OC class tried and failed.

Hi everyone !
My daughter has changed back to her old school. She was very home sick for her old school, and a few other things didn't sit right for her. She was going to stick it out for 6 months but I told her she may as well swap back now. After doing this I was told that on the My School web site that our old school actually got better scores than the bigger school that she tried out for three weeks. Anyway least she was brave enough to try it and see what it was like, instead of thinking back in the future that she should have tried it.
So now I will have so much time back to myself, seeing my daughter goes back to catching and getting off the bus her infront of our place now. I can go back to having some late nights. I also got very involved in studying my family tree before the above. I still have been going to Garden Web a tiny bit and posted some of my blooms the other day, I will post them here tonight.

Take the information on the My Schools website with a pinch of salt (and sip of lemon and a shot of tequila) Karen... it's fundamentally flawed. It will be good to have yo uback though Don't underestimate the power of belonging in developing sound educational experiences if she feels comfortable and has a sense of belonging she wil be more inclined to excel at learning

Thanks for the welcome back. Simon.
I am curious, why is the My School web site flawed ?
Yes she loves her school and friends.

It's like comparing apples to oranges... every school is different, with different cultural influences nopt to mention cohort differences that will cause results such as these to fluctuate from year-to-year... and the list goes on. The argument is that parents want the information but in reality it's just s a thinly disguised tactic to rank schools in the lead-up to the implementation of the national curriculum, which will lead to performance based pay for teachers (which is crazy when you take into account cultural and locality idiosyncracies... I started teaching in Moree in central NSW. If my pay was based on the net results of the students out there, without appropriate consideration of the cultural issues based on a standard curriculum then I would always be at a different, lower, level to other less disadvantaged schools, when in reality those kids excelled in many other less conventional areas) and will just result in some schools being harder to staff than others and with dezoning of schools will result in a mass exodus from schools and population explosions in others (which will result in a drop in standard testing scores in these schools too). My main gripe is that it is based on national testing which is a snap shot of a single day in a whole year so it doesn't take into consideration things like continuous assessment... as usual the Govt is focusing on small and, in the big scheme of things, meaningless indicators that do nothing except to say that on that particular day such and such a school performed in this way... there are so many other mitigating circumstances. For instance in winter last year when swine flu was ripping through our schools... we had one day where out school population of about 600 dropped by over 120 students in a single day. Imagine if the testing had been done on that day! 1/6th of the school was away, we had 30 staff away, and the students that were there weren't exactly a picture of health either. The other thing is that every state has a different curriculum and uses different strategies to impliment these curricula. Again... it's like comparing apples and oranges because we do not start from a common base. NSW is about as anal retentive as they come when it comes to curriculum... driven entirely by the HSC (I can say this because I did my time in the NSW system and coming down to Tassie was like a being turned loose after nearly 20 years of being ham-strung by the HSC). Tassie is far more progressive and in many ways advanced in their curriculum design but you wouldn't know it looking at the My Schools results because the literacy is among the lowest in the state... which in many ways is a reflection of the demographic composition of teh state more than anything.

So, yeah.. the My State website is flawed... it is a political stunt designed to fool the unwitting into believing they are getting realisitic comparisons and information when in actual fact they are getting political spin-doctor superficial crap.

Thanks for telling me about how it worsk, Simon, I appreciate it. Teachers should definitely all get the same, regardless of the locality of where they teach.

I thought it was just progress that kids down here seem to do more 'fun stuff' at school, these days Simon. I went to school in NSW and did the HSC and gosh it was boring compared. Maths, English, some type of Science..i would have loved to do some of the classes they do at Launceston College.

Yep - I've just been away at a conference in Melbourne for the last few days... I can tell you the kids in Tas don't know how good they've got it... Kevin Dudd's National Curriculum; back to basics plan, will see an end to it all guaranteed Make the most of it this year cos next year it's all going pear shaped.

Simon wrote:Yep - I've just been away at a conference in Melbourne for the last few days... I can tell you the kids in Tas don't know how good they've got it... Kevin Dudd's National Curriculum; back to basics plan, will see an end to it all guaranteed Make the most of it this year cos next year it's all going pear shaped.

Is this still going to go ahead now Simon ?
We have got a fantastic little country school here . The staff put a lot of effort into making it interesting and enjoyable and my kids love going to school . I wish school had been this much fun when I was going .
I'd hate to see all that change .

Next years NAPLAN testing is stuffing things around here in W.A .
W.A schools begin and break up on different dates to the E.S ones and come the testing days next year the E.S kids will have been back at school a week and the W.A kids would have come straight into it from holidays .
So now the powers that be have changed the holiday dates so the kids break up on Tuesday and go back to school on the Thursday before the tests start so they have time to "settle back into the school routine" .
Could be interesting . Have already heard a couple of parents say humbug to that , that they are not going back to the rush and bustle of school for 2 days and then having the week end , that their kids will go back on Monday as normal . And the same has been said about sending them to school for the Monday and Tuesday and then breaking up for the holidays .
Next year my two daughters will be sitting the tests , the eldest one will be doing the Grade 5 ones and the younger one will be tackling the Grade 3 tests . Will just have to wait and see how things go .
Some of the private schools have said that they are changing their holiday dates to match the E.S schools so there's even going to differences just within the state.

Wandered a bit off topic but that's not unusual for me . Originally was going to say what a humbug I thought the " My School " whizgig was . Bit of a nine day wonder too ; was the main topic of conversation for a week or so after it was launched and then it got lost . Our little school only got a pretty ordinary sort of rating but out of the seven students that graduated from Year 7 last year , one won a music scholarship to a school in Perth and one was accepted into Perth Modern School which is about as elitist as you can get educational-wise in W.A .
Not bad for a dinky little country school .
Which in a way leads me back to Rosemeadow's story about her daughter going back to her old school and being happy .
If the kids are happy at their school [and lets face it if they do kindy and PrePrimary through to Yr 12 it's a bit slug of their young lives] they are going to be a lot more receptive to learning and adapting . An unhappy kid is more likely to be resentful and unco-operative and shut off to learning.


cheers. Oz

Yep... still going strong... don't turn your back on MySchool either. Ms Gillard was ne of the driving forces behind it and she still wants league tables for schools.

Hi Ozrose, yes I should of known she was better at her the school she knew. But least she give it a go and I sorry if that mucked it up for some other child that could have been in her place instead.