Monday 18 June 2012

Principals Association concedes on league tables for schools?

I found it fascinating this morning listening to Principals Association head Patrick Walsh decrying that parents are taking their children out of “lower decile” schools in favour of “higher decile” schools--with the implication being parents if parents are going to act “selfishly” by using the “decile” rankings to avoid doing as they are told by zoning regulations, then the “decile” ranking should be abandoned.

This is the same Principals Association that objects to the “blunt instrument” of league tables being drawn up by the media based on National Standards. Yet Walsh was willing to concede that if parents are going to have the temerity to judge where they send their own children for eight hours a day, the best thing on which to rely is schools’ reviews by the Education Review Office.

So perhaps now he’s given his imprimatur, league tables could be drawn up by the media based on schools’ ERO Reports? Except, of course, that the ERO Reports are full of mush.

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