• Chris Bonnor

01 February 2010When you get into the business of comparing schools, there can be little margin for error - too much is at stake, writes Chris Bonnor in On Line Opinion

BY NOW everyone will know of the erratic launch of My School, the effort by the Rudd government to release standardised and test-based reports for every school in Australia. The launch, crash and subsequent political (rather than aeronautical) spin was fun to watch and made good media – but it was a sideshow that tended to detract from so many of the real issues.

Those able to successfully log on found a site with authoritative statements about the accuracy and fairness of the school data being used. Armed with this assurance they could then cast their eye over the figures and little coloured boxes to find out how any school compares with similar others, green for substantially above in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy, red for substantially below and various shades in-between...

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