Whose performance?

Increasingly, education systems worldwide are reporting public school performance based on measures of student performance. In some countries this practice includes serious consequences for under-performance, e.g, closures, mergers, staff sackings...*

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Most of the discussion on 'school performance' misses the main point. It is the government's responsibility to provide good quality public education for all its communities. Schools simply act on behalf of the government. Individual schools are directly guided and constrained by the government's policies and practices. Individual 'school performance' is actually government performance in that locality. In releasing the data, the government is actually reporting on the effectiveness of its own policies and practices. Viewed in this was the data is always interesting.

 

(*) One can only presume that these consequences are intended to imply the existence of strong committed leadership by those with responsible. But that begs the question: If those leading the system are so committed and strong, how is it possible for schools in the system to under-achieve?