Research by Professor Max Angus and Harriet Olney of Edith Cowan University has shown that the Federal Government's reward payments to schools for literacy and numeracy are perverting their intended purpose. The reward payments have encouraged state governments to focus their efforts on students who are just below cut-off points instead of on students who are well below cut-off points. Instead of the most needy students receiving additional attention, state governments have focused on students who are most likely to help state governments reach performance targets required to receive reward payments from the Federal government.
For example, the research found that 25% of the primary schools in the literacy and numeracy National Partnership reported no students below the minimum standards in 2009 NAPLAN results. At the same time, many primary schools with large proportions of students below minimum standards were not included in the national partnership. This was unlike the low-SES National Partnership where payments were not based on a reward structure.
The research also found that the literacy and numeracy National Partnership undermined the professionalism of teachers. Instead of teachers and principals being involved in the development of policy frameworks in their schools, they were dictated as to how to teach literacy and numeracy to their students. This raises questions about the Federal Government's confidence in teacher training programs. The result was that the program failed to take into account of the local needs of schools and missed an opportunity to build the capacity of teachers.
Unfortunately the Federal Education Minister Peter Garrett has not learnt from the mistakes in the US and UK public education systems where reward payments and high stakes testing have resulted in similar outcomes. Education jurisdictions focus their efforts on the students most likely to meet artificial performance measures instead of the students most in need.
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