The Opposition United Bermuda Party has called for test results to be released school by school in order to inform parents and make principals and teachers accountable for the performance of their students.

The challenge came from Shadow Education Minister Tim Smith yesterday after Government's Thursday release of the latest Terra Nova Reading, Mathematics and Language results from exams sat in June, 2000, by Primary Three to Senior One students.

He also called for his counterpart, Education Minister Milton Scott, to state what level of improvement he was seeking in the Terra Nova exams and to release the results from a second batch of tests sat by local students.

The results from the multiple-choice Terra Nova tests showed Primary Three and Five and Middle One and Two students have made gains in their reading ability over 1999 results while Primary Four and Six, Middle Three and Senior One have made no improvement or worsened.

The results from the Mathematics and Language tests -- which were sat through all the grades for the first time in 2000 -- will establish a baseline that next year's results can be compared to.

The reason given by the Education Department for the Terra Nova scores not being released for individual schools was that the base for the statistics would become too small for meaningful comparison.

But Mr. Smith said: "We (the United Bermuda Party) think parents have a right to know. We think principals and teachers in each school should be held accountable.'' He added that private schools should also be encouraged to release their test results.

"This way there is full disclosure, comparison and true accountability,'' said Mr. Smith.

The Shadow Minister said he recognised the release of school results would cause some "short term pain and upheaval'', but noted it would also provide "a long term gain''.

"Under-performing schools would be forced to address issues,'' said Mr.

Smith.

MP calls for `full disclosure' of school performance tests "The reality is we continue to see student flight away from public education based on innuendo and rumour. Let's make the facts speak for themselves and then, as a community, we would be forced to deal with under-performing schools.

"If one works from the premise that `students don't fail schools, schools fail students' then we think we can begin to understand why full disclosure is fundamental to accountability.'' Mr. Smith said it was encouraging to see the improvement in the scores but it was too early for people to start thinking that "we are out of the woods yet''.

"Parents, educators, businesses and students themselves should not be satisfied that we are properly and thoroughly preparing our students for success until we see a solid trend with year after year improvement.'' And he asked what level of achievement in the test scores the Minister was seeking to reach.

Mr. Smith said Sen. Scott did not say if he was trying to reach or exceed the average index in the US, which the latest round of scores were compared to.

"This tactic of not stating the target is so typical of the PLP Government,'' said Mr. Smith. "This way they hope they will not be held accountable.'' The Opposition would aim for students to be ten percent higher than the average US test scores, said Mr. Smith, and then it would want to compare local schools against the top American, Canadian and British schools -- not just the advantage.

Mr. Smith said the public also knew that another test was given to students -- the Stanford Diagnostic test.

He noted: "Perhaps the Stanford test results are equally encouraging, but why hasn't the Minister released them too?''