league tables comparing schools and urged parents to boycott national tests so that the results cannot be used to shame underperformers. I have read about other people who have studied how these league tables play out, and they agree with his view. Professor Caldwell said:

Teachers often spend more time preparing students for the exams at the expense of the wider curriculum.

They do so purely because they are under so much pressure to come up with good results and because their professional standing depends on it. I am not critical of teachers who do that. The system pushes them into it. What happens to schools that are pushed into this system and those at the bottom of the table? Many schools will be held up to ridicule. Dr Kaye reminded us of the disgraceful front page of the Daily Telegraph in 1997, when young people in their final year of school were held up to ridicule. I imagine parents would withdraw their children from schools at the bottom of the table.

The Hon. Robyn Parker: They can't because of zoning requirements sometimes.

Ms LEE RHIANNON: I acknowledge the interjection. I remember when my children were young how parents felt pressured as to whether they had their children in the right school and whether they should withdraw them. I believe there would be similar pressure under this proposal, and that parents and citizens associations of schools at the bottom of the table would struggle. Why would parents be inspired to work hard for that school? There is also the victimisation of, and difficulties faced by, teachers at a loser school. It is also documented that schools at the higher end of the table will be under pressure to poach better, well-performing students so they can maintain their ranking. Generally, we would see increasing inequality. It would be deeply disturbing and would have wide ramifications through our society.

The voices of opposition to the legislation are extensive. A letter has been signed by 15 groups, including teachers unions and principals associations, as well as independent and Catholic schools. Dr Moyes provided the details of those letters very well, but I will add just one sentence. A letter to the Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, states, "We write to strongly urge you to take legislative action prohibiting the creation and publication of league tables." It cannot be put more simply than that. Government leaders say that their role is to respond to the community and they travel throughout the State to hold community Cabinets, yet in this instance they have clear indication and direction, which is being ignored.

The President of the Australian Secondary Principals Association, Andrew Blair, stated that league tables would lead to a "narrowing" of curriculums as schools focus on teaching the content of standardised tests. I made that point earlier, and it highlights one detrimental way in which the legislation may play out. We will have a return to that narrow 1950s focus on education and lose the benefits that so many educational professionals and teachers have brought to our education system in recent decades. It is worth noting that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, have taken great trouble to present their scheme as being much softer and not problematic at all. They have argued that simplistic league tables will not be introduced in Australia. However, their attempts to justify the scheme that they are pushing onto the States have been blown out of the water by what happened in Tasmania.

I must repeat this example because it is so serious. It is a reminder of what will happen when this information is circulated in the community. Let us remember that last October the Tasmanian Premier, David Bartlett, justified his Government's decision to collect this information by saying it "is not about ranking schools or creating league tables." Yet, precisely six months later his assurance meant nothing. The Hobart Mercury published a league table because the newspaper was able to suck out the information and provide a ranking of schools from top to bottom. That alone should have been enough for the New South Wales Minister for Education and Training to say in her party room, "We're not going to do this. This is too dangerous and too destructive of our education system. We're just not going to touch it." Sadly, she did not do that, and we are now debating this legislation that simply goes too far.

It is worth reminding ourselves how far reaching the implications of league tables can be. They can impact upon everything from school funding to teachers' pay. The viability of individual schools will be determined by the basis of so-called student outcomes. The Government is pushing ahead with this legislation because it is tied up with the Federal Government's funding model, and that is dangerous at every turn. I will give the last word to Queensland teachers because this legislation largely deals with the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy, or NAPLAN, testing. Queensland teachers have coined the term "napalm" to describe Labor's new testing regime. They claim that its focus on test results to the exclusion of other aspects of the curriculum kills learning like napalm kills trees. It bombs the whole premise upon which public education has developed and all other aspects of education in this country. This legislation is a disaster. It is a disgrace. If it is passed, it will dog the New South Wales Minister of Education and Training throughout her career.

The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN [9.14 p.m.]: Everybody brings a different perspective to this type of debate. Although I did not intend to comment on the Education Amendment (Publication of School Results) Bill 2009, I will impart my perspective. When I was in the Army and we had to move every two years, my three daughters went to a Catholic school. Increasingly families have to move from location to location, so children have to change schools frequently. My girls went to Catholic schools because I thought that at least Catholic schools would provide some type of standardisation of education throughout Australia. At one stage they were attending a Catholic school at Penrith but because of my posting to the city we had to move to the eastern suburbs. My three daughters had to drop back a full year because their old school was a year behind the public school curriculum. I questioned that and I was told that there was no standardisation mechanism. Nevertheless, they were a year behind.

In those days I did not know enough about the education system to speak to someone about it, but as a parent I would have loved to have had a system that enabled me to look at the schools and find where I could best place my daughters. We know that parents are prepared to sacrifice almost everything for their children's education. We certainly were; we went without a lot to get it, and I think that is a fairly common point of view. I think parents should have the opportunity to obtain as much information as possible to enable them to make proper decisions in regard to the education of their children. I felt that the education system failed us. It took a long time to recover from that. I do not think that information on schools should be denied to parents who are trying to do the right thing for their children.

The Hon. PENNY SHARPE (Parliamentary Secretary) [9.16 p.m.], in reply: The capacity to report on the results achieved by schools in the New South Wales education system has been the subject of a regulation since 1997 that prevents the publication of school test results in a manner that ranks or otherwise compares the results of individual schools. It also protects the publication of information that reveals the results of particular students without their consent. The New South Wales Labor Government introduced these limitations on the publication of data to protect school communities from simplistic league tables.

As my colleague the Minister of Education and Training stated in the other place, we are unequivocally opposed to measures that rank schools in that way. Despite some of the debate tonight, there appears to be furious agreement in the House on this issue. What the Commonwealth will be doing is providing parents, systems and schools with a rich array of data that enables informed decision-making. The provision of that information to parents is crucial. New South Wales already provides substantial information to parents, and has done so for a decade. The new Commonwealth requirements recognise that Australia is a country of 20 million people and that a national approach to the provision of information is long overdue.

This legislation retains our opposition to league tables while maintaining support for the Commonwealth's position on the appropriate publication of data. Despite the endless protestations of Opposition members—on a bill that they have agreed nevertheless to support—New South Wales will be the only State out of all the State and Territory governments that retains its opposition to league tables in legislation. It is the Opposition that is opportunistic and hypocritical in relation to this matter. For 10 years their colleagues at the Federal level introduced pointless reforms, insisting on flagpoles and posters. There was no policy on school improvement from the Howard Government—just self-serving culture wars and continued attacks on public education. New South Wales complied with the then Commonwealth demands because they were preconditions for funding. And what was the response of the New South Wales Opposition to a decade of attacks, underfunding and silly games? It was dead silence and a refusal to engage in intelligent debate but, more importantly, a failure to defend New South Wales schools in general, and public schools in particular.

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Catherine Cusack will cease interjecting.

The Hon. PENNY SHARPE: Now that the Rudd Government has provided significant funding attached to real reform, the Opposition has begun to take notice of Commonwealth education policies for the first time in a decade. Those opposite have finally woken up. Beneath the Opposition's confected outrage lies a deep lack of faith in the performance of public schools. Their words are defensive and their tone is offensive. Every parent has the right to expect that a school will provide the best possible education for their child.

The PRESIDENT: Order! I call the Hon. Catherine Cusack to order for the first time.

The Hon. Don Harwin: Point of order: My point of order, without acknowledging the interjection, is nevertheless the same as the Hon. Catherine Cusack shouted out, which is that the Parliamentary Secretary is introducing material that is totally outside the ambit of the matters referred to in the second reading debate. The Parliamentary Secretary claims that she is replying to the Hon. Robyn Parker, but no such material was raised by the Hon. Robyn Parker. The Parliamentary Secretary is referring to matters that are completely outside the ambit of a speech in reply. I therefore ask you to call her to order.

The PRESIDENT: Order! By definition, and in accordance with tradition, in a House of review the second reading debate may be wide ranging. In this debate members have referred extensively to the bill before the Chair, to previous governments and even to members in the other place. As the contributions of members to second reading debates may be wide ranging, equally any reply, in this case by the Parliamentary Secretary, to those contributions may also wide ranging. The Parliamentary Secretary may continue.

The Hon. PENNY SHARPE: As I said, every parent has the right to expect that a school will provide the best possible education for their child. And that ability is evenly distributed across postcodes. Context is important but should never be an excuse. The provision of Commonwealth data will assist schools, parents, systems and governments to allocate funding, make choices, and identify what works and, more importantly, what does not work. I also address the issue of "like school groups" and the Commonwealth protocols. Like schools groups will allow appropriate comparisons between schools serving similar populations in similar communities. Not all communities are the same, but some schools serving similar communities perform better than others. We need to know that, and we need to know why. And members of the public who send their children to these schools also deserve these answers.

The Commonwealth publication of school information will not rank schools on a singe measure. Like school groups are designed to prevent this from occurring. They will allow meaningful comparisons. The Commonwealth protocols are an important additional safeguard. The alternative is for communities, parents and systems to have less information than bureaucrats and Ministers. Parents make decisions about schooling every year. They make decisions on the basis of available information. The bill will assist in this process. It is the height of hypocrisy for the Opposition to come into this place and lecture the Government about league tables and the unfair comparisons of schools. The Department of Education and Training recently received a freedom of information application from the Leader of the Opposition. The freedom of information application seeks, for every secondary school, the number of Higher School Certificate awards and the number of students with a university entrance rank above the median. This beggars belief. In other words, the application seeks exactly the same information that would be used to construct a simplistic ranking of schools—a league table. The Opposition wants to have access to this information for political purposes, but it does not think the public should have access to it.

The school reports that will be published by the Commonwealth will contain contextual information so that the public can make sense of the test results that accompany it. For the Opposition to suggest that parents and school communities could not understand that, frankly, is offensive. The Commonwealth's reports will make sure that comparisons of schools are fair and constructive. The Leader of the Opposition simply wants to be able to rank schools for political purposes. This bill allows New South Wales to provide data to the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth to use it in accordance with national agreements and protocols. It therefore guarantees important funding to New South Wales education. It moves the relevant existing regulation into the Education Act and clearly signals the Government's opposition to simplistic league tables. It demonstrates a balance between transparency and responsibility, and it continues the high standard of education policy produced by this Government over the last decade.

As the Minister for Education and Training stated in her second reading speech, all State and Territory governments and the Commonwealth have agreed that, for the first time, in 2009 there will be nationally uniform reporting about the results of individual schools. The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs endorsed the principle that:

The provision of school information to the community should be done in such a way as to enhance community engagement and understanding of the educational enterprise.

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 to by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs meeting 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.

The bill gets the balance right. It builds on the record of increasing transparency about school performance, a record that New South Wales is proud of. Parents in New South Wales should have the right to detailed information about the performance of their child's school, information that presents a fair comparison of their school's performance against other similar schools. It is vital for the education of children across New South Wales that the bill is passed urgently by this Parliament. Tied to this national agreement is $4.8 billion in funding over the next four years. That is around $1.2 billion per annum, or roughly 20 per cent of the annual cost of employing public school teachers and other school staff. But this bill is not only about funding. It is also about transparency and a parent's right to know. All parents and communities should be able to use the richest array of information when looking at schools for their children. Once again I place on record the Government's opposition to league tables. I commend the bill to the House.

Question—That this bill be now read a second time—put.

The House divided.
Question resolved in the affirmative.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Dr JOHN KAYE [9.34 p.m.]: I move:

Page 3, schedule 1 [1], proposed section 18A. Insert after line 26:

(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).

This amendment calls the bluff of State and Federal education Ministers, who say that they are opposed to simplistic league tables. In their protocol they state that governments will not publish simplistic league tables or rankings and, more importantly, they will put in place strategies to manage the risk that third parties may seek to produce such tables or rankings. This amendment does exactly that: it puts in place a strategy to manage the risk that third parties may seek to produce simplistic league tables or rankings. The amendment will prohibit the publication of simplistic league tables in New South Wales by stopping people from publishing rankings in newspapers and other documents or comparing schools unless the principals of those schools agree, or publish in newspapers and other documents the percentile of a particular school when that percentile is below 90 per cent, again unless the principal agrees, and it imposes a substantial penalty on individuals and organisations that seek to do so.

This legislation is significant because it does not stop two things. First, it does not stop State and Federal governments doing the things that are authorised to be done by the relevant national agreement, it does not prohibit the passage of data from the State Government to the Commonwealth Government, and it does not prohibit the Commonwealth Government from publishing that data. Nor does it stop the publication of results in the top 10 percentile. That is simply putting into legislation the current practice of the Board of Studies of allowing results to be released, which facilitates media outlets to rank schools according to the number of students they get in the top 10 percentile and only ranking a small number of those schools.

Secondly, the legislation does not interfere with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority website. In other words, it does not stop the publication of school rankings on that website. Indeed, I doubt whether the legislation will stop the publication of any website because it is State law. As the legislation refers only to newspapers and documents, it will have no impact on websites. I think it would be better if websites could be banned from publishing these results, but that is not within the purview or the power of a State government. The Parliamentary Secretary said the Minister for Education and Training and her Federal colleague have no interest in publishing league tables and that they have protocols in place to stop simplistic league tables from being published. That is good. This amendment seeks to stop third parties—media outlets and others—from publishing simplistic league tables in New South Wales. This is an important, although somewhat limited, protection against the worst aspects of simplistic league tables. It is not perfect because the State does not have the power to stop web pages from displaying school rankings.

The Hon. Penny Sharpe: We are against that anyway.

Dr JOHN KAYE: The Parliamentary Secretary interjects that they are against that anyway.

The Hon. Penny Sharpe: I thought the Greens were against the banning of websites.

Dr JOHN KAYE: This is not about banning websites. As I said, it is about banning the harm done to individual schools. It is important to understand that this amendment will not interfere with the putative $4.8 billion that rests on the passage of this legislation or the national agreement. It specifically facilitates the national agreement. All it does is put into words the protocol that all State, Territory and Federal Ministers published in June 2009; it simply enacts that protocol. The amendment is simple but extremely important. It will stop the naming and shaming of individual schools in newspapers in New South Wales. I commend the amendment to the Committee.

The Hon. PENNY SHARPE (Parliamentary Secretary) [9.40 p.m.]: The Government is of the opinion that the Greens amendment is well intentioned but utterly futile. While the amendment is an attempt to prevent media outlets from harvesting and publishing data and constructing ranked lists of schools, it could also prevent the non-government and Catholic sectors from publishing their own data for their own internal purposes. More importantly, it would not prevent the very thing it intends.

Media outlets in other States not covered by this amendment could still publish New South Wales data or include New South Wales in national schools list on their websites. People in New South Wales who read newspapers on the Internet could simply look at the material on the website of any paper in the country. Moreover, the amendment itself is a virtual challenge to the media to produce information that it believes, however erroneously, is in the public interest. It moves the debate from a discussion of school league tables to a discussion about freedom of the press, the rights of the media to publish information, and the public's right to know.

The protocols devised by the Commonwealth, the States and the Territories, with input from education stakeholders, place a significant onus on the appropriate publication of data and the contexts in which schools operate. This is now a national question and a national debate. My colleague, the New South Wales Minister for Education and Training, has made her position and that of the Government absolutely clear. The Government does not believe in simplistic league tables. They are potentially damaging and can present data in a fashion that allows unreasonable and unfair comparisons between schools, and no-one in this Chamber tonight supports it.

To support this view the legislation before the House moves the current regulation to the Education Act. It is a clear signal of the New South Wales position, and New South Wales remains the only State or Territory to act in such a fashion. It is a decisive and unequivocal step. It signals to any party or media proprietor the position of the New South Wales Government and the position of education stakeholders in New South Wales. My colleague the Minister for Education and Training said in the other place today that she would be the first to condemn in public any attempt to rank schools according to single measures, and that she would publicly condemn any production of league tables. The Greens amendment will not prevent the publication of school league tables. It merely attempts to locate the issue in New South Wales and New South Wales alone. This is now a national debate.

The amendment also fails to define the ranking or comparison of schools in a clear enough fashion. Leaving such phrases for the interpretation of courts is needlessly problematic and potentially leads to tangles of argument and litigation. Education matters are not usefully defined and discussed through the legal system. The potential fines attached to this amendment will have no or little affect on the decisions of newspaper proprietors. In fact, they may provoke a deliberate challenge. This debate is only at its beginning. It is not a debate that should be confined to educators, politicians and public servants.

The Australian community has the most to lose or gain by the data that the Commonwealth will provide. It is the community, ordinary mums and dads and their children, who should be at the centre of this discussion. The Commonwealth, the States and Territories must engage in a prolonged education campaign to explain to the community what the new information means and how it is useful. The New South Wales Government and the New South Wales Department of Education and Training will engage in this dialogue with parents who send their children to schools in New South Wales.

Beginning a war with the Australian media regarding appropriate school information for parents sends entirely the wrong message to those whose children attend schools in New South Wales. It begs questions that will be enthusiastically amplified in the media, such as "What is being hidden? What is it that you do not wish the Australian public to know?" The debate about school league tables must take place in the open. The case against league tables is solid and clear. Debate will occur at every school parents and citizens meeting in the country, and at every meeting between parents, teachers and principals. It will occur in articles in the press and professional journals. It is ludicrous to argue on the one hand that transparency is positive and then on the other hand to fine those who would seek to publish information, no matter our opposition to the simplicity of their use of data.

Opposition to league tables and appropriate levels of transparency will become an important and powerful debate in the next few years. It is an overdue discussion because it goes to the heart of identifying quality and sites of improvement. It means that informed debate will occur around both the purpose and the delivery of schooling. The Greens amendment allows the provision of New South Wales data to the Commonwealth and its use of the data. It avoids putting funding at risk. It must be judged on its merits and it must be opposed because it simply fails to address the issue with which it is concerned.

The Greens amendment will not prevent league tables being published in other States or on overseas sites. It may prevent the dissemination of important school information within systems. It does not adequately define what rankings or comparisons are or what they mean. It potentially brings the legal system unnecessarily into arguments about educational performance. It is provocative to the media and may well cause the problem it is attempting to prevent. It moves an important discussion about school quality away from parents and the community and into the courts and the papers. Instead of creating debate about schools, this amendment creates an argument about freedom of the press and the public's right to know.

The Government believes that there are sufficient safeguards in the legislation and the national protocols. The Government believes that the like school group concept importantly contextualises school information. It opposes the Greens amendment because it weakens the substantive argument against league tables and diverts it into a pointless attack on the media. Most importantly, the Government opposes the Greens amendment because it simply will not work. Legislation that will be ignored is poor legislation. I urge the House to oppose the Greens amendment.

The Hon. ROBYN PARKER [9.44 p.m.]: I again stress that the Opposition opposes the creation of simplistic league tables. The Opposition is concerned about what might happen with the flow of this information to the Federal Government, given that Federal protections are not in place. Protections are still in place in New South Wales but there is no control federally over who might seek information and then use that information to produce simplistic leagues tables. But the Liberal-National Coalition does not want to jeopardise the flow of funding from the Federal Government to education in New South Wales.

In some way the concerns of the Opposition about leagues tables have been addressed by the Greens amendment and I thank Dr John Kaye for his hard work in this regard. The role of the Legislative Council is to improve and strengthen legislation. Dr John Kaye has worked with the Coalition to achieve some outcomes to improve the legislation. The amendment provides more protection but does not go all the way because once the information goes to the Federal Government everything cannot be controlled. However, we can make sure that the situation is strengthened in New South Wales.

Members have heard time and again how the Federal Education Minister has asked the States to put those sorts of protections in place. New South Wales has some protections but there is nothing to stop a media outlet from approaching the Federal Government and seeking the information that appears on the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting website, producing it in a simplistic league table form and then publishing it in New South Wales. The amendment addresses media outlets in terms of print media in New South Wales and puts in place a very clear sanction. It makes sure that simplistic publication will not occur within New South Wales from the information given to the Federal Government.

The amendment does not interfere with the national agreement, and it enacts the protocols that are in place. It does not prevent the flow of information and, importantly, does not put the funding at risk, which is the main concern of the Liberal-National Coalition because the Rees Government and the Department of Education and Training need this funding from the Federal Government. I congratulate Dr John Kaye on working so hard with the Coalition. The Coalition supports the Greens amendment.

Dr JOHN KAYE [9.48 p.m.]: I thank the Opposition for its support for this amendment and I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for her detailed analysis of the Greens amendment. I cannot say I agree with much of what the Parliamentary Secretary said but I do appreciate the effort that went into the analysis. I wish to correct a couple of errors expressed by the Parliamentary Secretary. She began by saying that the amendment would prohibit Catholic and independent schools from being able to have their schools listed or ranked in any way. There are two problems with that statement. Firstly, it relates only to a newspaper or other document publicly available in this State—and "publicly available" has a meaning. Secondly, I draw the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the final words of paragraphs (a) and (b) of proposed subsection 4: " except with the permission of the principals of the schools involved".

Any principal of a Catholic or independent school could give permission for their school to be part of an internal or even an external systemic ranking system if they choose to do so. The Greens encourage them not to do so. We are not taking away the right of any school principal to allow their schools to be ranked in any particular way. The Parliamentary Secretary suggests that this amendment throws out a virtual challenge to the media. I do not think that any law should be perceived as a challenge. Laws are there because they express what society wants. They express a desired collective social outcome, as does this amendment. The collective social outcome has been expressed by the State Minister, the Federal Minister, the ministerial council and the Parliamentary Secretary, so in that sense there is nothing wrong with laws that express the collective desire of society.

The Parliamentary Secretary is correct in saying that there are a number of domains in which this amendment will not work, one of which is interstate and the other is on the Internet. The Greens accept and acknowledge that it is not within the power of the State Government to do that. We have said that this is an imperfect amendment and it would be up to the ministerial council to enact similar legislation in every State and for the Commonwealth to enact legislation to cover the Internet. The Greens will leave this Chamber and start agitating specifically for a national embargo on the publication of simplistic league tables. We will start in New South Wales, which should not ashamed of being the lead State. New South Wales was the lead State against section 18A and the clause 4 education regulation. I make it clear that this amendment simply takes the best parts of existing legislation and regulation and tries to enshrine them in legislation.

I do not think this is war with the Australian media; but if I thought it was, I would be less enthusiastic. The Parliamentary Secretary and the Government underestimate the maturity of the Australian media. This is about showing leadership to the Australian media and the community about what is right and what is wrong. The Parliamentary Secretary, the Opposition, the Greens and Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes have said that simplistic league tables are wrong and we are sending that signal. The Parliamentary Secretary spoke about the protocols, which are fine and wonderful but they refer only to the actions of governments, which I say for the last time. They have no binding influence over the media. We cannot rely on media self-regulation. We saw what happened in January 1997 on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. If we do not have legislation like this in place we will see a return to those days. Getting rid of clause 4 education regulation and existing section 18A of the Act means we will be opening up the floodgates back to the bad old days when individual schools can be named and shamed in newspapers, something which this amendment is designed to stop happening.

I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary that we do need, and will have, a debate but we should not have the debate at the expense of schools that struggle, that have high levels of Aboriginal children or that are serving low socioeconomic status communities. Let us have the debate once we have protected the schools, and talk about where we go forward in terms of school accountability. The Opposition spokesperson has said, the Opposition shadow Minister has said outside this Chamber and I have said before that New South Wales already has a high level of accountability of public and private schools with the school reports. The Government put that scheme in place and it needs to have faith in it. Perhaps it is time for the Rees Government to start talking to schools that do not put their annual reports on their web pages, but we already have accountability and transparency. This amendment is to stop appalling things happening in the false name of transparency and accountability.

Reverend the Hon. FRED NILE [9.54 p.m.]: I ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether the amendment would have any effect on the agreement with the Commonwealth. Does it in any way threaten Commonwealth funding?

The Hon. PENNY SHARPE (Parliamentary Secretary) [9.54 p.m.]: The answer to both questions is no. The issue at stake with this amendment, which the Government agrees is well intentioned, is that it will not work, and that is why the Government opposes it.

Question—That the Greens amendment be agreed to—put.

The Committee divided.

Mr Ajaka Mr Brown Mr Clarke Mr Cohen Ms Cusack Ms Ficarra Mr Gallacher Miss Gardiner

Mr Gay Ms Hale Dr Kaye Mr Khan Mr Lynn Mr Mason-Cox Reverend Dr Moyes Reverend Nile

Ms Parker Mrs Pavey Mr Pearce Ms Rhiannon Mr Smith Tellers, Mr Colless Mr Harwin

Mr Catanzariti Mr Della Bosca Ms Griffin Mr Hatzistergos Mr Kelly Mr Macdonald Mr Obeid

Mr Primrose Mr Robertson Ms Robertson Mr Roozendaal Ms Sharpe Mr Tsang Ms Voltz

Mr West Ms Westwood Tellers, Mr Donnelly Mr Veitch

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Greens amendment agreed to.

Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Title agreed to.

Bill reported from Committee with an amendment.


Motion by the Hon. Penny Sharpe agreed to:Motion by the Hon. Penny Sharpe agreed to:

That the report be adopted.

Report adopted.


Motion by the Hon. Penny Sharpe agreed to:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and returned to the Legislative Assembly with a message requesting its concurrence in the amendment.