Christopher Harris: There has been a shift away from transparency in schools

NAPLAN results in which thousands of boys couldn’t meet national minimum standards are what happens when schools lose accountability, writes Christopher Harris.

If you’re reading this, you’re doing better than the thousands of Year 9 boys this year who could not meet the ­National Minimum Standard when it comes to reading.

And the thousands more who also can’t meet the standard when it comes to writing.

Those students are ­probably not in high-fee schools like King’s or Cranbrook. Those schools have parents in well-paid jobs who are invested in their child’s education alongside school governance boards seeking the best outcomes for students. In other words, accountability.

In NSW, there has been a slow shift to remove transparency about what exactly goes on in schools, from how much taxpayer money is doled out, to whether or not students can read and write.

NAPLAN students (L-R) Meron Alkhuiga, 12, Monica Jreige, 10 and Maribelle Moawad, 11. Picture: David Swift

The result? Teachers, principals, bureaucrats and policymakers have been working with little to no public oversight, answerable only to a revolving door of state and federal education ministers.

In March 2020 those ministers agreed to implement a ban on newspapers like this one producing league tables giving parents a clear idea of how their child’s school performed compared to others.

That ban was thanks to the agitation of teacher unions.

The teaching class overwhelmingly comes from comfortable middle-class homes. They claim NAPLAN is a narrow measure of achievement and league tables damage school communities by unnecessarily shaming them. But they have never had to deal with the shame of not being able to read.

That is measured by ­NAPLAN – it remains the best objective measure to call out underperforming schools and force them to do better with their taxpayer money.

And is there a publicly available list of how many millions each school gets?

That is also now a secret, according to ACARA. The reason? It may “cause damage to relations between the commonwealth and a state”.

As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Parents juggling jobs and complicated home environments simply do not have the capacity to hold schools to account. They need the wider public and the media watching.