I am a fan of www.myschool.edu.au. Full disclosure. SEMA built it and runs it for ACARA. We also conduct NAPLAN testing for NSW DET. We are part of the system.

But setting that aside, seriously, I am a fan. Now a father I am turning my mind to schooling and forming expectations around that. To me it seems perfectly reasonable and uncontroversial that I should know how my sons’ schools perform, and more. In fact, I look at it as a right. A right no less than the right to know how anything so precious as an education is coming along, and how capable a set of hands it has been entrusted to. But it also seems commonplace. I have spent my grown life being tested, measured and scrutinized. It starts at school but now extends completely into the workplace. So why not the work of teaching?

I have heard the arguments, recently in the AFR by the odd Latham. But these criticisms are point in time ones. Time series data comes in time.

I can see the passion, namely of the Teachers Federation. But I have also read their letters to parents. They are condescending and borderline militant.

I have listened to Julia, but her reasonable arguments that poorer schools become clearer candidates for more funding, are also politically motivated and therefore mystical.

Regardless, I don’t care for this noise. My son’s first school was underwhelming. He was unhappy and too young explain why. The teachers didn’t notice, so they couldn’t either. So we moved him. He loves the new school and the teachers confidently say the same. And that’s the point. Education mobility should be as normal as social and labour mobility. I will take my kids out if I know I can and should. In that regard, bad schools do have something to fear. An empowered parenthood.