Prime Minister Julia Gillard spoke about her portfolios when she was Deputy Prime Minister in glowing terms. She said they were “dear to my heart.”

Certainly primary education benefitted enormously as a result of the education revolution she presided over. Improvements in funding for government primary schools, facility development on an unprecedented scale and the promise of a curriculum that will meet the learning needs of all young Australians spring easily to mind. Primary school principals are full of praise for these initiatives.

Julia Gillard also made it clear to all Australians that her ministry would provide transparency and accountability for education. To this end she established the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and instructed it to gather data on the literacy and numeracy standards of all students Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. These results are aggregated and reported to parents, schools and the wider community on the MySchool website.

I have no problems with transparency and accountability, nor do I object to census testing of students as a measure to achieve them, although I believe for many purposes sample testing is more accurate and cost effective. My concern is that by making so much of the NAPLAN scores we may be encouraging the “perverse effects” Dr Ken Boston believes have occurred in high stakes testing regimes in other parts of the world; effects such as narrowing the curriculum and disengaging students. There are signs this could happen in Australia. We already have examples of systemic programs requiring schools to devote considerable amounts of time to boosting NAPLAN results.

I have faith that primary school leaders and teachers will jealously protect the learning experiences they provide for students from such inappropriate mandates while still ensuring adequate test preparation.

I also have faith that the instances of “gaming” that have been reportedly associated with the 2010 NAPLAN tests will disappear in future years as we reclaim our reputation as an ethical profession.

However, school principals have reported one very worrying outcome of the 2010 NAPLAN testing that was not so apparent in previous years and it causes me grave concern.

They are saying that significant numbers of Year 3 students, eight year old Australians, are displaying physical and emotional distress as a direct result of being NAPLAN tested. The Australian Primary Principals Association has reported, “Some children became anxious on the test days (in particular Year 3s) Some became stressed, ended up in tears, gave up, went home, were upset that they did not complete the tasks, reported they felt ill, etc.  There may be negative, longer term consequences for these young students.”

What is different about NAPLAN tests this year compared to the census testing of Year 3s that occurred previously in most states and territories? This year the tests were “high” stakes, reputations of teachers, schools and students depended on test scores. Our young students felt the pressure and it made some of them sick. Parents responded to the news that their children had been upset during the tests by saying, “We don’t understand why our child would be stressed we’ve been practising for months.”

They seem unaware of the weight their expectations place on the shoulders of their children. Schools are also adding to the burden. Some are now requesting student Year 3 NAPLAN results as well as Years 5 and 7 before enrolment. I wonder how predictive Year 3 results are for academic achievement in the senior phase of schooling. Educators must be sure to use NAPLAN results for purposes for which they are fit. I am also in favour of that.

I am in favour of transparency. Everything we do in classrooms must be scrutinised and found acceptable to reasonable parents. I am in favour of accountability. Every dollar, every human endeavour and physical resource we employ to teach our students must be counted. I am in favour of student assessment. Every child, even young ones and their parents deserve to know about and celebrate their learning achievements.

What I am not in favour of is any process that is going to make eight-year-old children sick with worry about the part they believe they play in it. Let’s make sure we keep a proper perspective on NAPLAN and establish classroom environments where all students have a healthy desire to perform at their best in any assessment task, without the toxic side effects principals observed during NAPLAN this year.

Norm Hart is president of the Australian Government Primary Principals' Association and president of the Queensland Association of State School Principals.

There is no more pressing issue for Australian educators than Indigenous student outcomes. Despite all of the money spent and all of the efforts made, the disparity between outcomes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students remains profound.

The Productivity Commission’s report on Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage noted that there is “little if any gap in cognitive ability between young Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. However, a gap in school performance is evident as early as Year 1. This gap widens over time, and as the degree of remoteness increases.”

The report found that in literacy and numeracy, “there has been negligible change in Indigenous students’ performance over the past 10 years, and no closing of the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students’ performances.”

I believe school leaders have a great role to play in turning this around. Dare to Lead is a national project funded by the Australian Government supporting principals to make a difference for Indigenous students at all stages of education. Principals, working collaboratively with their school community, need to make this issue personal and take whatever steps are necessary to ensure Indigenous education in their schools is addressed in a committed, informed and collaborative manner.

There are schools across Australia where this is happening – government, Catholic and independent schools, in remote settings as well as metropolitan contexts, primary and secondary. These schools typically are led by principals who have made a personal commitment to improve outcomes. A wide array of strategies is used, but these are almost invariably underpinned by: strategic use of data; connectedness to the local Indigenous community; a willingness to persist over time; and openness to working in partnership.

At Swan View Senior High School we rejected the deficit model and tried to lead students towards more meaningful futures. We did so in a partnership with two other local secondary schools. By clustering around the issue of post-secondary pathways for our Indigenous students we were able to pool resources, work collegially and develop complimentary rather than competing programs.

Indigenous student numbers continue to grow at a rapid rate – within a few years one in every four WA government primary school students will be Indigenous – which means this is an issue that will only get bigger.

It doesn’t matter the system, sector or the location; what matters is providing leadership to achieve genuine improvement in this most crucial of areas. Dare to Lead is working with What Works and the Stronger Smarter Institute - the three projects are using their different strengths to work towards one goal. Dare to Lead supports the principals of more than 5000 Australian schools via professional development; collegial work focused in geographically-determined action areas; provision of resources; and collegial snapshots conducted in individual schools.

We need to look at expanding the traditional parameters of school involvement as a way of addressing outcomes for Indigenous students. Some of my primary colleagues are looking at the years between birth and formal schooling, partnering with childcare providers, establishing play groups, and examining ways to improve transition from preschool to primary.

At the other end of the scale, the notion that a school’s responsibility to a student ends when they exit secondary school is being rethought in a number of schools, including Swan View SHS. The establishment of worthwhile and viable pathways to higher education and the workforce is as an essential part of the ‘contract’ secondary schools make when an Indigenous student is enrolled.

Working to redress the inequality of outcomes has a strong moral imperative. It is also working towards something the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA) has marked as its top priority. The six areas it has pinpointed as having the most impact on closing the gap align with Dare to Lead’s findings: readiness for school; engagement and connections; attendance; literacy and numeracy; leadership, quality teaching and workforce development; and pathways to real post-school options.

There is a gilt-edged opportunity to make a better tomorrow by working with the next generation of leaders who are in schools today. At the launch of Dare to Lead in 2003 it was said that ‘Something must be done, and something can be done’. That remains true. But the doing is up to those who work in schools, making incremental improvements all the time.

Rob Nairn is president of the WA Secondary School Executives Association, former principal of Swan View SHS, deputy chair of Principals Australia and a member of the Dare to Lead steering committee.

The provision of Special Religious Education (SRE) or ‘scripture’ classes in NSW primary schools is based on a 19th Century agreement between church and state. Attendance at SRE is voluntary. However, in conformance with the wishes of SRE providers, a policy of the NSW Department of Education (DET) prohibits children who are not attending scripture from receiving any formal instruction during this period, and specifically not in the area of ‘ethics, values, civics and general religious education’. While it is understandable that classes in, say, maths or English not be offered during SRE (as this would unfairly disadvantage those attending scripture), it makes no sense to prohibit opportunities for children, not attending SRE, to learn more about ethics as this is acknowledged to be an element of what is taught in SRE.

Late last year, the NSW government approved a joint request by the NSW Federation of P&C Associations and St James Ethics Centre (SJEC) to run a pilot ethics program in 10 schools. The schools nominated to participate in the trial are: Darlinghurst, Bungendore, Haberfield, Rozelle, Hurstville, Ferncourt (Marrickville), Baulkham Hills North, Leichhardt, Randwick and Crown Street Public Schools.

SJEC acknowledges that ethics is already an important part of learning in NSW primary schools, with attention to its instruction in a number of areas in the curriculum. However, those children attending SRE are able to have this work extended. From a social justice perspective, it is unfair that some children are denied this opportunity for extension simply as a consequence of their parents' choice not to have them attend scripture classes.

Although the number of students who choose not to attend SRE is not centrally collated, anecdotal evidence suggests that around 25 per cent of NSW primary children are sitting idle for that period every week. Much higher incidences – well over 50 per cent - are reported in some schools where parent populations are more secular or where SRE providers are unable to meet the particular needs of the student population.

Associate Professor Phillip Cam, from UNSW, an international expert in philosophical inquiry for children, has written the pilot curriculum. The pilot is designed to engage students in ethical inquiry rather than to offer them ethical instruction. This means that the subject matter is being treated in such a way as to stimulate students to explore ethical issues through dialogue and discussion. By discussing issues and ideas in small groups, as well as by contributing to class discussion, students will be involved in building a collaborative and inquiring community. (See www.specialethicseducation.com.au)

Volunteers were recruited and trained in a two-day session to deliver the 10-week pilot program. Most of the 33 volunteers are parents, although some are interested members of the community and five are teachers. (It should be noted that one of the principles agreed with the NSW Teachers Federation is that no teacher be required to take on extra work as a consequence of this program – and that no teacher be denied the opportunity to be involved if it is their wish to do so).

The NSW DET has employed the services of an independent assessor to evaluate the course itself, as well as the operational arrangements supporting it. SJEC is paying all costs of running the pilot from donated funds.

To paint this as a contest between people of religion and the secular world is misleading. I have personally attended meetings of the NSW Federation of P&C Associations in which parents of all faiths (and of no particular faith) have joined together to press for this initiative to proceed. There is absolutely no desire or intention, on the part of SJEC, to eliminate religion from schools or any other part of Australian life. Indeed, should an ongoing program be approved then all curriculum materials will be made available to faith groups for their use.

I think it unjust (and fundamentally wrong) that any religious institution should prefer its interests to those of children whose parents choose, for whatever reason, not to attend classes in SRE. I wonder at the fear that seems to be driving opposition to this pilot. Surely, people of faith would hope to prevail – not by throttling all alternatives but through the quality of what is offered in SRE classes.

That anyone should wish to deny any child further opportunity to spend a period of meaningful reflection about aspects of what makes for a good life and a good society is a serious ethical issue in itself.

Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre.

KENNETH RIGBY

We live in alarming times. More precisely, we live in times in which we continually seek to outdo each other with tales of impending doom, whether from terrorist attack, global warming, an imminent tsunami, sexual molestation of children, swine flu and predators on the internet. And of course the rising epidemic of school bullying.

Ironically, we tell each other that our judgements must draw upon ‘evidence-based research.’  Reflecting what we commonly read in the media, earlier this year the Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard, said: “All of the research has found that the prevalence of bullying in our schools is on the rise.”

Unfortunately the research evidence is rarely examined. When you actually look at it, the bulk of the evidence does not support the view that bullying is on the rise. A good deal of it suggests that it is decreasing.

In Australia, there is no evidence of an increase in school bullying over the past decade or so.  In national surveys of the schoolchildren in the same age range conducted by Rigby (1998) and Cross et al (2009) a higher percentage of respondents  reported being bullied ‘weekly’ in the 1990s than were  bullied ‘every several weeks’ some ten years later.

Such a reduction in school bullying is consistent with what has been revealed in numerous studies conducted in many other countries. Compelling evidence of changes in the prevalence of bullying over time is now available from numerous empirical studies. The most comprehensive is a study of changes between 1993 and 2007 in 27 countries in Europe and North America. The majority of the countries in which data was gathered from schoolchildren showed a significant decrease in the prevalence of bullying.

A range of other studies between 1990 and 2007 in England, Spain, the United States, Finland and Lithuania, drawing upon responses to questionnaires completed by  students and, in some cases, by parents and teachers, have provided further evidence of significant reductions in the prevalence of both being victimised and bullying others at schools.

In cyber bullying too there is now evidence from England - based on repeated surveys with students between 2002 and 2006 - that after a steep increase in the availability of  cyber technology there was no further increase in ‘nasty and threatening’ text or email messages being received by students in 2006.

These findings, suggesting that bullying is decreasing, are consistent with what has been repeatedly reported about the effectiveness of anti-bullying programs and initiatives. Summarising results from a large number of published studies, it appears that, on average, programs reduce bullying by about 20 per cent. Increasingly, anti-bullying programs are being implemented in schools. It would indeed be surprising if the great amount of attention that has been focussed on this problem had had no beneficent effect.

Schools are adopting new and effective ways of dealing with actual cases of bullying. These go beyond the traditional disciplinary approach and include strengthening the target through assertiveness training, peer mediation, restorative practices, the support group method and the method of shared concern. Each one of these can be employed successfully to resolve cases of bullying.

Why then are many people unconvinced that things are improving? The first reason is that, despite some progress in reducing bullying in some schools, the situation is still a serious one. According to one recent survey conducted in Australia approximately one child in four is bullied at school over a period of several weeks. The harm experienced by vulnerable students has been repeatedly documented.  It is well known that being bullied can be seriously harmful to the short term and long-term health of children.

A further reason is that from time to time very serious cases of bullying in schools come to light and are widely discussed in the media. Children are sometimes seriously assaulted and/or subjected to constant ridicule and social exclusion, with appalling consequences for their mental health. Schools sometimes fail to take effective action and are forced to compensate the victims. Bullying becomes, understandably, a highly emotional issue – and affects the judgements of many commentators.

Although an exaggeration of the prevalence of bullying might motivate some schools and parents to take action, the effect of misrepresenting the evidence can also have negative effects. It can result in people concluding that nothing can be done to stop ‘the rising tide’ of bullying or that desperate and violent remedies are now needed. On balance, I think it is best to know and tell the truth.

Ken Rigby is an Adjunct Research Professor and educational consultant based at the University of South Australia. He is a member of the National Centre Against Bullying.