2 February 2010

My School misses the point!!

| Educated Guess
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As a parent I have to say that I am very disappointed with the website that the Rudd government has created. Do they really believe that schools can be rated on Academic scores or parental income??

As a mum who had a hard time finding the right school for my daughter, I built a website 3 years ago to help other parents. I used my life savings to do this, in the hopes of improving the schooling system.

The government has known about my website Educated Guess for over 2 years now and I can only presume that they have a fear that we enable parents to have their say. I logged onto My school the other day and noticed that they had a lot of comments from parents regarding missing schools.

I posted a note on the forum regarding Educated Guess to help these parents. Within 1 minute not only was I banned from the website but they also totally removed the forum from the site. If the government wanted to be transparent and really improve the education system, then enabling people to communicate would be the right step, not disabling them because they don’t like what we have to say.

Kevin Rudd also announced today that if he was RE-ELECTED then he would evolve the site into a community base for dealing with the social issues…. sounds to me like another empty promise in the making for votes as they didn’t even leave the forum on their site for more than 2 hours.

As a parent I urge other parents to spread the word and get behind Educated Guess, rate the schools and leave comments on the school forums to help other parents. This is the only way that we can truly make the government accountable for the real issues facing our children’s education.

Educated Guess is privately owned and doesn’t have the marketing budget that the government has, but we do have the power of the parents. so lets get together and show them that we have a say.

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Rawhide Kid No 25:58 pm 02 Feb 10

Coach said :

If anyone really believes that some statistical tables from one test conducted once a year, is a reflection of the educational experience a child receives at one school or another, then they are are living on a different planet to me. ———snip——

.

And this is not good enough for school leavers who are about to embark onto jobs and university at the end of every year?

Woody Mann-Caruso5:22 pm 02 Feb 10

Do they really believe that schools can be rated on Academic scores

Got a better metric? “My little Jaydun can’t read, but he feels good about helping out with the school fete!”

hellspice said :

you might want to consider a differnt savings plan if you used your life savings and only got that out of it

+1

Searched for schools in my area and the ones that don’t exist are still there and none of them even have a rating. Can’t get much information from it.

SolarPowered1:40 pm 02 Feb 10

I respect the effort you have put in to your site and that you are genuinely trying to do the right thing. However I think you are using a very biased sample. Only people with a strong opinion one way or the other will bother to log in and post a comment. My guess is that people who are really peeved will bother. That does not equal good or balanced information.

For example, I have only ever heard bad things about my local public school – because they are the only stories worth re-telling over a cuppa. Unfortunate, but true.

I’m sure My School has it’s faults, but I also think that the response of parents has been greatly exaggerated by the media in order to sell newspapers.

And as for being banned from the forum, did you read the Terms and Conditions before posting?

chewy14 said :

Coach,
have you ever thought that maybe the Myschool website is not meant to be the be-all and end-all of deciding where you child goes to school. Just because some parents are idiots and overreact to their school results does not mean the website is not valuable.
Myschool is meant to be a tool to provide more information to parents on one part of the schools performance. In that regard, it works.

Hi Chewy…….I get that, but on the other hand, I guess I’m just a bit simple, because I have looked at the site inside out, back to front etc, and I find it the most meaningless set of statistics, because it has no relevance to being a real human child going through the experience of learning in a school.

I totally understand and respect that other people will see it differently.

I have just heard too many knee jerk reactions in the last few days, with no thought at all, and people making life changing decisions for their children based upon those statistics on that page.

The information about the individual school’s performance has been sent home with individual child reports for a while now. The danger with the web site is that many people don’t understand the information in conveys and will judge schools and teachers in a vaccum of misunderstood statistics.

The information is neither good nor bad, nor is it right or wrong; it is what it is and what meaning each person attaches to it.

My belief is that it does not serve our community and our children well to put those comparisons on the web. Nor does it do anything positive for schools and teachers to live with the paranoia that has been whipped up.

Coach,
have you ever thought that maybe the Myschool website is not meant to be the be-all and end-all of deciding where you child goes to school. Just because some parents are idiots and overreact to their school results does not mean the website is not valuable.
Myschool is meant to be a tool to provide more information to parents on one part of the schools performance. In that regard, it works.

you might want to consider a differnt savings plan if you used your life savings and only got that out of it

Clown Killer11:03 am 02 Feb 10

Grunge_hippy makes some interesting points that I believe are worth elaborating on:

… and before you all jump on the ‘teachers are shit that’s why’ bandwagon, why aren’t we looking then at the uni’s and what they are or are not teaching??? Why are entrance scores for teaching so low?

I guess the answer is that as a community we expect a lot from teachers but we’re not prepared to place a realistic value on their contribution. I think that a lot of potentially excellent teachers are deterred by the low wages for graduates when compared to pursuing a career in science, commerce, law or the arts. The low entrance scores reflect this because we still need teachers and the universities still need to fill the places so the market dictates a lower entrance barrier.

why are those teachers who further their training with extra study not offered more incentive to do so??

Simple answer – the teachers union. It rubs against socialist dogma to reward high performance because it makes it easier to spot under-performance in a context were mediocrity is the goal.

Why are schools stuck with under performing teachers and not allowed to fire them? (believe me, ive seen them!!)

See above

… why are schools/teachers now in charge of teaching basic values and mores with more and more time spent dealing with shitty little kids with no respect for anyone?

This one really is the parents fault. Why won’t parents set appropriate boundaries? Why are they happy to have children with no moral or ethical framework, no understanding of action and consequence?

Rarely have I seen a government get it so wrong. If anyone really believes that some statistical tables from one test conducted once a year, is a reflection of the educational experience a child receives at one school or another, then they are are living on a different planet to me.

I have 11 children aged between 2 and 23, in private and public schools, and I am horrified at how a few misguided politicians and public servants can get it so wrong and do so much potential harm.

In listening to ABC talk back this morning, there are actually parents already racing to move schools as a result of that website.

I would ask “If the school was OK last week…….why would it not be OK now.” Would it not make more sense to communicate more with your child, and let him or her be your guide to how the school is doing. Would it not make more sense to get involved in the school community, in order to really discover how they are nurturing our children.

And when all is said and done, the input from home is at least as important, if not more so than that of the school to the development of our children. ALL the schools on the website have children who are above average and children who are below average academically.

In my own family, I have children who score higher and lower academically, because they are different, they have different likes and dislikes, different motivators, but their are equally valuably in our family and our society.

Sending your kids to the top ranking school and thinking that they will perform an unnatural miracle, or do the parents job for them, is just plain dumb.

As Kevin Rudd said on the radio this morning, it only takes 2 or 3 out of 100 people to change their vote and we have a different prime minister. I would be looking over my shoulder Kevin and Julia, after this episode, or better still, admit that you got it wrong and get ride of the website.

Do the testing, keep the stats to see how our overall education system is travelling, but don’t throw the community in to this sort of chaos……..Please.

Same same, the Jerrabomberra postcode didn’t yield a result for the suburb or surrounds. Needs work.

Your website is a waste of space! looked up schools @ postcode 2519 as an example. Most schools are not even listed & the rest have no rating whatsoever!
MYSCHOOL is the best thing ever!

Will start making teachers & Principal accountable for their generous super & guaranteed jobs!

So your upset they stopped you from spamming your website on theirs?

Most forums I have been involved in will not allow you to post links to other sites on them. This is not a reflection on the content but a way of preventing people posting malicious links or advertising where it is inappropriate to do so. You should contact the forum administrator for clarification.

What is the point?

Are the kids tested on punctuation in the NAPLAN assessments?

grunge_hippy11:33 pm 01 Feb 10

wasted your then money didn’t you?

why cant we just go back to the old days, where schools were allowed to do their job without nosy, ignorant, know-it-all parents trying to tell schools how to do their job???

and before you all jump on the ‘teachers are shit that’s why’ bandwagon, why aren’t we looking then at the uni’s and what they are or are not teaching??? Why are entrance scores for teaching so low? why are those teachers who further their training with extra study not offered more incentive to do so?? whya are schools stuck with under performing teachers and not allowed to fire them? (believe me, ive seen them!!) why are schools/teachers now in charge of teaching basic values and mores with more and more time spent dealing with shitty little kids with no respect for anyone?

parents need to pull their head out and stop blaming everyone else for their kids failures.

I’ve had a look at your site after having already looked at my school when it came out re: my child’s school.

There is a big difference between the two and your site could catch on with the recent interest. However the only ones who will add any information to your site are those with grievances and axes to grind. The plural of anecdotes is not data.

My child’s school has nothing listed on your site apart from contact info; can I therefore assume it’s a good school?

Spam. If you want site advertising pay up.

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