WHILE the controversial ‘My School’ website has attracted much national media coverage, principals in Young have voiced their concern about the limitations and problems associated with the website.
Hennessy Catholic College principal, Brother Christopher Peel, said he is not opposed to the website. He recognises that as a non-selective school Hennessy’s NAPLAN results for students will display a range of strengths as well as areas that need improvement.
“We are not unhappy with the My School website,” Brother Peel said.
“We are happy with greater transparency.
“We just want to provide the best education we can for our students and particularly have students work on the areas they need to develop further, we have been using such information for some time as a tool to assist our students development.
“However, the site does have minimal information at present.
“It is simply another source of information and I just hope people understand that.
“We were very happy with it because Hennessy fell within the Australian average for most NAPLAN results, and I think it also indicates that not all schools are the same.
“It is a big plus for Hennessy Catholic College because we are the only Catholic high school in this region, and we have only been going for 10 years.
“We are going very well and the My School website confirms what we already knew.
“The site will develop when more information is added and this will improve the value of the site for everyone.
“The My School only highlights certain aspects of education and it only provides limited information because schools provide much more than can be currently found on the My School website,” Brother Peel said.
Young High School principal, Steve Harvey, said he made a statement at the 2009 presentation evening and he still firmly believes his original stance.
“In my address I said that the Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a diagnostic test that shows teachers and parents what the kids can and can’t do,” Mr Harvey said.
“The numbers themselves tell us nothing.
“To get that number from a diagnostic test and say it reflects the school is something I find very difficult.
“Each student’s achievement is about what they want.
“All schools have positive and negative points and I think it is more about how a school operates with a child,” said Mr Harvey.
The report given to parents has been transferred into figures, schools and statistics on the website but Mr Harvey believes most parents would already know this information from the summary of their child’s results given to them at the completion of NAPLAN.
“At Young High we have an open policy for parents and if they want information on their child I am more than happy to show them a more detailed report,” Mr Harvey said.
“The NAPLAN test can give us so much information and the report that is given to parents is three pages long.
“For us it is about individual education.
“It will be very interesting to find out who we are compared to.
“If it is a valid comparison, then yes, it is valuable but if the information is ludicrous then no, it is not valid,” Mr Harvey said.
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