text: Queensland teachers to meet government today about ban on national school testing | 4ZzZFM NEWS
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  by David Jackmanson | April 19, 2010 · 9:38 am
  Queensland teachers to meet government today about ban on national school testing
  The Queensland Teachers' Union and the Queensland Department of Education and Training are expected to meet today in a compulsory private conference at the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission. The government asked for the conference after the union said it would ban its members from working on national school reading, writing and maths tests. (pdf file)
  Queensland Education Minister Geoff Wilson said on Thursday the national NAPLAN tests must go ahead, and that the government supported unprecedented access to knowledge about school performance.
  Australian Education Union spokesman Mark Robinson said on Friday that more information needed to be provided about test results on the Myschool.edu.au website, including the amount of money schools receive. The AEU's counter-proposals for presenting test result information (pdf file) include showing the full range of test results across each year level, instead of summing up each year level with a single number. Mr Robinson said that league tables prepared using the test results are harmful and damaging to students who are labelled as failures.
  3 responses to "Queensland teachers to meet government today about ban on national school testing"
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  So by the AEU's logic, we should ban Year 12 exams and, indeed, exams of any kind because "the test results are harmful and damaging to students who are labelled as failures"?
  I suspect the AEU's concern here is more about teachers being branded as failures. There's nothing wrong with that. The AEU's job is to protect the interests of teachers. But the line being pushed strikes me as disingenuous.
  Their position is also rather naive. Even if the full data matrix of the NAPLAN results are released, the media will still simplify the story down to a league table. I think the AEU needs to suggest a simple-to-understand media-friendly metric which more accurately reflects the quality of a school's education.