Investigation into moving Year 7 to high school kept secret

DOZENS of documents about the State Government’s investigation on moving Year 7 to high school are being kept secret.

• Preliminary investigations into moving Year 7s to high school
• Should Year 7 be left in primary school

DOZENS of documents about the Education Department’s investigation into moving Year 7 to high school are being kept secret.

And the few that have been released show a “confused” approach from senior bureaucrats, the Opposition says.

Of 93 documents found in a Freedom Of Information search covering the period June 16 to October 1 last year, 87 were withheld from Liberal education spokesman John Gardner.

SA is the only state that has kept Year 7s in public primary schools.

Liberal Party policy is to move them to high schools, while the Government has argued there is no evidence of educational benefit to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Advertiser revealed in December that the Education Department was conducting “preliminary” investigations on the issue.

“Clearly they have been looking at this for eight or nine months now,” Mr Gardner said.

“I think the Government should come clean and release these documents to the public so we can have a good understanding of what is in the best interests of our students.”

The Department said the 87 secret documents were “exempt in full” from release because they were “Cabinet documents relating directly to the drafting process of cabinet notes”.

Mr Gardner said the “odd” collection of six emails that were released showed “the Government’s left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing”, with senior bureaucrats spending time confirming what was already known — that SA was out of step with the rest of the country.

One is from a senior official to another saying: “I looked things up in the internet and noted the following link below that identifies SA is the only state providing Year 7 in primary schools.”

Another says: “Officers in each jurisdiction have confirmed with me that Year 7 is part of secondary school,” noting possible exceptions in remote parts of the Northern Territory.

Former chief education officer Jayne Johnston, who was made redundant late last year, emailed

University of Melbourne expert Prof John Hattie for advice about “impact on (student) achievement”.

“Most of the research we have looked at says ‘inconclusive’. Would welcome a quick ‘off the top of your head’ response,” she wrote.

Ms Johnston also wrote to senior colleagues, including chief executive Rick Persse, saying Western Australia’s rationale for shifting Year 7s in 2015 was “around access to specialist teachers and resources, making no claims of increased performance”.

“They were managing a growth in students numbers in the public system (due to the resources boom) so were needing to build additional classrooms and schools anyway”.

A department spokesman told The Advertiser: “We will continue to evaluate the changes in other states, however current evidence shows that Year 7 can be taught equally well in a primary or secondary setting.”