The right to know in gifted education

Do parents have a natural, moral right to know about their children? What I mean by this is that if an educational authority administers tests, observations, or any other kind of information gathering procedure on their child - gifted or otherwise - is there a moral right for the parents to know the results, to read the reports and to have full access to all information pertaining to their child?

I ask this because our son, Ainan, is presently being studied by the Gifted Education Branch of Singapore. Much information is being gathered, but the information flow is largely one way, from us, to them. It is difficult to get information to flow back to us. We are not allowed to see the reports generated by all of this data collection, yet are expected to co-operate fully with it. This one-sidedness of their approach makes us more than a little uncomfortable, in fact it is upsetting.

My own feeling on the matter is that without full access to all information, the parent is being denied the power to make effective choices for their child. Without full access to the information the parent doesn't have all of the knowledge necessary to assess the appropriateness of the decisions made on behalf of their child. The parents are left with the choice to trust in the decisions made blindly, or not to trust them at all. Without full knowledge the parents can never be sure of the rightness of anything that is done. All we would have is what we know of Ainan - but we would not know what the other party THINKS they know. There is no opportunity to correct them, expand their understanding or put a different viewpoint, when we don't know what their viewpoint is. Being in the dark is no good at all from the parents' perspective - nor should it be any good from the educational authorities perspective, either - for by keeping the parents far from fully aware of all that transpires they are compromising the validity and integrity of the whole evaluative procedure. If the parents are in the dark, in some sense, so too are the evaluators, since a valuable source of feedback is lost. One cannot feedback about something one doesn't know about.

I would like your thoughts on this. Is there a natural right to know all matters pertaining to one's child (gifted or otherwise)? Is it fair for an educational authority to study a child but not pass the full results of that study on to the parents? Does it compromise the whole procedure if access is denied? What is done in your country? Are parents given full information? Is it their right?

Please write your thoughts in comment. Thanks.