Fran Foo | August 20, 2008
INDIVIDUAL schools should be allowed to decide whether internet access or other communication tools are appropriate for use by students during exams, federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said.
Ms Gillard, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister, was responding to media reports that Sydney's Presbyterian Ladies' College was encouraging students to gather information from the internet, call a friend or access podcasts in exams.The trial is being conducted with year 9 English students and might include all other subjects by year's end.
"On questions of individual school decisions, that’s a matter for the school involved. Nationally, what do we want to see? We want to see a high quality national curriculum," she told reporters in Sydney today.
She refrained from directly commenting on whether others should be encouraged to follow the school's lead.
"I’m not going to lecture school leaders about the decisions they make in their individual school. But from the point of view of the national government, what we want to see is rising standards. We want to see educational excellence."
On whether standards would slip if students were allowed to obtain answers from the internet, she said the federal Government would need more information about them before being able to comment.
"We want a new era of transparency when it comes to what’s happening in schools. We want information publicly available about the students in our schools, about the mix of abilities that they bring to school and we want more information available publicly about attainment in schools.
"We don’t have that information now. If we had that information then obviously we would be able to objectively measure how schools are going and what difference the teaching practice in schools is making," Ms Gillard said.