|
|
|
Breaking
News: Week of 26 February 2007
|
- A spot of irony
- Those hundreds of people trapped in their cars for half an hour, to facilitate a solo crossing of the Sydney Harbour Bridge by Dick Cheney, must have smiled when Mr Cheney's return flight to the US developed minor mechanical problems and had to divert to Singpore. Web
Plus: New Brisbane trains too big for tunnels
- Curriculum Council
- Information on Teacher Juries
- The West Australian
Education News
- Unis face scruity on teacher training (page 12)
by Bethany Hiatt
"The debate over the quality of teachers in Australian schools is set to be reignited today when a wide-ranging report on teacher training is tabled in Federal Parliament.
"The House of Representatives inquiry into teacher education, puts university standards under the microscope with recommendations on the effectiveness of teaching courses."The inquiry's terms of reference included examining how well universities prepared trainee teachers to teach children reading, writing and numeracy skills and to deal with disruptive pupils.
"The report will also assess the criteria for selecting people to enter teacher training courses, ways to attract high quality students, reasons for student attrition rates and problems with lack of adequate funding.
"Former Federal education minister Brendan Nelson set up the inquiry in February 2005 after concerns were raised about trainee teachers who were failing basic maths and literacy tests.
"Concerns about a drop in teacher education standards hit the news again this month when it was revealed Edith Cowan University was actively recruiting high school students into teaching courses who would not normally qualify for university entrance.
"WA universities battled to fill places in teaching courses this year, with most reporting a significant drop in enrolments.
"University of WA education dean Bill Louden said the report was the 25th report on teacher education in 25 years. "The difficulties with teacher education and the teaching profession are now new or unknown," he said yesterday.
"I'll be looking for some proposals that address the basic problems which are to do with the level of resourcing in teacher education and level of salaries in teaching."
"Teaching was an industry under stress, he said, and any recommendations that trainee teachers should spend more time in schools would need to be backed by funding because sending students on teaching practice was the most expensive part of teacher education.
"Professor Louden, who was head of education at ECU when the inquiry visited Perth in October 2005, said most universities focused on their students' literacy standards.
"They were tested at the start of their courses to identify those who needed extra help before the could graduate.
"We do not want graduate students who cannot spell 'sentence' when they write on the board," he told the inquiry."
From The West Australian
See today's Australian for a more detailed article on the Inquiry
- Tertiary costs can reach $40,000 (page 12)
by Bethany Hiatt
"Parents can expect to pay nearly $40,000 to put their child through a three-year university course, according to a national survey on education costs..."Full story in The West Australian
- Editorial
No benefit in moving Year 7 to high school (page 16)
"Education Minister Mark McGowan is right to resist the ill-conceived idea of moving WA's Year 7 students into secondary schools."There was no compelling evidence or logic to support the suggestion. Certainly, there was no indication that the school curriculum would be improved.
"Year 7s are much better served by their generally smaller and more supportive classrooms than bigger high schools.
"However, Mr McGowan is showing less common sense in dealing with the remnants of outcomes-based education.
"English teachers are calling for a year's delay in the new literature course they are required to teach next year, just two years after they'd begun teaching the OBE English course.
"Mr McGowan is insulting the teachers if he refuses to believe them when they say the new course should be delayed until 2008 [typo: should read 2009].
"The education Minister Mr McGowan replaced, Ljiljanna Ravlich, was unshakable in her refusal to listen [to] teachers' concerns. Mr McGowan must ensure that he does not follow her lead." [emphasis added]
From The West Australian
Letter to the Editor (page 18)
- We disagree
"Steve Kessell (Letters, 22/2) is the one, along with the WA College of Teaching, who defies logic. Why is a four-year-grained teacher any better than a three-year-trained one? [At a guess, because they have more training? Web]"There must be hundreds of three-year-trained teachers still practising and through years of experience, performing better than their four-year-trined counterparts.
"Many years ago teachers could do a bridging course, quite often of no relevance to the day-to-day job of teaching, to gain four-year-trained status. Did it make them better teachers? I think not. It was only done to receive higher wages.
"How the lack of a piece of paper can cause a drop in standards is beyond logic. Experience is what is needed and by refusing experienced teachers, you are losing a wonderful resource." [Which is worse, Steve, being called illogical or being lumped with WACOT? Ha Ha Web]
G R Stubbs, Carnarvon
- Inside Cover (page 2)
- Pollie's folly writ large in error-ridden epitaph
"State Education Minister Mark "Sneakers" McGowan has a skeeleton in his kloset.
"IC's spelling errors are deliberate and serve as a pointer to the pollie's folly. Back in September, before he started espousing the value of the three Rs and was just Rockingham MLA and Tourism Minister, Sneakers opened a memorial at Palm Beach that honours the famous Catalpa escape of 1876..."
"The moment he opened had more spelling errors than a letter penned by George Bush.
"These included references to "In-Subordinate" language used by an escapee, while one of his fellow bolters apparently "recieved" a considerable "remmision"..."
Full story in The West Australian
Carpenter's Crisis
- Minister's career in doubt over links to Burke and Grill [online update 6:45 pm]
West Australian Local Government Minister John Bowler is facing almost certain dismissal after he was caught on tape discussing details of a cabinet meeting with lobbyist Julian Grill.
- Two more WA ministers to face corruption probe [online update at 3:15 pm]
Two more West Australian government ministers [Agriculture Minister Kim Chance and Local Government Minister John Bowler\ were expected to face questioning by the state's corruption watchdog today.
- McRae sacked as Carpenter braces for more trouble [Front Page Headline]
Alan Carpenter's beleaguered Labor Government is bracing itself for more damaging revelations at the Corruption and Crime Commission this week after Environment Minister Tony McRae was sacked yesterday for what the Premier called a major error of judgment.
- Premier captive of Left, McGinty: union boss (page 4)
Union heavyweight and Labor Party factional powerbroker Kevin Reynolds lashed out yesterday at Alan Carpenter for ending the Cabinet career of Tony McRae and labelled the Premier a "captive" to dominant forces within the party.
- McRae axing a clear message from Carpenter on peril of murky deeds (page 4)
Alan Carpenter got it absolutely right yesterday, sacking Tony McRae despite the former environment minister's protests of innocence and disquiet within the ALP about the methods and motives of the Corruption and Crime Commission.
Editorial
Premier gets it right – but why take so long? (page 16)
It took too long, but Alan Carpenter finally arrived at the right decision yesterday when he dumped the discredited Tony McRae. With each passing hour of indecision since Friday, the Premier not only gave the Opposition opportunities to score uncontested points but also invited increasingly critical speculation about his possible immersion in the turmoil of Labor's factional politicking over the issue.
Click here for today's Alston Cartoon [Cartoon © The West Australian]
- The Australian
- Teacher attrition tactics to focus on uni links
by Justine Ferrari
"Measures to support beginner teachers, including induction programs run in co-operation by universities and schools, are expected to be the focus of a parliamentary report into teacher education to be tabled today.
"After two years of submissions and public hearings around the nation, the House of Representatives standing committee on education and vocational training will make a series of recommendations to address the high attrition rates among teachers in the first five years of the job."The main issues to emerge during the inquiry were the need for closer links between schools and universities for training teachers, particularly in supporting beginner teachers.
"It is understood that the report will recommend the establishment of a first-year induction program, during which new graduates would not be expected to take on a full teaching load and would retain some links with the university.
"One of the main focuses of the inquiry was the practical component of teacher training, particularly its expense and the difficulty universities had securing places in schools for their students.
"The inquiry considered different methods of paying for the practical component of the teaching degrees, including paying mentor teachers for supervising and training beginners.
"The report will also address the need for national accreditation of teacher education courses and whether a national system for registering teachers should be introduced.
"At present, individual states and territories register teachers in various ways.
"In submissions to the inquiry, it was suggested that the number of faculties be reduced and resources be concentrated into fewer but better quality teacher education centres. [So, ECU loses its accreditation, and WACOT has no reason to exist? Web]
"The inquiry was also asked to examine the educational philosophy underpinning teacher training courses, including the methods used for teaching and assessment, and whether they were based on research.
"But according to the emeritus professor in education at the University of Melbourne, Brian Start, no university is assessing the quality of its teaching courses and the graduates they produce.
"In a paper delivered to the Association of Teacher Educators in the US last year, Professor Start said a survey of every education faculty revealed none were researching the success of its graduates and its course.
"Universities have a monopoly on this process as the providers; they select, train, qualify and certify graduates as competent to teach," he told the ATE." [emphasis added]
From The Australian at link
Top unis want to dump cap
by Dorothy Illing
"The nation's most powerful universities have urged the Howard Government to abolish the limit of 35 per cent on the number of fee-paying students.
"As student fees loom as a key election issue, the Group of Eight universities have argued that the limit on the number of fee-paying Australian undergraduates is limiting the capacity of universities to expand."The move is likely to exacerbate the divide between large and small universities, with smaller universities struggling to attract the same number of fee-paying students as their sandstone competitors. The submission, to the Government's review of university funding, flies in the face of Labor's longstanding policy to abolish full-fee domestic undergraduates if it wins government.
"Under changes brought in by former education minister Brendan Nelson, the cap on the number of fee-payers was lifted from 25 per cent to 35 per cent of total enrolments in any undergraduate course. This was promoted as a way for universities to earn more private revenue when their proportion of government funding was declining.
"But the Group of Eight argues that changes to the definition of "course of study" under Dr Nelson has had the opposite effect -- a further example of excessive regulation."The Government may have intended to raise the number of full-fee students, but its policy has had the reverse effect," said Group of Eight chairman and Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis.
"Education Minister Julie Bishop declined to comment.
"The Group of Eight comprises the universities of Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland, Western Australia, NSW, Adelaide, Monash University, and the Australian National University."
From The Australian at link
Op Ed
Labor's woes in west are not over
by Peter van OnselenThe ALP in WA is rotten to the core
"The Crime and Corruption Commission of Western Australia has exposed just how rotten the Labor Party in the west truly is. And by all accounts the hearings are only going to get more salacious this week. Yet again it is former premier and one-time jailbird Brian Burke and his business partner Julian Grill who are attempting to exercise their influence over the state Labor government.
"Late last year cabinet minister Norm Marlborough was forced to resign from his ministry and retire from parliament because he lied to the CCC about his dealings with Burke."Marlborough's resignation came on the back of two other ministers being forced to resign within the past 18 months because of inappropriate conduct or conflicts of interest.
"Last week Environment Minister Tony McRae was accused at the CCC of using his ministerial position to gain a fundraising advantage in his dealings with Grill. Yesterday Premier Alan Carpenter asked for his resignation which he duly received. Telephone intercepts have revealed there are two other ministers, as yet unnamed, over whom Burke claims to have control. Exactly who they are should be revealed at the CCC this week.
"How is it that Burke and Grill are able to exercise such influence?
"Parliamentarians win their seats by first winning party preselections. They stay in parliament by raising large amounts of money to finance their re-election campaigns. Whether it is by winning preselection or raising money, they often make deals, and those deals can carry over into their ministerial careers.
"Although Burke was forced to resign from the ALP by Carpenter late last year, he retains significant factional control over the old Right. Grill is a former minister in Burke's government and is one of the most senior factional leaders of the state's centre faction. Between them, the two men are able to influence the outcome of many preselections and are vital fundraisers for the Labor Party at election time.
"The conflated role of being an "independent" lobbyist and an internal party heavyweight is an inappropriate mix. Links between lobbyists and party organisational involvement on either side of politics should be severed. Links between lobbyists and political fundraising should also be severed. This isn't just a problem for the Labor Party, although it is clearly worse in WA Labor than anywhere else.
"Carpenter has a very serious problem. He has already lost three ministers to scandals since taking over as Premier 12 months ago and will in all likelihood lose more by the end of this week. He should restructure his cabinet into an inner and outer ministry, keeping junior ministers susceptible to undue influence at arms-length from the cabinet decision-making process.
"The state Liberal Opposition and the Greens have threatened to block supply in the Legislative Council if further ministerial scandals come to light. Such action is unprecedented in the 117-year history of responsible government in WA.
"The fallout from the scandals besetting WA Labor won't just be felt at the state level. They could adversely affect Kevin Rudd's bid to become prime minister.
"With the next state election still likely to be two years away, WA voters will get their first chance to punish Labor for corruption in the west at the federal election later this year.
"Normally the public deliberately distinguishes between state and federal voting issues. However, the problems in WA don't only rest with the state parliamentary Labor Party, they pertain to the Labor organisation as a whole, for it is the organisational influence of Burke and Grill that is the main problem.
"If Labor gets into power federally, Burke and Grill would look to use their influence among factional allies in the federal sphere just as they have at a state level. WA voters know this only too well. [emphasis added]
"Last week Rudd made an unscheduled stopover in Perth as part of his concerted plan to "play with Howard's mind". In doing so he garnered for himself good media interest, breaking up the Prime Minister's attempt to dominate news in the west with his four-day visit.
"Rudd must be glad he chose the first half of the week for his surprise visit rather than the second half, wherein he would been in for a surprise of his own - landing right in the middle of the CCC revelations.
"WA will be crucial to this year's federal election. Labor needs to pick up 16 seats across the country to gain a majority. The state houses four winnable seats - Stirling, Hasluck, Canning and Kalgoorlie.
"However, Labor also has to worry about two of its own marginal seats in the west - Cowan and Swan. Both are being targeted by the Liberals, with fundraising functions and government-funding announcements galore during Howard's visit last week.
"Both seats have been formally put on the Coalition's key-seats watch for the next election. If Labor doesn't seriously address its problems in the west, Rudd's dream start may turn into a nightmare.
Peter van Onselen is a senior lecturer in politics and public policy at Edith Cowan University in Perth.
From The Australian at link
- When moral rot set in
"The decline in moral and ethical values of government commented upon in Saturday’s editorial (24/2) could have been forecast easily if society had thought more deeply when the public service changed from being independent adviser to government to being a contracted job where continuing employment depended on the public servant giving acceptable advice the political master wished to receive."Today, senior public servants receive high levels of pay, are contracted for short periods, and if the advice given is not politically correct or disagrees with the “boss” (politician) the servant is replaced with a more amenable lackey.
"Bring back the independent public servant. Have them promoted for demonstrating high intelligence and good ethical and moral judgement, and remove the boot lickers, corrupters and “yes” men at present lobbying the politicians and causing such perceptions of corruption."
Tim Mather, North Fremantle, WA
- Carpenter sacks third cabinet minister
Premier Alan Carpenter has sacked his third cabinet minister in nine months and warned that others would follow if the state's corruption watchdog revealed more evidence of impropriety.
- McRae loses his post after just nine months
Tony McRae's short stint as a minister, lasting just nine months, ended as it began - steeped in controversy [he replaced John D'Orazio].
- CNN
- Length of school day under review across nation, in Congress
US schools experiment with an extended, eight-hour school day. The extended-day schedule costs on average about $1,200 extra per student.
- The Melbourne Age
- Editorial
Education is not just another commodity
"It reads like the plot for a bad television drama. Two Chinese men — the leader just 22 years old and with no education experience — establish a training institute in Melbourne and recruit overseas students willing to pay thousands of dollars for a qualification."Within months, the promised classes are cancelled and students are advised to take holidays. A former staff member reports the International Business and Hospitality Institute to the Australian Crime Commission after failing to interest the state regulator in the matter. The Australian Federal Police and the Immigration Department become involved. In the tradition of television drama, we are still waiting for the problem to be resolved.
"Sadly, for the students affected and for Australia's reputation as a provider of quality education, this is not fiction. It may be an isolated case of alleged corruption but it points to the potential problems when overseas students are regarded as a source of revenue for schools, universities and private colleges. In 2004, the Bracks Government nominated providing education to overseas students as one of two crucial growth sectors for Victoria (the other was financial services). International education was worth $2 billion in exports to Victoria in 2004-05 and the state had a 35 per cent share of the national market. In fact, the number of overseas students studying here was greater than in any capital city in the world, save London. No wonder Treasurer John Brumby referred to it as "a great strength of our city — the diversity, the cultural exchange, the links that we build in the future".
"That strength depends on reputation. Without careful regulation to ensure that courses are legitimate, that teaching is of a high standard and that students who gain qualifications deserve them, Victoria could be hard hit by the decline in demand that has already begun across Australia."
From The Melbourne Age at link
- 640 university staff lose jobs
At least 640 academics and support staff have lost their jobs at Victorian universities as the tertiary sector makes cuts amid claims it is underfunded by up to $1200 a student.
- The West Australian
Education News
- Principals doubt value of performance pay (page 7)
by Bethany Hiatt
"No significant evidence exists to show that performance-based pay for teachers actually works, according to the Australian Primary Principals Association."In a discussion paper released yesterday, the association calls for Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop to properly research her proposal to reward teachers based on academic improvement of their students and on rankings from peers, parents and students.
"The report warns that such a scheme could set teachers against each other as they compete for recognition and says claims that student test results could provide a fair basis for setting the pay of individual teachers are open to question.
"Overseas experience showed that the only way a performance pay scheme could be effective was if enough funding was available to pay all.
"WA Primary Principals Association president Colin Pettit, who is also deputy president of the national body, said the report revealed there was little evidence to suggest that linking performance pay to students' results would raise standards."
From The West Australian
New teachers 'need better class skills' (page 36)
See detailed stories in The Australian, The Melbourne Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
- WA leads private school surge (page 5)
by Bethany Hiatt
"WA parents are leading the nation in a charge towards private schools as the economic boom makes it easier to pay for what they believe is a better education for their children.
"Australian Bureau of Statistics school census figures released yesterday revealed that WA had the biggest movement of students to private schools of all the States and Territories in the past decade, with an increase of 36.9 per cent. Enrolments at public schools increased just 2.5 per cent since 1996..."
"Independent and Catholic school sector heads said WA's economic boom could account for part of the rise in private school enrolments. "There's no doubt that with the strength of the economy in WA people do have the after-tax dollars to spend on education if that's important to them," Association of Independent Schools executive director Audrey Jackson said yesterday..."
"WA Council of State School Organisations president Rob Fry said private schools received huge amounts of government funding which enabled them to keep fees down so more parents could afford to enrol their children.
"Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people believe if they send their children to a private school they will get a better education."
"Education Minister Mark McGowan said he was pleased enrolments in State schools were rising."
Full story in The West Australian
Also see detailed stories in The Australian and The Melbourne Age
Carpenter's Crisis
- Premier sacks Bowler over corruption claims [online update 4:30 pm]
John Bowler has become the second government minister sacked by Premier Alan Carpenter in three days after details emerged in the Corruption and Crime Commission of his links with disgraced former premier Brian Burke's lobbying partner Julian Grill.
- Bowler: I was naive [online update at 1:00 pm]
Sacked minister John Bowler faces possible contempt of parliament charges after new revelations in the Corruption and Crime Commission that he leaked a confidential draft report to lobbyist Julian Grill.
- Bowler on the ropes as CCC bugs Grill's house [Front Page Headline]
Local Government Minister John Bowler's political career was in the balance last night after the Corruption and Crime Commission played a secret tape of conversations he had at the home of lobbyist Julian Grill, allegedly about confidential Cabinet information.
Plus 7 additional articles, Op Ed pieces, an Editorial and the Alston cartoon
Full details in The West Australian
- ABC News
- Rise in private schooling 'no surprise'
"The Western Australian Opposition says it is not surprised by new figures showing more WA parents are choosing to send their children to private schools than in previous years."A report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows 33 per cent of WA students were privately educated - 6 per cent more than 10 years ago.
"The figures have also shown the shift towards private schools has been stronger in WA over the past decade than in other states and territories.
"Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier says there is a perception in WA that children receive a better education at non-government schools.
"In terms of the public education system, what the Government needs to look at most notably in remote and regional areas is the quality of the buildings of the schools themselves but also in terms of behaviour management and curriculum delivery," he said.
"In 1996, 27 per cent of the state's students were privately educated, but last year that figure was 33 per cent."
From ABC News Online at link
- The Australian
- Teachers to start with a test
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"Student teachers will sit a literacy and numeracy test when starting their university course and teachers will have to undertake continuing education to qualify for registration and higher rates of pay under proposals tabled in federal parliament yesterday.
"A two-year inquiry into teacher education calls for a national accreditation system of university teaching courses, with accreditation made a condition of receiving federal funds, and for national teacher registration, to be administered by the states."The report, Top of the Class, also calls for an increase in funding for education students, both while at university and when undertaking their practical component, and a one-year induction program for beginning teachers.
"It recommends the practical component be funded separately and not wrapped into the larger university grant as at present, and that overall funding for teaching courses be increased by about $1800 a full-time student.
"Under the induction program, based on a Scottish model, new teachers would spend 20 per cent less time in face-to-face teaching. They would be assigned a qualified mentor, observe classes and undertake professional development courses.
"The mentor would be trained, given time to properly perform the role, and be paid for the job.
"The scheme would be voluntary to start and funded by the federal Government contributing 10 per cent of a starting salary, and by the employer.
"It also calls on the federal Government to ensure that it better allocates the funding of teacher education places to address shortages in the workforce. At present, Australia is training too many primary school teachers and insufficient maths and science teachers.
"Tabling the report in the House of Representatives yesterday, the chair of the education and vocational training committee, Luke Hartsuyker, said teacher education was not in crisis but that improvements could be made.
"If we invest $1 in teacher education, we're going to provide an increased return on investment in every other dollar in the system," he said.
"The report dismisses the idea of setting a minimum tertiary entrance score, believing it would preclude too many applicants and particularly a diverse candidature including indigenous students and those from a non-English speaking or low socioeconomic background. It instead recommends a diagnostic test to identify student teachers' problems with literacy and numeracy and provide them with remedial teaching.
"Attention should be focused on the capabilities graduates have at the end of their courses rather than at the beginning," it says.
"The report says only four of the 31 Australian universities training teachers require students to have studied maths in Year 12 and that a further eight required students to have Year 11 maths."
From The Australian at link [story carried by virtually all daily newspapers]
Similar story in The Melbourne Age
Similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald
- Op Ed
Kevin Donnelly: Ill-trained in the classroomIt's not teachers' fault they can't teach; it's the fault of the institutions that failed to properly equip them
"How effective is teacher training in Australia? The question is more than academic. After all, the quality and effectiveness of the classroom teacher is one of the most important determinants of successful learning. The commonwealth report on teacher training, Top of the Class, released yesterday, suggests that all is well and that there is no crisis.
"Wrong. As University of Melbourne emeritus professor Brian Start points out, teacher training suffers from provider capture and there is little attempt to measure effectiveness. In 2005-06, Start contacted 38 teacher training institutions, asking whether there was any evidence of a link between teacher training - indicated by admission procedures and graduation scores for prospective teachers - and success, however defined, after teaching for three to six years. Not only did about half of the institutions fail to return the questionnaire but it appeared that none had undertaken any research investigating how effective their courses were in preparing teachers for the classroom."According to Start in a paper given in Philadelphia last year: "Teacher education is a legal requirement for entering the teaching profession. Universities have a monopoly on this process (as) the providers. They select, train, qualify and certify graduates as competent to teach. Yet there does not appear to be any validity checks on the near billion-dollar enterprise."
"Start argues that teacher training institutes are unaccountable. For evidence, consider a paper related to establishing the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research. "To our knowledge," the paper states, "no teacher education program or institution has ever been disaccredited, yet variation in quality is known to be considerable." It goes on: "Teacher education is arguably one of the least accountable and least examined areas of professional education in Australia."
"It is easy to find evidence that beginning teachers are not being properly equipped to teach. Says one submission to the commonwealth parliamentary inquiry into teacher education, written by the Australian Secondary Principals Association and based on a questionnaire to 600 beginning teachers: "The respondents indicated that their colleagues at school had provided the most worthwhile support and advice with relatively little value being given to that provided by university personnel." Not only does the ASPA submission argue that teacher training must better prepare teachers for the classroom but it concludes that teacher education "was at best satisfactory" as a preparation for teaching and in "several areas it is clear that they felt that they were significantly under-prepared".
"A 2005 survey of beginning teachers, funded by the federal Government, identified literacy, especially the basics represented by spelling, grammar and phonics, as one area in which teachers lacked confidence and knowledge of effective teaching. Fifty-seven per cent of primary school teachers felt unprepared to teach phonics and 51 per cent of secondary teachers interviewed felt unprepared to teach reading.
"Of course, it's not the teachers' fault that they struggle in the classroom. Blame rests with teacher education institutions that appear to be driven more by politically correct fads such as whole language - where children are taught to look and guess instead of sounding out syllables and words - and new age theories such as constructivism, where teachers no longer teach. Students, in the words of the commonwealth report Teaching Reading, are treated as "self-regulating learners who construct knowledge co-operatively with other learners in developmentally appropriate ways". And there's more: "Adoption of a constructivist approach in the classroom involves a shift from predominantly teacher-directed methods to student-centred, active discovery learning and immersion approaches via co-operative group work, discussion focused on investigations and problem solving."
"During the past few years The Australian has detailed example after example of how the curriculum has been dumbed down and how standards have fallen. While some suggest teachers are at fault, the real culprits are those responsible for teacher education who fail to provide them with the right tools to do the job."
Kevin Donnelly is director of Education Strategies in Melbourne.
From The Australian at link
- Private schools lift their share of pupils
by Justine Ferrari
"More than a million children now attend non-government schools, representing one-third of all pupils and up from about a quarter of the student population 20 years ago.
"The school census for last year, released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, shows that the growth in private school enrolments continued at the rate of more than 20 per cent a year."As of last August, 1.12 million students attended a non-government school, up from 920,000 in 2005, while the number of students attending a public school was almost stagnant, rising 1.2 per cent from 2.22 million students to 2.24 million last year.
"The number of independent schools has almost doubled since 1986, while the number of government schools has fallen substantially.
"Last year, there were 1007 independent schools, up from 784 in 1986, while the Catholic system has stayed relatively stable, with 1703 schools last year, compared with 1712 in 1986.
"By comparison, the number of government schools around Australia fell from more than 7500 in 1986 to about 6900 last year.
"The proportion of students completing Year 12 fell slightly last year, with 74.7 per cent finishing, compared with 75.3 per cent the year before.
"But retention rates are still much higher than 20 years ago, when fewer than half of all students finished Year 12. About eight in 10 female students complete Year 12, compared with about seven in 10 male students.
"Class sizes in primary schools have dropped, from about 18 students per teacher 10 years ago to 16 students last year. The fall in class size in high schools is less dramatic, from 12.8 students per teacher in 1986 to 12.2 last year."
From The Australian at link
Similar story in The Melbourne Age
- Aussie kids may get a laptop each
by Verity Edwards
"Australia could be one of the first developed countries to take part in a "one laptop per child' program when it is launched globally later this year.
"OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte told The Australian the not-for-profit project, to provide every child in a developing country with a laptop, would be extended to nations with a high gross domestic product from as early as July."The program will go out worldwide within 60 days," Professor Negroponte said in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, attending the Education Without Borders conference.
"We'll be looking for expressions of interest (from Australian governments, business or non-government organisations) and that is a means for countries to request to be part of the program."
"Professor Negroponte, who is an academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of phone company Motorola, launched his $US25million initiative in conjunction with the UN in 2005.
"Its initial objective includes providing $US148 ($187) laptops to every child in Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay, with distribution completed by August.
"The small plastic laptops will be hand-wound and include a word-processing program, camera, games, and internet access via wireless network connection.
"Full-scale production of up to five million machines is about to begin near Shanghai, and 600 staff will be involved in setting up infrastructure and teaching children how to use the device.
"The cost of the laptop is expected to drop to $US100 by next year. The not-for-profit organisation has plans to distribute up to 50 million laptops worldwide by the end of next year.
"Adelaide University electrical engineering student Joel Stanley won a version of the laptop at a recent software conference, and the model - which can be powered using a ripcord - has replaced his own expensive laptop.
"I love it," said Mr Stanley, who has provided the laptop to younger students at conferences.
"It has small keys but the kids who have used it find it easy to navigate and the software is high-quality."
From The Australian at link
- Degree costs start at $40,000 - before food
by Dorothy Illing, Higher education writer
"Students starting university on a HECS place this year can expect to pay up to $40,000 to get a basic three-year degree - and up to $82,000 when living costs are added.
"And if they opt for a six-year undergraduate medical degree subsidised by the commonwealth it will set them back more than $100,000."The findings, revealed in a report by the Australian Scholarships Group, highlight the factors driving up the cost of getting a university education.
"Soaring tuition fees and rising computer and internet costs along with items such as textbooks, which are no longer GST-free, and other course materials, are making students feel the pinch.
"And with more than a third of students moving out of the family home, the living costs add $7000 to $14,000 a year..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- Burke scandal fells new minister [Lead story]
by Tony Barrass and Amanda O'Brien
"A fourth West Australian minister will be sacked after a bug placed by corruption investigators in the apartment of Brian Burke's business partner revealed he was leaking cabinet information.
"In a sensational recording played to the state's Corruption and Crime Commission last night, former resources minister John Bowler was heard giving Julian Grill, the partner of the disgraced former premier, the rundown on what had happened to a proposal before cabinet."It is the first time investigators have used a bug - as opposed to telephone intercepts - to get to the bottom of corruption allegations now crippling the Government of Premier Alan Carpenter.
"Mr Bowler had earlier denied discussing sensitive government matters with Mr Grill at his West Perth apartment.
"But in the transcript played last night, Mr Grill is heard saying: "So, how'd cabinet go?"
"Mr Bowler replied, "Good, good, yes, deferred a couple of big decisions", before detailing numerous issues while Mr Grill, a state Labor minister in the 1980s, took notes.
"The dramatic development comes just one day after Mr Carpenter was forced to sack environment minister Tony McRae over his evidence to the commission - a decision that has sparked factional brawling within the state Labor Party..."
Full story in The Australian at link [plus audio tapes at that link]
Similar stories in virtually all daily newspapers.
- Left knew about the phone taps: union chief
West Australian trade union heavyweight Kevin Reynolds has questioned how members of the Labor Party's Left faction knew to stop taking calls from disgraced former premier Brian Burke astelephone taps were put in place by the state's Crime and Corruption Commission.
- The Washington Post
- Gifted? Autistic? Or Just Quirky?
As More Children Receive Diagnoses, Effects of These Labels Seem Mixed
Increasingly, schools and psychologists assign children labels ranging from Asperger's and attention-deficit disorder to various learning disabilities.
- Teens Can Multitask, But What Are Costs?
Ability to Analyze May Be Affected, Experts Worry
by Lori Aratani
It's homework time and 17-year-old Megan Casady of Silver Spring is ready to study.She heads down to the basement, turns on MTV and boots up her computer. Over the next half hour, Megan will send about a dozen instant messages discussing the potential for a midweek snow day. She'll take at least one cellphone call, fire off a couple of text messages, scan Weather.com, volunteer to help with a campus cleanup day at James Hubert Blake High School where she is a senior, post some comments on a friend's Facebook page and check out the new pom squad pictures another friend has posted on hers.
In between, she'll define "descent with modification" and explain how "the tree analogy represents the evolutionary relationship of creatures" on a worksheet for her AP biology class.Call it multitasking homework, Generation 'Net style..."
Full story in The Washington Post at link
- The Brisbane Courier Mail
- Schools wield axe
by Tess Livingstone
"The number of subjects Queensland's senior students can study will be slashed to fewer than 20 in the latest phase of the most widespread education reforms since the 1970s."A two-year review has recommended non-mainstream subjects such as recreation, tourism, retail and marine studies be scrapped to enable children to gain a deeper and broader knowledge in their chosen areas of study.
"Education Minister Rod Welford said the aim of the review was to reduce the "curriculum clutter".
"Subject options have been growing like Topsy," Mr Welford said.
"But he claimed that while the new system would offer fewer subjects, students would receive a broader education because they would not be specialising so narrowly.
"There has been a knowledge explosion and we have to adjust accordingly," Mr Welford said.
"The latest changes come less than a week after the Queensland Studies Authority recommended students in Years 1 to 10 go back to learning plain English.
"Selective state school academies for gifted students have also been introduced, while last month the first intake of Prep Year students began school.
"The reforms reverse the trend in recent decades towards "new age" teaching methods which have come under sustained attack from federal Education Minister Julie Bishop and conservative academics.
"Mr Welford said the move to cut the current offering of about 80 senior school subjects to between 16 and 20 subjects would add depth and flexibility.
"It would give students new options to study core subjects at basic and advanced level as well as the option of specialising in their areas of expertise.
"The new system, likely to be in place by 2009, would result in current subjects such as tourism, recreation, retail, manufacturing and marine studies being subsumed into broader subjects to be known as fields of learning. Mr Welford said the "fields of learning" would include maths, science, English, humanities, technology and design and business.
"It will allow for a broader inter-disciplinary approach to allow advance science students, for example, to study emerging fields like biotechnology and nanotechnology as well as the traditional physics and chemistry," he said..."
Full story in The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
- The Sydney Daily Telegraph
- Bullied student sues
"A six-year-old boy was choked, beaten with a stick and repeatedly bullied at school, leaving him unemployable and scared to leave his house alone more than a decade later, a court heard yesterday.
"Now aged 18, the boy, who cannot be named, launched legal action against the State Government yesterday claiming "little if anything" was done to prevent him from the physical and mental playground abuse."The young man does not recall the incidents but his mother is today expected to detail the complaints she made to the school, education department officials and even the police in a bid to protect her son.
"Despite the serious injuries sustained, the nine-year-old who is said to have led the attacks was admonished once but no further action was taken, the court heard.
"As the case began yesterday, barrister Dennis Wheelahan QC told the Supreme Court his young client was "severely physically and mentally abused in an extreme case of bullying perpetrated by an older child"...
Full story in The Sydney Daily Telegraph at link [and other News.com newspapers]
- The Melbourne Herald Sun
- Holiday-makers pay to use school grounds
Victorian schools are turning into camping grounds to score extra cash.
- AAP
- Rudd announces national curriculum plan
"Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has announced a federal Labor government would set up a national education curriculum.
"Today we are launching this document which is to establish a new national curriculum for Australia," Mr Rudd said.
"Mr Rudd said the national syllabus would be phased in over three years under the guidance of a national curriculum board.
"We will do it through four key subject areas: maths, science, English and history," he said.
"The curriculum, if Labor won office later this year, would run from kindergarten to year 12.
"The membership of the curriculum board will be comprised of state and territory representatives as well as the non-government schools sector.
"We believe this is an important part of Labor's plan for an education revolution," Mr Rudd said.
"Labor had set a three-year deadline to introduce the national curriculum and would work collaboratively with the state and territory governments to ensure it was met.
"Labor said the Government had spoken about a national curriculum during its period in office but had not produced the goods.
"For 20 years this country has talked about moving towards a national curriculum. It's time we delivered on a national curriculum, and one of the highest standard," Mr Rudd said.
"Labor's education spokesman Stephen Smith said already he had been in consultation with the states and territories.
"He admitted some governments had reservations, but he was confident a co-operative approach would bear fruit.
"He said the states knew federal Labor was aiming to improve educational outcomes, would work in a genuinely collaborative way, and Labor's objective was to set the highest standards.
"We are interested in taking the best of each" of the states' and territories' curriculums, Mr Smith said.
"Of course, it would not be appropriate for me to not say that some of the states and territories do have some reservations.
"Not surprisingly, very many of them jealously guard their curriculum." [Perhaps we can then abolish the Curriculum Council and spend the funds where they would actually accomplish something? Web]
"He said there would still be an allowance for sensible state, territory and local variations in the curriculum.
"Mr Rudd said the policy document addressed the controversial area of teaching history.
"When it comes to the teaching of history, two sets of skills are necessary: a chronological factual framework of history, and Australian history in particular, and in addition to that the teaching of interpretive and analytical skills to use historical facts to map arguments," Mr Rudd said.
"What we want to ensure for the future is that no Australian kid misses out on key national facts when it comes to how our country has evolved.
"But it is ... in addition to that, instilling in our young people to use historical facts and to map arguments.
"Both things are necessary, not just one."
"Mr Rudd said the new national curriculum would be of the highest standards.
"A report released last year found an overwhelming majority of Australian teenagers are ignorant about the nation's history.
"The report, commissioned by the federal, state and territory education ministers, showed three-quarters of teenagers did not know the origin of Australia Day.
"A majority of Australian teenagers also were unaware of the purpose of Anzac Day or the reasons for the Union Jack's inclusion on the Australian flag.
"Labor at the time questioned the value of a federally backed civics and citizenship program called Discovering Democracy being taught in schools at a cost of $30 million.
"Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop blamed the states and territories for the shocking performance, saying they were responsible for the curriculum.
"The federal Government in August last year agreed to develop a national history curriculum for years nine and 10."
From the AAP
Click here for the complete policy statement
- The West Australian
Education News
- Education contracts damned in report (page 6)
by Jessica Strutt
"A State Supply Commission investigation into the Department of Education and Training has revealed serious deficiencies in the department's record keeping processes for the awarding of contracts to two companies, Huntly Consulting Group and Miles Morgan Australia..."
"Treasurer Eric Ripper said in November that the commission was probing the contracts after The West Australian revealed that a friend of former colleague of then education minister Ljiljanna Ravlich won at least $300,000 worth of contracts from the department in seven months.
"Gregory Philip's company, Huntly, was awarded contracts worth at least $279,290 between March and October last year, according to tender documents.
"Education Department acting executive director Siobhan Mulvey is married to Mr Philip and Ms Mulvey's brother, Andrew Mulvey, is the other company director. Mr Philip was also a founding member of Miles Morgan Australia.
"The commission investigated contracts awarded to both companies between January 2003 and November 2006. Mr Philip worked as a training policy adviser to Ms Ravlich in 2005 and helped develop the Skills Formation Taskforce.
"The commission said it could not offer an opinion on the correctness of the contracts with the two companies where full documentation did not exist.
"Education Minister Mark McGowan said all directors, managers, schools and FATE colleges had been told of the need to understand and comply with government policy for the procurement of goods and services."
Full story in The West Australian
- Letters to the Editor
- Stupid bonus
"As as experienced and committed teacher I am infuriated at Julie Bishop's amazingly simplistic comments about a teacher bonus scheme.
"There are many complex factors that go into successful student performance. Ms Bishop would no doubt reward the wonderful teacher is a well-resourced school in a class of already motivated and intelligent students.
"Would she reward the dedication of a hard-working teacher in a difficult class where even small steps of improvement would indeed be significant measures of success?
"Please, those of you who have authority, remove such non-representative people from office and replace them with genuinely concerned and informed representatives."
Margarita Hayes, Willetton
- Classroom reality
"I come from a family of teachers. The current debate about performance-based pay for teachers ignores the reality that in some situations teachers spend a great deal of their time simply attempting to maintain order in a classroom full of disruptive and unruly students.
"This leaves limited time for teaching, and even less for ensuring that teaching is delivered to the maximum benefit off all students in the class. An evaluation of performance then, unless it accounts for this vital factor, would seriously disadvantage teachers in this situation.
"The irony is that the parents who, for whatever reason, have failed to inspire their children to good behaviour and respect for teachers, now expect to be consulted on teacher performance, as do their trouble-making children! Let common sense prevail please."
Peter O'Brien, Hopetoun
Carpenter's Crisis
- Premier admits: It's a State of disgrace [Front Page Headline]
Alan Carpenter admitted yesterday that the Burke-Grill affair was threatening to destroy his Government – just minutes before he was forced to sack a fourth minister following revelations at the Corruption and Crime Commission.
- Bowler to be investigated for contempt [online update t 1:15 pm]
Sacked West Australian local government minister John Bowler will be investigated for contempt of parliament over leaking a confidential parliamentary report to lobbyist Julian Grill.
- Bowler in tears as he apologises in Parliament [online update at 4:00 pm]
Dumped Labor Minister John Bowler was reduced to tears in Parliament today as he apologised to his family and his fellow MPs for his role in the latest Corruption and Crime Commission scandal.
To read the full speech, click here
There are MANY articles on the Crisis, including the main Editorial, Letters to the Editor and the Alston cartoon.
- Follow-up stories on ABC News
- WA Govt accused of trying to keep CCC evidence secret [4:00 am]
The Western Australian Opposition has accused the State Government of trying to cover up evidence used at a corruption inquiry, as the fallout from the hearing continues.
- Omodei labels Carpenter a fraud [11:36 am]
The Western Australian Opposition Leader Paul Omodei has labelled the Premier Alan Carpenter a fraud after yesterday's revelation that the Government sought to restrict the Corruption and Crime Commission's (CCC) access to certain evidence.
- The Melbourne Age
- Op Ed
School needs matter most
by Jack Keating
The real equity issue is not a drift out of government schools.
© The Melbourne Age"The patterns of enrolments across Australian school sectors reported in The Age (27/02, "Parents shun state schools") reflect a trend that now spans a generation. Since the Whitlam government released its Karmel report in 1975 and made substantial levels of funding available to non-government schools there has been a steady drift from government to non-government schools that averages about 0.4 per cent per year.
"The responses to this trend from governments and other stakeholders reflect a 30-year-old debate in Australia about public education and the funding of non-government schools. This debate has maintained a public perception of a stand-off between the government and non-government school sectors that has crippled any capacity for rational policy on these issues at the national and state levels.
"Ownership of the schools should not matter as long as students have reasonable access to schools that will deliver a good quality education within a curriculum that meets public expectations. For example, the Netherlands and Belgium, both of which have strong public systems, have a majority of their schools enrolments in publicly funded church schools.
"The problem in Australia, and unlike the situation in most other OECD countries, is that despite public funding, non-government schools can be selective in their enrolments, through fees, scholarships and other means. Thus the long-standing fear in Australia is that the drift in enrolments will deprive government schools of their better-off and more scholastically capable students. This would lead to government schools being seen as residual places for students from poor household and students who are rejected from non-government schools because of their weak scholastic performances or behaviour.
"There is some evidence for this fear. The recent growth in non-government enrolments has mainly been in the independent, non-Catholic sector, and the increased enrolments are strongly concentrated in students from wealthier families. However, these broad figures hide other patterns.
"The largest element of the non-government sector, Catholic schools, is relatively stable in its enrolment share, which is distributed fairly evenly across all income groups. The sector looks like, and to a large extent behaves like, a public sector, being mostly publicly funded, delivering the public curriculum and charging mostly low fees, and in some cases no fees.
"If they were added to the government school enrolments in Australia, as they are in most other OECD countries, public education market share would grow to 85 per cent. [emphasis added]
"On the other hand within the government sector, apart from the loss of some better-off students to the independent sector there are changing internal patterns of enrolments. In Victoria, there has been a significant migration of better-off students to large primary and secondary schools that achieve good results in tests and the VCE.
"Correspondingly there is a growing concentration of poorer students in small schools with weak results.
"The trends are expressions of a robust school education market. As numerous surveys have shown, parents choose on the basis of their image of a good school, not the sector. Schools are aware that the surest way to achieve this image is to concentrate scholastic power among their enrolments. The temptation to use selection to achieve this is high.
"The problem is not the residualisation of the government school sector. A significant proportion of government schools do very well. The list of the schools that gained most entries into Melbourne and Monash universities, published in The Sunday Age (18/02) included six government and no Catholic schools.
"However, there is strong evidence that the growing concentration of poorer students in small schools is a serious equity issue.
"As the OECD Program for International Student Assessment has shown, overall standards of Australian schooling are higher. However, we are weak on the equity front with large gaps between the high and low-performing students. A continued drift in enrolments segregated on the basis of wealth and scholastic levels will surely make us weaker.
"The current policy setting of many and possibly all state governments is to have their government schools out-compete the non-government schools for enrolment share, especially among the middle-class.
"In going this way they have introduced more selective measures including selective entry schools and programs. Selection is zero sum and will only accelerate the social segregation.
"The immediate policy challenge is twofold.
"First there is a need to jettison old notions about public and private based on the school sectors. A public system is about using public funding to deliver to the public, irrespective of the ownership of the delivery agency.
"Correspondingly, all schools in receipt of public funding, government and non-government should have both a moral and a contractual imperative of delivery for the public good. This principle should be the basis for new policy settings that are designed to encourage and reward schools in delivering quality education to an entire community and for all students, and for schools to work in partnership across the sectors. The most obvious focus for this would be a sub-region or municipality, as is the case in several European countries.
"Second, there is a need to lessen the incentives for schools to engage in selective behaviours. In a market environment this cannot be achieved through regulation. Schools need to be rewarded for taking on the biggest challenges. This requires recognition of educational need, which provided the basis of the original Karmel report, which, sadly, has largely disappeared from education policy." [emphasis added]
Jack Keating is a professorial fellow in education at the University of Melbourne.
From The Melbourne Age at link
- The "Monday" Education Supplement has updated [finally] and has 16 stories, including:
- Can't write can't spell...
Moves are afoot to instil correct grammar and punctuation in our children, but are our teachers up to the task, asks Lisa Mitchell.
"Principal Andrew Blair had a ritual at his former school. Come report time, he and three assistant principals would sit down to begin the "mind-numbing" task of vetting the teachers' written assessments of 1200 students. These were checked for grammar, spelling, punctuation and language use, then handed back to teachers for alterations."You can't put reports out to the parent community that are inadequate in language or in meaning," says Mr Blair, president of the Australian Secondary Principals Association.
"I think there has been less emphasis placed on grammar and language structure over the past 10, 15 years in teacher training, probably even longer when you think about it."
"For Mr Blair, it is a simple proposition: if those entering teaching do not display a solid grasp of language structure and grammar, it is reasonable to assume those principles are not being passed on to students. New evidence supports his suspicions.
"Last August, two researchers at the Australian National University released a report - How and Why Has Teacher Quality Changed In Australia? - which concluded that the "literacy and numeracy standards of those entering teacher education courses are significantly lower today than in the early 1980s".
"This followed the Federal Government's controversial National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, released in 2005. That report referred to recent Australian research that confirmed ". . . prospective teachers have a positive attitude towards, but poor knowledge of, language structures", and that "beginning primary teachers are not confident about teaching specific aspects of literacy such as spelling, grammar and phonics"...
"The big question is: who is ultimately responsible for those teachers and students who fail to grasp English language somewhere along the way? Is it the education system for not teaching the teachers; the teachers' approach to teaching; an evolving English curriculum that never quite attains perfection; students' own lack of aptitude; or their need for tailored teaching?"I think we tend to get things a little bit back to front," says Professor Knapp. "We're terribly worried about young children being creative and (developing) critical (thinking) and then when students get to university, we get serious about teaching them to write sentences." ... [emphasis added]
[And here come the "equity and self-esteem brigades"... a long article but well worth a read. Web]
Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
- Feature
Classroom burnout triggers teacher opt-out
Belinda Hogan finds out why so many young teachers leave the job, and Caroline Milburn looks at why others should, and don't.
"Gabriel Baldwin, 25, is working as a waitress - and skiing - in Canada after travelling through Europe for a year. To do this she walked away from a career as a high-school teacher after just three years because she felt burnt out. Joanne O'Brien, 37, recently left just shy of a decade as a teacher because a new job opportunity was far more appealing. Kerryn Manifold, 28, gave it all up after five years because, he said, he wanted his life back. Alison Venning, 40, taught for six years and then started her own business. Angela Cullen, 31, left after seven years because she was sick of battling against what she considered an outdated curriculum."Once upon a time, teaching was a vocation for life. You trained, you taught and you retired with a certificate of long service. Now, despite a teacher shortage, many young teachers are opting out. A recent Australian Education Union survey showed that 47 per cent of beginning teachers did not see themselves teaching in 10 years.
"Why?
"It is not only an Australian phenomenon. A 2003 Victorian Department of Education and Training report found that in the US a third of teachers leave the profession within three years and almost half within five years. In Britain, a 2003 survey by the University of Buckingham found that 30 per cent of teachers who left teaching that year had been in the profession less than five years.
"There are many reasons for this. Younger teachers point to issues such as overwork, pay structures, being put on contract without assurance of permanency, community expectations, student management and lack of social status. Others say it is a sign of the times - that generation X and Y have different approaches to work than their babyboomer colleagues.
"Ms Baldwin is the daughter of a teacher. All her life she wanted to be a teacher and she graduated top of her class in 2003 from Melbourne University. "I had it in my mind to become a teacher for as long as I can remember," she says. "But after three years I had had enough." Overwork was the major issue for her. "It is a job you can never leave and I had enough of the really long hours I worked," she says. "It frustrated me to see my flatmates come home and switch off."
"Mr Manifold, who first taught in the rural Queensland community of Bell, agrees. "I would get to work at 7am, finish at 10pm at home and found that, (when) living in a remote community, teaching becomes your life."
"They, like others, resented that on top of all the meetings after school, paperwork and student management issues, lesson preparation had to occur in their own time. Ms O'Brien feels that curriculum planning becomes the least of a teacher's priorities. "By the time I had done everything that needed to be done, there wasn't enough time or I was too tired to then start planning dramatic, interesting and new lessons, which is a shame," she says.
"According to a recent AEU beginning teacher survey, 64 per cent of new teachers feel that the immense workload is their major concern. Victorian AEU president Mary Bluett says young teachers are enthusiastic and want to do it all, but this comes at a price. She says governments need to give schools the time and resources to better enable new teachers to ease in. "We need to give a reduced teaching load to people, particularly in their first year of teaching," she says. But have things changed that much? Lorraine McLaren, a Melbourne-based teacher of 40 years, feels that although graduate teachers' workloads are ridiculous, teaching in the past was just as onerous. "Classes were huge and we didn't have photocopiers," she says.
"Hays recruitment consultants, which recently surveyed what younger generations wanted in their work, found that they demanded a work-life balance. Working in education, according to some younger teachers, doesn't seem to deliver that.
"Ms O'Brien, who now works for local government, says that not having the time to enjoy her weekends and holidays was a major reason she left teaching. She now has only four weeks' annual leave but says she is far happier. "I sleep well, I am less stressed, I have holidays without feeling I should be at home marking." ...
[Long article, definately worth a read. Web]
Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
- Op Ed
The need to sort good apples from bad
by Caroline Milburn
"In most jobs people can readily name the stars and the duds among their colleagues. Schools are no different. Public discussion of teacher performance is intensifying, with politicians at state and federal levels commenting regularly about the need to better reward the best teachers, improve teacher quality and the status of the profession. But there's a reluctance to talk about the flip side of this policy coin: what to do about the worst teachers in a school."Earlier this month, in a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra, the federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, had a go. She said public school principals should be given hire and fire power. Predictably, state education ministers responded by defending the status quo. John Lenders, the Victorian Education Minister, said state school principals already had the capacity to hire teachers. Victoria is the only state where government school principals can hire staff for their school and recommend to the Education Department that a teacher be sacked. In other states the system is centralised, with education departments appointing teachers to schools and handling dismissals.
"The Victorian system of teacher selection is considered by many education researchers to be the most advanced among the states, but the process used to sack incompetent teachers isn't working too well.
"The statistics tell part of the story. Of the 39,434 teachers working in government schools, only three were dismissed last year by the Education Department secretary. Principals say most of their colleagues avoid using the dismissal process, known as "managing underperformance", because it is too cumbersome, time-consuming and debilitating for all involved. Typically the process can take two years before a principal can reach the stage of writing to the department secretary to recommend dismissal. Teachers can be given six months of support, monitoring and professional development to improve before a principal decides whether to make the recommendation. But principals say the process is commonly delayed by other factors: teachers, stressed by the scrutiny, often take sick leave, which can then roll on to a Workcover claim. School holidays also interrupt the process. In the meantime the school has to make temporary arrangements to cover the teacher's absences, adversely affecting students and other teachers at the school who take on extra workloads to cover for an underperforming teacher. Private schools have more flexibility in getting rid of non-performers.
"In public schools teachers deplore the ineffective way the system deals with incompetent colleagues. When hundreds of primary and secondary teachers were surveyed in a Boston Consulting Group review of workplace issues for the Victorian Government, the thing that most annoyed them about performance management was the failure of their schools to deal with underperforming teachers.
"And when the problem is tackled in most cases, those under scrutiny can rightly point to an obvious flaw in the process: most principals have to base their judgements on anecdotal evidence because of the absence of performance data. The Federal Government will soon release a report from the Australian Council for Education Research, suggesting a variety of methods used to measure teacher performance and introduce performance-based pay rises. And then there is the growing body of national and international research showing teacher quality - depth of subject knowledge and the ability to teach it effectively - is the most important factor in lifting student results.
"A recent OECD report, Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers, found almost all countries surveyed, including Australia, had concerns about "qualitative shortfalls" - whether enough teachers have the knowledge and skills to meet school needs. Countries had mechanisms to sack teachers for poor performance but rarely used them because the process was too slow and unwieldy. The lack of simple, transparent and accepted procedures for dealing with ineffective teachers meant the problem was often ignored, which damaged the reputation of schools and the teaching profession.
"But the report also pointed to emerging international evidence showing that greater school involvement in teacher selection and personnel management helped improve educational quality. Studies of student performance revealed countries in which schools have high levels of responsibility for selecting teachers and managing them tend to have higher student results.
"If governments take action to introduce a more comprehensive system to reward and retain good teachers, they also need to develop a fairer and more efficient system for those unsuited to the classroom. Employees who consistently fail to do their job well are found in every profession. The challenge for education authorities is to emulate the better management practices found in other industries, where employers come to a mutual agreement with an underperforming worker to help them find a new job. Under these career transition models companies often pay for the employee to use recruitment agencies for three months, allowing them to spend half their time at work and the other half attending job interviews or searching for alternative work.
"Changes to established processes will be daunting for some teachers, but today there are no jobs for life and a system that offers higher rewards must necessarily contain more risks." [emphasis added]
From The Melbourne Age at link
- Op Ed
Performance tests? That's rich
by Jenny Miller
"For the three years I have lived in Melbourne, the media has constantly warned of the dire state of public education, the yawning gulf between government and private sectors, and the entrenchment of social inequality via an increasing segregation of young people into the haves and have-nots. Recent threats from Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop to tie funding to school performance (read: academic scores and tertiary entrance) come hot on the heels of new figures showing that government funding to private schools has increased at eight times the rate of funding to government schools since 2002."In 2004-05, each government school student was funded by the Federal and State Governments to the tune of $9700, whereas non-government school students received $5451.
"This means government school kids get more, right? Let's hypothesise about two schools of 1500 students - Buckley Creek High and St Peter's School for Young Ladies. Buckley Creek scores $9,700,000 in government funding, while St Peter's gets a meager $5,451,000. But St Peter's fees are $14,000 a year (modest by today's standards), bringing in an additional $14 million, and $3 million a year in major fund-raisers, bequests, and donations from grateful past students.
"St Peter's has an annual budget of $22,451,000 - still a laughably small figure compared with the budgets of elite private schools, but more than double that of Buckley Creek High. This comparison is realistic, as shown by the principal of Karingal Park Secondary College, who reported in The Age in 2004 that his school operated on $10 million a year, while a private school near his home in Brighton had an annual budget of $20 million, although both schools had 1600 students. But the funding issue goes far deeper than this..."
"Another way round the problem is perhaps to make public how last year's money was spent in every school. In case you need some more lateral criteria to develop your funding formula, here are some questions you might ask. I used 25 years' teaching experience and a 100 or so school visits to devise the questions.1. Do you have a 50 metre swimming pool?
2. Do you have a gymnasium with parallel bars and rowing machines?
3. Do you have more than three choirs in your school?
4. Does every student in your school have a laptop?
5. Do you have more than one sporting field?
6. Is there AV equipment in every classroom?
7. Is there a dedicated drama-theatre space?
8. Are salad wraps and fresh fruit salad served in your canteen? (I mean it.)
9. What is the staff-student ratio in your school?
10. What percentage of parents come to your parent-teacher meetings?
11. What percentage of parents come to the school council meetings?
12. What amounts were raised at your last major fund-raiser?
13. What amounts were donated from any source to your school this year?
14. How many students were suspended or expelled last year?
15. What is the staff turnover?
16. How stressful is your school, based on staff sick leave?"
Jenny Miller is senior lecturer in education at Monash University.
Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
- Letters to the Editor
- Public schools need to lift their act
"No doubt the most recent figures on the growth of private education ("Parents shun state education", The Age, 27/2) will see the advocates of public education respond with their usual complaint about federal funding of private schools. It's time they woke up, or soon we will have no public education system worthy of the name.
"If the Government provided free meals to everyone, and more and more people decided to buy their own, you would have to conclude that the free meals were simply not acceptable. When parents turn away from the free education provided by the taxpayer and spend thousands of dollars to buy a private education for their children, they are really buying the company of the other students for their own children.
"If the public school system wants to stay in the race, it needs to lift its academic and discipline standards. Every child in every school has the right to high-quality teaching in a peaceful focused environment. The public school system also needs to have the resources stolen by the previous government restored. Victorian secondary schools are still some 2000 teachers below the number that would be provided by the 1981 pupil-teacher ratio.
"Finally, we need an uncompromising rejection of the fads of the past 30 years — both the trendy left's recycled open-classroom play-way to learning and the hard right's schools as competing (and inefficient) small businesses that fail to take advantage of the economies of scale that a large system can provide."
Chris Curtis, Langwarrin
- Schools of last resort
"We read that the proportion of parents enrolling children in state education is declining. Australian Education Union Victoria branch president Mary Bluett blames this "in part" on federal funding for private schools. A more balanced view could be achieved if we had the sum of state and federal funding.
"Funding may very well be part of the problem, but the bigger problems are ones the AEU will not recognise: bullying in many state school playgrounds; poor behaviour in class and convoluted behaviour management procedures; the AEU's desire that teaching practices should not increase the margin between the socioeconomically deprived and the rest of the community.
"As a result, state schools are becoming the schools of last resort — the school you have to use if you can't find anything better. Parents who can afford it are choosing something they think is better.
"As a retired teacher from the state system I cry for the current state of public education."
John Rees, Gympie, Queensland
- Stop knocking
"I am sick and tired of the Federal Government and the Liberal State Opposition continuing to attack the state education system. Think of the reaction as the senior school students open their newspapers each morning in their civics class to see their schools attacked in this way. It is time for federal Education Minister Bishop and the state Liberal Opposition to stop the attacks and support the schools and their students."
Anne Cox, Prahran East
- If only pollies were as well prepared …
"As a final-year student teacher, I reject in the strongest possible terms the inference that today's graduate teachers are poorly prepared for the classroom ("Put student teachers to the test on literacy and numeracy, report urges", The Age, 27/2)."By examining only the entrance requirements to teacher education courses, the House of Representatives Education Committee has neglected to examine the content of the courses themselves, much less the quality of graduates at the end of the process. How are we to make a strong start to our teaching career when our professional reputation is under attack before we've even had a chance to demonstrate what we can do?
"When my colleagues and I graduate from our four-to-five-year course at the University of Sydney, we will have had more than 100 days of prac teaching, a semester of observations, a year of classroom management courses, 18 months preparation in our subject areas, a year of child psychology, plus special-ed. How much training did the MPs who wrote the report get before they were elected to Parliament?"
Mercurius Goldstein, Ashfield, NSW
- Shameful treatment of overseas students
"My family and I are relieved to see The Age attempting to uncover the exploitation of international students at schools and universities ("Education is not just another commodity", Editorial, 26/2) ."We have had international university and public high school students live with us for more than 12 years. It has been invaluable to us to meet so many amazing young people from around the world. However, we are all too aware of the alarming neglect of international students by the education system and have often had to support them through bizarre circumstances.
"We know exactly what the problem is: lack of regulation in the public education system.We know why: the public education system is desperate for funding and will exploit international students to make up for a serious lack of government funding. We know what urgently needs to be done: a thorough investigation of the international student program.
"International students are incredibly vulnerable to abuse and neglect and we have seen enough disappointment and despair. It is well past time the government took responsibility for this huge problem."
Ruby Partland, Elwood
- The Australian
- The Higher Education Supplement has 15 articles, including:
- Commit to the next generation
by Verity Edwards
"University of Adelaide vice-chancellor James McWha has raised concerns about an "anti-intellectual flavour" in the community, claiming there is little commitment to ensuring high school students receive an adequate education.
"Professor McWha told the HES that low high school retention rates across the nation suggested there was little interest in educating students to a high standard."The community has to want a commitment to education," Professor McWha said.
"Is there an anti-intellectual flavour in our community?"
"In South Australia, just 55 per cent of high school students achieve their certificate of education, the lowest in the nation.
"Does every person in the country ... feel education is so important that they should make a sacrifice to the tax system, or whatever, to ensure there is a high quality of education for the next generation?" Professor McWha asked.
"He refused to blame schools, parents or governments but said that without "a genuine national consensus of commitment" nothing would change. "Everybody feels that it's something that ought to be happening. I mean, have parents failed, or whenever the system fails do they say the teachers didn't do their job properly? The teachers might say the parents didn't do their job properly. We're always pointing the finger at someone else."
From The Australian's Higher Education Supplement at link
Similar story in The Melbourne Age
- Too many teachers, not enough cash
by Bernard Lane
"The federal Government's attempt to promote teacher training within universities has not only failed but has worsened the chronic underfunding of education faculties.
"These were the conclusions of this week's bipartisan federal parliamentary report into teacher training, although they were covered by the fig leaf of requests for further research, commentators saidyesterday."Derrick Armstrong, education dean at the University of Sydney, said it was "refreshing" to see the report conclude that the national priority status given to education had been counterproductive.
"The federal Government, hoping to make education programs more attractive to students, stopped universities charging higher fees for these programs - denying faculties up to $962 more a place - and this loss was not compensated for by extra federal funds, the report says. Demand had outstripped the regulated supply of places.
"Kerry Cox, vice-chancellor of Edith Cowan University, where about one-fifth of students are in education, said the policy frustrated investment in new equipment and more teaching staff.
"Professor Armstrong said the report had accepted that the discipline had been chronically underfunded. The report picked up a proposal by the Australian Council of Deans of Education that teacher training be given the same federal subsidy as foreign language programs ($9037 a place rather than the present $7251).
"Professor Armstrong said he was "a little surprised" at the open-minded, serious and positive nature of the report, given that it was set up following "political criticism" of teacher training by former federal education minister Brendan Nelson.
"In 2005 Dr Nelson drew a link between the alleged shortcomings of teachers - weak literacy and numeracy and leftist tendencies - and the "quasi-sociology", fad-driven ethos of education faculties.
"Sue Willis, president of the council of education deans, agreed this week's report was not what had been expected when Dr Nelson announced the inquiry. "We have to say initially we imagined that the terms of reference suggested there might have been a preset agenda," she said.
"But the committee had taken its job seriously and turned out the first report she had read that wrestled with the complexities of teacher training.
"The report says quality varies across education faculties.
"Mercurius Goldstein, a final-year student at Sydney, said he felt the committee had unfairly focused on entry requirements rather than the quality of graduates turned out by education programs. "We haven't hit the classrooms yet and we're having people taking pot shots at us," he said."
From The Australian's Higher Education Supplement at link
- Op Ed
Reach for top of the class
Michael Ferguson looks at the new parliamentary report on teacher training
"In my last year of teaching, Rebecca (one of my more memorable maths students), demanded I explain why a trainee veterinarian who wants to look after animals has to study for six years while the trainee teacher who wants to look after children has to study for just four. Sure, the comparison was flawed, and Rebecca was just having a laugh."But her comments highlight the obvious link between well-prepared teaching graduates and success in the challenging world of teenagers, teaching and learning, whiteboards and parent-teacher evenings.
"This week the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training tabled its much-anticipated report, Top of the Class, on the inquiry into teacher education. It is the latest in a lengthy catalogue of more than 50 teaching reports by parliamentary committees and government authorities during the past 25 years. Many in the higher education sector hope the federal Government will end the rhetoric and take the lead in this essential area.
"The committee sought to piece together the extensive existing body of work with fresh evidence taken from universities, parents, schools and teacher bodies. Its objective was to advance much-needed reforms to teacher education that have been agreed to but never implemented.
"The final report is bipartisan and makes 12 far-reaching recommendations including: a truly national system of accrediting university courses; a more effective practicum (those periods of practical preparation in the classroom for trainee teachers); a genuine first-year induction in schools for graduate entrants to teaching; a reliable research base to inform teacher education policy; and of course more money.
"At a political level, there have been complaints that it is possible for graduates to enter the profession without having basic skills in literacy and numeracy.
"The inquiry found the quality of teacher education varied widely between universities. After all, faculties operate in an academic environment that allows freedom to be innovative, and to be dull.
"Yet it is difficult to come to a firm view on the overall quality of teacher education because we lack a sufficiently rich body of research. This is surprising and troubling (hence the committee's call for a comprehensive longitudinal study into different models of teacher education as well as the creation of a specific education research fund).
"Teacher training in Australia is not in crisis but we can certainly do better. Our community is ready for further education reform and we need it to begin in our universities.
"On the evidence available throughout the inquiry, it can't be said that teacher training in general turns out graduates without the necessary suite of knowledge, skills and strategies to teach effectively, although this is happening in some quarters.
"Universities need not feel shamed by the recommendations of this report but neither do they get a clean bill of health. The evidence is mixed but there are clear areas of concern.
"A teachers union survey showed that 22 per cent of beginning teachers rated their pre-service education poorly. A survey by the federal Department of Education, Science and Training found that 19 per cent of beginning teachers and 25 per cent of supervisors believed teachers at this first stage of their careers were poorly prepared. Research has revealed weakness in the practicum experience, a perceived lack of relevance within education courses, a weak link between theory and practice, and concern at the capacity of beginning teachers to manage the classroom.
"There are high rates of resignation and burnout - between 25 per cent and 40 per cent - within the first three to five years of teaching.
"This country lacks a consistent set of standards for registration of teachers and accreditation of education programs. If there has been a failure to ensure that graduate teachers are properly equipped, then this is the way to deal with it.
"The university testamur ought to be a reliable indicator to any employer that a graduate is fit to teach, and teach well. Yet progress towards national registration and accreditation has been sluggish and inefficient, despite agreement in principle by the various state and territory authorities.
"Hence, the recommendation of a new national system of teacher education comprising two parallel processes - the registration of teachers and the accreditation of teacher education courses - based on professional teaching standards.
"In future, the commonwealth would fund only accredited teacher education courses. Rather than locking in the lowest common denominator effect, a national system would allow for diversity and innovation while ensuring high quality. [emphasis added]
"National accreditation has the potential to resolve claims that university faculties, their staff and underlying philosophies are deficient to the point of harming the effectiveness of teacher preparation.
"No parliamentary committee has the capacity to arbitrate the detail of individual faculty complaints; this committee has not attempted to do so.If there are legitimate claims against faculties and their methods, then they should be addressed by reference to professional standards.
"A more immediate issue is the practicum, which has the potential to give students of teaching a better understanding of what they are letting themselves in for. Unfortunately, the practicum is rarely well-organised and typically not engineered in a fashion where student-teachers get the best value from it.
"One reason is the often weak link between practicum and the theory of the education program of which it should be part. However, the biggest challenge facing the practicum is the broken relationship between universities and employers (state education authorities and private schools) who should share responsibility for the next generation of teachers.
"The broad profession (schools, principals, teachers and education faculties) needs to accept that universities cannot carry this burden alone. The profession at large will have failed as long as universities have trouble finding well-supervised placements and as long as schools regard practicum as an inconvenience to be dealt with as a management issue.
"This is something that the education community must resolve, although the committee recommends that the federal Government foster stronger partnerships for the practicum, assisted by a national teacher education partnership fund. [emphasis added]
"Predictably, the committee was urged throughout its inquiry to consider funding issues. The evidence was mixed, some suggesting that education faculties have been used to subsidise other, more expensive faculties, others simply claiming that education has not been receiving enough by way of the Commonwealth Grant Scheme.
"What is clear is the need for greater transparency and accountability from universities. Until such time as university administrators report in more detail how they spend the money given to them for each funding cluster, they can hardly expect an increase in funding. Lack of proper funding for the practicum is a common complaint but the true cost of the practicum is not as clear as it should be. This needs close study. Also in need of examination is the effect of listing education as a national priority area. What financial implications have there been? Has it helped deal with teacher shortages?
"Meanwhile, the committee recommends that education be given more federal funds from 2008.
"Education faculties are in for substantial reform, but I suspect most in the sector will welcome Top of the Class as positive and overdue."
Michael Ferguson, a Liberal MP, served on the House of Representatives inquiry into teacher training. He is an education graduate from the University of Tasmania and taught maths, science and information technology in public secondary schools.
From The Australian's Higher Education Supplement at link
Related story in The Melbourne Age
- No room at unis, VCs say
The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee has rejected new analysis claiming universities are failing to tap into a large pool of young talent in the face of acute skills shortages, insisting instead that all eligible students who want to attend university are doing so.
And on the Corruption in Government scene...
- Burke loots mining boom
Corruption has been exposed at the heart of the West Australian resources industry, which has underpinned the national economy and fed commonwealth coffers.
Western Australia's Corruption and Crime Commission yesterday revealed that disgraced former premier Brian Burke and his business partner Julian Grill secretly manipulated the state's multi-billion-dollar mining approval processes with the help of a compliant cabinet minister eager to help their clients overcome any hurdles.
- Outrage as angry Carpenter fires another minister
Premier Alan Carpenter sacked former resources minister John Bowler just one hour after the ruined MP finished giving evidence at Western Australia's Corruption and Crime Commission yesterday.
White-faced with anger at yet another betrayal, the Premier demanded Mr Bowler resign from the Labor Party and advised him to leave parliament as the crisis deepened over the influence of Brian Burke and Julian Grill on the Government.
- Comment
Unnerving unwillingness to admit any fault
by Tony Barrass
"The most disturbing aspect of the past two weeks of evidence to the Corruption and Crime Commission is not the startling allegations themselves, but the constant mantra from those in the witness box that they have done nothing wrong.
"John Bowler couldn't see any problems with being used by Brian Burke and Julian Grill to effectively set up a parliamentary inquiry and then manipulate the findings."Nor could he see anything wrong in telling Grill on a regular basis about what was discussed in cabinet, who discussed it, and what conclusions were reached, again to benefit Grill and Burke's big-paying clients.
"He couldn't see any harm in setting up secret meetings, organising clandestine ways in which to communicate with the notorious pair, or even telling them about decisions that had yet to be made public that could be worth, literally, billions of dollars to the clients of the two former Labor men.
"Clients such as Twiggy Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group, which was battling BHP and Rio Tinto over access to their rail line through the Pilbara, and needed government approval to build its own smaller connecting line through a sensitive Aboriginal rock art precinct.
"Bowler had at his disposal vital information not just about Fortescue but about diamond companies, mining tenements, claim jumpers, proposals from multinational mining giants - matters that could and did affect share prices.
"As the minister primarily responsible for a mining boom unprecedented in the state's history, it was hardly any surprise that Bowler was in demand, especially from the likes of Burke and Grill.
"The only time he showed the tiniest sign of remorse was when he moaned to reporters outside the commission about how the past three months had been the worst of his life.
"Tony McRae, the former education minister [WRONG !!] who was sacked on Monday after dodgy testimony to the commission about a telephone conversation with Grill, is also in complete denial. He, too, sees nothing wrong with soliciting fundraising expertise from Grill, while being less than frank about signing off on a matter beneficial to one of Grill's clients.
"Labor backbencher Shelley Archer, the wife of union heavyweight Kevin Reynolds, also attacked the commission after being exposed last week for leaking confidential government information to Burke. She was another who could not understand what all the fuss was about. It was all because she was Kevin's wife, she hissed.
"Carpenter has dealt with his ministers correctly. It will be interesting to see how certain sections of the West Australian criminal code deals with them in the coming months."
From The Australian at link
Virtually all daily newspapera have "another minister overbaord in WA" stories.
- Letters to the Editor
- Give student teachers a go
- "As a final-year student teacher, I reject in the strongest possible terms Kevin Donnelly’s inference (Opinion, 27/2) that today’s graduate teachers are poorly prepared for the classroom. By ridiculing our course material, Dr Donnelly brings into question our readiness to teach. Yet how are we to make a strong start to our careers when our professional reputation is under attack before we’ve had a chance to demonstrate what we can do?
"When my colleagues and I graduate from our four to five-year courses at the University of Sydney, we will have had over 100 days of practical teaching, a semester of observations, a year of classroom management courses, 18 months preparation in our subject areas, a year of child psychology, plus special-ed. How much training did Dr Donnelly get in his day?"
Mercurius Goldstein, Ashfield, NSW
- "Yet again, an inquiry into teacher education has found that Australian universities are providing high quality training for our prospective teachers. Kevin Donnelly neglected to mention that the recent inquiry into teacher education was announced by the previous education minister, Brendan Nelson, on the back of a scare campaign that standards had fallen and education faculties had become hotbeds of leftist sociology.
"Now that this sort of crisis-mongering has been shown to be baseless, why is Dr Donnelly being so un-Australian as to not accept the commonwealth umpire’s decision?"
Mark Howie, Lawson, NSW
- West Australians deserve an air-clearing election
- "The almost daily scandals concerning the West Australian Labor Government illustrates one thing – that they have not learnt from the WA Inc episode. The only way to clean up the sordid mess is to deregister the party and call a immediate election for both chambers (including a full upper house election). That way, the community can elect some representatives who are free of the tainted influence of WA Inc’s main actors."
Robert H. Bromwich, Welcome Creek, Qld
- "Isn't it about time that we set a deadline for the abolition of the states? These toy-town governments, such as the one falling apart in Western Australia, are incompetent and corrupt. In a country of 20 million, there are simply not enough people of calibre and integrity to populate all of the tin-pot structures we now have in place.
"Let’s end this expensive and dangerous farce without further ado and invest our hard earned dollars in the sound administration of an Australian democracy."
Kevin Morris, Adelaide, SA
- "Western Australia’s cabinet, at first looking somewhat frayed, is now clearly unravelling. We might end up with a cabinet of one."
W. Flynn, Albany, WA
- The Brisbane Courier Mail
- Cheat claim
by Tess Livingstone
"The State Opposition has given its seal of approval to the Government's revamp of Queensland's senior high school curriculum, saying it simply poached Coalition policy."Opposition education spokesman Stuart Copeland said the Year 11 and 12 review was long overdue.
"After 8½ years' overseeing the education system, Labor has finally realised there is a problem in our schools," Mr Copeland said. "This is the second time in a month the Beattie Government has poached Coalition policy. Just last week, the minister announced changes in the English syllabus which the Coalition has long been calling for. Now Labor is following our lead with changes to the overall curriculum."
"Mr Copeland called for English to be made compulsory for Year 11 and 12 students, as it is in most other states.
"He said the overhaul followed the release of a State Government advisory council report earlier this month, which warned that "the approved Queensland senior syllabuses have grown in an ad hoc way and comprise many overly specialised and narrow subjects" and that "current Queensland Studies Authority syllabuses are vague and content-poor"...
Full story in The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
- The Sydney Daily Telegraph
- 'Be happy your son's bullied'
A mother who sought Education Department help amid repeated assaults on her six-year-old son by a classmate was twice told "bullying builds character", a court has heard...
[follow-up on yesterday's story]
- The Washington Post
- Self-Awareness Not a Problem at College
Study shows a cultural shift taking place as students become more narcissistic and self-absorbed: "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place," say 18 year olds...
- The Launceston Examiner
- State's private school surge
Tasmanian school enrolments have bucked the national trend and dropped slightly during the past 20 years but non-government numbers are up by almost a third, a new report shows.
- The West Australian
- One in two Year 9s fails maths and reading tests [Front Page]
by Tiffany Laurie
"The State Government yesterday used the overload of bad news from the Corruption and Crime Commission as a golden chance to release figures which showed fewer than half of Year 9 students were achieving acceptable levels in reading, science and maths.
"As Parliament descended into chaos over censure motions and furious debate about the corruption inquiry fallout, Education Minister Mark McGowan chose to unveil figures showing just 45 per cent of Year 9 public school students achieved the equivalent of a B-grade or better in mathematics and science.
"In reading, only 47 per cent achieved such levels.
"The results also showed that just 51 per cent of the almost 16,000 students who sat the writing test achieved the equivalent of a B-grade or better.
"The Education Department said a B-grade was considered to be the “achievement target” in each subject.
"The results also showed there had been only marginal improvement in student performance over the past two years.
"Girls continued to perform better than boys in English but boys marginally outperformed girls in maths.
"Students from non-English speaking backgrounds performed better in maths and writing than their English-speaking classmates, but the average achievement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands students was significantly lower than their classroom peers across all categories.
"Mr McGowan said he was pleased with the results, which showed a one per cent fall on the 2005 figures in all subjects except writing, which improved by one per cent."But shadow education minister Peter Collier described the results as nonsense, saying parents had no hope of understanding them if the Education Department could not explain how they were reached.
From The West Australian at link
"When asked how the B-grade equivalent was determined, department curriculum standards acting executive director Chris Cook said that the number of correctly answered questions was irrelevant, and that the assessment was “a description of what students can do and to what level they can demonstrate what they know”.
“The testing is not about achieving a pass or fail but about collecting comprehensive information through system-wide assessments about students’ performance against aspirational targets,” Mr Cook said. [emphasis added]
"WA Council of State School Organisations president Rob Fry said the poor results were proof that the Government was failing students with learning difficulties.
"He said remedial support must be increased for students in primary school to address numeracy and literacy problems before they reached high school."
- Labor plan for national kindy to Year 12 curriculum (page 10)
See detailed stories in The Australian, The Melbourne Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
- Letter to the Editor (page 18)
- A delicate balance
"Let us not be alarmed by the headline WA leads private school surge (27/2). [Actually, it was on the bottom half of page 5] Private schools have traditionally served and should continue to serve a purpose in our evolving society.
"We should seize the opportunity and examine carefully the potential benefits of innovative relationships between government and private schools. Rather than view private schools as threats which must be eliminated because they offer alternatives to the major school systems, we must find ways to enhance the educational opportunities of all children.
"If everybody in society placed the same importance on all aspects of living, then we would need only one kind of school.
"But let us suppose we eventually fund private schools 100 per cent, the same as government schools. What then would be the definition of private schools? What would distinguish them from government schools?
"The main difference is that a private school has the right to select its students and then government school does not. Should the favour be granted to the government schools? It would not be accepted because their teachers are committed to a somewhat broader purpose – precisely as broad as the base from whence cometh their help."
Michael Detiuk, Perth
Carpenter's Crisis [just a small sample]
© The West Australian
- Enough is enough. Alan Carpenter must go to the people [Front Page Leader]
The State Government has been rendered dysfunctional by an unprecedented series of ministerial scandals. As crisis builds on crisis as a result of the revelations of the Corruption and Crime Commission, it would be an understatement to say that WA politics is in a desperate state.
- CCC poison sparks internal Labor war [Front Page Headline]
Shelley Archer, the wife of union and Labor Party heavyweight Kevin Reynolds, has dared Alan Carpenter to throw her out of the party after she was accused yesterday by the Corruption and Crime Commission of leaking confidential information to lobbyist Brian Burke.
- Carpenter rules out election as MPs rally (page 6)
Alan Carpenter yesterday ruled out calling an early election in the wake of the Corruption and Crime Commission scandal as Labor backbenchers rallied behind him.
- Premier up against deep links to Burke
Inside State by Robert Taylor
Just how many ministers does Alan Carpenter have to sack before he decides that his Government is hopelessly corrupt and unfit to govern?
- Carpenter rejects calls to expel Archer [online update at 3:45 pm, plus audio tape]
Alan Carpenter has refused to immediately expel one of his MPs from the Labor Party over her dealings with disgraced former premier Brian Burke, amid speculation such a move could spark a factional brawl.
- Rudd grilled over Brian Burke meetings [online update at 2:45 pm, plus audio tape]
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has rejected a coalition "attack on his honesty", as he detailed his three meetings with disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke.
- Alston cartoon (page 16)
- ABC News
- Carpenter vows to clean up WA Labor Party (7:18 pm)
"Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter has ruled out calling an early election, saying it is his responsbility to clean up the Labor Party in WA..."
"Mr Carpenter has told the ABC's 7.30 Report an early election is not the solution to the Labor Party's problems.
"I've got a responsibility now, not to walk away, not to say okay let's have an election that will fix it all up. It won't," he said.
"I'm in the job, I'm the Premier. I think I've got overwhelming support from the public from what I'm doing here.
"They recognise that this is an historic opportunity in politics in Western Australia never mind the Labor Party, in politics in Western Australia."
"Mr Carpenter says disciplinary proceedings have begun against a senior public servant who appeared before the CCC inquiry earlier this week...."
Full story at ABC News Online at link
- Carpenter urged to oust backbencher over CCC evidence
"Pressure is mounting on Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter to have another MP sacked from the Labor Party, following revelations at a corruption inquiry."Government backbencher Shelley Archer appeared before the inquiry yesterday, accused of passing on confidential information to lobbyist Brian Burke.
"She is also accused of being used as an agent to deal with ministers who would not deal with Mr Burke.
"Ms Archer has denied doing anything wrong and has vowed to resist any moves to oust her from the Labor Party.
"But Opposition Leader Paul Omodei says the Premier has no choice but to have her sacked.
"If the Premier was serious about removing the influence of Brian Burke from the Labor Party, he has got no alternative at all but to get rid of Shelley Archer," he said.
"Mr Omodei says Mr Carpenter has promised to clean up the party and must do so.
"He made it very clear that he was going to clean up the Labor Party," he said.
"He's now going to be put to the test."
From ABC News Online at link
In other developments:"The corruption inquiry that has brought down three State Government ministers and shaken the foundations of the Western Australian Labor party winds up its public hearings today." (Full Story)
- Carpenter rejects calls to eject Archer from ALP
"Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter has dismissed claims he has taken the soft option by not throwing Upper House Labor MP Shelley Archer out of the Labor Party.
"Instead he has removed her from two parliamentary committees, after her appearance at a corruption inquiry yesterday.
"Ms Archer admitted acting as a go-between for the former premier Brian Burke to help him obtain information from ministers.
"She is married to union boss Kevin Reynolds, and the Opposition says that is why the Premier is too afraid to force her out of the ALP.
In Parliament, Opposition Leader Paul Omodei moved a censure motion against the Premier, accusing him of going soft on Ms Archer.
"You need to pick up that sledgehammer that Shelley Archer has been bandying around and you have to smash that connection," he said.
"Mr Carpenter said her relationship has not been a factor in his decision.
"It would be in a completely different category to John Bowler's behaviour and also to Norm Marlborough's behaviour and if Shelley Archer were a minister I'd strip her of the ministry, but to expect me to throw her out of the party on the basis of the evidence that is there, I think, is expecting me to go too far," he said."
From ABC News Online at link
- The Washington Post
- Graduation Requirements: State Superintendent Supports Rule Despite Delay for Some
Starting with the Class of 2009, students must pass all four tests [algebra, biology, English and government], or score at a minimum level on each, to graduate -- a requirement that has provoked increasing worry among some educators and state legislators, who fear that thousands of students could fail to receive their diplomas.
- The Times
- Progress ends at primary school for one tenth of all children
More than one in ten teenagers make no progress in reading and writing in the first three years after leaving primary school, according to government figures.
- The Australian
- Rudd to push school standards [Lead story]
by Samantha Maiden and Justine Ferrari
"Kevin Rudd has pledged to introduce a back-to-basics national curriculum in maths, science, English and history within three years of winning office.
"In a move aimed at seizing the initiative on the national curriculum debate after years of discussion, the Labor leader said it should be "concise, in plain English and understandable to both parents and teachers"."And in a challenge to teachers' unions, Mr Rudd said union leaders would not be offered a place on the National Curriculum Board that a Labor government would establish to develop consistent national curriculums from kindergarten to Year 12.
"The new benchmarks would include a recommended reading list of Australian literature and classics, which the Opposition confirmed last night would include Shakespeare.
"Younger maths students would be required to understand multiplication and fractions, and senior history students would have to demonstrate a systematic understanding of Australian history.
"Australia has been talking for years about the need for a national curriculum," Mr Rudd said yesterday. "A national curriculum will mean that a student moving between Western Australia, Queensland, NSW and Victoria will not be disadvantaged."
"Labor predicted the plan could be achieved in consultation with the states.
"It immediately won qualified support from Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, but the NSW Government remained sceptical about the value of a national curriculum, even under a federal ALP government.
"Labor's plan would also include a new discussion to boost languages in schools, echoing the elevation of "language other than English" program in the Queensland Goss government during the 1990s, when Mr Rudd was director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. The program, introduced in 1991, had set an ambitious target to have all Queensland students studying a second language by 2000.
"A veteran of battles with the teachers' union in Queensland during his years as a public servant and more recently during the debate over the state's controversial Studies of Society and the Environment, Mr Rudd said there was no place for unions on the curriculum board.
"We will not have representation from the unions," he said. "This is a professional curriculum body with representation from the states and territories and curriculum experts from the non-government sector as well." [emphasis added]
"Mr Rudd's show of determination to resist union pressure on education came as the Government sought to paint him as weak on industrial relations.
"A succession of government ministers demanded Labor reveal whether it would keep small business exempt from unfair dismissal laws after Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson hinted on Tuesday night that Labor would give the sector special treatment.
"Dr Emerson's comments at a meeting of small business people caused jitters among some Labor MPs and unionists, who are demanding Labor give all workers the same treatment, regardless of the size of their employer.
"In parliament, Education Minister Julie Bishop accused Mr Rudd of plagiarising the term "education revolution" from former Labor leader Mark Latham.
"Naughty boy! You stole that idea, didn't you?" she said, later adding: "You will have to go to the naughty corner, won't you?"
"Ms Bishop said the suggestion that a national system could be achieved through co-operation with the states was "politically naive" and signalled she would introduce her own plan for a national curriculum by using the threat of funding to force action.
"Labor was also on the attack over early childhood education in parliament, seizing on secret cabinet submissions revealing the Prime Minister had recommended action in 2003 but failed to deliver.
"Mr Beattie yesterday backed the plan to develop a national curriculum, but only if standards were lifted. "We don't want to lose the edge that we have, but if it means lifting the national standard up to Queensland standards then we would support that," he said.
"NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt welcomed the more consultative approach adopted by Mr Rudd and Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith, but said NSW would not accept a national curriculum simply for the sake of uniformity.
"I remain concerned that any move to a national curriculum could result in an undermining of our standards," she said.
"The chairwoman of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, Sue Willis, said progress towards a national curriculum framework was continually being derailed by short-term policy bursts that failed to provide any consistency over the long term.
"Victorian Education Minister John Lenders said he was confident that Mr Rudd's proposal would "lift standards rather than dumbing down standards to the lowest common denominator".
"Ms Bishop's approach has been aggressive and confrontational," Mr Lenders said.
"NSW Teachers Federation president Maree O'Halloran said it was essential for teachers to be involved in any national curriculum. "The people who actually develop and deliver the curriculum and understand the needs of students and teachers are the people in our classrooms currently," Ms O'Halloran said.
"The announcements build on Labor's policy to invest $450 million to provide four-year-olds with 15 hours a week of high-quality early childhood education and provide $111 million to encourage students to study maths and science at university."
From The Australian at link
Similar story in The Melbourne Age
Similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald
Reader comments on 'Do you want a national curriculum?' [Sydney Morning Herald]- Comment
Back to a policy essential
by Justine Ferrari
"Labor embraced its roots yesterday with the old-fashioned idea that the best way to help the poor and disadvantaged is through a sound education.
"The release of Kevin Rudd's vision for a national curriculum with its emphasis on rigorous subject content and a foundation of skills seeks to recapture one of Labor's traditional policy strengths."The Howard Government has made education policy its own in recent years, tapping into parental concerns that the quality was slipping out of their children's education.
"It is a debate that crosses political allegiances, based on concerns that kids can't read, can't spell, are spurning subjects such as maths and science as too hard, and are ignorant of basic events in our nation's history.
"Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop proposed in October the idea of a national board of studies setting a national curriculum, but she is yet to explain the details of her plan.
"Mr Rudd took the initiative yesterday, in his third education policy statement since being elected leader, outlining a curriculum that emphasises basic skills, knowledge and documents written so every parent knows what their child is learning at school.
"Teachers say curriculum documents are technical and not meant to be understood by the wider community.
"It's an assertion rejected by Mr Rudd, who says curriculum documents should be concise and written in plain English that can be understood by parents and teachers.
"And that's what will speak to parents. Education belongs to the whole community, not just the teaching profession." [emphasis added]
From The Australian at link
- Labor plan focuses on four key subjects
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"Recommended reading lists of Australian and classical literature for high school English students will form part of a national curriculum under a federal Labor government.
"Under the plan outlined yesterday by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and education spokesman Stephen Smith, a national curriculum would specify what students should be taught in the four key subjects of English, maths, the sciences and history."The curriculum will also detail essential skills that Australian students should have by the time they leave school.
"The detailed content and skills would be developed by a National Curriculum Board, headed by an eminent educationalist. [I nominate retiring Univ of Queensland V-C John Hay. Web]
"The ALP plan envisages a national curriculum that would explicitly state the content to be taught for the different levels of education at pre-school, primary school, secondary school and Years 11 and 12.
"The policy document released by the ALP yesterday outlines basic tenets in the four core areas.
"In English, students need to know how to spell, how the language works, and to be skilled and articulate users of the oral and written language.
"Young people should be able to read an opinion piece in a newspaper with a sense of the intentions of the writer, and the way the writer's views have affected the language used and the evidence cited," it says.
"As an example, primary school students should understand basic grammar such as using a full stop at the end of a sentence, and should meet consistent spelling competency levels. [Is someone confusing 'grammar' with 'punctuation'? Web]
"Students need "a framework of knowledge about mathematics" so they can recognise the mathematical basis of information about the economy, use maths in their work and understand the "use and misuse" of statistics in public debate.
"Maths students in the early years of school should be able to solve problems, understand multiplication tables, fractions and the placement of decimal points, and identify geometric shapes.
"In science, students need to recognise the science underlying such matters as nuclear power and global warming, what counts as scientific evidence and judge arguments and evidence "claiming to be scientific in support of particular social, economic and political positions". [Sounds pretty soft Web]
"Science students in the later years of primary school should understand scientific concepts such as gravity and the solar system.
"History students should have a historical framework of how the nation evolved, and "the capacity to recognise and handle evidence and arguments in the contemporary world".
"What we want to ensure for the future is that no Australian kid misses out on key national facts when it comes to how our country's evolved," Mr Rudd said."
From The Australian at link
- Editorial
Editorial: Credibility will win the contest
The coming election will be won by the candidate who sticks closest to his policies and his principles
"... There was another example of Mr Rudd's principled politics yesterday when he announced a Labor plan for a national school curriculum in the key learning areas of maths, the sciences, English and history, with an emphasis on the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy, factual information and analysis that all young Australians need to acquire. This policy will infuriate the education unions who have shaped the party's policy on schools for the past decade at least. But it will delight parents who fear their children's schooling is being shaped by education ideology, not objective information. It is a principled policy stance that could well convince voters that Mr Rudd is as sensible as he is smart. And it denies Mr Howard another issue he has used to wedge between Labor and ordinary Australians for years. Good, but not good enough, because there is a raft of other issues, especially workplace relations and energy, on which Mr Rudd has yet to lock the party into policies that are right, regardless of whether they are popular in the party. Despite all the evidence that workplace reform is one of the factors that has increased the size of our economy by 40 per cent across the life of the Howard Government, Labor is still not game to tell the unions that their days of unfettered power are gone for good. Mr Rudd must go to the polls with a clear statement that it will not roll back the Government's workplace reforms. Doing so would enrage the unions but encourage small business owners to think Labor is no longer their enemy..."
Full Editorial in The Australian at link
- Letter to the Editor
- Hands-on teaching needed
"Mercurius Goldstein’s course looks good on paper but it doesn’t explain why many teachers often feel unprepared to teach, particularly maths and phonics (Letters, 28/2)."Maybe things have changed since I graduated there in 2001, but during my time at the University of Sydney, the philosophy of student directed learning underpinned teacher training. I would have preferred to have been explicitly taught how to teach and thoroughly immersed in a practical creative teaching and learning environment than toil through four years of theory-based academic jargon more concerned with recording bureaucratic student outcomes than hands-on teaching."
Cameron Goozeff, Dulwich Hill, NSW
Carpenter's Crisis
- Burke and Grill earned $1m for doctored report
- Rudd cuts Labor links to pariah
- Labor MLC 'Burke's go-between'
Shelly Archer, a Labor backbencher and wife of union heavyweight Kevin Reynolds, has been accused of being Brian Burke's stooge and a go-between in the former premier's dealings with unfriendly ministers.
- Greens demand full disclosure
by Amanda O'Brien, WA political reporter
"Alan Carpenter is under pressure to name all Labor MPs who had contact with Brian Burke and Julian Grill and to publicly explain the nature of their dealings.
"Greens MP Giz Watson wrote to the Premier yesterday asking him to provide the information in a bid to restore public confidence in the Government."The Greens hold the balance of power in the upper house and have refused to rule out blocking supply to force an election if more misconduct or corruption within government is exposed.
"Ms Watson told The Australian the Premier had responded properly by sacking the ministers caught dealing inappropriately with Mr Burke and Mr Grill."But she said the simmering question of misconduct and influence among backbench Labor MPs, some of whom received substantial fundraising help from the pair, continued to undermine confidence and had to be addressed.
"In another torrid day in parliament, Mr Carpenter was accused by the Opposition of trying to stop evidence at the CCC being released publicly, a senior Liberal MP was accused of threatening the deputy speaker, and sacked minister John Bowler broke down in tears as he apologised for his actions..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- Comment
Premier keeps head above murky waters
by Amanda O'Brien, WA political reporter
"The frenzied, rowdy scenes at parliament this week leave no doubt that Alan Carpenter is in for the fight of his life trying to salvage the reputation of his Government.
"A Government grown fat on mining royalties and used to a consistently lacklustre Opposition in parliament is suddenly facing a barrage of abuse from Liberal MPs who sniff their first chance of glory in years."Carpenter is at a huge disadvantage trying to respond while the CCC is still churning out new scandals every day as its hearings continue.
"But despite the massive damage from the misconduct of his ministers, Carpenter is making a pretty good fist of it.
"By sacking them, expressing his outrage and constantly painting himself as the crusader everyone has been waiting for - the only man prepared to take on the Burke colossus - he has turned black and white into grey, confounding his critics.
"In parliament, Carpenter comes across as more in tune with the Opposition line than with his own soiled Government. His tactic of condemning the misbehaviour in terms no less furious than the Opposition makes it strangely difficult to hold him responsible.
"It's clever and it has worked - so far. But Carpenter would be foolish to think it won't change.
"The misbehaviour of ministers has been so extraordinary that the media and the community have been utterly consumed by it. But with those ministers now sacked, the opportunity to look more closely at his backbench MPs and their lucrative links to Brian Burke and Julian Grill is drawing near.
"It's a murky, swirling pool of innuendo at present and he needs to get cracking on this aspect or risk losing public support."
From The Australian at link
- Comment
Downright dangerous liaisons
by Matt Price
"Your enemies can't hurt you," observed former Texan governor Ann Richards. "But your friends will kill you." Western Australia is a lot like Texas, but you doubt the scriptwriters from Dallas could dream up somebody as dodgy and toxic as Brian Burke. While most poison is confined to Burke's "friends" out west, yesterday some fumes wafted to Canberra to make Kevin Rudd queasy.
"When Rudd and education spokesman Stephen Smith appeared to launch Labor's national curriculum push, talk turned to the stench in Perth. Smith, a long-time enemy of Burke, wondered how any half-sensible MP would mix with such a creature: "After a couple of very seriously improper examples over a 20-year period, maybe in future more people might think it's sensible not to have contact with him.""Rudd went faintly ashen. During six months in 2005, Rudd and Burke crossed paths three times. Had the Labor leader ever sensed the sleaziness that's now spewing from the corruption investigation? "Not at all, not at all, not at all," came the nervous reply..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- The Melbourne Age
- Schools fail new report cards and plan to boycott system
by Bridie Smith and Farrah Tomazin
"A growing number of state schools are unhappy with the Bracks Government's controversial A-E report cards and may boycott the compulsory system."Several schools told The Age yesterday they were reluctant to comply with the cards, which have become mandatory from this year. Some complying schools felt the need to provide an additional report.
"Spensley Street Primary School in Clifton Hill, which requested an exemption from the Government last year, voted last week at a school council meeting to maintain its reporting system. The school has not yet been granted an exemption.
"Our community has said very clearly that our current reporting format meets the needs of our families and provides the information families want," principal Maureen Douglas said.
"The school of 350 students uses a band reporting system developed over many years, which a majority of parents supported, she said.
"At a philosophical level, we are against labelling of children in their early development as learners to characterise them as successes or failures with a digit put after their name," she said.
"An A to E is very limited to make judgements about schools and systems. Our emphasis is on the whole child. A single grade doesn't allow us to do this."
"Last week, Princes Hill Primary School principal Gillian Collins said rating students in grades 1 and 2 "doesn't sit comfortably with our teaching staff". The school council will discuss the matter on March 13.
"Another school in northern Victoria, which declined to be identified, said struggling students, particularly those with an intellectual disability, would get an additional report.
"The deputy principal said the school did not want to send home a report littered with Es, which would discourage the student and make parents think their child was a lost cause. Instead, the school wanted to present a fair report in the context of hope.
"Last week, Education Minister John Lenders announced changes to the reporting system following a backlash. The changes exempt prep students and allow 'A' students to receive the top grade when they are 12 months ahead of the agreed standard, rather than 18 months, as originally proposed.
"Maths would also be graded in five areas — space, number, measurement chance and data, working mathematically and structure — following teacher concerns.
"The first reports are due at the end of term two.
"Mr Lenders' spokesman, Licardo Prince, said yesterday some students had been given exemptions because of the specialised nature of their learning programs."
From The Melbourne Age at link
- Rudd hands out a lesson on taking initiative
by Michelle Grattan
"He's here, there, everywhere. The Government now knows Kevin Rudd's modus operandi. When it has an issue on the go, he sprints to get ahead with his own initiative."The latest is his plan for a national curriculum. Education Minister Julie Bishop is working on that idea, proposing to put something firm to state ministers in April. Now Rudd has got in first, announcing he'd set up an independent national board of experts to develop a curriculum. Labor would hope to get co-operation from the states: education spokesman Stephen Smith has been consulting them.
"The Government has been left flat-footed. It can squeal that this is daylight robbery — "what we have heard today is a direct lift of the Howard Government policy" complained Bishop. Indeed; just as in the past the Coalition has been happy to pinch Labor ideas.
"It can say Labor will run into trouble with states and the education union. But Rudd is always going to be better-placed to negotiate with the states. He plans to use the wall-to-wall ALP governments to his advantage on a range of issues.
"As for a stoush with the education union — that would probably play to Rudd's benefit.
"He was firm yesterday that the union wouldn't get a look-in on his committee, which would be strictly a professional body. [emphasis added]
"Rudd's policy document is a sensible pathway ahead. It proposes a structure and some broad boundaries (the subjects and years to be included). There is little detail but it doesn't need it. The fine print would be filled in after the national curriculum board reported to a Rudd government.
"Rudd has not just seized and rebadged the Government's curriculum initiative — he's also advancing a less shrill version of the PM's preoccupation with narrative history. Rudd says all Australian children should learn the nation's past, including a chronology of what happened.
"It's also vital, he says, that they acquire analytical skills. It would be hard for most of those at the Government's history summit to object to the Rudd version.
"The Opposition Leader's education strategy is on two fronts: linking his "education revolution" with the needs of a growing economy, and neutralising government attempts to wedge Labor on issues such as history teaching.
"The Government is likely to ramp up other aspects of the education debate, such as teachers' performance pay, which Labor has already embraced, and making school principals more autonomous.
"The latter would test Labor. But it's clear Rudd will be a match for the Government on education. It's also obvious Julie Bishop, who has had an easy run, will have to lift her game. Jibes like "naughty boy" make her sound like a silly girl."
From The Melbourne Age at link
- Letters to the Editor
- Entrenching inequity in our school system
"I don't blame parents for sending their children to private schools for a better education. It is a parent's imperative to ensure a good education for their children, to prepare them for their future. If they feel that they can't get this from the public education system, then private it is."Increasingly, though, public schools will be the education of last resort. More money will flow from the public system to the private system, as the inertia imparted by decades of education policy vacuum and neglect builds on itself. This money will enable private schools to have smaller class sizes, better facilities — to make the difference between the systems increasingly stark.
"More pressure will then be applied on those parents who still send their children to government schools; the understanding will become that sending your child to a state school will be little short of child abuse. The trend away from state schools will become a stampede.
"Outcomes from the private school system will soar, as they assert their dominance by creaming the best minds from state schools by way of scholarships (the present measurement of performance makes this cherry-picking of students essential for private schools that want to maintain their competitive edge).
"So we have entrenched inequity. A second-class system for those without the wherewithal to pay for private education, a first-class system for those who can afford it.
"We need to redress this balance not by attacking private schools, but looking at how we can re-energise the public sector. By providing sufficient resources for the public education system we can stop the drift to the private sector — and give parents a real choice."
Chris O'Neill, Belgrave
The difference
"Julie Bishop may consider it to be part of her job to continually attack teachers in general and state school teachers in particular, but it is hard to see what exactly she is trying to achieve with the continual undermining of the state school system."Having started my teaching career in one of Melbourne's "elite" independent schools before moving to a state school, I can attest that the standard of teaching is equally high in both systems. It's the vast grounds and state-of-the-art equipment that are the real difference — and parents know this all too well. It's a sick joke that millions of dollars in government funding is being pumped into schools that charge up to $20,000 per year while other schools are unable to provide decent toilet facilities.
"The problem lies not only with the current Liberal government, which is systematically sabotaging free public education, but also with the great number of Labor MPs who send their own children to private schools. How can we rely on them to defend our state schools when they are not personally invested in them?"
Blair Mahoney, Brunswick West
Perceptions
"Contrary to Minister Bishop's claim that "parents are choosing to pay school fees at non-government schools because of the quality of education provided", parents are making this choice based as much on an ill-informed perception of public education."This perception is in no small way influenced by sensationalist media headlines such as "Parents shun state education" atop stories reporting that most Australian students are being educated within the public system (The Age, 27/2), as it is by the continual Federal Government bashing of state education and its teachers. This negative press creates a drift to the private sector which legitimates the further funnelling of public funds into private schools, the ultimate goal of which is the privatisation of education by stealth.
"Parents must remember that it is the teacher who, by and large, makes the difference to the education our children receive — and teachers are all trained in the same institutions regardless of where they are subsequently employed. Any value-adding after that is enabled by where and how the money is spent. And that is a political decision based on ideology. In this case, a neo-liberal ideology that embraces the free-market, small government and privatisation."
Margaret Pledger, Fairfield
- The Sydney Morning Herald
- Head girl teaches new boy a lesson for copying answers
by Phillip Coorey
"Kevin Rudd is not the Messiah."So said the Education Minister, Julie Bishop, yesterday as she accused Mr Rudd of poaching the idea of introducing a national school curriculum.
"Naughty boy. You stole that idea didn't you," teased the impeccably coiffed one before segueing seamlessly from Monty Python to reality TV.
"You will have to go to the naughty corner won't you?"
"Not only did Mr Rudd pilfer the policy from the Government, she taunted, but the name of its mothership, The Education Revolution, was borrowed from a more sinister source: "What did you learn today? Creating an education revolution by one Mark Latham."
"Ms Bishop should at least score points for having unearthed a copy of one of Mr Latham's more turgid offerings.
"Mr Rudd's idea was the latest example of the one-upmanship between the Government and Labor as they compete to care more about the same thing.
"Sure, they disagree vehemently on Iraq and industrial relations, but on other matters, Mr Rudd has adopted a policy of hugging his foe and surreptitiously placing a "kick me" sign on his back, rather than taking the cudgel to him.
"The Government has been prattling on for years about nationalising school curriculums but has been resisted by the Labor states, the education unions and the federal Labor Party itself.
"Now Mr Rudd is the leader and Stephen Smith his education spokesman, the ALP has done an about-face. The education unions may not be convinced but Mr Rudd has made it clear, both publicly and privately, that he will run them through should they stand in his path. [emphasis added]
"So Mr Rudd's policy is off and running while Ms Bishop is still awaiting a meeting with her state counterparts in April to try to convince them of backing her plan, not Mr Rudd's. Fat chance, one would imagine.
"John Howard sniffed partisan politics at play. "If, in fact, the state education ministers change their tune because the federal Labor Party have put up the proposal, it will demonstrate what we have believed for a long time: that they have been playing politics for a number of years." ...
Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
- ABC News
- WA's CCC inquiry to end public hearings
"The corruption inquiry that has brought down three State Government ministers and shaken the foundations of the Western Australian Labor party winds up its public hearings today.
"What started out as an inquiry into the handling of a proposal for a tourist development in the south west turned into an investigation into the highest echelons of Government.
"The inquiry by the Corruption and Crime Commission exposed the influence of the lobbyist, former Premier Brian Burke, and his business partner Julian Grill on local government councillors, senior public servants and politicians.
"Three Ministers have been forced to resign because of their dealings with the men.
"The inquiry also revealed the wide-ranging powers of the CCC as it bugged phones and installed a listening device in the home of Mr Grill.
"While further investigations will continue, today marks the end of public hearings and those caught up in the inquiry will now wait to see if they could face criminal proceedings."
From ABC News Online at link
- The West Australian
- Editorial
It is no wonder that the community is confused (page 16)
"An executive from the WA Education Department was asked to explain how a B-grade equivalent was achieved in the recent testing of Year 9s in reading, mathematics and science.
"He replied that the number of correct answers achieved was irrelevant and that the testing "was not about achieving a pass or a fail but about collecting comprehensive information through system-wide assessments about students' performance against aspirational targets".
"It is this kind of meaningless bureaucratic gobbledegook that makes parents and the community despair. With such muddled thinking it is sadly unsurprising that our children appear to be struggling with the basics of education.
"If the department cannot explain its testing coherently, no wonder there is dwindling faith in its teaching powers."
From The West Australian
- Don't rush national syllabus: [self-appointed?] expert (page 49)
by Rhianna King, Canberra
"A national curriculum is not a magic bullet to addressing academic standards and could overload an already crowded syllabus, a leading WA education expert has warned.
"Edith Cowan University professor Greg Robson urged the Federal Government and Opposition to tread carefully with plans to develop national standards and said they needed to provide significantly more support for teachers..." [And newly-minted Professor Robson has done so much for education in WA... Web]
"Professor Robson, former acting chief of the WA Curriculum Council, said a national curriculum was not necessarily going to lead to better results. "Australia education is going pretty well, but we need to do better for low achieving groups," he said. [According to yesterday's article, that's approximately HALF of our students. Web] "Continuing to change the curriculum... isn't going to help resolve that challenge. Teachers need practical, decent, on the ground support." [emphasis added]
"In this situation, less is actually more. A national curriculum could load more and more stuff into what is supposed to be taught. The evidence is that in primary schools in particular, teachers are already struggling to cope with the demands of what they've got."
[Acting on party lines] "Education Minister Mark McGowan said he preferred Labor's model to the Government's... and applauded Labor's plan to establish a national curriculum board."
Full story in The West Australian
Carpenter's Crisis –
Things are Soooo Bad... There is so little talent... that Lil is Back
Reshuffle sees Ravlich rejoin the ranks [11:30 am update]
by Peta Rule
"Controversial MP Ljiljanna Ravlich has rejoined the higher ranks of Cabinet in a reshuffle prompted by this week's sacking of two ministers."Premier Alan Carpenter was forced to reshuffle his Cabinet after Tony McRae and John Bowler resigned in disgrace when their links with controversial lobbyists Brian Burke and Julian Grill were revealed in the Corruption and Crime Commission this week.
"Ms Ravlich was the big winner in the reshuffle, picking up Mr Bowler's ministerial responsibilities just months after she lost the Education portfolio over her handling of outcomes-based education.
"In a show of faith in the beleaguered Ms Ravlich, Premier Alan Carpenter gave her the Local Government, Racing and Gaming, and Goldfields and Esperance portfolios - which were all once under Mr Bowler..."
Full story in The West Australian at link
- Barnett plays down talk of leadership run (page 6)
Former Opposition leader Colin Barnett yesterday played down speculation that he may be returned to the Liberal Party’s top job, saying he just wanted to do what he could to take the fight up to the Government.
- Alannah’s bold plan to crush ALP heavies [Front Page Headline]
Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan wants to form a new faction of the WA Labor Party in a bid to break the control union bosses and powerbrokers such as Brian Burke have over the ALP.
- Archer was go-between for Burke (page 4)
Labor backbencher Shelley Archer [aka Mrs Kevin Reynolds] admitted acting as a “go-between” for Brian Burke as the former premier sought information about State Government decisions affecting his clients.
- And as usual, Alston says it best:
© The West Australian
- The Australian
- Editorial: The advantages of a national approach
School reform deserves to take centre stage in the campaign
"Kevin Rudd may have gone home from parliament yesterday licking his wounds after a bruising question time that focused on his meetings with former West Australian premier Brian Burke, but he can take some comfort in his plan to nationalise primary and high school curriculums. For while the proposal may put the teachers unions offside, it represents a dose of common sense on an issue of long-term national importance. There is no good reason for a country of 20 million people to host eight separate state and territory educational systems, each developing their own syllabuses. The advantages of a national system are myriad. For the nearly 80,000 students who move interstate each year, a uniform curriculum would help make the transition to a new school that much less difficult. Employers interviewing candidates who were schooled in another state would, with the implementation of a national curriculum, have a far greater understanding of what qualifications the candidates bring to the table. Giving the federal government central control of the nation's curriculum would also serve to increase accountability and transparency in a system that is too often deliberately opaque and unfriendly when it comes to involving parents. And although a national curriculum is by no means a cure-all, if Australia is to continue to compete with India, China and other "Asian tigers" where education is a far more intense, rigorous and fact-based experience than it is here and whose students repeatedly best ours in international rankings, something has to change. [emphasis added] Despite the predictable opposition of teachers unions angered at the potential loss of power that Mr Rudd's plan represents, there are already noises of support coming from the states. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, for his part, has already indicated that he would go along with a national curriculum as long as any new regime represented an improvement on his state's present system. And Queensland, it should be recalled, is where Mr Rudd first cut his teeth on this issue. His old boss, former Queensland premier Wayne Goss, fought off attempts in the 1990s to introduce politically correct textbooks that used the word "invasion" to describe the European settlement of Australia. And Mr Rudd, as Mr Goss's right-hand man, was instrumental in the implementation of a Language Other Than English program in Queensland's curriculum.
"Mr Rudd's plan does two important things. First, in declaring that a Labor government would essentially shut teachers unions out of the curriculum-writing process, the Opposition Leader has breached the cultural wall separating the federal ALP from parents in suburban and regional Australia. For Labor, such a move is a return to its roots and its proud - if lately forgotten - belief that one of the best weapons against generational poverty is a first-class government education. Here, Mr Rudd's own biography is testimony to this power. And second, in bringing his party to the sensible centre, Mr Rudd has helped take the politics out of the issue and instead allowing the debate to move on to the best way to tackle a reformed national curriculum that eschews trendy fads for solid core knowledge. [emphasis added]
"Because of this, it is vital that the discussion over national curriculum reform not become just another political dogfight. The media, especially, should engage with Mr Rudd's proposal on a practical, rather than political, level - even if it contains within its pages ideas many commentators will find uncomfortable. The core of the plan is the idea that education works best when it fuses knowledge and skills and calls for shorter, more specific curriculum documents that speak in plain English. This alone will be enough to horrify education industry bureaucrats used to padding out their prose with talk of "best practice" and "process learning". In science, the plan emphasises not just theory but the ability to make sound judgments about data and evidence. In maths, the report calls for giving students a grounding in the fundamentals of the discipline, not just for their careers but for their ability to participate in public life, and says that even young students should be familiar with multiplication and division. In the teaching of history and English, Mr Rudd calls for students to be taught not only how to critically interpret texts but also to be able to fully understand the grammatical workings of the language and demonstrate a factual understanding of events that shaped the nation, from the indigenous experience to the two World Wars and beyond. And the plan calls for a set number of works of Australian literature to be taught (in some states even movie posters count as "texts") as well as the classics. [emphasis added]
"Of course, federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is right that Mr Rudd's is not a new idea. And, as always, it is easier to put forward sweeping reforms from the Opposition benches than it is to implement them once one's hands are on the levers of power. In 1993, the Australian Education Council voted down its own long-running effort to implement a national curriculum, an incident then prime minister Paul Keating recalled as "one of the most depressing outcomes ever of commonwealth-state meetings". The Howard Government has made feints at nationalising the curriculum and using funding as a lever to bring state and territory governments to the table. And John Howard himself has done much to raise awareness of these issues by convening a history summit to discuss the way our past is taught and complaining about the "gobbledegook" that too often passes for an English education. It will be interesting to see how many pundits, commentators and experts who in the past have criticised attempts by the Howard Government to federalise education as bullying attempts to force the nation to march in lock-step with Canberra find themselves suddenly seeing the merit in similar proposals when they come from the Opposition benches. [emphasis added] None of this distracts from the importance of the project. This newspaper has long called for a national curriculum and taken the lead in pointing out the damaging excesses committed by state and territory education departments, and it is heartening to see this issue become so central to the coming election campaign. An accountable, centralised system that casts its net over the entire country makes far more sense than one that has education broken up into separate fiefdoms, each hijacked by various agendas, with parents and the community locked out at the gates."
From The Australian at link
- ALP pushes languages in schools
by Samantha Maiden and Justine Ferrari
"Schools would be encouraged to offer every child the opportunity to study a foreign language under the next phase of Kevin Rudd's education plan.
"As Victorian Premier Steve Bracks moved yesterday to back federal Labor's plan to offer a national curriculum in core areas including maths, English, science and history, the Opposition confirmed offering more students the chance to learn a language was the next target."I think all children should have that opportunity," federal Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith told The Australian yesterday.
"Whether that should be something that is compulsory, I am happy to take expert advice on."
"Mr Smith said lifting the number of children who learned a second language was a longstanding policy goal of the Labor leader, who had lifted targets when he worked in the Goss government in Queensland during the 1990s.
"The Australian Council of State School Organisations welcomed the focus on the core subjects of English, maths, science and history as the starting point for a national curriculum.
"Council executive director Terry Aulich said the next curriculum to be developed should be languages other than English, which was imperative given Australia's status as a trading nation with a large non-English speaking population.
"We really do have to come to grips with that. Only about 12 per cent of graduating school students have a second language," he said.
"In parliament, Education Minister Julie Bishop said Labor's policy credentials were undermined by Mr Rudd's involvement in the ALP's failed policy venture Knowledge Nation, often lampooned as "noodle nation" as a result of a complex diagram included in the document.
"Members will be interested to know who the other authors of noodle nation were. Hands up! The other authors of noodle nation ... none other than the Leader of the Opposition and (Stephen Smith)," she said.
"Australian Curriculum Studies Association spokesman Alan Reid said highlighting the four subjects gave them a privileged status over other disciplines.
"Professor Reid, education professor at the University of South Australia, said subjects such as geography, the arts and civics should be included.
"But Mr Aulich and Professor Reid thought the ALP proposal superior to the plan put forward by the Coalition, saying it was necessary to include the states in any curriculum development."
From The Australian at link
- Letters to the Editor
- The school curriculum needs a stable foundation
"A national curriculum has finally become public policy more than two decades after it was first advanced. The concept is a significant advance in Australian school education."The state governments should embrace the proposal immediately, in principle, allowing for the usual push and shove of a changing federal system.
"The national board should include a balance of state and federal agencies without involving unions, non-government schools, interest groups or politically motivated individuals. The history of composite and representative boards in Australian education has not been a happy one even though the concept appears attractive.
"A national board with membership grounded in professionalism and sound scholarship rather than ideological values should be the focus, and a bipartisan approach is desirable. The biggest sticking point is likely to be assessment. This should be addressed from the outset rather than given second place to designing the curriculum framework.
"Whether all this can be achieved in three years is questionable. It would be unfortunate if, as the timeframes suggest, the curriculum is limited to the last two years of secondary schooling. It should, over time, encompass the entire spectrum of schooling.
"This is a policy area that has taken more than 100 years to evolve and it needs to be established on a stable basis and not pushed forward in such haste that it has to be repeatedly revisited."
Ian Welch, Mawson, ACT
"Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop says that the Government will hold the states accountable on federal funding. It sounds more like holding the states to ransom. Do as demanded or no funding sounds like a great way to improve education in cash-strapped schools."
B. Lines, Middle Park, Qld
"It's about time the states stopped stuffing around with children’s education and got down to the task of teaching appropriate content and teaching it well. I just hope that this standardisation of the curriculum won’t dumb down the high standards that do exist across the educational patchwork, but will strengthen them and improve the quality and reputation of an Australian school education. We owe this to future generations."
Brad Ruting, Castle Hill, NSW
- Most Talked About: Burke Scandal
Voters will struggle to find an honest politician in WA [Six Letters]
- YouTube blocked in state's schools
by Rick Wallace, Victorian political reporter; Additional reporting: AAP
"YouTube and other video-sharing websites will be blocked in Victorian schools in a move condemned by the main teachers' union as "censorship".
"The state Government yesterday announced that such sites would be banned as part of a crackdown on "cyber-bullying"."The decision follows the distribution via YouTube last year of footage of a degrading attack on a teenage girl, filmed by teenage students in Werribee.
"The Bracks Government has never tolerated bullying in schools and this zero-tolerance approach extends to the online world," Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan said.
"We do not tolerate bullying on any level - be it physical, verbal or cyber-bullying.
"We want to educate students about responsible use of the internet and ensure they are accessing age-appropriate material that is relevant to the curriculum and their learning needs."
"But the Australian Education Union's state secretary, Mary Bluett, said while bullying was on the decline in the state's schools, blocking internet sites had little to do with the reduction.
"That sort of censorship will play a minor part," Ms Bluett said. "The best thing is to modify children's behaviour by them understanding the consequences of the impact of bullying."
"Ms Bluett said students would still get access to YouTube from their home computers, and while the website did contain "inappropriate" content it also held "some pretty amusing and reasonable stuff as well".
"Schools, and their internet service providers, already filter websites and Ms Allan said YouTube would be added to a list of blocked sites."
From The Australian at link
Similar story in The Melbourne AgeIt's now 'Rudd's Crisis'
- Burke scandal bruises Rudd
Kevin Rudd's bid for government has suffered its first serious blow after the Labor leader admitted to bad judgment in meeting disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke on three occasions.
- Cut & paste: The Opposition Leader's dealings with a convicted crim
Treasurer Peter Costello, in parliamentary question time yesterday, attacks Kevin Rudd over the Brian Burke scandal
- Union pressure denied
Permier Alan Carpenter has denied pressure from union figures was behind his decision not to force MP Shelley Archer out of the ALP.
- Burke may lose his assets
- Tapes reveal backroom manoeuvring
- Comment
Dennis Shanahan: Danger Latham's L-plate tag could stick
- The Sketch
Matt Price: Perfect storm shakes up Rudd
- Swiss in threat to sue over $17.5m
Similar stories in all daily newspapers:Melbourne Age Sydney Morning Herald
- The Melbourne Age
- Teacher unions angry at Labor exclusion
by Jewel Topsfield, Canberra
"Federal Labor is on a collision course with the powerful education union over its policy decision to exclude union representatives from the board tasked with developing a national curriculum."Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has ruled out having union representatives sit on the board, which, under a Labor Government, would develop a curriculum in maths, the sciences, English and history for all students from prep to year 12.
"But the federal president of the Australian Education Union, Pat Byrne, said it would be "counter-productive" to exclude teacher union representation.
"The union represents in excess of 200,000 teachers … it's important for a board like this to have credibility with the profession," she said. [Some would say "the union has 200,000 members", NOT that it represents them. There will be teachers on the board; they just won't be carrying a union banner. Web]
"Victorian president Mary Bluett also warned that excluding the unions could put teachers offside. "For some reason, the combination of teachers and union seems to be used as a swear word at the moment," she said. "Both the Government and the Opposition are having difficulty understanding that teacher unions do speak on behalf of teachers on professional as well as industrial matters," she said.
"Let's be a little bit sensible about … including the profession as a major player, otherwise it is not going to work. There is a growing cynicism, if not distrust, about politicians determining the direction."
"However, Labor, the Government and the Democrats yesterday voted against a motion moved by the Greens that the Senate insist that Australia's teachers, through their unions, be directly involved in formulating a national curriculum.
"The Greens moved this motion because we want teachers, not politicians, involved in formulating curriculum," Greens senator Kerry Nettle said.
"The Democrats claimed the furore over the national curriculum was a smokescreen to hide the inequitable funding of education, with government funding for independent and Catholic schools growing at three times the rate of spending on public schools.
"The two major parties would have us return to rote learning and times tables and every grade three student making paper daffodils on the same day in spring," Senator Lyn Allison said. [emphasis added]
"However, Premier Steve Bracks yesterday said he would work with federal Labor, saying Mr Rudd's plan for a national curriculum was "significantly different" to the Howard Government's proposal.
"The proposals from the Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop are for a takeover of the education systems and more power to Canberra over the curriculum, which we don't accept, we don't support," he said.
"The proposals, as I understand, from federal Labor are for harmonisation of state systems and a national curriculum which would come out of the harmonisation," Mr Bracks said."
From The Melbourne Age at link
- The Sydney Morning Herald
- Editorial
Ms Bishop and the naughty corner
"Who was the first person to propose a national school curriculum? Who cares? Let's just get on with it."The federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, has accused the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, of stealing the idea from the Government. Labor's education spokesman, Stephen Smith, replies that the proposal was around in the 1960s. It may well have been around even longer than that; after all, it is only common sense to have a single body replace separate curriculum authorities in six states and two territories. No one could argue with the principle. But there may be considerable disagreement about the detail - if only we knew what it was.
"The Government's by now familiar plan is to develop a national curriculum in mathematics, physics, chemistry, English and history. Labor's position is ditto. However, while Ms Bishop talks of financial penalties if the states do not sign up, Mr Smith, sensibly, stresses negotiation.
"Both sides emphasise not only unifying standards, but lifting them. This is implicit criticism of present standards. But what is that criticism? What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing syllabuses, and which states exemplify them? Which, if any, teach mathematics well, and which teach science badly? Enough of the generalities. The public needs the nitty-gritty, subject by subject and state by state. Yet neither the Government nor Labor offers the public any sense of the differences in standards from one state to the next, or of how well each state performs. So far, all we have from Ms Bishop - in the five months since she promised national curriculums - is the promise of a model curriculum for Australian history to be put before April's planned meeting of education ministers. [emphasis added]
"NSW is having none of Ms Bishop's criticism. It believes its history syllabus, for one, is exemplary. And it thinks its teaching methods are more rigorous than those of some other states, with more face-to-face teaching time. It complains that the Federal Government ignores the work since 2003 between the states and territories to harmonise standards in English, science, mathematics, civics and citizenship, and information and communication technologies.
"If this debate is to go forward, Ms Bishop must be plain about how syllabuses will change. As well, the federal Education Minister needs to explain who will shape the new national syllabuses, how they will be implemented, at what cost and who will bear it. Otherwise, Julie, it is you, not Kevin, who will have to go to the naughty corner."
From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
- Devil's in the details on standards
As politicians squabble over credit for the idea of a national school curriculum, details of how it would work are scarce, writes Anna Patty.
"John Dawkins may want to send Julie Bishop and Kevin Rudd to the naughty corner for copying his plans for a national school curriculum. During his term as the federal minister for education in the Hawke government, Mr Dawkins worked towards developing a similar plan."And while the minister and the Opposition Leader squabble about who should take credit for the idea, they still haven't explained how they are going to make it work. Nor have they learnt any lessons from the failed Dawkins experiment, the main one being that without the support and co-operation of the states the idea is dead in the water.
"It is no easy task. NSW and Queensland are among those that continue to dig in their heels, jealously guarding control over their existing curriculum standards, which they fear could be lowered within a national framework. They are only too happy to co-operate in the national push, just as long as standards are raised to meet theirs.
"Barry McGaw, the architect of the NSW Higher School Certificate in its present form, introduced in 2000, supports the idea of a national curriculum. "It won't work if there is some kind of central office in Canberra that tries to prescribe it all," he says. "It will only work if you keep the states on side."
"The founding president of the NSW Board of Studies, John Lambert, pulled the pin on the Dawkins plan for a national curriculum during the early 1990s. Interestingly, Mr Lambert, who now works as a full-time consultant for the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation, is singing a different tune.
"Mr Lambert withdrew his support from the model discussed from the late 1980s to the early 1990s because he believed it was impractical for teachers to implement the high level of detail it demanded. "There were too many outcomes that teachers were expected to meet," he recalls. "The issue at the moment is a different one."
"Both the Government and the Opposition are talking about a national curriculum in terms of common outcomes and probably common content. "I am quite supportive of that. I think it is time that we had a national curriculum that identified common outcomes, common content and common skills," he says.
"Education experts, the teaching profession and both sides of government agree national consistency in needed, with 80,000 families moving from state to state and school to school each year. There is also a push to lift education standards around the country.
"When the Federal Government announced its plans in October for a national certificate of education - to replace the existing state and territory year 12 leaving certificates - it released a report from the Australian Council for Educational Research.
"The report by the council's chief executive officer, Geoff Masters, identified unnecessary duplication and differences in assessment between the states.
"Professor Masters found the curriculums for chemistry, physics and advanced maths were very similar. For example, the states and territories shared 95 per cent of the chemistry course, 85 per cent of physics and 90 per cent of advanced mathematics.
"While the maths curriculum was found to be largely common, the method of assessment differed. In accounting, a mark of 85 in one state did not represent the same level in another. This made it impossible for employers to compare a mark gained in one state with that in another state. And when it came to subjects such as Australian history, less than half the content was in common; in English it was about a quarter.
"There was fairly good agreement on skills, but little agreement on the type of English texts or particular periods of history that were studied," Professor Masters says.
"The Prime Minister, John Howard, and Ms Bishop have been critical of the content of English and history courses around the country, insisting that history be taught as a stand-alone subject, as it is in NSW.
"SCEGGS Darlinghurst earned a special gong for daring to incorporate feminist and race readings of Shakespeare's Othello into its syllabus, despite the central characters being a feisty female and a black foreigner.
"While NSW English teachers argue their syllabus is of high quality, with an emphasis on a personal reading of the classics, Western Australia's syllabus has been more difficult to defend. The WA Premier, Alan Carpenter, was forced to dump his education minister, Ljiljanna Ravlich, after a series of gaffes she made, including her failed introduction of a system of "outcomes-based" courses into years 11 and 12.
"History courses were criticised for their lack of rigour, English students were reportedly asked to study posters and SMS messages, and music students were not required to play instruments.
"Ms Bishop points out that the Queensland Government's decision to exempt selective schools from the official State Government curriculum so that students at these schools will study the International Baccalaureate, is a clear admission that the Beattie Government "has no faith in the quality of its curriculum".
"Declaring an obvious bias, Mr Lambert says that "as founding president of the NSW Board of Studies from 1990 to 1994, I would say the NSW certificate is the best one".
"The HSC is an outstanding credential with international recognition and will get students entering just about any university in the world," he says. "It has also been very well tested in the sense that it has been around many years and has been through many revisions and has been refined so that it works very well.
"Given that it seems we will have a national curriculum, because the Coalition and Opposition have said they both want it, the NSW HSC should be held up as the model on whatever is decided on. I think NSW should take the initiative in making it happen."
"Ms Bishop doesn't rule out lifting national standards to match those in NSW, but the state shouldn't be so sure that it has best practice for all subjects.
"Her spokesman said that if NSW was so sure it had the best system, it should put its cards on the table and allow an independent body to judge its merits against its other counterparts. That way, the best of what each state has to offer can be included in a gold-standard curriculum.
"The NSW Minister for Education, Carmel Tebbutt, has been consistent in her wariness of the national proposal, regardless of whether it is being spouted from the Coalition or federal Labor.
"She says NSW is one of the only states to have an external exam for its year 12 certificate and to make the study of English compulsory. "NSW HSC students are required as a minimum to spend 65 per cent more time in the classroom than their Victorian peers - that's an extra 520 hours of face-to-face teaching time," she says.
"In NSW the minimum requirement for tertiary entry courses includes 200 hours more classroom time than is the case in Victoria. And unlike the situation in some states, including Victoria, NSW students must successfully complete the School Certificate [or year 10] before being allowed to commence the HSC." Ms Tebbutt also insists that practising teachers should be represented on any national curriculum board.
"Ms Bishop says it would be appropriate for any national curriculum development organisation to include teachers as representatives of the profession.
"The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maree O'Halloran, says the NSW Board of Studies includes representatives from the independent schools and public school teacher unions.
"That way ensures you have the practising teachers on the board and that they reflect more than their own viewpoint," she says.
"But Mr Rudd has made a point of excluding teacher union representatives on his plan for a new national curriculum board, charged with designing common content in maths, English, history and science as soon as 2010."
From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
- The Weekend Australian
- Op Ed
Labor the lesser evil
by Judith Weeldon
"I continue to believe that the arguments against a national curriculum outweigh potential benefits. The danger of nationalising bad policy is significant; divisiveness among the states over who wins will be serious; the expense will not be insignificant; loss of intellectual diversity will be similar to loss of biodiversity.
"But when both the Government and the alternative government choose to support a national curriculum, the best strategy for the voter is to choose the better option and try to influence what can be influenced."This week, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and education spokesman Stephen Smith published Labor's new policy document, Establishing a national curriculum to improve our children's educational outcomes. In his 20-page easy-to-read statement, Rudd produces a policy with some strong features and an approach to national agreement that has a chance of working.
"The most often heard argument for a national curriculum is consistency across the country to assist students who move interstate. Consistency is not only the hobgoblin of small minds; it is also a poor argument for a major change. Of the 80,000 students estimated to change states each year, only some experience avoidable difficulty due to different curriculums, and those are generally older students facing examinations on specific syllabuses. There are already many strategies to assist these students and their teachers if schools are sensitive and well-enough resourced. Centralising curriculum for this purpose is overkill.
"A better argument is one based on international competitiveness, an idea that is prominent in Labor's policy, which gives ample evidence of the strength of Australian curriculums as revealed in international benchmarking, in which Australia holds a proud but not top place in each category.
"Two countries that are consistently placed ahead of us in almost all categories and clearly do significantly better than Australia are Finland and South Korea. Why? What do they do that we don't?
"The top students in all three countries are roughly equal but Finland and South Korea do much more to ensure all students reach their full potential. This achievement is not made suddenly in the senior years of school or by offering a few brilliant teachers so-called performance pay.
"Solid achievement for all is built by many teachers, from pre-school through to Year 12, applying a sound curriculum that develops first-class fundamental skills and thinking ability that can be used in all other study: that is, primarily, literacy and numeracy. Foundation knowledge of history, science and literature are crucial, too. For this reason, the Labor policy has taken a brave and important step in offering a national curriculum that covers kindergarten to Year 12.
"Take the example of science teaching, which is in crisis across Australia. We are not producing enough scientists or keeping the ones we have. We do not have a scientifically educated populace that is able to apply scientific principles to make good personal, political and economic judgments. As just two examples, consider alternative medicine and water recycling.
"Labor's plan for a K-12 science curriculum is ambitious but well placed and suggests seriousness of purpose. A main reason for our difficulties in senior sciences today is that we fail utterly in teaching science in primary years. Almost no new primary teachers have any qualifications whatsoever in science; they seldom even have significant high school science. Thus they are not capable of recognising and developing the natural scientific thinking of young children that should grow into a love of science. A strong primary science curriculum supported by qualified specialist science teachers would, over the years, make a significant intellectual and economic change in Australia. Finding and educating these teachers will be a major challenge, but it can be done and is an urgent task. Serious curriculum imbalance can quickly develop when four disciplines are selected above others for national attention.
"It is hard to imagine that national assessment, reporting and certification would not follow close behind the national curriculum. The same curriculum measured by different standards and reported in different terms will not achieve the goal of consistency across the country and equality in university entrance competition. A bitter battle can be expected on the issue of external examinations versus continuous assessment. This battle has been fought and different resolutions have been found in each state or territory. It will be essential that professional educators making these decisions put aside local pride and make judgments in the interests of the nation and its young people.
"Once we have equivalent assessment and reporting, there will be great pressure for a national certificate as an easy way of communicating the achievements that can so easily be compared. When this happens, the elevation of the national courses will cause serious problems for the other subject areas that will seem to students, and especially to parents, less important and therefore will not be studied as seriously. Do we want to then embrace these subjects in the national curriculum, too, or are there other strategies? We need to discuss these problems now. The implications are huge and require a clear policy statement to match this one.
"Rudd does not seem to value the creative arts, which hardly get a mention; I hope he fixes that. Similarly, biology (and probably geology) should be named alongside chemistry and physics.
"Rudd does, however, recognise the very real conundrum of languages other than English, a giant weakness for a country that hopes to compete internationally. The solution will not be easy, but at least the Labor call for "a new policy approach" suggests we can look forward to a much-needed breakthrough in a funded policy that addresses one of our most embarrassing educational failures.
"The best national curriculum will be meaningless if it cannot be adopted by the states and territories on the sole criterion of being the best. Political sparring, jealous guarding of present curriculums and point scoring will not produce success.
"Education Minister Julie Bishop says she looks forward to winning the states' and territories' agreement to her plan by 2009. It is less clear what they are meant to agree to but, as Bishop points out, she has three years to convince the states. And if they are not convinced, she will withhold funding. Judging by national agreement to the sad requirement for A to E grading on school reports, she will win the argument through force and a national curriculum will become law.
"Rudd has committed to a three-year program with $50 million in funding for representative experts from the states, territories and Catholic and independent schools to write the new curriculum. He outlines the process and the required qualifications of the writers. Labor will negotiate with state and territory governments when the impact on their education budgets is known and will provide funding accordingly. The government would need to be well prepared, for this will not be an inexpensive exercise.
"This two-pronged approach of collaborative writing and funding is more likely to gain support than Coalition funding threats and claims the present curriculum comes "straight from chairman Mao". The Coalition has some valid criticisms of some curriculums but these get lost in hostility that obviates the possibility of fruitful negotiation with main participants.
"If we have to have a national curriculum, the Labor policy at least brings a definite benefit in valuing the early years, including kindergarten, in its proposition. Labor's implementation strategy may be more palatable to the many who see benefit in both a national curriculum and states' rights.
"If you are going to vote based on the better national curriculum proposal, Labor should give greater satisfaction. In seeking endorsement of the new curriculum through the Council of Australian Governments, it will be imperative that the new prime minister uses all his leadership skills to ensure those responsible at all levels have the best interests of children and of the Australian nation as their only priority. Otherwise a national curriculum could be a national disaster."
Judith Wheeldon is a former head of two private Sydney girls' schools, Abbotsleigh and Queenwood.
From The Weekend Australian at link
- Op Ed
Our forsaken schools
by Christopher Pearson
"Julie Bishop, the federal Education Minister, was quite matter-of-fact on The 7.30 Report on Wednesday night. "About a third of our 15-year-olds are functionally illiterate." Left unspoken were two other obvious conclusions.
"First, these were kids their teachers had given up on. Second, their parents lacked the ability or inclination to rectify the problem at home. For the first time since the mid-19th century, reading has become a chore adults quite commonly delegated to other people and inter-generational illiteracy is becoming an entrenched dimension of disadvantage."It's with this grim view of the present and the foreseeable future in mind that we should take on board last week's report from the Productivity Commission. As usual, it beat the drum on the benefits of reforming energy markets, transport and infrastructure; unfinished business that can further enhance national prosperity. But it stressed the need for a new agenda: human capital reform.
"Partly this was a matter of reducing chronic disease and injury to ensure fewer people are excluded from the work force. Partly it was a matter of reforming tax and welfare systems to increase incentives to work. Mostly it was about education.
"If ever there were a time for a back-to-basics approach, the Productivity Commission says it is now. The agenda takes in improving early childhood education, literacy and numeracy, better school completion rates and skills training. It estimates substantial reform could add 9 per cent to economic output during the next 25 years, increase household incomes by an average $1800 and lift workforce participation by nearly 5 per cent. It also calculates that during that time it could boost state and federal revenues by up to $25 billion.
"The Productivity Commission's brief is to imagine how much better off we'd all be in a more rationally ordered world. Sceptics tend to share Kant's intuition that "out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made". But even so, within living memory, before 1970, we know that ordinary state school students were regularly achieving much higher levels of literacy and numeracy than their present counterparts. Is it too much to ask the current crop of schoolteachers to replicate these results?
"According to the annual Schools Australia report, released on Monday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, an increasing number of parents think it is. They are giving up on public education in hordes and droves. In the past decade, private schools have grown at nearly 20 times the rate of government schools. The number of state school students has risen by just 1.2 per cent since 1996, compared with 21.5 per cent for Catholic and independent schools, to say nothing of the more radical option of home schooling, for which reliable statistics are hard to find.
"In Victoria, where dissatisfaction with public education has long been an issue and nearly 40 per cent of senior secondary students are educated privately, overall enrolments remained relatively steady. In South Australia during the decade, government school enrolments fell by 7.7 per cent and in the ACT by 12.3 per cent.
"These regional collapses of confidence in public education are certainly spectacular but they need to be seen against the backdrop of long-term change. Since the Karmel report in 1975 and the era of substantial public funding of non-government schools, there has been a fairly steady drift to the private sector. Jack Keating, an educationist at the University of Melbourne, reckons it at about 0.4 per cent a year. Last year 66.8 per cent of Australian children were in government schools and 33.2per cent in the private sector. If, as seems inevitable, the rest of the country follows Victoria's example, the ratio will soon be 64.6 per cent to 35.4 per cent.
"The question everyone in the political class is tiptoeing around is this. At what point do most public schools simply become sinks of disadvantage, places where a residue of kids with average or below average IQs and more than their fair share of other problems confound everyone's efforts to teach them life's basic survival skills? You could re-formulate the question by asking: at what stage does the abandonment of public-sector education by what used to be called the lower middle classes reach a tipping point?" ... [emphasis added]
"While the Catholic schools are more aggressively ordinary and anti-intellectual, there's no shortage of paid-up philistines in the independent schools. And let's not forget the genteel ideologues. The social justice wing of the Uniting Church is over-represented, as are the deep greens, people who won't teach phonics and the social studies teachers who fancy themselves in "Sorry" T-shirts. It's gratifying to see how many of the young survive their ministrations with critical faculties intact and a sceptical, often explicitly conservative attitude to all the codswallop they've been taught.
"A great deal more could and no doubt should be said about the shortcomings of Australia's Catholic and independent schools. But, whatever private education's failings, if what we conceive as the public sector is to remain viable it is going to have to become much more like its private competition. Whether along the lines of charter schools or various hybrids, public schools urgently need to be rebadged and given a new remit. The less they operate like government agencies, the more confidence they're likely to inspire in parents. The more power parents and principals have, at the expense of head office and the unions, the better the chance of shifting demoralised or incompetent staff and boosting morale. Performance-linked pay is another overdue development.
"In the rebadge exercise, there should be a rethink of the ownership and control of schools that aims to capture the benefits that come when an enterprise is owned (and loved) by the people who work there, or even by an individual, rather than by the state. For example, short of outright sale, there's a case to be made for leasing existing public school premises at peppercorn rentals to the entrepreneurial heads of the low-fee colleges that are burgeoning on the outskirts of most of the capital cities.
"Some, I'm sure, would leap at the chance to take over deadbeat schools, lock, stock and barrel and run them more or less non-selectively on a state subsidy, which would in all likelihood be a fraction of the present cost. In a market system, as Keating argued in The Age last week, they should be rewarded for taking on the most challenging and disadvantaged pupils."
Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
- Op Ed
Rudd's delicate lesson
by Paul Kelly, editor-at-large
"Education is the heart of Kevin Rudd's political revolution. In policy terms this is where his personal imprint is deepest and where his aspirations are highest.
"Rudd grasps the conundrum that has plagued Labor since 1996: that education is Labor's issue yet it has generated no electoral punch or cut-through. Even worse, John Howard has mobilised education against Labor on values and depicted Labor's private school hit list as evidence of its class envy. Howard has used education to penetrate the Labor base vote."Education is enshrined by Rudd as the strategic pivot to reposition Labor on the economy, values and federalism. It is a mighty challenge. It goes under the title of Rudd's education revolution and this will be his mantra until voting day.
"Its essence (though Rudd won't admit this truth) is that Labor must appeal more to the consumers, notably the parents and employers, and less to the producers, notably the teachers, their unions, academics and educational theorists. The producers' hold on the Labor Party at state level has been political poison at the federal level. It has given the Howard Liberal Party a new credence in education.
"In this task Rudd's chief lieutenants are Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith and shadow treasurer Wayne Swan, two of his main opponents in the leadership contest. For Smith and Swan, education is a front-line issue in both the culture war and the economy. Such Labor responses are overdue.
"Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop last year outlined the Government's priorities: raising school standards, a national curriculum and a new system of accountability for schools. This came in the context of the Australian history summit designed to save history as a discipline in schools and restore the idea of narrative history.
"Education is a national priority and it is too important to be left at the mercy of state parochialism and union self-interest," Bishop said. She quoted the Program for International Student Assessment that 30 per cent of Australian students did not have the reading ability needed for further learning. She endorsed a recent Centre for Independent Studies report that said: "If public schools are to thrive and flourish into the future, the power nexus between teacher unions and state governments must be broken."
"The Howard Government is on the education warpath. In this context Rudd is moving fast and switching direction. He has two aims: offensive and defensive. First, to redefine education as an economic, not just a social justice issue, and establish a new point of attack on Howard's economic record.
"This is the unifying theme of Rudd's education revolution.
"Education is the engine of the economy," Rudd says. "Australia's overall investment in education is 5.8 per cent of GDP, behind 17 other leading economies", including the US, Britain, New Zealand and Poland. With the rise of China and India, Rudd says Australia's only future lies in a long-run national strategy that enshrines education as the driver of productivity and prosperity. He accuses Howard of a decade of under-investment in education that has prejudiced future living standards. Rudd pledges both more investment and higher standards, this theme being central to his claim that Labor is the party of the future.
"The message from Rudd and Smith is that education must be benchmarked against the Asia-Pacific region. Australia must perform on the international measures. Education is not just about individual fulfilment but national progress, a view that undermines the progressive education philosophy so influential in our schools.
"Rudd's second aim is to deny the Howard-Bishop attack on Labor over culture and values. This reveals Rudd's character as a cultural conservative. Rudd and Smith won't become chest beating right-wing culture warriors, yet they are determined not to be nailed by Howard as apologists for the teacher unions, low standards and postmodernist sludge. Is this a delicate exercise? Absolutely. Rudd wants to energise, not antagonise, Labor's educational base in the teachers unions while still striking a more conservative stance on values and standards.
"This week Rudd and Smith unveiled Labor's national curriculum plans. This went far beyond upstaging Bishop, who meets state ministers next month about her own national curriculum agenda. Their aim is to neutralise Howard on values.
"Witness these Rudd-Smith specific pledges: they will save the full stop, promote understanding of gravity and the solar system, enforce learning of the multiplication tables, demand spelling competency, revive the classics in English, get decimal points in the right place and promote a systemic grasp of Australian history. Yes, that's what they said.
"Rudd said the teachers unions will have no representation on the new national curriculum board. In devising a "quality curriculum" from kindergarten to Year 12, the focus will be four core areas: maths, sciences, English and history. He promised a curriculum written in "plain English", and for those unlucky enough to read curriculum documents this looms as one of most audacious of all Labor's election year pledges.
"The national curriculum is about better consistency given that 350,000 people move from state to state annually. It is also about a greater assumption of political responsibility by the national government for what happens in schools. With federal government school funding at $33 billion, Bishop says it is "determined to achieve higher standards and greater national consistency". Federal Labor is under the same pressures.
"State governments are in the firing line because they abandoned to varying degrees their obligations and let progressivist ideology take hold in the curriculum. The University of Queensland's Ken Wiltshire wrote recently of the plight of English and the power of the critical literacy movement: "Key aspects of their mantra include deconstructing texts; no longer considering texts to be timeless, universal or unbiased; focusing on the beliefs and values of the composer; and working for social equity and change." Wiltshire concluded this approach was "at best negative and at worst nihilistic".
"State Labor governments are retreating, to some extent, from these ideas. Yet schools remain the front line of the culture wars. The problem in government schools is reflected by consumer preference. ABS figures show that the shift from government to private schools has taken nationwide enrolments in private secondary schools to 38.4 per cent of the total compared with government school enrolments down to 61.6 per cent. This fell from 70.6 per cent just 20 years earlier.
"The conundrum about a national curriculum is that those states with high standards (notably NSW) have a legitimate fear that new benchmarks may involve a fall in their standards. Remember, a national curriculum has risks as well as opportunities. [emphasis added]
"Bishop's problem, ultimately, is that the national government must work with the states and the teachers to improve education. There is no other way. Rudd and Smith present their policies and their national curriculum as collaborations with the Labor states. Making it happen within three years is the final pledge in Rudd's education strategy."
From The Weekend Australian at link
- Human Interest
Door opens on learning's rewards
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"As a 14-year-old running around the streets of NSW bush towns such as Walgett and Dubbo, Craig Ashby knew how to smoke pot and drink.
"He knew how to win a fight, steal cars and wag school. Not surprisingly, he couldn't read or write."Four years later, he finished his Higher School Certificate and today he is in his second year at university, studying to become a teacher. What separates him from the kids he hung out with in the black dust of Walgett, in the state's north, is opportunity..."
Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
CCC Fallout, Flack and Feeding-Frenzies
I think it's time to wind this section down, except for stories with direct education relevance.Premier revamps cabinet, again
Premier Alan Carpenter has been forced into a second major cabinet reshuffle in just 10 weeks, shifting seven ministers and adding a new face to try to keep pace with the recent sackings... But after sacking three ministers in little more than three months, Mr Carpenter was forced to bring Ljiljanna Ravlich back in from the cold just 10 weeks after demoting her from the high-profile education portfolio to the Siberian wilderness equivalent of Minister for Government Enterprises.
Deckchairs shuffled as the ship goes down
Comment by Tony Barrass
Alan Carpenter is on the edge of the abyss. One more slip-up or damaging revelation and the pressure on him to either resign as Premier or go to the polls will be insurmountable. Yesterday's ministerial reshuffle - the second in just 10 weeks - is a classic case of shuffling chairs on a sinking ship of state. The damage caused by three weeks of relentless corruption claims going to the heart of his administration - and corrupting the parliamentary process, even more importantly - is now clearly impeding the functions of proper governance. Carpenter looks as though he's just putting bums on seats to make up the numbers and his decision yesterday to bring Ljiljanna Ravlich in from the cold with three extra portfolios shows how few cattle he's got to muster.
- Premier fighting the forces of darkness
Bowler's emotional collapse is the stark reality of what is happening in Western Australia. There are bodies piling up and it's ugly; ministers, MPs, department heads, ministerial staff, senior public servants, some with decades of service. The Brian Burke poison has infiltrated government at every level and for many of the individuals tangled in his web it will be fatal... [Shelley Archer's] belligerence sparked yet another crisis for Carpenter, and it may yet prove to be the final straw. Archer's performance outside the CCC, as much as the revelations within, put massive pressure on Carpenter to seek her expulsion from the ALP. When he didn't do it, probably because he knew he would fail if he tried, his promise to root out the nefarious Burke-Grill influence from government was instantly compromised.
- The Sydney Morning Herald
- Op Ed
Haves or have-nots, that is the question for education
by Adele Horn
"Tony Vinson is a proud grandparent. His three-year-old granddaughter has a rich vocabulary. Professor Vinson carries this knowledge into his work as an academic who mines the darker side of Australian life. It adds poignancy to encounters with children from disadvantaged communities: for example, a four-year-old who knows only two words, "bad boy" and others of that age who don't understand simple instructions such as, "boys over here, girls over there"."Educational advantage, and its opposite, start early in life. And while some kids are merely slow off the block, and others show pluck and resilience in the face of dysfunctional families, many youngsters never catch up.
"Today the talk is of a national school curriculum. Whichever party wins the federal election, Australian students seem destined for a uniform curriculum and national testing. Whatever its merits, a national curriculum super-imposed on our shaky school structure will do nothing to address the crucial issue facing Australian education.
"The big problem is not whether we have too little narrative in history and too much critical analysis, or study too many movies in English and too little Shakespeare. It is not even that students moving states have to adapt to different curriculum demands, although that is tough.
"The big problem is the educational divide between the haves and have-nots. The Federal Government will not talk about it because its funding policy for private schools has exacerbated the divide. Labor won't talk about it - not after Mark Latham's "hit list" of elite schools went down so badly last time.
"Australia has a long tail of underperforming students. School failure is a personal disaster, and it is bad for the nation's economic future. A national curriculum will do nothing to lift the performance of these students. What is needed is a serious commitment to early intervention programs and to free preschool in disadvantaged areas.
"What is also needed is extra school funding and specialised teachers for low-achieving students to help them meet state - or national - curriculum standards.
"Despite the impression the Federal Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, gives of poor national academic attainment, our students on average are high performers. Comparing results in 27 OECD countries, our 15-year-olds on average ranked second in literacy, sixth in mathematics, and fourth in problem-solving in international tests taken in 2000 and 2003.
"No, the problem is not with the average students, nor the brightest. It lies with the performance of Australian students from a low socio-economic background. In the international tests, they lagged well behind the performance of the average Australian student - and the achievement gap was bigger than in many comparable countries: Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Austria, Norway, Korea, and Finland.
"For all our illusions about being egalitarian, family background plays a bigger role in determining school success here than in many places. Our school system, how it is funded and organised, is less effective than many in compensating for social disadvantage.
"For example, the average Australian student is almost as clever as the average Finn, who topped the international literacy test. But an Australian from a poor background is educationally 18 months behind a Finn from a similar background.
"Evidence that the achievement gap has widened in Australia in the past decade is to be published next month in a new international study, Education and Equity (Springer), co-edited by Richard Teese from the University of Melbourne.
"Professor Teese found Australia's rich schools are getting richer and poor schools are getting poorer. There is more social segregation in the system and a widening discrepancy in performance of students from public and private schools.
"There can be no more important mission for an Australian government than to ensure kids from disadvantaged communities get the best possible education.
"Vinson's new study, Dropping off the edge, which identifies the most-disadvantaged postcodes and localities in Australia, highlights the central role of limited education in the web of problems that locks people into poverty. From leaving school early, threads run to limited computer use, poor work skills and low income, as well as high-imprisonment and high-unemployment rates, all markers of disadvantage too often passed on to the next generation.
"In an age where middle-class children are not only sent to private schools but tutored in everything from faster hand-writing to higher mathematics, the discrepancy in resources is immense.
"The Coalition cannot get away with claiming curriculum is a national issue but funding schools to meet the challenge is a state matter. Labor must acknowledge many private schools are overfunded and many public schools are underfunded.
"It does not mean you need a "hit list". It does mean policies and resources should favour the long tail of underperformers, and start in poor communities from a child's birth. A debate about a national curriculum could be an opportunity to address the uneven playing field. Otherwise it will reinforce inequalities.
"If the Finns and Canadians can narrow the achievement gap without lowering standards, so can we."
From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
- Op Ed
First lesson at university: have the cash, can jump the queue
by Lisa Pryor
"As uni goes back, a traditional game begins. It is called Spot the Full-Fee Payer. In courses like law and pharmacy, where local full-fee paying students abound, it is customary to whisper something like "bet that one's a full-fee payer" when someone says something dumb in a first-year class. This teasing is not always harshly judgemental, from what I have seen and heard. It is more an is-she-or-isn't-she kind of curiosity. Like trying to guess whether a woman's breasts are real or fake."The school leavers who are starting university now were barely in primary school when full-fee paying local students were first allowed to bribe their way into universities. Today's students would not remember a time when it was not possible for parents to pay to get their kids into top courses even when they miss out on merit. So I thought it might be timely to remember what is so wrong about this system.
"The problem with local full-fee paying students is not that they are dumb. Usually the mark they received in the higher school certificate is only a handful of marks lower than students who get into the same course legitimately. The problem with full-fee paying students is they are engaged in institutionalised bribery.
"If you think I am going too far by using an expression like "institutionalised bribery", consider the definition of bribery offered by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. "In New South Wales offering money or gifts to government officials to obtain a benefit or favour is illegal," ICAC's fact sheet on bribery warns. Bribery is a form of corruption, punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail. The fact sheet goes on to list examples of bribery, including "if a government official asks for money to put your name higher on a waiting list".
"This is exactly what the full-fee system is. Students who do not get good enough marks are paying a fee to jump a queue. It is immoral and dishonourable. This year at the University of Sydney, if you miss out on commerce/law by five points or less, the going bribe is $20,697. This is $13,275 more than the fee that legitimate entrants pay..."
"Anyone who is concerned about the values young people are learning in the education system should be worried about full-fee payers. Forget schools which teach postmodernism and students who do not even know the third verse of the national anthem. The real threat to values is the triumph of money over fairness, which full-fee payers represent. What is the point of drumming into kids an ethos of egalitarianism and the fair go at school, if we are going to teach them as soon as they leave that it is okay to bend the rules so long as you can afford it? Sure, they will eventually learn the world is corrupt, but why rush this lesson?" ...
Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
- The West Australian
- Rudd in more strife over Burke dinner [Front Page Headline]
It seems that Mr Rudd was not a last-minute tag-along to that infamous dinner, but rather the guest of honour, according to e-mail invitations that Brian Burke sent to the other guests several days previously. [Oh my, that's not what he told Parliament.]
Full story in The West Australian
- Burke links stain both sides of politics (online update at 11:00 am)
Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd is sticking to his explanation over his dinner with disgraced former Western Australia premier Brian Burke, despite new revelations that he was the function's guest of honour.
- Unions turn on MacTiernan over faction plan (online update at 9:30 am)
Labor splintered yesterday over Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan’s plan to start a new faction and take a radical plan to overhaul the party’s constitution to this year’s ALP conference.
- Editorial
Premier left floundering as WA's good name sinks (page 18)
"WA is shrouded in political infamy and dishonour, match only by the worst excesses of the WA Inc era. The State's political and business reputation is in tatters, again, as ministerial and other scandals have exposed the festering rot at the heart of the ruling WA Labor Party..."
"Sadly, there are compelling reasons for believing that Alan Carpenter is not up to the job. Yes, the Premier has sacked ministers whose misconduct has been exposed by the CCC and no one would pretend that was easy.
"However, it was a political imperative and ultimately unavoidable: the ministers had become an embarrassment and their continued presence at the Cabinet table would have politically untenable and would have threatened the very existence of the Government.
"The real test of Mr Carpenter's sincerity and resolve came in the form a Labor backbencher and confessed "go-between" for Brain Burke, Shelly archer, and he failed it. He condemned her actions but kept her in the embrace of his Government – so much for cleansing the party.
"One of the problems for Mr Carpenter was that Ms Archer is the partner of influential union boss Kevin Reynolds – who, incidentally, neatly if unwittingly summed up the culture of venality that pervades elements of Labor when he defended Mr Burke's clout in the Government as fair trade for the money he raised for the party. Ms Archer's forced departure from Labor would have incited even more upheaval among the factions.
"It is now evident that Mr Carpenter's supposed commitment to cleaning up Labor is at best heavily qualified by political expediency. It is not surprising that a national newspaper's assessment of Mr Carpenter's handling of the crisis led it to the conclusion that he should go..."
Full Editorial in The West Australian
- Letters to the Editor (page 23) – many on the government crisis, all condemning it and/or politicians generally
- Alston cartoon (page 18) says it best, again. © The West Australian
- Weekend Extra
Homework: A waste of youth [Cover Story plus pages 4-5)
by Norman Aisbett
Comments from Peter:
An article on the benefits or otherwise of setting homework for school students, centred around an interview with the author of book by a US academic Alfie Kohn, titled; "The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing". There are also comments on this topic from the principal of Mt. Lawley Primary School, Don Barba and Scotch College headmaster, Andrew Syme.As always, there is not much depth in the article, but essentially Kohn says that there is little or no evidence arising from any formal studies or structured investigation that homework increases learning, retention of knowledge or skills or the development of discipline or time management skills, but rather that it dampens their desire to read or think and generally puts them off school and takes away from joy of their childhood.
An interesting question, given the very diverse and often strongly held views and practises of individual teachers. I have one child in year 7 whose teacher (same teacher in year 6) is firmly of the same opinion as Kohn and gives homework (extremely rarely) only when for some reason that child has not completed set tasks within school time or actually asks for it in order to consolidate or extend their understanding of a topic. From this (my) limited experience of this approach, I can say that I have not seen anything but benefits, but I'd be interested to hear what teachers and other parents have to say about this. Hence I've started a new thread.
Full story in The West Australian's Weekend Extra
More material at: http://www.alfiekohn.com/
- Uni students face rental squeeze in tight market (page 61)
The housing rental market increases have exceeded many students' budgets, with properties which used to be considered "student housing" now renting for unaffordable prices.
Full story in The West Australian at link
- The Brisbane Courier Mail
- Editorial
A need for right balance in education [2 March]
"In a world in which the sum of human knowledge doubles every seven to eight years, rapid and radical changes in education are inevitable."The overhaul of Queensland's Year 11 and 12 subjects, the long-overdue reform of the Years 1 to 10 English syllabus, the move to try out streaming in mathematics and science classes and the creation of the Smart State academies are all prime examples.
"So is the emerging federal political consensus over the value of a uniform national curriculum, no longer a potential wedge for the Government to use against the Opposition. Improving educational quality and accountability and widening choice should be paramount and in the main, the new measures should help achieve these goals.
"Education Minister Rod Welford's move to rebuild junior English around clear expression, correct spelling, grammar and punctuation and give students a better balance of literature has struck a resounding chord.
"Far more complex, however, is the overhaul of all Year 11 and 12 subjects. As the Queensland Studies Authority works through all the issues and takes account of public reaction to whatever model is presented, Mr Welford's goal of implementation for Year 11 in 2009 would have to be delayed if it means rushing through the writing of the new syllabuses and curriculum materials that would be needed.
"Much of the trouble in English and other subjects in Queensland in recent years has stemmed from vague, unclear syllabuses that require each school to draw up its own curriculum – a time-consuming repetition of effort in a sector where resources are over-stretched..." [emphasis added]
Full Editorial in The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
- The Hobart Mercury
- School heads attack funding
by Michelle Paine
"School heads in Tasmania lack the resources to deal with an increase in violent and disruptive students, says a nationwide survey of principals.
"Tasmania's school heads are furious at a worsening lack of resources as Tasmania sits near the bottom of the school-funding heap, the Australian Education Union survey shows."Three in four said they did not have enough money to produce good school programs, far worse than in other states.
"Tasmania should be spending more than other states because of its decentralised and inefficient system -- not less, said the Tasmanian Liberals and the AEU.
"I think this survey shows that Tasmania doesn't spend as much proportionately on education," AEU Tasmanian president Jean Walker said..."
Full story in The Hobart Mercury at link
- The Melbourne Age
- Letter to the Editor
- Web bans folly
"Re "Schools ban YouTube sites in cyber-bully fight" ( The Age, 2/3). The education authorities' response to the moral panic regarding video-sharing websites such as YouTube and MySpace reflects their ambivalence towards new technologies. On one hand, they advocate that schools adopt "cutting-edge" technologies such as mobile phones and iPods. On the other, there is fear of how students will use them. A cynic might regard private corporations' sponsorship of these products in schools as a way for them to delve into the curriculum. The fear of what might be produced reflects a lack of trust in students' and teachers' ability to use the technologies wisely.
YouTube and MySpace can be powerful educational tools. The authorities have removed them from the classroom where their use is monitored, taught and analysed, and sent them to students' bedrooms and studies where they may go un-monitored and certainly un-debated and un-analysed.
Roger Dunscombe, deputy chairman, Australian Teachers of Media, Melbourne
An unflattering view from the east
- Op Ed
States of decline
by Paul Rodan
Western Australia is an extreme example of a malaise that affects politics across the nation.
"By my reckoning, one state government (WA) is irredeemably corrupt, two (Queensland and Tasmania) have major problems in that regard, and Victoria's "secret" police union agreement suggests Steve Bracks is no Mr Clean. NSW, at the very least, seems to attract some extraordinarily low life to its parliamentary ranks. This leaves only South Australia as passably respectable, which English critics may attribute to the absence of convict origins in that colony."The WA story is so bad that it is tempting to regard the issues as unique to that state, and certainly the emerging story fits the stereotype of the brash, untamed West at it again. However, without vilifying MPs outside WA, there are some more general themes evident, suggesting that vigilance is a more appropriate response than complacency..."
The Howard Government's criticism of Kevin Rudd for meeting Burke is legitimate, raising questions about the alternative prime minister's judgement. If this issue gains electoral traction, the disgraced ex-premier may have sabotaged the election of a federal Labor government while possibly destroying a state one.Paul Rodan is a senior honorary research fellow in the school of political and social inquiry, Monash University. Shaun Carney is on leave.
Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
- The Times
- Thousands spent to give ‘borderline’ pupils private help
State schools are paying thousands of pounds to send GCSE and A-level pupils to private tutorial courses to help with exam revision.
- The Independent
- Plan to levy fines on parents of truants 'are in disarray'
A government plan to levy fixed-term penalty fines on parents of truants is in disarray, according to research.
- CNN
- Critics denounce Pizza Hut reading program
"New York (AP) -- You've read the book, now eat the pizza."Since 1985, that's been the gist of Pizza Hut's Book It, an incentive program used by 50,000 schools nationwide to reward young readers with free pizzas. The program is now under attack by child-development experts who say it promotes bad eating habits and turns teachers into corporate promoters.
"Book It, which reaches about 22 million children a year, "epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
"In the name of education, it promotes junk food consumption to a captive audience ... and undermines parents by positioning family visits to Pizza Hut as an integral component of raising literate children," Linn said..."
Full story at CNN at link
- ABC News
- Carpenter supports push for new WA Labor faction
"Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter says major changes are needed in the Labor Party in the wake of the corruption inquiry and he supports a push to create a new faction.
"Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan is forming a new faction in an effort to break the influence of union bosses and power brokers.
"Ms MacTiernan also wants to introduce secret ballots in the state executive to make the voting process more democratic.
"Mr Carpenter says the party needs to be reformed to restore public confidence.
"This is a chance for us to make changes that will get rid of that influence that Burke and Grill have been wielding," he said.
"Opposition leader Paul Omodei has described the plan as a vote of no confidence in Mr Carpenter.
"She obviously believes that he hasn't the ability to rid the Labor Party of the influence," he said.
"Unions WA has accused Ms MacTiernan of trying to create her own power base in the Party."
From ABC News Online at link
- The Sunday Melbourne Age
- School rejects A-to-E grading
by Deborah Gough
"An independent school is seeking exemption from the controversial A-to-E reporting system, claiming the system is at odds with its founding principles."The Federal Government has made education funding to the states dependent on the introduction of the system in all schools.
"The school council at Preshil has applied to state Education Minister John Lenders for an exemption from the reporting system up to year 10. The Hawthorn school is the second school to seek an exemption.
"Preshil's principal, Vivien Millane, said the school's philosophy was that children learnt at different rates and they should not be forced to fit into a curriculum and be labelled."
From The Sunday Melbourne Age at link
- A boon or banned: schools divided on use of iPods
by Michael Lallo
"A split is emerging across Victorian schools about whether the iPod should be banned or embraced as a valuable education tool."Once demonised as a distraction and target of playground thievery, the MP3 player is being embraced by many schools.
"Several schools have reversed bans on the devices, with the State Government even funding a trial of their use.
"In a separate program, students at Heathmont College are using laptop computers and video MP3s to listen to German language recordings at their own pace, document their life stories and follow instructional cricket videos while standing on the pitch.
"But not everyone is impressed. A senior staff member from one state secondary college, who did not want to be named, said media players such as iPods had no place in schools.
"I was just trying to sort out an iPod theft when you rang," she said. "It's a nightmare. (Teachers) are not the police; we're not here to sort out these kinds of problems."
"St Kevin's College in Toorak, St Francis Xavier College in Berwick and Kardinia International College in Geelong are among the schools that have banned iPods and similar devices.
"Laverton Secondary College, which declined to comment, was reportedly forced to issue a trespass notice to a parent after he stormed into a class, accused students of stealing his son's iPod and demanded they empty their pockets. And a US high school teacher was admitted to hospital last month after two students bashed him after he confiscated an iPod during class.
"But advocates of iPods in the classroom insist their benefits are too great to be ignored. "The iPod is part of the technological revolution and it's here to stay," said Victorian Principals Association president Fred Ackerman.
"It's quite advanced in terms of what it offers for student learning, so why not tap into it? (Banning) them is almost like trying to hold back the tide."
"Brian Burgess, president of the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, likened the opposition to iPods to the furore surrounding the introduction of calculators.
"People used to worry about students' maths skills dropping, but what happened was actually the opposite," he said. [Oh really?? Web]
"This kind of new technology is a really powerful way to get through the drudgery. We need to embrace it … "
"Michael Fitzgerald, assistant principal of Heathmont College, said he had already seen positive results since the "iPodagogy" program began this year.
"The students are definitely more engaged," he said. "The iPods allow them to follow things at their own pace, so they're not getting lost.
"A lot of (older people) want technology in schools — although we want it to be our technology. But this is the multimedia generation."
From The Sunday Melbourne Age at link
- Editorial
Kevin Rudd must come clean on his meetings with Burke
"Ian Campbell's departure from cabinet yesterday because of a 20-minute meeting with disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke gives Prime Minister John Howard a new position from which to attack embattled Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd."That new position is called the high moral ground.
"But this being politics, the position isn't all that high or very moral, either. And if Rudd is a political match for Howard, it is a position that could well prove insecure and very temporary. Just a few days ago Rudd had Howard looking baffled; now Howard has Rudd on the run..."
Full Editorial in The Sunday Melbourne Age at link
- The Sunday Melbourne Herald Sun
- They're schools of hard knocks
Exclusive by Mary Papadakis, Education reporter
"State schools have become battlegrounds with more than 1500 assaults and serious incidents reported in the past two years.
"Figures show that, on average, more than two serious incidents of physical, verbal and sexual assault, loitering and offensive behaviour are reported each day to the Education Department."Knives have been used as weapons in some of the incidents.
"Figures released under Freedom of Information provisions reveal 785 incidents involving students, school staff and strangers occurred on school grounds during and after school hours last year -- 36 more than in 2005.
"And education leaders warn the real toll is much higher. Many schools are reluctant to report incidents because they fear retribution and negative publicity.
"Australian Principals Federation president Fred Wubbeling said most schools had resorted to installing security cameras in a bid to reduce violence.
"But when somebody loses it, no number of cameras will prevent them behaving the way they do," Mr Wubbeling said.
"He said there was significant under-reporting of incidents.
"While these numbers are high, the real number is higher," he said.
"Mr Wubbeling said attacks included fights between students, gangs invading schools -- often after incidents at weekend parties -- and increasingly aggressive parents attacking school staff.
"School principals needed more power to remove troublemakers from school property, he said. [emphasis added] And all schools needed better fencing..."
Full story in The Sunday Melbourne Herald Sun at link
- The Times
- Rhodes scholars give Oxford D-minus
Two Harvard students have condemned Oxford University, where they are both Rhodes scholars, as “outdated” and “frustrating” and dismissed its world-famous Bodleian library as “less than inspiring”.
- The Independent
- Teachers fail to understand black pupils, charity warns
A legal charity has called for teachers to receive better cultural training to work with black pupils, following the publication of an official report identifying the existence of "institutional racism" in some schools.
- The Sunday Times
All Politics – 'WA Inc Revisited' Style
[There are identical stories in many of the six other News Corp Sunday newspapers.]
- 'Resign - or be kicked out'
Julian Grill will be booted out of the Labor Party if he doesn't resign, says Premier Alan Carpenter... Mr Carpenter has instructed State Labor secretary Bill Johnston to begin procedures to expel Mr Grill from the party.
- Rudd was Burke's 'star guest'
There was nothing incidental about Kevin Rudd's starring role at the Brian Burke special-invitation dinner in Perth, one of the guests revealed last night.
- Campbell quits over Burke ties
Federal minister Ian Campbell has resigned from the Howard Cabinet after admitting to a meeting in his office with disgraced former premier turned lobbyist Brian Burke.
- Editorial
Wayward MPs to blame, not the CCC"The most disturbing revelation from the Corruption and Crime Commission hearings so far is that MPs cannot see they have done anything wrong.
"They think – and want us to believe – that the problem is the CCC and its considerable powers of surveillance."The voting public know that the real issue is MPs behaving badly.
"If ministers did what was right and put good government ahead of dodgy lobbyists, the CCC would have nothing to investigate.
"The people of WA demanded a corruption watchdog with teeth and they got it. The CCC should be left to go about its business without fear or favour.
"And MPs should quit blaming others for their own irresponsible, sneaky and improper actions.
"The fallout from the CCC hearings has been a sad spectacle. The public has witnessed MPs acting like children who don't know the difference between right and wrong and who point the finger at anyone but themselves.
"Kevin Reynolds, the CFMEU boss, was reported this week as saying his mate Brian Burke's influence within government was a fair trade for the fundraising he did for the Labor Party. Mr Reynolds feels so strongly he publicly defended his mate Mr Burke. But he is silent on the the real issue – shady deals, shameful leaking of cabinet information and ministers listening to lobbyists instead of their Premier.
"The likes of Mr Reynolds seem to think being loyal to their mates at all costs is more important than proper government.
"No wonder voters think unionists and MPs are out of touch with the real world..."
"The Premier would be wrong to think that banishing Julian Grill from the party, as he did Mr Burke, is the solution. It's not."Of course, Mr Carpenter cannot be responsible for the individual behaviour of MPs. But the only real fix is changing the culture of the Labor Party. On this point, Mr Carpenter seems reluctant to act..."
Full Editorial in The Sunday Times at link
- Op Ed
How dodger did so much harm
by Matt Price
"All around Australia, people are shaking their heads in utter bewilderment.
How on earth is a dodgy character like Brian Burke still able to exert such malevolent influence, both in and outside WA?"Burke's heyday ended almost 20 years ago when the still young and successful premier retired from politics to accept a plum diplomatic post as Australian ambassador to Ireland..."
"But Burke, surely, is finished. Cockroaches are remarkably hardy creatures that can apparently survive a nuclear holocaust, but they're still vulnerable to a well-aimed thwack."The CCC has destroyed several careers and it may yet bring down the Alan Carpenter Government.
"But it's finally and belatedly snuffed out the mysterious, improbable, inexplicable influence of Burke."
Full story in The Sunday Times at link
- Op Ed
Rudd's strife of Brian
by Piers Akerman
"Until this week, the Federal Government had not laid a glove on Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd since he won the top spot last year – and Rudd has only himself to blame.
"He has to take responsibility for the appalling lack of judgment that went into Labor's attempt to smear the Howard Government with innuendos about its links to prominent businessmen Hugh Morgan, Robert Champion de Crespigny and Ron Walker and their plan to develop an interest in nuclear energy."Having promised Australia a new brand of politics free from personal attacks, Rudd had his henchmen pull the trigger. He didn't have the ticker to do so himself, but found cannon fodder in a pack led by Anthony Albanese.
"His strategy was triply flawed. Not only was Walker in contact with the Victorian Premier Steve Bracks about the plan at the same time as he spoke to the Federal Government, he has also worked with Victorian Labor when it needed him, just as de Crespigny has served the South Australian Labor Government.
"The second error Rudd made was to overlook his own connections with disgraced former WA premier Brian Burke, whose mafioso-like features have dominated the scandalous coverage of the WA Corruption and Crime Commission and whose links to the WA ALP Government have now cost four WA state ministers their jobs.
"And his third error was hubristic, he didn't foresee (how could he?) that a federal minister would be shown to have a tenuous association with Burke and be prepared to take the fall to highlight the disparity in the standards Rudd was claiming for himself and the Government was demonstrating in action..."
"Rudd, on the other hand, dissembled when his association with Burke was revealed..."
Full story in The Sunday Times at link
- Op Ed
Cancer must be cut away
by Joe Spagnolo
"Brian Burke and Julian Grill cannot be blamed for all the poison that has affected this Government and previous administrations in the past 27 years.
"Burke and Grill are master manipulators who use present and past friendships to get results both for themselves and for their clients. And they appear not to care if they destroy careers, reputations and friendships on the way."We know all that. In truth, we have known it for years..."
"Corruption within governments has been going on for a long time and few have had the courage to do something about it."Let's be totally honest: Had it not been for the CCC, Burke and Grill and their army of soldiers would have continued "doing business" the same way they have done for years, probably for a long time to come.
"Are we to truly believe that no one knew what was going on before the CCC turned up with its phonetaps and bugs?
"Or was a blind eye turned to the corruption that was occurring because no one really wanted to know or had the courage to tackle the problem?
"Sacking ministers wasn't a difficult decision. The CCC made that job easy by providing Carpenter with enough evidence to sink a ship. What alternative did he have?
"The really hard job for the self-proclaimed crusader will come in the days, months and, if he is in the job long enough, years ahead when there is no CCC investigation to turn up the dirt.
"Very soon, Carpenter will be left on his own to cut out the rot from a very rotten apple.
"That's when the really difficult decisions will have to be made..."
Full story in The Sunday Times at link
- Op Ed
Tit for tat, PM left no option
by Glenn Milne
"John Howard didn't have any alternative after revelations that his Human Services Minister, Ian Campbell, met disgraced former WA Labor premier Brian Burke.
"If he hadn't forced Campbell to resign, Howard would have to abandon his attacks on the honesty and integrity of Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd over the Labor leader's connections with Burke."To retain Campbell in the Cabinet after the minister's admission that he met Burke to discuss a planning matter, would also have been to condone and excuse Rudd's actions.
"How do we know this? Because, Peter Costello told us so in the Parliament on Thursday."In a blistering assault on Rudd's credibility – a political mugging of such ferocity it was judged to have ended the new Opposition Leader's political honeymoon – the Treasurer declared that anyone with connections to Burke was not fit for public office.
"Anyone who deals with Mr Brian Burke is morally and politically compromised," Costello thundered as Rudd took the worst hit since taking over from Kim Beazley.
"So, on the basis of Costello's own public judgment of Rudd, Campbell was no longer fit to sit at the cabinet table..."
Full story in The Sunday Times at link
- ABC News
- Tell the truth about Burke meetings, Rudd urged
"Prime Minister John Howard says Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd is under mounting pressure to tell the truth about three meetings he held with the former Western Australian premier Brian Burke.
"Mr Howard says former Human Services minister Ian Campbell has done the honourable thing and resigned from Cabinet after admitting he had held a meeting with Mr Burke in June last year.
"Mr Howard says he does not believe Mr Rudd was unaware he was a guest speaker at a dinner organised by Mr Burke in Perth in 2005.
"The Prime Minister says Mr Rudd attended the dinner to advance his political career.
"That in itself is not a crime, to want to advance your political career, but to run the risk of putting yourself in debt to somebody such as Mr Burke to advance your political career raises very serious questions about your political judgement, particularly as you are aspiring to the highest office in this country," he said.
"Mr Rudd says the Prime Minister is desperate to do anything he can to hold onto office and is targeting him because he realises the Australian people are warming to Labor..."
Full story at ABC News Online at link
- The Sydney Sunday Telegraph
- Bullying victim told: leave town
by Sharri Markson
"A teenage girl has been unable to attend school after she was attacked by fellow students and rushed to hospital with suspected injuries..."
"[The girl's mother] claims staff at nearby Mulwaree High School told her she would be better off leaving the area, and private school Trinity did not have room for more enrolments."I've approached every school in Goulburn. They said my best bet would be to leave town,'' she said.
"I haven't sent the kids back to Goulburn High because the school can't guarantee their safety.'' ...
Full story in The Sydney Sunday Telegraph at link
All Alston cartoons are © The West Australian Newspaper
All media quotations, photographs and cartoons © their respective publishers
This page last updated 17 April, 2009 10:57 PM
