"Actual marks are not to be revealed to students" does sound awfully like a demand rather than just a suggestion. Arguably then, they're violating the Information Protection Principles.
I agree that it sounds like a demand, but the truth is that the Board is not empowered to make demands at large. It only has the powers conferred upon it by the Education Act, such as the power to make rules approved by the Minister with respect to the exercise of the Board's functions (s131).
The introduction to the ACE Manual on p5 shows (in my opinion) that the manual could reasonably be seen as a summary of the relevant rules and regulations made under the Act rather than the manual itself being a rule made under the Act. If that is correct, any matters which are contained in the manual but which are not covered by the rules are advisory only.
Curiously, the rule does not appear in the document titled "
Rules and Procedures for 2009 Higher School Certificate Candidates", although that document does refer readers to the ACE Manual "for more detailed explanations".
I suppose I have to accept that it's not really clear what the true position is - I obviously have particular views about these things. If the rule has not in fact been made, I think it is unlikely that the Minister would approve it now given the events that have transpired this year and her unconditional acceptance of the Ombudsman's recommendations. This might reasonably be described as a change in governmental policy.
But even if the Board has made or were to make such a rule, it could not trump other legislation passed by a state or federal parliament and would necessarily be subordinate to that legislation.
For public schools, this likely includes the Privacy & Personal Information Protection Act 1998, and for private schools it probably includes the Privacy Act 1988. Interestingly, applications for access to information under the former Act do not need to be in writing and an oral request made to a teacher by a student for access to their assessment mark might well constitute an application under the Act.
The problem is because schools can and some do adjust the raw marks doing things like setting them to the same standard deviation across all subjects and thus the marks that the students get for each task can actually be adjusted by the school. Then you have the situation of trying to explain to Student A why their marks have 'gone up' but Student B why their marks have 'gone down' in this process.
Personally I don't agree with schools being able to do that, but schools do including mine.
I think it's OK for schools to transform marks if the purpose of the transformation is to give greater meaning to the marks and is done in a fair and transparent manner - the raw marks are more or less arbitrary anyway.
Everyone who gives advice in these forums knows that the problem about students not understanding what is going on doesn't go away when marks are hidden. The practice of hiding marks just entrenches ignorance.
