Should we be told?

The Mercury Editorial, July 15, 2008: Snakes and ladders

OUR difficult decision last week not to publish a table of the best and worst Tasmanian schools was based on one over-riding concern – our children.

Information ranking the performance of Tasmanian schools has been kept from Tasmanians by their government. They have been denied an opportunity to base decisions on their children’s education on comparative data about schools.

It was only with the help of disclosure provisions under Freedom of Information laws that the Labor Government, long notorious for a culture of non-disclosure, was forced to release a statistical breakdown of school performance.

Our Saturday report painted a grim picture of failure, compelling enough in itself to set alarm bells ringing without a ranking of schools.

Premier David Bartlett and the Education Department requested that this newspaper refrain from publishing a ladder of schools to identify those performing badly. They argued that this information would stigmatise not only the schools but also the students and their families.

The schools involved already suffer dreadfully from the ills of poverty. Their classes are full of children from families living in the most disadvantaged socioeconomic communities.

Typically, these communities are driven by welfare, overwhelmed with unemployment, dominated by single parents and lacking in post-high school education.

Over the years, this newspaper has tried to expose such disadvantage. Repeatedly, we have been urged by government departments, MPs and social workers to focus on the positive stories – and avoid stigmatising these communities.

It is an emotionally strong appeal, as no newspaper wants to hurt the community it serves. However, there is a very real danger that by focusing on the positive and ignoring the harrowing disadvantage that some children are born into we are letting the Government, and others responsible, off the hook – and, worse still, condemning a generation of children to disadvantage.

Our withholding of the table of schools is a singular departure from this paper’s commitment to the public right to know. But it is not open-ended. If a change in community thinking requires its publication we will do so.

We made our decision, not to protect a Government that flunked the exam and avoided publishing the results, but to shield innocent children – if only temporarily – from being implicated in that failure.

But this does not let the Government off the hook. It must quickly find a way to give this information to the community. Only through this knowledge can communities and schools hope to pressure government to end the inequities in education.

The Government is on notice to do something about what appears to be the emergence of an illiterate, poor and non-working class of Tasmanian who is destined to miss out on the opportunities and trappings that the rest of us enjoy.