Yes. Depression Bay is just that, one of the worst areas of Brisbane, although on the other side fence is North Lakes, one of those massive big estates with an unnatural lake in the middle, Brisbane has a habit of doing that. It was (and to a degree still is) a big housing commission area, it has improved over the last 5 years and has little pockets of okay, but still bad on the whole.

A national maths and english test without a national curriculum?

A test you can't study for unlike the TEE end of school exams

Are these tests just a statistical fluke?

Is it just propaganda?

Do some schools spend weeks and weeks focusing on making the school look good, while other schools generally deliver well rounded education.

My mum has also said the results of these tests are rarely equivalent to their marks in Maths and English at school. Im a sceptic.

And? I'm no fan of the idea of a national curriculum but I don't really see the harm of states and schools being assessed against a nationalised set of standards.



Apples and oranges. TEE exams (nobody else calls it that but WA I think) are state exams designed to comprehensively assess students on completion of senior secondary courses and generate a standardised mark for the purposes of university admissions (note that they are two seperate things fulfilled by the one test). The nationalised tests are simple assessments designed to test basic skills on a national basis. If you could actively study for it then there'd be too much bias towards schools and individuals who prepare a lot for the exam, which is obviously not the point.



Does this sentence actually mean anything?



If you're going to contend it's propoganda you'd have to demonstrate that it's biased in some way to support some agenda. Proceed.



Huge false dichotomy. Oh and by the way I thought you couldn't study for this exam?



Results on a national test different to internal school results? Isn't that kind of the point? Isn't that why for all year 12 exams (TEE, HSC, VEE, whatever) we have state-based scaling?

Individual schools have individual standards. This is a good thing. It doesn't mean that those individual standards have to be imposed on state-based and national-based assessments. If national tests came up with the same results as internal school assessments that's when you would be suspicious of cooking the books.

National curriculum? Oh no, you've done it Cheesie. I'm resisting the urge to rant. I'll leave it at this. "National consistency" is the biggest wank term around that exists purely grow the Commonwealth government.

Is this process a waste of time and money would be better spent delivering more money to teachers on recourses...

I questioned whether it was propaganda, not suggesting it was.



Again its the schools with the most money and resource(edit) that are being delivered the best scores. Wouldn't it be better to significantly increase the funding for these tests for more recourses for teachers to use in hard to teach areas. I just think the funding could be allocated in a better way.

Theres nothing ground-shattering that is being revealed by these tests. We have known how Low Income areas are hit by multiple levels of injustice, including weaker education results for decades. This can be fixed by a whole different range of policy issues, outside the spectrum of the education portfolio.

As a solicitor, I say the best recourse people have the judicial system.

How much per hour? And do I get a free Pizza if you lose?

Surely the costs of doing these tests are a complete pittance compared to the actual money spent on education by the federal and state governments.



"Just asking questions" is pathetic.



Delivered the best scores? Ms Gillard is a sneaky one it seems.



Throwing money at education will do nothing. All the electronic whiteboards in Orange and the Kevin and John Laptop Giveaway Challenge (TM) won't address the fundamental problems of social disadvantage, single-parent households, welfare dependency, drug and alcohol abuse and everything else that means that even the best equipped teacher won't get far, no matter how hard (s)he tries, if the kid doesn't have the support required to achieve.



Fair enough. We know that schools with a poor socio-economic background tend to do badly. Pens down then. No need to identify problem schools. No need for parents to be able to make informed choices. Definitely no need to study trends over time.

Cheese, you are becoming more leftist as you grow older...



Are the costs worth it?

Is there already an awareness of problem schools before the tests are delivered?

Is it just Rudd again implementing a policy at middle class Australians that is politically popular, but doesn't really change the status quo?

The one problem of years of economic growth is how elections are won by the middle class. Compared to Great Britain and USA we are one of the world's great middle class societies. As a result polocies that benefit the lower class lack substance a lot of the time, because they are at the periphery of society and moreso than in the United States and England.

I must've missed the announcement. When did Egan reinvent himself as the second coming of Socrates?

No but my business card turns into a sponge. Isn't that something!

Like mum and dad getting a job for instance.

I see some Victorian schools are about to spend 4 weeks studying for the tests...

I agreed with you Be"There is at least no rankings saying this is the best performing school, to provide anything of that sort would have been bad. Anyways on to the fun side, what's the worst school anyone has found"