Premier using flawed figures on education reforms

My phone is running hot with teachers who are saying that the figures that the Premier is using to claim that his Tasmania Tomorrow reforms are working are flawed.

Concerns include

Three Academy teachers have told me they have kids still on their enrolment lists who they have never seen in my life.
I received a report from Hobart College where a senior teachertried to have 100 kids removed from the books because they just were not turning up, and hadn’t been for ages, yet they are still there listed as attending
I had a teacher from the Academy say “the drop-out rate this year is certainly worse than the last few years”
A very experienced, popular and respected teacher who said: “We are very worried at ……College about the Polytechnic students in particular, as we have students dropping out like flies.”
From one campus, where reference to the Daymap which is an online recording system for monitoring attendance, on Friday 153 students out of a college of 700 were absent already, and it was only 11.45am in the morning, with many classes still to go.
The Premier has been challenged repeatedly in the past week in Parliament to back up with evidence his claims of a “95% retention rate into Term 3” in the Polytechnic and Academy.

He has refused each time – and in fact talked about anything but the problems that his office at least knows exist in the data recording systems.

And last week in Parliament, the Premier also refused to explain why, if he was claiming a Term 3 retention rate of 95%, Mike Brakey, the CEO of the Academy, is reported by the media as saying they were July figures. Did the Premier mislead the Parliament? Why won’t he answer this question?

I am being inundated with reports that the systems for recording attendance are flawed and that they are still recording students as attending who haven’t been at school all year.

Teachers are telling me the data simply isn’t reliable.

They’re saying the Premier could be in for a huge shock at the end of the year with students not being passed because of non-attendance and non active enrolment.

It also begs the question of how many students on Youth Allowance will have a hard time with Centrelink in trying to explain why they haven’t been turning up to school.

There also seems to be a common pattern of some students turning up in the morning, but disappearing from classes after 11.00am.

Whilst no one would claim the old College system was perfect, at least there was an established process within a fairly tight timeframe to follow up absenteeism, with phone calls, and several letters. After that they were presumed left, and struck off the list. That just isn’t happening in the Polytechnic and less so in the Academy now.

The Premier can’t continue to try to duck and weave on this. He claims to be a data and evidence driven Premier and his post year 10 reforms were supposedly all about improving retention.

If he is using flawed statistics, to try to make the situation look better for him – while out there on the ground there is a catastrophe developing, then that would be unacceptable. The teachers are furious that no one in government is listening to their genuine feedback that they are concerned.

The State Liberals continue to call for an independent audit of the figures, which should include at least asking each teacher for each class to report on what their current active enrolment is, and what their original enrolment was at the beginning of the year.

The students who are being affected are the same students who were the Labor Party’s Essential Learnings guinea pigs. These reforms should have been delayed to ensure we got them right, but the Premier was more interested in his own political interests than the interests of our students.
Sue Napier MP Shadow Minister for Education