Media Release

Shire students suffer from Federal Government bungling

Friday 14th May 2010

Local Federal Member for Cook, Scott Morrison has joined parents in expressing outrage over the bungling of NAPLAN testing for students at Port Hacking High School which saw year 9 students given year 7 exams.

“The Port Hacking High School community has the right to be outraged by the inability of the Federal Government to ensure such an important test as NAPLAN was done correctly and fairly,” Mr Morrison said.

“The fact that 80 year 9 Port Hacking High School students were given the wrong literacy tests and were then forced to wait two days to complete the exam is unfair and distressing to parents and students,” he said.

“Parents deserve to know that their children will be sitting tests that are fair and that they or their schools won’t be disadvantaged by mistakes and failures like this one.

“School communities must have confidence in testing used to grade schools and students. Students likewise should be sitting tests together, not in separate groups, as happened in this case.

“Julia Gillard should write to the students, parents and teachers and apologise.

“Everything they touch seems to turn to chaos. From pink batts to border protection and building school halls, it is just one policy failure and budget blow out after another. You simply can't trust them to implement anything they say without some type of disaster.

“Sadly, year 9 students from Port Hacking High have had to receive a lesson about the incompetence of the Rudd Government and Julia Gillard the hard way,” Mr Morrison said.