Monday 9 April

Tuesday 10 April

Wednesday 11 April

Thursday 12 April

Friday 13 April

Saturday – Sunday, 14 – 15 April

Monday 9 April

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Merit pay fear for bush schools (page 10)
    by Dawn Gibson
    
    "A Federal Government plan to pay teachers based on performance rather than experience would widen the gulf between rich city schools and disadvantaged country schools, State Education Minister Mark McGowan has warned..."
    
    "Mr McGowan said the scheme had the potential to cause disharmony.
    
    "The most concerning aspect of this plan is that it will entrench privilege by rewarding teachers at the best schools in the most affluent areas," he said. "While I believe in paying teachers well, I want to focus on rewarding those teachers who are willing to work in remote and country areas as my first priority to ensure that every child across the State has a good education."
    
    "Mr McGowan was concerned the scheme would require a huge bureaucracy to administer..."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor (page 18)
    

    Three Letters, covering the poor resourcing of school, teacher merit pay, intimidation of and retribution against teachers by the DET, and PC madness ["no student fails"]. Excerpts include:

    • Teaching gets harder

      "One of the many frustrations for teachers is the lack of resources... the two schools in which I have worked are so low of resources it is a joke. The staff members are excellent but the restrictions on resources at the current school include: working within a 4000-page photocopy budget a year (four a student a week) or having only one tricycle in the pre-primary for the children to use.

      "I even had to provide my own chair... We are told constantly to be inventive, due to the lack of resources, with how we present lessons in class. We shouldn't have to do this - our children are too important to have to scrimp on resource materials..."

      "Staff rooms are exactly how Rutherford described them. Many staff members talk of how they wait for the day when they can "get out of teaching", but for many this means waiting for retirement. Because the average age for teachers in my school would be in the 50s, this might be very soon..."

      Name and Address supplied
      
      

    • Fear in class

      "I refer to your report (Principals join forces to consider OBE delay, 4/4) about WA public school principals now going public to express their concerns about the implementation of the OBE system, but requesting that they and their schools no be identified because they fear retribution from the Education Department for daring to speak out on a specific issue.

      "The West Australian has often published letters from teachers and principals about the shortcomings of OBE, many of them requesting anonymity because of the retribution that they expected to receive from the Education Department.

      "Just what is happening in Australia - an allegedly democratic country where free speech applies and each person is entitled to have their say about social issues - that people fear to be identified because some minion hiding in a government department is going to make their lives hell?" ...

      Ian Benporath, Nannup
      
      
      

• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • More power for principals difficult to implement
      
      "I support the various proposals stated by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop, giving staffing control to principals ("Hire, fire power for principals”, 7-8/4). The stronger the consonance between a school’s learning/teaching philosophy and a teacher’s strengths and attitudes, the greater the capacity of the school to achieve desired learning outcomes. As pointed out by Judith Wheeldon, many independent schools have demonstrated the wisdom of principals having control over staff selection. State schools deserve no less an opportunity.

      "What is sad to note is that failed or failing teachers are shunted between schools, having been placed on a mobile list. This situation has lingered for decades in all our states. If vastly improved methods of teacher evaluation were in place, weeding out those whose professionalism and teaching skills are inadequate, much of the present problem would not exist.
      
      "Inadequate teachers who are permanent mean that students and parents (and ultimately society) are forever disadvantaged.
      
      "Obviously what Julie Bishop proposes will be difficult to implement, particularly as teacher unions view any such changes as a threat to their power. However, the central focus must always be placed on student welfare, including improved learning capacity. And this can only be achieved by a skilled and appropriate staff."
      
      Tony Shinkfield, Adelaide, SA
      
      

    • "Further to Judith Wheeldon’s comments ("Teacher performance model won’t perform”, 7-8/4), at 66 I can review my teaching career without fear or favour. If I had been assessed in my first four years by a principal who could hire or fire, I’d be a retired journalist now. In my 19th year I was awarded Master Teacher status in the ACT. This was performance pay for the few. The system was whittled away rapidly as the costs blew out and jealousies arose among the many, equally experienced and often equally good. Later I was accepted as a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. What was I doing wrong in the first few years? Experimenting, not always successfully, with the new approaches to teaching which later have proved their worth. I just hope every modern school principal is up to date enough to keep the staff who may bloom in summer but look a bit daggy in spring. My career was preserved because I was protected by my employment conditions from easy dismissal."
      
      Frank McKone, Holt, ACT
      
      

    • "Judith Wheeldon asks the right questions of the performance pay notion emanating from the Howard Government, but her faith in principals is misplaced.
      
      "Victoria has gone furthest down the road to local power in the hands of principals and it has resulted in massive inefficiencies, bullying of teachers and absolutely no improvement in the education of children.
      
      "The principals of Victoria, with a few honourable exceptions, sold out their teacher colleagues under the previous Liberal government, grabbing pay increases, bonuses and exemption from cuts to superannuation that teachers had to suffer, all for the power to abuse and exploit their own staffs, a power they used with relish.
      
      "Any principal who lacks the competence to work with the staff appointed to his or her school should resign and make way for one of the many excellent people passed over by the current clubbish selection system.
      
      "I just hope the Labor state governments have enough principles to resist this latest federal takeover."
      
      Chris Curtis, Langwarrin, Vic
      
      
      
    • "Hire, fire power for principals will not improve public education. Public schools are about teachers working together in teams. The job is too big to operate any other way. The school that develops this culture has a better chance of improving student outcomes because the team effort produces more benefits than the isolated teacher approach. To break up this approach and suddenly put the teacher into a competitive work environment would be a travesty.
      
      "A more appropriate strategy would be to train all school management teams to support teachers set higher expectations for themselves and their students, fund better resources and professional development, develop more appropriate curriculum and to share all successes.
      
      "Teachers don’t have time to be in competition with each other. It is also not in their nature. Most public school teachers are professionals who nurture students through learning experiences. Competition for monetary rewards would not benefit this type of culture."
      
      Fay Calvert, Southport, Qld
      
      
      
    • "The model for teacher employment and remuneration promoted by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is essentially Stalinist. With no offence intended to Australia’s many good principals, the endowment of such authority to school heads would produce a teaching service dominated by slavish compliance with the preferred teaching style and related methodologies, generated by fear of dismissal or pay cuts. This pervasive submission to the leader’s slant on the prevailing ideology would be unhealthy for our education system."
      
      Stewart Rose, Burbank, Qld
      
      
      
      
  • Boy, 6, kicked out for sex harassment
    by Alana Buckley-Carr
    
    [Clearly, we haven't heard the end of this.  Web]
    
    "A six-year-old boy thrown out of class for allegedly sexually harassing a fellow student will receive private tuition until he finds a new school after his mother sold the family's story to a current affairs program.
    
    "Veronica Townsend yesterday refused to discuss details of her son's case with The Australian after signing a deal with the Seven Network's Today Tonight for an undisclosed amount.

    "But Ms Townsend confirmed she would not send her son Jonathan back to Perth's Bramfield Park Primary School.

    "I'm very stressed but I'm not sure what I can and can't say (under the deal) so I'll have to say goodbye," she said.

    "The Year 1 boy was accused of making inappropriate sexual remarks, inappropriately touching and threatening a girl in his class with a pair of scissors.

    "While the six-year-old has denied all the allegations made against him by the girl, who sat next to him, the Education Department confirmed he would be moved to another class.

    "Ms Townsend's lawyers Vertannes Georgiou wrote to the school saying the matter had not been properly dealt with, and that there was "no evidence other than the unsubstantiated allegations of the girl".

    "A spokesman for the Education Department would not discuss details but said Jonathan would be allowed to remain at the school, in a separate class.

    "But Ms Townsend said her son would not go back to the school, in Perth's southeastern suburbs, after the Easter holidays.

    "She said she hoped to send him to a private school but did not know if she could afford it. "I'll have to sort my finances out and see what I can manage," she said. In the meantime, she would use the money from her Seven deal to pay for private tuition."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Foreign student numbers boom
    
    Australia's $10 billion education industry is still booming, with 87,600 new foreign students starting courses here this year, a 17 per cent increase on the previous year.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Parity's the question when teachers get report card
    by Lyndsay Connors and Jane Caro
    
    "The last thing anyone would want to be is a lousy teacher, especially one who has to face up to a room full of adolescents day after day.

    "Al Shanker, the then president of the American Federation of Teachers, said during the round of merit-pay proposals in the 1980s (it's an issue that has come up cyclically since the 1890s): "Teaching is a lot more like lion taming." He was pointing out that while performance pay might motivate a vacuum cleaner salesman to work harder, it was unlikely to have the same result when you're in a cage with the big cats (read 30 adolescents). A lion tamer's motivation for keeping the cats engaged and paying attention is all about getting out alive. [emphasis added]

    "If Shanker is right, and any parent who has tried to tame a recalcitrant teenager would take his point, why is the Federal Government making such a fuss about merit pay for teachers in an election year? An obvious reason is it's a no-risk issue. The Federal Government doesn't employ any teachers, just as it doesn't run any schools. Like a dry-cleaner, it is all care, no responsibility.

    "And it has judged it to be good politics. The federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, has said the purpose of merit pay is to reward, and so retain, good teachers in our most disadvantaged schools. This is a noble sentiment, but it would be more effective if the minister took on the tough task of overhauling the Federal Government's funding scheme for schools that funds public and private schools as if they existed on separate planets, educating different sorts of children.

    "Federal funds are increasing the capacity of high-fee private schools to use their financial muscle to poach the best teachers.

    "The very least Bishop needs to do is demonstrate that her teacher performance bonuses will be sufficient to ward off predatory recruiters from wealthy schools. Otherwise the effect of her merit-pay scheme on our most disadvantaged schools (mostly public) may simply be to identify the prey more clearly.

    "According to one of Bishop's more fanciful scenarios for merit pay, parents and students should judge which teachers deserve the extra bucks. One advantage of this proposal is that we would no longer need Teaching Australia, the Federal Government agency recently set up to judge teacher standards.

    "Another minor problem with this idea, perhaps, is the willingness of parents to take on the onerous responsibilities involved in determining which teachers deserve extra pay and which ones don't. After all, the recent flood of advertising for independent schools is designed to appeal to time-poor parents keen to write a cheque and outsource some of their parenting responsibilities. So it seems unlikely many parents would then want to take on additional human resources management tasks in schools.

    "Perhaps it should not be overlooked that politicians see that blaming teachers, particularly those attempting to tame the most ferocious lions, as an easy, cheap and popular tactic that always seems to go down well with voters.

    "Parents and teachers have, at heart, an ambivalent relationship. Some parents secretly fear teachers, because if anyone knows whether we are doing a good job of bringing up our children, it's their teachers, and no parent is perfect - rather like teachers, in fact.

    "Instead of designing a policy that rewards the few and blames the many, Bishop and the Federal Government could look at policies that will help every teacher enter the lion's cage with confidence and skill. [emphasis added]

    "The NSW Education Minister, John Della Bosca, is not averse to considering merit pay, but this would need to be done against agreed and validated professional standards.

    "It might be worth looking at a more realistic career structure that takes into account the degree of difficulty and complexity of teachers' work and then pays them appropriately.

    "And what about someone who may have started out as an ace history teacher, for example? After five years in a very disadvantaged school, he or she may have become a top disciplinarian and social worker, but lost his or her edge in history. Should such a teacher be punished or rewarded? Or should schools be more adequately and appropriately staffed, so teachers in every school have more chance to concentrate on teaching?"

    Lyndsay Connors chaired the former NSW Public Education Council and is a former head of the Commonwealth's Curriculum Development Council. Jane Caro is the convener of Priority Public.
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    

  • Editorial
    Pay teachers on performance
    
    "The contentious topic of merit-based pay for teachers may well dominate this week's conference of Australian education ministers. The federal minister, Julie Bishop, has put the issue high on the Darwin gathering's agenda. Ms Bishop has been a firm advocate of performance-based pay for teachers, if less clear about just what it might involve. Broad statements of principle rather than policy detail have been more Ms Bishop's ministerial style. Now, however, the minister is getting down to specifics in a discussion paper circulated before the conference. Of special interest will be the reaction of NSW's new Education Minister, John Della Bosca. No sooner had Mr Della Bosca received the keys to his new office than he said the unsayable: merit-based pay is good, and relying on length of service is not. For many in Labor this has been heresy. For many teachers - and officials of their powerful union, the NSW Teachers Federation - it still is.

    "Yet merit-based pay is very much in the interest of teachers as well as pupils. A paper by the Australian Council for Educational Research, commissioned by Ms Bishop, notes that Australian teachers reach the top salary band nine years after graduation - and the top salary is only 1.5 times the starting salary. To get a further pay rise, teachers have to move towards management. The system condemns teaching to continue to fall behind other professions until it becomes a lowest-common-denominator job for also-rans. Higher pay for better performers and more flexible patterns of promotion will enhance teaching as a profession and enlarge the pool of talent available to it.

    "That much seems obvious; less clear is the detail of how a merit-based system should work. Even defining "good teaching" is not straightforward. However, it is certainly not the same as getting the best academic results. The best teachers are those who bring out the best in their students. As it stands, a dedicated and talented teacher could work miracles at a disadvantaged comprehensive high school in NSW without due recognition, while an indifferent teacher at a selective high school could coast along, relying on the quality of his or her students. [emphasis added]

    "Principals are undoubtedly well placed to judge a good teacher. However, Ms Bishop appears to want to give them too great a role in teacher assessments. Such assessment must also involve input from parents and pupils and, most importantly, independent expert assessment of teachers' knowledge and performance in relation to clear professional goals. Such an overhaul will not be easy, but NSW now looks to Mr Della Bosca to at least make a prompt start."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
  
  
  
  
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Student teachers in need of places
    by Bridie Smith
    
    "Schools need to boost the number of places on offer to student teachers to have any hope of correcting the "systemic problem" universities face in securing student-teacher placements, an academic says.

    "More than 30 student teachers from Monash University's Clayton campus are without a school rounds placement.

    "It's not just a Monash problem, a Victorian problem or even an Australian problem … It's an international issue," Monash's dean of education, Sue Willis, said.

    "Professor Willis, who is also president of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, estimated that about 60 per cent of schools declined when asked to take students.

    "We can't blame schools, as schools are busy … but we need their help," she said.

    "She called on Victorian schools to increase their student teacher places by two a year, which would "be enough to get us out of the hole we are in".

    "Professor Willis said the vast majority of state schools offered placements, but she would encourage the Catholic sector and independent sector to be more accommodating.

    "There are some schools who don't participate and I think they need to think about whether they are contributing to the profession," she said. Rural schools could also be better utilised, she said.

    "The shortage at Monash affects fourth-year secondary student teachers.

    "Monash is extremely embarrassed and very concerned that we have got 30 students who aren't placed," she said.

    "Teachers in low-supply subjects such as languages, visual arts and business studies were harder to place, she said.

    "Teacher shortages already affect English, maths and science nationally, with the problem expected to worsen as baby boomer teachers retire.

    "Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Mary Bluett said workload issues made it difficult for schools and teachers to take on trainee teachers.

    "She said that although classroom experience was critical for student teachers, "funding cuts to universities mean that they are not able to provide support to the teachers and the teacher in training as they have done".

    "A national survey of new teachers released last month revealed that students thought school experience was significantly more effective than university training in "teaching about teaching".
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Many factors contribute to success
      
      "It is pleasing that the Federal Government wishes to reward teachers for achieving good results (The Age, 7/4). However, I have several concerns with the current proposal.

      "First, judging teachers' performance on academic standards may encourage them to teach the top academic classes. You don't have to be a teacher to know that lower-ability classes are harder work.

      "Second, it presumes that teachers are the only factor in academic success. Socio-economic status, family support and social status within the school have consequences.

      "Third, feedback from parents and students can be useful measures of success but needs to be treated with caution. A "popular" teacher may not necessarily be the best teacher. Also, this shifts the power even more towards the student rather than the teacher when behavioural issues occur."
      
      Nick Avery, Holder, ACT
      
      

    • Copying a failed idea
      
      "What's it going to be? Reward good performance or deter poor performance? Why does Australia copy failed ideas such as performance pay? (Perhaps Education Minister Julie Bishop's performance should be judged.) How does an inactive principal, who is less visible in the corridors, measure staff?

      "I suppose cronyism and favouritism make it credible."
      
      Frances Stewart, Carlton
      
      

    • What's wrong with rewarding excellence?
      
      "The debate about how to reward excellent teachers can only be a rehash of that which was carried out in South Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. It was successfully resolved then and the system ran for a decade or so, but was scrapped by an economically irrationalist government.

      "As everyone agrees, an adequate system will cost money. However, we agree to reward excellence financially in other fields. So why not in one that is so vital to our future?

      "Increased salaries will be but a minor part of this additional expense. A valid system will also require the establishment of middle-level administrators who have the expertise to evaluate teacher performance — principals having been shown not to be the best people to do this, at least without some specialist mediation."
      
      Donald Richardson, Mount Barker, SA
      
      

    • Scapegoats again
      
      "Performance pay is another backhanded slap in the face for dedicated teachers who attempt to instil knowledge into the minds of often hostile and disrespectful students. For years, politicians have used teachers as scapegoats for their own incompetence. By blaming supposedly "bad" teachers for alleged decline in academic performance in schools, they divert the public's attention from the real problem at hand — the lack of state and federal funding for government and independent schools. Having a good teacher is paramount to students' performance. However, other determinants — e.g. the study environment at home and school, and students' attitude towards education — impact on their ability to attain acceptable academic results."
      
      Claudia Gherman, Glen Waverley
      
      
      
• The Independent
  
  
  • Schools may fingerprint six million children
    
    Almost six million children at 17,000 schools could have their fingerprints taken, intensifying fears of the growth of a "surveillance society" where personal information is gathered from cradle to grave.
    
    
    
• CNN
  
  
  • Program brings drunken driving trials to high schools
  
  
  
  
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Teachers Can Spur Learning By Listening
      
      "Honoring the ideas and voices of children is what makes progressive education stand out so distinctly from the norm found in most schools across the country today. The questions and interests that the students have should be the driving force behind what happens in progressive classrooms.

      "A typical traditional classroom in today's climate is more about depositing a large quantity of disassociated facts into children who not only begin to realize that what they think does not matter but that learning is about swallowing and regurgitating information for a test. Imagine a classroom where children are saying, "I have an idea! What will happen if we try to run this motor with three solar panels instead of just one?" rather than "Do we have to know this for the test?" or "How am I doing?" In a progressive environment, children are listened to, and their ideas are considered valuable and worthy of further consideration or investigation.

      "Honoring the voices of children also means giving up some control in the classroom. It means accepting the fact that you, as the teacher, are not the sole keeper of the knowledge. Children are people with a natural desire to understand their world, and they love learning new information. The teacher's role in a progressive classroom is one of facilitator: helping and guiding children while they construct their own knowledge. It's the difference between telling students that electricity happens when you use wires to connect an energy source to a light bulb or motor (or worse yet, reading it and memorizing it from a textbook) and actually giving the students wires, a battery, and a light bulb or motor and asking them to experiment to see what they can find out. The latter is obviously a more memorable, exciting and motivating learning experience."

      Joan Adler, Green Acres School, Rockville [Maryland]

 

Tuesday 10 April

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Making teachers compete for pay will do nothing for students
    John Della Bosca, NSW Minister for Education
    
    "Paying teachers according to their popularity is the sort of policy that might be proposed when absolutely everything else has failed.

    "It truly would be the last thing you would do. Yet this week, Australia's education ministers will be in Darwin, discussing exactly that idea.

    "The Commonwealth Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, is trying to impose on the states and on public school teachers a simplistic, ill-defined and unworkable proposition for individualised, performance-based pay.

    "As we've come to expect, the Commonwealth Government that collects our taxes is threatening to reduce and withhold funding to the states, which deliver the services.

    "The Commonwealth's proposal comes when NSW school students are achieving literacy and numeracy results right at the top of the OECD nations. The reading skills of our 15-year-olds are second only to Finland, and they outperform their peers interstate in reading, mathematics and science.

    "The debate must infuriate the dedicated professionals who have clearly taught their students well.

    "Bishop wants a pay model that could include "relative improvement in student achievement, feedback from the school community, teacher contribution to broader school life and attainment of relevant academic and professional registration standards".

    "While NSW wants to hear the details, the information so far fails to convince me that the Federal Government is serious about developing a fair way of determining quality teaching, assessing it and rewarding it.

    "The Treasurer, Peter Costello, has already ruled out any additional funding. Bishop must therefore be proposing financial penalties for some teachers in order to reward others. This will understandably be viewed as a provocation by more than 50,000 public school teachers in NSW.

    "Measuring effectiveness by how much students improve on standardised tests is unworkable. If the first test occurs for students in year 3, how is it decided who should receive the performance pay? Is it the kindergarten teacher, or the year 1, 2 or 3 teacher? Does a high school teacher get rewarded for a student's results that are based on work done by primary school teachers? [emphasis added]

    "While the opinions of parents and students are valued in many areas of school life, using their feedback to determine teacher pay introduces incentives that are contrary to school discipline and the fundamentals of teaching and learning.

    "We expect a great deal of our teachers today, including responsibilities that previous generations considered the role of parents, families and employers. But ultimately, teaching is not a popularity contest. Making teachers campaign for salaries, in the way contestants in Dancing with the Stars campaign for popularity, will do nothing for students. [emphasis added]

    "NSW public school teachers already have their efficiency assessed annually. Salary increases require a performance review confirming the teacher merits the increase. They must show continued effectiveness in classroom practice, satisfactory performance overall and the development of professional skills.

    "School principals control this process. If a teacher's performance doesn't merit it, the wage rise is deferred. A teacher who remains below standard faces losing their job.

    "To further ensure teacher quality, the Iemma Government recently established the NSW Institute of Teachers, which requires all new teachers to meet a range of strict professional teaching standards.

    "I'm happy to discuss improvements to this model, but any change must boost quality teaching in a way that clearly benefits students. It must be transparent and it would require co-operative negotiation with the workforce.

    "The proposal outlined by the Commonwealth seems primarily designed to provoke. It comes from a national government with no responsibility for delivering services. [emphasis added]

    "Despite almost doubling its education bureaucracy in five years, the Commonwealth doesn't run a single school, employ a teacher or write a curriculum. This debate is the perfect political diversion for a national government that doesn't have to make the system work.

    "I hope this week's meeting in Darwin doesn't result in the Commonwealth using its tired technique of threatening to cut funding, attacking wages and conditions and running down public education. Our schools are already world class and the Commonwealth's proposals will not improve them. The needs of students and teachers are not at the heart of the Commonwealth's proposal."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • As any student knows, meaning is sometimes hidden

      "Lyndsay Connors and Jane Caro ("Parity's the question when teachers get a report card", April 9) must be congratulated for their article on teaching and the attacks being made by the federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop.

      "However, the minister's intentions may be more sinister, as many in our profession believe the ultimate aim of merit pay is to destroy the collegiality of the profession, and with that, the teacher unions. That is the main prize, not the improvement of education in our public schools."

      Phil Armour, Yass
      
      

    • "It is claimed that performance pay for teachers will improve educational standards because it rewards and helps retain quality teachers. What if a large majority of teachers, say 80 per cent, are deemed to be quality teachers by the Federal Government's teacher performance indicators? Will it pay all these teachers a salary bonus in order to retain them? Unlikely.

      "The proposed performance pay model will only reward a small number of teachers, regardless of the quality of the entire teaching profession. How will rewarding a few teachers ensure that every student gets a quality teacher?"

      Alice Leung, Maroubra
      
      

    • "I am an old boy from Canterbury Boys High School. I was there in the 1940s, about five years before John Howard.

      "The school had two eccentric Latin teachers (eccentricity is a desirable characteristic for a successful teaching career). Jim Kentley's class was ruled with iron discipline, but John Gibbs's class was noted for its chaotic enthusiasm. I wonder how these two would have rated for Julie Bishop's performance pay.

      "In Jim Kentley's class no one dared fail, but in John Gibbs's class many did. From Kentley's class very few continued with Latin in the senior years but Gibbs produced some of our finest classics scholars, in particular Bob Maddox and Harry Jocelyn."

      John R. Giles, New Lambton
      
      

    • "Whether based on performance or on degrees and years of service, salary is not the ultimate factor that determines where most teachers choose to teach.

      "In the US, for example, private and religious schools pay teachers far less than their public counterparts, yet manage to attract some of the best and brightest candidates to their staffs. That's because many teachers don't want to contend with the behavioural problems that afflict too many inner-city public schools.

      "Taxpayers are entitled to know if children are being well educated, but merit pay will not provide the answer, despite its great intuitive appeal. It is being used in an election year by politicians as a red herring."

      Walt Gardner, Los Angeles (US)
      
      

    • "Since nobody has ever come up with a way to measure the performance of teachers that takes into account differences in available resources, student aptitude, parental support and other circumstances, can we please drop the misleading term "performance-based pay"?

      "A more accurate term would be "randomly selected pay".

      Andrew Tanner Hazelbrook
      
      
      

• The West Australian
  
  
  • McGowan plan to solve teacher crisis (page 4)
    by Rhianna King, Canberra
    
    "WA Education Minister Mark McGowan has called on the States to stop competing against one another for qualified teachers and instead work together to address the shortage.
    
    "He plans to put forward a discussion paper for a national approach at a Ministerial Council on Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs meeting in Darwin on Thursday.
    
    "He said the trend of States and Territories competing for the shrinking pool of qualified staff – and running separate overseas recruiting campaigns – was unsustainable.
    
    "He wants a standing committee, to be run by a WA-based chairman, to advise on national workforce planning policy. [Clearly it needs a WA chairman; after all, WA knows how to keep teachers out of the classroom for 6 or 8 months via its ridiculously cumbersome WACOT / DET registration processes.  Web]
    
    "We are not looking for a one-size-fits-all approach... but we do want to improve the way we do things," Mr McGowan said.
    
    "Professor Lance Twomey will review WA's recruitment practices."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor (page 18)
    
    
    • E GRADE
      
      "Pssst, keep it under your hat but the Department of Education and Training has been awarded an E grade for its OBE fiasco, an E grade for its courses-of-study shambles and an E grade for its editing and communication skills.
      
      "Looking forward to, but not expecting, an improvement next term."
      
      Frank Mulligan, South Perth
      
      
      
    • My Solution
      
      "Failure can be a powerful learning experience – in some circumstances. More often it is a devastating discouragement.
      
      "It is success, not failure, that is the greatest motivating factor in learning. This means that teaching programs have to be structured to provide small cumulative steps in achievement, individually tailored in increasing degrees of difficulty to suite each student's progress. Broad levels of evaluation can be useful in comparing student achievements but are of little value for motivation.
      
      "OBE offers the possibility of individualising education, but it requires structures that encourage each student to progress at his own pace. There will be a wide range of achievement in a time frame, but all can reach the desired target given time. OBE and levels are being misused to assess students at the end of a course for the purpose of selection for higher education. This is a misuse of OBE and will fail.
      
      "Education is about developing individuals, not sorting them for further study. Some other means will have to be devised for this purpose."
      
      Clive Hamer, Como
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • Call for better homework-home life balance
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Homework should be scrapped in the early years of primary school and its place in high schools reviewed amid concerns it is a practice without any academic benefits.
    
    "The national umbrella organisation of parents and citizens groups, the Australian Council of State School Organisations, has called for a review of the setting of homework, arguing there is no evidence that students benefit from the practice and that it has become an overbearing invasion of family life.

    "In primary schools, certainly we have grave doubts about the need for homework in most years," said council executive officer Terry Aulich. "There's nothing to prove homework gives kids an advantage in terms of literacy and numeracy."

    "Mr Aulich said homework was not addressed in teacher education courses, and when the council first raised it as a topic for its national conference, some teachers considered it a low-level issue.

    "They thought it wasn't worthy of intellectual study ... as if it were a minor issue, like the tuck shop," he said.

    "A discussion paper by the council says a review of the international research into homework reveals the evidence "is at best ambivalent" about the benefits.

    "Even in high school, the correlation between homework and performance is negligible.

    "The paper says some US and British studies link homework to improved grades, school performance, attitude towards learning and time-management skills, with one arguing that "the more homework students complete, especially from grades 6 to 12, the better they do in school".

    "But a review of British research found the positive relationship was only true for high school.

    "Other studies found homework contributed to physical and emotional exhaustion and allowed little or no time for leisure and family activities.

    "An analysis of the International Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, which compares students in 50 countries, stated: "The overall correlations between national average student achievement and national averages in amount of homework assigned are all negative."

    "Mr Aulich called for research on homework's effect on families and how children develop socially and intellectually..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • More pay for good teachers
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Paying teachers the same salary across subjects and in hard-to-staff locations hampers the ability of schools to recruit the best teachers.
    
    "A policy paper from The Future of Children, a joint initiative of the Brookings Institution and Princeton University, advocates paying teachers according to performance and skills as a way of improving student achievement.

    "The paper outlines a plan for improving the quality of teaching, which provides a fillip to federal Education Minister Julie Bishop's plan to push a system of performance pay for teachers.

    "The paper argues for a system that identifies effective teachers, promotes only effective teachers, ensures good teachers work in problem schools and raises the quality of teachers through professional development.

    "It says student test scores should not be the only element on which teachers are assessed.

    "School systems should judge teachers on a combination of student gains, principal evaluations, parent evaluations," it says.

    "Higher salaries should be paid to effective teachers who agree to work in disadvantaged schools, and to attract teachers to areas where there are shortages, such as maths and science.

    "Teachers with strong maths and science skills often have good opportunities outside of teaching, yet their pay is the same as that of teachers in other fields where outside opportunities may be more limited," it says.

    "Additional salary or other benefits could attract more teachers to these difficult-to-staff fields. Pay incentives for teachers in these fields may also be a productive way of increasing the pool of interested candidates."

    "Research in the paper argues that overall salary increases for teachers are expensive and ineffective and the best way to improve the quality of instruction is lower barriers to becoming a teacher and to link pay and career advancement more closely with increases in student performance."
    
    From The Australian at link

    
    
    
  • States push $7bn reform plan on Howard
    by Steve Lewis and Rick Wallace
    
    "The Labor states have challenged John Howard to bankroll a new $7 billion national reform program, tackling key education, health and regulatory obstacles as part of a 10-year plan to lift productivity.
    
    "In what the premiers say is a historic opportunity to address some of Australia's most pressing needs, the states want to expand provision of early learning to the nation's 250,000 four-year-olds and provide greater access to childcare so more parents can work.

    "They have also agreed on plans to lift literacy and numeracy standards, and want new programs to improve exercise and diet to slash the 100,000 new cases of type 2 diabetes each year..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    See related stories in The Melbourne Age (below)
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Peter Saunders: Sit in the corner while we rob you
    
    If only taxpayers would conform to the nanny state's expectations
    
    The commonwealth Government is to spend $2.5 million on a campaign telling parents not to smack their children.
    - AAP
    
    "It has recently come to my attention that some of you are still smacking your children when they are naughty. I do not approve of this. I admit that I've changed my mind on this issue. I didn't used to think there was anything wrong with smacking naughty children. Indeed, I used to smack your children when I had custody of them in my schools. But I've stopped doing this and now I think you should stop, too.

    "I have therefore decided to start nagging you about this. I intend to spend $2.5 million on an advertising campaign, so that whenever you go to the cinema, turn on the television or open a newspaper, I'll be there, wagging a finger at you until you start to rear your children in the way I think you should.

    "Of course, I have no money of my own to pay for this advertising campaign, so I shall be using yours. As usual. For I am your government and I am here to tell you how to live your lives..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • A quantity issue too
      
      "Judith Wheeldon’s comment ("Teacher performance model won’t perform”, 7-8/4) on federal Education Minister Julie Bishop’s plan for performance-based teacher pay ("Hire, fire power for principals”, 7-8/4) addressed many of the problems which arise from this ill-considered policy, most importantly that basing pay on performance will not ensure that every student has quality teachers.

      "One point Wheeldon did not mention was the increasing shortage of teachers, something which many in the teaching profession attribute in large part to the relatively poor remuneration of teachers.

      "I teach in a high school which is under-staffed because the Department of Education and Training is not able to supply us with all the teachers we require on the basis of our student numbers. On top of this, my school, like many others, is suffering from a shortage of casual relief teachers, so that staff have been asked to curtail professional development in school hours and many of us are required to cover each other’s classes when our colleagues are sick.

      "The stress induced by this state of affairs is likely to mean even more teachers deserting the profession. The most pressing issue is likely to become not just whether school students have quality teachers but whether they have enough teachers."
      
      Vivien Encel, Hilton, WA
      
      

      
      
• Professional Services Management website
  
  
  • Problems with Performance Pay
    
    Well worth a look
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Victoria chases more tertiary places
    by Jewel Topsfield, Canberra
    
    "Victoria will push for more Commonwealth-funded university places at a meeting of education ministers this week, claiming the Federal Government is harming the economy by failing to allocate the state its share of places.

    "Controversial recommendations including performance-based pay for teachers and principals having the right to hire and fire — which have met strident opposition from unions and principals' and parents' groups — will also be voted on at the annual meeting with Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop.

    "Acting State Education Minister Jacinta Allan said more than 14,000 applicants missed out on university places after third-round offers because the Federal Government had underfunded Victorian universities.

    "She said Victoria had a higher level of unmet demand — the number of students who qualify for but miss out on a university place — than any other state.

    "Victoria now has the best year 12 or equivalent completion rate of any state in the country but young people are being denied the opportunity to go to university," she told The Age.

    "Meanwhile, the Victorian Government called on the Commonwealth to bankroll Ms Bishop's contentious performance-based pay plan rather than "foist it all on the states".

    "The Age reported on Saturday that Ms Bishop is pushing for all teachers to be paid on performance rather than years of service by 2009, with principals to determine their salaries.

    "Under Ms Bishop's plan, principals would also have the power to hire and fire and would have primary control of school budgets.

    "Parents Victoria, the Victorian Principals Association and the Australian Education Union yesterday blasted the plan, saying that while teachers should be better paid, Ms Bishop's performance-based scheme was unfair.

    "It would be divisive, it would lead to competition between teachers and there is the potential for nepotism," said Victorian president of the Australian Education Union Mary Bluett.

    "If you drive that wedge … you are saying to teachers: "Your best chance of maximising your pay outcome is to keep the good things you do to yourself and not share with other teachers in the school."

    "Victorian Principals Association president Fred Ackerman said developing a rational, defensible, evidence-based performance pay system for teachers was intensely difficult.

    "To the best of my knowledge none exists in the world so how we would come up with one in Australia I'm not quite sure," he said..."
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • $5 billion plan to assist parents
    by Paul Austin
    
    "Premier Steve Bracks is challenging Prime Minister John Howard to commit almost $5 billion before this year's federal election to tackle Australia's child care and obesity crises and to boost childhood literacy and numeracy.

    "As the state premiers prepare for their last formal meeting with Mr Howard before the election, Mr Bracks will today send the Prime Minister an ambitious plan to create an extra 3000 child-care places and help 20,000 young parents in Victoria return to paid work.

    "In the 50-page blueprint, being sent to Mr Howard and other state premiers in the lead-up to Friday's Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra, Mr Bracks says a big increase in the quality of pre-school education and the number of child-care places is only possible with dramatic funding commitments and "strong national leadership" from the Prime Minister..."
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    

• USA Today
  
  
  • Schoolteachers, professors differ on what's important
    by Mary Beth Marklein
    
    "State learning standards may help high school teachers focus their coursework, but college faculty say they're focusing on the wrong things, says a report that finds a "significant gap" between what high school instructors teach and what college faculty think entering freshmen ought to know.

    "States tend to have too many standards attempting to tackle too many content topics," the report says. The report examines science, math, reading and English.

    "Every state but Iowa has developed standards for what high school students should know when they graduate, a trend that began in the 1990s and has been further underscored by President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, says Cyndie Schmeiser of the non-profit ACT of Iowa City. It released the study Monday.

    "To date, more than 30 states have taken steps to align high school learning standards with college expectations, she says.

    "The report, based on survey responses from more than 6,500 middle- and high school teachers, first-year college and remedial college faculty, can "inform those efforts," Schmeiser says. Aligning standards is especially important, she notes, as more U.S. jobs demand a college education.

    "High school teachers are working very, very hard at following and teaching their state standards," she says, but college faculty "felt it was more important for students to learn a fewer number of fundamental but essential skills."

    "When asked what was most important for students to learn, the study found, by discipline:

    Math:

    "High school teachers put more weight on advanced content, while college instructors said "a rigorous understanding of fundamentals" was more important. More than half (55%) of faculty ranked "basic operations and applications" most important, compared with 40% of high school faculty. Among material most desired by college faculty but covered the least in high school were algebraic problems such as solving quadratic equations and factoring.

    Science:

    "High school teachers consistently rated factual knowledge more important than process and inquiry skills, such as understanding a hypothesis. But that's what college instructors said they want most. For example, college faculty generally ranked "evaluating the similarities and differences, or strengths and weaknesses, of scientific viewpoints" important, while high school teachers were more likely to cite "understanding the physics principles involved in collisions" and "knowing the processes of how proteins are made inside of cells."

    English and writing:

    "More than a third (35%) of college instructors placed high importance on basic grammar and usage such as sentence structure and punctuation, compared with 10% of high school teachers. Similarly, high school faculty said the "ability to write an effective introduction and conclusion to a piece of writing" was the most important skill, but college instructors ranked it 30th.

    Reading:

    "High school and college teachers generally agreed on the relative importance of specific skills and identified the teaching of "main ideas and author's approach" as the top skill. But other ACT data show a decline in performance in reading between middle and high school, suggesting that reading skills acquired in middle school are not being deepened in high school. While educators in college and high school agree that reading skills are important, such skills "need to be incorporated into state standards," the study says."
    
    From USA Today at link
    
    
    

  • New Orleans: Looking for a few good principals
    by Greg Toppo
    
    "A non-profit group retained to recruit 40 new principals for New Orleans Public Schools is using an unusual lure: A year-long, intensive training residency before candidates even take over schools — plus bonuses that could add up to nearly $40,000 if President Bush approves them.

    "Under pending legislation, principals in high-performing New Orleans schools could earn up to $14,500 a year in bonuses. They'd also qualify for up to $2,500 in relocation costs, monthly $500 housing subsidies and student loan forgiveness of up to $7,000 a year.

    "Veteran principals who agree to lead a school and mentor younger principals could earn as much as $27,000 in bonuses.

    "The non-profit New Leaders for New Schools is taking applications through April 13. It asks for a five-year commitment beyond the year-long residency."

    More information is at: www.nlns.org

    From USA Today at link

    
    

  • 9 States to give common math test [Sound familiar?  Web]
    
    WASHINGTON (AP) — Nine states have come together for the first time to develop a common high school math test, a move described by some as a step toward national educational standards.

    State standards, and tests based on them, vary wildly for subjects as basic as math, English and science.

    This group of states has decided to share a test and standards for Algebra II, saying a subject like that shouldn't vary across state lines.
    
    
    
    

• The Guardian
  
  
  • Teacher training scheme for top graduates to go nationwide
    by Debbie Andalo
    
    "A graduate teacher training programme to attract high-flyers to the profession is being expanded, it emerged today..."
    
    "The Teach First scheme is aimed at graduates who leave university with a first or a 2:1 degree.

    "The high-achieving graduates attend an introductory summer school after leaving university before starting a two-year placement in a secondary school.

    "While on placement the graduates receives on-the-job and professional training which includes them working towards achieving Qualified Teacher Status at the end of the first year.

    "The graduates spend the second year on placement working as probationary teachers. They also take part in a leadership programme, developed by its business sponsors, as part of the initiative..."
    
    Full story in The Guardian at link
    
    Similar story in The Independent

Wednesday 11 April

• The Australian
  
  
  • Premiers agree on national education goal
    by Steve Lewis and Justine Ferrari
    
    "State premiers have agreed on a set of nationally consistent teaching standards and will seek commonwealth approval for their plan later this week.
    
    "The agreement meets years of Howard government pressure for national consistency across education systems.

    "Sources confirmed last night that state premiers would reveal their plans at Friday's meeting of the Council of Australian Governments in Canberra.

    "The news came last night as it emerged that state education ministers would consider establishing an independent body of experts and representatives from the public and private school systems to develop a national school curriculum.

    "Education has been a key battleground between the states and commonwealth in recent years, with the Howard Government pressing for national consistency in curriculums and teaching standards to prevent students who move interstate from facing inconvenience because of inconsistency between systems.

    "A letter signed by all state leaders obtained by The Australian last night commits the states to nationally consistent standards on teaching, although it does not go into details. A spokesman for federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said last night that Ms Bishop had not heard of the agreement but looked forward to hearing the details.

    "Ms Bishop's proposal on a nationally consistent school curriculum includes three options, all of which involve an expert committee guiding the development of curriculums for all states and territories.

    "The proposal, to be considered by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs when it meets tomorrow in Darwin, suggests establishing a working party to consider the best model.

    "The three models canvassed are that the expert body directly oversees the development of curriculums in core subjects; that it develops a framework against which state and territory curriculums are evaluated to ensure national consistency and standards; or that it disseminates the best practice between the states and territories to better share resources.

    "The first model outlined in the paper is similar to that proposed by the federal ALP. Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith will meet the state and territory ministers, all Labor, in Darwin tomorrow before the meeting to convince them of the merits of this plan. The states and territories are concerned that Canberra's proposal will "dumb down" curriculums or destroy the local content in what is taught at schools, particularly in subjects such as English and history. [emphasis added]

    "Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford yesterday said the commonwealth had "a league table approach to education instead of one based on principles of educational outcomes of students".

    "Most of the focus is on league tables of various kinds; having students competing with one another, having teachers competing with one another, testing across the country to have schools competing with one another," he said.

    "Mr Welford said the states and territories had already made much progress in agreeing on core curriculums for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 with the National Statements of Learning.

    "All states and territories have agreed to adapt their curriculums where necessary to ensure they meet the national statements.

    "A spokesman for NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca said he would have to be convinced of the need for a national curriculum and that it would improve on that offered in NSW."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Rudd plan for free check-ups for kids
    
    All children would receive free checks on their physical and mental development before starting school under a Labor plan for early detection and treatment of serious health problems.
    
    
    
  • Labor plan for obesity check for school starters
    
    All Australian children would be checked for obesity and other health and learning problems when they start school under a Labor plan unveiled today.
    
    
    
    
  • Higher Education Supplement contains 14 articles today, including:
    
    
    • Bishop plan to cut unis
      
      Federal Education, Science and Training Minister Julie Bishop has made good on her promise to pursue diversity in universities "through every mechanism at my disposal" by tweaking the priorities of the $46.8 million Collaboration and Structural Reform Fund to reward proposals for university mergers and campus closures.
      
      
      
    • Battle to balance paid work and study
      
      Universities are scrambling to find a better fit between students' work and academic programs.
      
      
      
    • Op Ed
      Philistines of relativism at the gates
      
      Universities should provide access to the best art and literature, write John Hookham and Gary MacLennan
      
      A time comes when you have to say: "Enough!", when you can no longer put up with the misanthropic and amoral trash produced under the rubric of postmodernist, post-structuralist thought. The last straw, the defining moment, came for us when we attended a recent PhD confirmation at the Queensland University of Technology, where we teach.
      
      
      • Uproar at student's disabled comedy
        
        
        
    • Op Ed
      A leaf out of America's book
      
      Our universities need to take a broader view, writes Gavin Moodie
      
      Australia has an unusually circumscribed conception of higher education, so it is unremarkable that most higher education institutions should appear similar. US and British higher education sectors appear more diverse, but they start with a much broader view of higher education.
      
      
      
      
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Homework needs a purpose
      
      "In any discussion about homework, it’s important to acknowledge how people learn ("Call for better homework-home life balance”, 10/4). Active learning, that is learning by doing, is certainly the most effective way to master any skill. From an early age, reading, writing and mathematical skills must be practised in order to truly learn them. As children grow up, further skills in communication, personal organisation, finding information, as well as physical abilities, are developed by practice. Homework can be an important part of this practice.

      "While the Australian Council of State School Organisations is right to call for research on the value of homework and the homework-home life balance, there is no ambivalence about the benefits. The real issue with homework is that teachers must be clear on what skills it will develop, rather than assigning it for its own sake."
      
      Michael Keller, Mitcham, SA
      
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • Union battles to see Minister over teacher shortage
    [or "A nice junket for David Kelly"]
    

    "Western Australia's State School Teachers Union is disappointed the Education Minister has not agreed to meet them to discuss regional teacher shortages.

    "Union secretary David Kelly says he will travel to Darwin tomorrow where the Minister, Mark McGowan, is attending a national education meeting.

    "He says he will try again to arrange a meeting to hear what is planned to ease the shortage before term two starts, but he will not rule out industrial action.

    "It's my intention that if I don't hear from them by somewhere around tomorrow, I'll be contacting them directly and seeing if there's any problems with us meeting," he said.

    "Based on that then we will get some indication of their willingness to sit down and find some solutions to the issue of teacher shortages in this state."
    
    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    

  • Performance pay plan for teachers 'divisive'

    "The WA School Teachers Union wants a plan to introduce performance pay for Australian teachers abandoned.

    "Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is expected to raise the matter at a national meeting of education ministers in Darwin tomorrow.

    "However union secretary David Kelly says it is a divisive plan which would have a severe impact on teacher morale.

    "He says it is a narrow-minded way to address poor teacher salaries and the teacher shortage being faced by regional WA.

    "You don't pay the back end, you attract quality people in in the first place," he said.

    "If you have quality people studying education and studying in teaching then you end up having quality teachers standing in front of students, and you end up getting quality outcomes for educational programs."

    "Meanwhile the union is disappointed Ms Bishop has not agreed to meet them to discuss regional teacher shortages. [It seems that NOBODY wants to meet with Mr Kelly. I wonder why...  Web]

    "Mr Kelly says he will try again to arrange a meeting to hear what is planned to ease the shortage before term two starts, but he will not rule out industrial action.

    "It's my intention that if I don't hear from them by somewhere around tomorrow, I'll be contacting them directly and seeing if there's any problems with us meeting," he said.

    "Based on that then, we will get some indication of their willingness to sit down and find some solutions to the issues of teacher shortages in this state."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Children 'turned off' by homework (page 18)
    by Kym Daly
    
    "Primary schoolchildren should not be "lumped" with homework because it risked turning them off education forever, according to WA Council of State School Organisations president Robert Fry.
    
    "Mr Fry yesterday condemned the use of homework as a disciplinary tool by teachers and called for more research on whether homework was at all appropriate.
    
    "His comments echoed the call by the Australian Council of State School Organisations for a review into the setting of homework amid concerns it failed to help lift numeracy and literacy standards and imposed a burden on families.
    
    "US and British studies found imposing homework on children only became effective once they reached high school, where it helped them develop time management skills and improve marks. There are concerns that giving homework to younger children increases pressure on them and their parents, who have to enforce its completion and help if needed.
    
    "Mr Fry said some children were given too much homework and questioned whether it was needed at all in primary years. "It can just put them into overload," Mr Fry said. He said teachers might be dishing homework out as punishment and that was not appropriate "because they can just turn kids off education and that's just silly".
    
    "State School Teachers Union general-secretary David Kelly said he would not want to go as far as banning homework for primary students but doubted it had any benefit for youngsters.
    
    "When they are in early primary school they are in a developmental stage – it's much more important for them to be engaging with their parents and other children at home and participating in play rather than doing proscribed homework," he said.
    
    "Mr Kelly said play was crucial for children's physical and social development and the types of activities they should be engaged in at home could not be formally set down by teachers. "We want them to share things with parents, to tell them about their day," he said."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Funds threat in teachers' pay proposal (page 14)
    by Chris Johnson, Canberra
    
    "Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will demand tomorrow her State and Territory counterparts agree to a trial of an uncosted plan to implement performance pay for public school teachers..."
    
    "State Education Minister Mark McGowan said Ms Bishop was missing the point. "Constructing formulas as to whether one teacher should be paid $1000 or so a year more than another teacher in the same school in the city is not addressing the real issues in teaching," he said. "Firstly, we already have a system or rewarding performance based upon an assessment of teachers' qualifications and experience.
    
    "Secondly, the formulaic approach proposed by Ms Bishop will involve an awful amount of red tape and bureaucracy and accordingly, cost.
    
    "It also has the potential to cause enormous disharmony in staff rooms throughout the State."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    See The Melbourne Age Editorial on this issue
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • "Lachlan Mason (Letters, 7/4) makes the claim that the curriculum framework is a fiasco and that OBE is a spawned innovation. I would beg to disagree.
      
      "I have seen outcomes-based education successfully implemented in primary school for many years. The problem, I believe, is in the lack of training that high school teachers receive and I don't think that a one-year graduate diploma is long enough to give high school teachers the skills they need to be good teachers.
      
      "The West Australian has run a long campaign denigrating outcomes-based education. A former colleague of mine once told me that is someone was not a part of the solution they were a part of the problem. Can The West Australian be brazen enough to publish an article of good practice in schools or will it continue to pander to the demands for mediocrity?"
      
      James McIntyre, Woodvale
      
      
      
      
      
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Teachers union to campaign
    by Bridie Smith
    
    "Australia's powerful teacher union will launch today a $1.3 million pre-election campaign blitz, urging the Federal Government to boost public education funding after a decade of shrinking contributions.

    "The Australian Education Union federal president Pat Byrne said public schools needed at least $2.9 billion a year if students were to meet national literacy, numeracy and skills targets set by federal, state and territory education ministers.

    "Public schools cannot withstand another three years of attacks on their funding share," she said.

    "Without that funding, "there will be many, many children who are denied the opportunity to reach those national goals".

    "Ms Byrne said under the Howard Government the funding share for public education had plummeted from 43 per cent to 35 per cent, despite 70 per cent of Australian children attending public schools.

    "The Howard Government's continuing cuts to the share of public education funding are taking away the right to a quality public education that every child deserves," Ms Byrne said.

    "The Australian Education Union estimates that after NSW, Victoria is in the greatest need of funding, requiring 24 per cent of the $2.9 billion.

    "The television campaign, which will be aired in marginal seats across the country from today until election day, will be combined with letterbox drops and targeted local campaigns.

    "Ms Byrne said the $2.9 billion needed was conservative and did not include costs associated with capital works, infrastructure improvements or educating students with disabilities.

    "Instead, the priority was employing more teachers and reducing class sizes to around the OECD average.

    "What is being requested here is that the Government fund their responsibility to provide a high-quality, well-resourced public education system," she said.

    "The AEU warns that under the present funding model, public school funding will continue to decline every year until 2009-10.

    "The union's claim comes barely a month after the state's independent schools launched their own pre-election bid for funds, rebutting the "myth" that independent schools are more generously subsidised than their public counterparts.

    "The Association of Independent Schools of Victoria research showed that, when state and federal funding is combined, taxpayers spend $4173 for every student in an independent school compared with $8134 per student in a government school.

    "However, Education minister Julie Bishop said it was state and territory governments that held primary responsibility for State Government education systems, adding that federal funding for state schools has increased 118 per cent since 1996.

    "If states had matched the federal rate of (funding) increase there would have been an additional $1.4 billion for State Government schools," Ms Bishop said."

    http://www.aeufederal.org.au

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Time to do the homework on performance pay for teachers
    
    Our nation's future depends on keeping the best teachers in classrooms. But political point-scoring must go if we're to devise a fair grading system.
    
    "An outstanding teacher wanting generations of students to benefit from his or her talent needs altruism, along with endurance, to fulfil such ambition. Teachers enter the profession on a starting salary of about $46,000 and within 10 years hit a modest ceiling of about $66,000, unless they are willing to take on managerial roles or extra responsibilities. The current system offers little incentive for the best educators to stay in the classroom, and makes a gentle mockery of the nation's ambition for a skilled workforce to power a sophisticated, knowledge-based economy. So far, so uncontentious: all parties to the education debate would agree that more needs to be done to attract and retain quality teachers. The problems arise when talk turns to how teachers' performance might be measured under a new scheme. It is a tricky question indeed, but one that must be emphatically tackled.

    "But it must be tackled with clarity and goodwill — an admittedly tall order in an election year. Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop will this week ask her state counterparts — under threat of funding cuts — to agree to a number of fundamental principles. These include that teacher salaries should reflect performance rather than length of service and that school principals are best placed to judge performance. Ms Bishop is likely to propose that several models be trialled next year, with the successful one introduced across the country in 2009. There is significant merit in the minister's proposals. The trials will apparently take many factors into account when measuring teachers' performance: relative improvements in student results, the socio-economic status of the school, involvement in extracurricular activities, feedback from the school community, professional development and attainment of professional standards or qualifications.

    "Including schools' socio-economic status in this equation is particularly welcome, and should go some way to easing union concerns of performance pay being used as a blunt and inequitable instrument linked to academic results alone. The minister appears to be heeding the findings of a report she commissioned from the Australian Council for Educational Research. The report, which looked at performance-based pay in other countries, warned against schemes that graded teacher performance according to narrow criteria, such as one-off tests of student achievement. Such schemes, the report found, had a short life span and risked lowering student results. (Teachers in such a scheme are tempted to coach their students to sit tests, to the detriment of well-rounded learning.) But the report, which found evidence of well-regarded schemes in several US states, found the most successful involved external agencies, rather than principals, doing the assessing. The idea of setting up a new bureaucracy holds little instant appeal — and clearly at this stage it is only one suggestion — but teaching is an intensely co-operative endeavour and introducing hostile rivalries into staff rooms could also disadvantage students. Impatient as the community rightly feels about this issue, a process of trial and error might be necessary before a scheme can be confidently implemented.

    "Of course, state and federal governments would face some profound challenges of their own should these reforms go ahead. Our leaders must find the long-term funds to sustain these schemes. This obviously cannot be done by substantial funding cuts to other parts of the education system; even the best teachers will struggle if their schools are badly under-resourced. And what is needed most of all is a large measure of open-mindedness, sensitivity and resolve from all parties. Ms Bishop should drop the threats and refrain from ideologically driven attacks on state governments and unions. The state governments, and federal Labor, should support performance-based pay even if it means a confrontation with education unions. And the unions, in turn, while entitled to the fairest possible deal, must surely accept the community's wish that their members submit to scrutiny, as do most other professionals."

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
• Tempers fray in uni funds row
  
  An angry Julie Bishop will tell Victoria to "put its money where its mouth is" and abolish the $93 million it extracts in payroll tax from universities every year if it is serious about universities being underfunded.
  
  
  
  
• Letters to the Editor
  
  
  • Missing the point
    
    "The debate over rewarding teacher excellence misses at least one major point. Reward seems mainly to be based on classroom expertise and/or superior results. What about the caring primary school teacher who makes sure that each student has a friend? What about the high school teacher who takes on the role of a parent to a troubled adolescent? Many intangibles make a teacher excellent. Until these intangibles become part of any reward system, this can only be seen as another government publicity stunt."

    Thomas Cromwell, Mount Martha
    
    

  • Make school sex education effective
    
    "As a year 12 student, I have been shocked to learn there are high rates of HIV in Victoria and that the numbers are rising. Obviously sex education in schools is not effective. For many students, AIDS is something we associate with the United States and African countries. We are aware that HIV-positive people exist elsewhere, but schools do not focus on it. I remember in year 10 health class having discussions about herpes, chlamydia and gonorrhoea, along with other STIs. I don't remember extensive discussions about AIDS and the fact that there are many HIV-positive people in Victoria. If there had been more focus on it, I think many young people would be shocked into wearing a condom or demanding it of their partner. How can society address this problem when it is not even addressed in the classroom?"

    Sarah Bambery, Glen Waverley
    
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Performance pay plan fails experts' exam
    by John Garnaut and Mark Davis
    
    "A Federal Government push to reward teachers for good performance has received a setback - the Government's own report warns that previous performance pay schemes have not worked.

    "The report, commissioned by the federal Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, and sent to state ministers before a meeting in Darwin tomorrow, says further research is needed to "avoid the mistakes made by so many performance pay schemes in the past".

    "Further, Ms Bishop has yet to secure the funding for such a scheme, government officials say.

    "Six weeks ago Ms Bishop said she wanted to push through a bold, federally funded performance pay regime by 2009. She also said she would push the states to move faster towards a national curriculum. Both plans were to be negotiated or imposed in Darwin tomorrow as part of a four-year, $42 billion school funding agreement.

    "Background papers circulated to state ministers suggest both proposals will be watered down. In their performance pay paper, researchers at the Australian Council for Educational Research did not endorse Ms Bishop's proposal, despite extensive redrafting after comments from the federal Department of Education. The researchers, led by Dr Lawrence Ingvarson, warn that a badly designed performance pay scheme could "distort performance" and even "face charges of bias and cronyism".

    "The authors advocate tying teacher rewards to accreditation standards set by a new professional body.

    "Teachers' careers plateau very quickly and at a relatively modest salary," the report says.

    "As the average age of Australian teachers is around 45, most teachers have been sitting at the top of the incremental scale for at least 10 years."

    "Ms Bishop told the Herald tomorrow's meeting would focus on higher teaching standards and greater national consistency.

    "The single most important element is to raise standards in the teaching profession," she said.

    "A paper Ms Bishop has sent to her state and territory counterparts suggests three options for moving towards nationally consistent curriculums for senior school students:

    - Establish a panel of experts to develop common national curriculums in core subjects;

    - Agree on a national framework that would be used to assess existing curriculums;

    - Advise each jurisdiction on best practice.

    "Ms Bishop's paper says the quality of school education would be improved by clear national statements of core curriculum content. She will seek agreement to set up a working party on the best way to achieve this outcome.

    "Federal sources say state education ministers have not placed any substantial item on tomorrow's meeting agenda.

    "Ms Bishop said the states were good at identifying problems but they were not coming up with any solutions."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
    
  • A lot to learn for new man in education's highest job
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor
    
    "The new director general of education, Michael Coutts-Trotter, admits he has a lot to learn about education. He is to run the country's largest education bureaucracy with almost 100,000 staff with no formal qualifications other than a degree in journalism.

    "But Mr Coutts-Trotter, taking over from Andrew Cappie-Wood, who was sacked yesterday, is confident his years as the director-general of the Department of Commerce and chief of staff to the former treasurer Michael Egan qualify him for the job.

    "His rise through the public service since starting work for Mr Egan as a press secretary in 1996 is even more remarkable because he is a rehabilitated drug addict, who served two years and nine months of a nine-year jail sentence for selling heroin.

    "I was arrested in 1984 as a 19-year-old, 23 years ago," Mr Coutts-Trotter said yesterday. He was charged with conspiracy to import narcotics and pleaded guilty in 1986.

    "When I entered my guilty plea, I described my addiction as an explanation but not an excuse, and made the point that I was greedy and selfish and that it was a very serious offence."

    "After his released from jail, Mr Coutts-Trotter entered a Salvation Army drug rehabilitation program and completed a journalism degree at the University of Technology, Sydney.

    "He joined the public relations firm Fox Communications, before applying for the job as the Treasurer's press secretary.

    "Despite having early doubts about the appointment, Mr Egan said these were quickly dispelled. "Not many people survive what he survived. He is one of the stand-out successes," he said.

    "He is seriously bright and seriously talented and a great human being all round." ...
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Parents are keen to help

      "It seems we can't have an objective debate on merit-based teacher pay without its infection by wider education ideology.

      "Lyndsay Connors and Jane Caro ("Parity's the question when teachers get a report card", April 9) couldn't help but show their ideological hand by insulting parents who choose private schools. They implied that parents were lazy and couldn't be bothered providing feedback on teacher performance. In their words: "… the recent flood of advertising for independent schools is designed to appeal to time-poor parents keen to write a cheque and outsource some of their parenting responsibilities. So it seems unlikely many parents would then want to take on additional human resources management tasks in schools."

      "In my experience, parents at private schools devote a huge amount of time and skills to the school community - listening to reading, fund-raising, running canteens, supervising excursions and camps, helping at sports carnivals. It is often the school that outsources activities to parents (who are happy to oblige).

      "Merit-based pay has nothing to do with public versus private education, except that some ideologues hold predictably uniform views on both subjects."

      Elizabeth Henderson, Northbridge
      
      

    • "Paying very able teachers more money is not a new idea. NSW trialled such a system with the Advanced Skills Teachers Program, which began in 1992.

      "The program soon became lost in a sea of paper, with teachers creating submissions to selection panels, assessments and interviews going on for days at a time, tens of thousands of hours of teacher effort being spent around the state with not one iota of improvement in student performance.

      "Some teachers were bitterly offended by decisions. In the light of the outcomes, many teachers refused any longer to perform the myriad voluntary tasks required to allow schools to operate.

      "People realised that, in a closed budget, every extra dollar paid to advanced skills teachers had to come out of the pockets of colleagues. After a few years of hectic activity and acrimony, the program was done away with, to unanimous relief."

      Noel Beddoe, Kiama
      
      

    • "What a shame the publicly funded private-school bank balances are not available for public scrutiny in your paper or on your website ("In the balance: school accounts up for grabs", April 10).

      "Public schools do not fear accountability or full scrutiny and must list all financial transactions in detailed financial reports as part of their annual reports. We live for the day the same requirements will be mandatory for all publicly funded private schools. Such reports should include fees paid by parents, all federal and state government grants, all bequests and investments here and overseas.

      "While ever private schools remain exempt from all aspects of freedom of information legislation, your readers will have a very one-sided picture of school finances across NSW."

      Judy King, principal, Riverside Girls High School, Gladesville
      
      
      
      

• The Times
  
  
  • Don’t punish bad pupils or they will feel left out, schools told
    
    Schools should not “over discipline” persistently unruly pupils for fear of alienating them and should instead hand out praise five times more often than punishments, the Government has said.
    
    Similar story in The Independent

 

Thursday 12 April

• The Australian
  
  
  • Labor to set literacy tests for teachers
    by Patricia Karvelas and Justine Ferrari
    
    "Trainee teachers would have to take literacy and numeracy tests before working in schools, under a federal Labor policy aimed at lifting students' standards.
    
    "A Rudd government would provide homework centres for children who needed extra help, and professional development in literacy and numeracy for staff who were already teaching.

    "The announcement yesterday continues Kevin Rudd's effort to frame family-friendly policies before this year's election, coming just a day after he promised health and development checks would be provided for all children when they start school.

    "Unless you've got your A-B-Cs right, unless you've got your one-two-threes right, then the rest of your education won't work," Mr Rudd said yesterday in reference to the focus on literacy and numeracy.

    "Labor education spokesman Stephen Smith said an important part of the plan was the need to raise the standard of teaching.

    "For that, the starting point is ... enhancing the practical courses that teachers do," Mr Smith said.

    "It is also about ensuring young Australian university students, when they do their education courses, are assessed in literacy and numeracy, and that current teachers receive ongoing professional development in literacy and numeracy."

    "All teacher-training courses would be changed to ensure all graduates could confidently teach using a variety of methods, including phonics.

    "Mr Rudd said lifting literacy and numeracy standards was essential to improving Australia's economic performance.

    "We've got a problem when it comes to productivity growth in the Australian economy," the Labor leader said.

    "It's slowing, and it's been slowing for years now.

    "One of the reasons it's slowing is because as a nation we've not invested enough in education, skills and training. Our response is that we believe Australia needs an education revolution."

    "No costings were given for yesterday's initiatives, which follow more than $500 million in previous Labor promises. They include establishing a national curriculum and providing 15 hours a week of early childhood education for children aged four.

    "Mr Rudd said the overall education plan would include a national curriculum running from kindergarten through to Year 12, setting literacy and numeracy benchmarks.

    "ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr has proposed the creation of an online database of literacy and numeracy tests that teachers could access at will.

    "The plan will be considered by education ministers at the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in Darwin today.

    "A national online bank of literacy and numeracy tests would allow teachers to assess their students against the national standards. "Ongoing assessment for all year levels is more important than once-a-year testing for a few year levels," Mr Barr said.

    "A national literacy and numeracy bank would mean teachers could use tests throughout the school year, not just once a year."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    See similar story in The Melbourne Age
    
    
    

  • Editorial
    Union campaign fails to do the numbers
    
    If public schools lack funding, blame the states
    
    "The Australian Education Union has proved once again it is better at political spin than mathematics. In an inflammatory television advertisement designed to shame John Howard over his Government's funding for private schools, the AEU has reignited a black-hearted campaign kicked off by former Opposition leader Mark Latham for the 2004 election. The campaign is as wrong-headed today as it was then. But this should not surprise, coming as it does from AEU federal president Pat Byrne, who has a history when it comes to political intervention. In a speech prepared for a Queensland Teachers Union conference following the last election, Ms Byrne lambasted voters for putting economic issues ahead of compassion in their decision to vote for the Coalition.

    "For the upcoming election, the union will spend $1.3 million on a television and letter-box campaign in marginal seats accusing the Government of neglecting public education by directing the bulk of commonwealth funding to private schools. The television advertisement shows a class of children at a public school excitedly preparing for a visit by the Prime Minister, only for him to drive straight past without stopping. The voice-over tells viewers that since the Government was elected, the share of funding for public education has decreased to 35 per cent, despite the fact that 70 per cent of Australian children attend public schools.

    "The campaign mirrors a $1 million advertising blitz by the AEU against the Government at the last election, urging a boost in funding for public schools. But what both union campaigns failed to mention is that public school funding is a state responsibility. The federal government does provide the majority of taxpayer funding for non-government schools, as the state governments do not fund the private sector. But overall, government schools receive a higher level of government funding than private schools. Sixty-seven per cent of students are in government schools that receive 75 per cent of total taxpayer funding. And under the Howard Government's funding formula, which is based on income demographics for the school catchment, the poorest non-government schools can receive a maximum of 70 per cent of the taxpayer funding provided per government school student, with a sliding scale down to a minimum of 13.7 per cent. The AEU campaign conveniently leaves out the fact that commonwealth education funding to government schools has increased by 120 per cent since 1996, while enrolments have risen by 1.1 per cent over that period. And it must be remembered that the state funding for public schools comes largely from commonwealth grants.

    "That parents are voting with their feet and taking their children away from public schools and putting them into the private sector underscores the danger in anti-government campaigns based on demonising private education as elitist. The reality is that parents who send their children to private schools effectively pay twice: once in taxes for a public system they don't use and again in private school fees. Labor has rightly dumped Mr Latham's failed policies of trying to widen the public-private divide. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd should not thank the AEU for reminding voters about it. All levels of government certainly have their failings on education, but this does not excuse the AEU's shameless political campaign based on a false premise. The Australian strongly supports the public school sector and believes it should be properly funded and offer a rewarding career path for teachers. But a union campaign that attacks the federal Government when its track record on education funding is better than that of the Labor states, which escape criticism, is a bit rich and must be marked a failure."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Union 'dishonest' in public school ads
    by Cath Hart
    
    "John Howard has attacked a national television advertising campaign by the Australian Education Union that accuses him of slashing public education funding and paints him as heartless.
    
    "The $1.3million advertising blitz by the AEU features a 30-second television advertisement that shows a group of public primary school students clutching Australian flags and cheering as they await the arrival of the Prime Minister - only to have him drive past without stopping.

    "Images of the children looking disappointed as they watch Mr Howard's white commonwealth car pull away are accompanied by a voiceover which says: "John Howard says he supports our public schools, but the truth is he's leaving them behind.

    "Public schools teach almost 70 per cent of students, but their share of federal education funding has been cut to 35 per cent. Our children need a government that will put public education first."

    "Mr Howard said yesterday the campaign was dishonest and did not reflect the large amount of public funding that came from state coffers.

    "Sixty-seven per cent of Australian school children attend government schools, and government schools receive 75per cent of all public funding," he said.

    "How on earth anybody can argue from that that government schools are being short-changed is completely beyond me."

    "The ad began airing in parts of NSW, Victoria and the ACT yesterday and will be rolled out to the rest of the country by next week.

    "Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said it showed unions dictated Labor's education policy.

    "The Labor Party will cave in to union demands on education policy every single time," Ms Bishop said.

    "This is a Labor campaign, dressed up as a union campaign, or vice versa."

    "Yet the AEU also has reservations about federal Labor's education policy.

    "In March, The Australian revealed that the AEU was part of a bloc of left-wing unions gearing up to challenge policy direction at the next ALP national conference on April 27.

    "AEU federal president Pat Byrne has said her members are concerned at Labor's failure to reassert the priority of public schools, but last night she refused to be drawn on the matter.

    "The ad is not about the ALP," Ms Byrne said.

    "She said the concept for the ad was developed last year and that it had been well received during focus-group testing.

    "We had alternative scripts to consider in the beginning but people were very supportive of this particular concept," she said.

    "Ms Byrne said the next federal election would be crucial for public eduction.

    "Public schools cannot withstand another three years of attacks on their funding share by the Howard Government," she said.

    "The Howard Government's continuing cuts to the share of public education funding are taking away the right to a quality public education that every child deserves."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Not me, thank goodness
      
      "I taught the same 36 Aboriginal students for three years in Far North Queensland 1971-73. At the end, many wrote good English, spelt well and had good handwriting. It was a wonderful experience for me. Now some are dead, some are on welfare and some are working. Your article ("More pay for good teachers”, 10/4) quotes a US policy paper, The Future of Children, as saying teachers should be judged (and then paid) on “a combination of student gains, principal evaluations, parent evaluations”. Thank goodness this did not happen to me."
      
      Ronnie Elgar, Sunshine Coast, Qld
      
      
      
      
  • Feature
    A few ticks for early check-ups
    
    Healthcare professionals have greeted with cautious scepticism Labor's plan for free health checks for children, writes Clara Pirani
    
    The plan prompted a mixture of cautious approval and scepticism by health professionals, who have witnessed school health screening programs come and go over the past 50 years.
    
    
    
    
  • New schools chief defends drug past
    
    Morris Iemma's rocky start to his new term as Premier continued yesterday with an outcry over the appointment of Michael Coutts-Trotter - a former heroin addict who spent three years in jail in the 1980s for drug crimes - to the state's most senior education position.
    
    See related story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Labor plan to lift skills of teachers
    by Bridie Smith and Jewel Topsfield
    
    "Teaching students would not graduate from university unless they passed national skills tests, under a Labor plan to improve literacy and numeracy in Australian schools.

    "Under a Labor government, trainee teachers would sit literacy and numeracy tests at the start and finish of their university courses, while existing teachers would receive ongoing professional development training.

    "A national schools curriculum would specify literacy and numeracy standards that should be achieved at each year level from kindergarten to year 12.

    "Schools with additional needs would get special reading and writing "coaches" and homework centres for extra support.

    "Labor's latest push in its so-called education revolution comes on the back of Victorian Premier Steve Bracks challenging Prime Minister John Howard to boost childhood literacy and numeracy in the lead-up to the Council of Australian Governments meeting tomorrow.

    "Labor's National Action Plan on Literacy and Numeracy said the quality of teachers was critical in determining students' performance levels, accounting for 30 per cent of their results.

    "But the paper said recent studies had found that 8 per cent of maths teachers had not studied maths at university, and 27 per cent of new teachers were teaching outside their expertise areas.

    "This was felt most strongly in English and mathematics," it said. "The literacy and numeracy abilities of teachers themselves have emerged as one of the key issues in recent research." [emphasis added]

    "This follows last months's damning 2005 National Report on Schooling, which found 20 per cent of year 7 students were failing to meet national minimum benchmarks in maths and one in 10 did not meet reading and writing benchmarks.

    "Unless you've got your A-B-Cs right, unless you've got your 1-2-3s right, then the rest of your education won't work," Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said at Elwood's St Columbus Primary School yesterday.

    "Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop slammed the announcement, claiming it was a "grab bag of uncosted and poorly planned ideas".

    "She said the Federal Government had provided an additional $1.8 billion to the states, specifically to support students in literacy and numeracy.

    "But Labor's plan was welcomed by the Australian Education Union and the Independent Education Union, whose federal secretary, Lynne Rolley, said: "What teachers want is a genuine commitment from the government to work collaboratively to improve the literacy and numeracy standards of all students."

    "Last year, ANU researchers Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan, who studied the results of literacy and numeracy tests by students who later became teachers, found their average results dropped from 74 per cent in 1983 to 61 per cent in 2003.

    "Labor did not give a costing for yesterday's plan."
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • States step up merit pay row
    by Jewel Topsfield
    
    "A showdown is looming over performance-based pay for teachers, with the states branding the federal proposal unworkable and ideologically driven ahead of today's meeting of education ministers.

    "The merit-pay proposal — under which all teachers from 2009 would be paid on performance rather than years of service, with principals to determine their salaries — is expected to dominate the meeting in Darwin.

    "NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca said federal Education Minister Julie Bishop was trying to impose a "simplistic, ill-defined and unworkable" proposal on the states and teachers.

    "Measuring effectiveness by how much students improve on standardised tests is unworkable. If the first test occurs in year 3, how is it decided who should receive the performance pay? Is it the kindergarten teacher or the year 1, 2 or 3 teacher?" Mr Della Bosca said.

    "West Australian Education Minister Mark McGowan said the proposal had the potential to create disharmony and bureaucracy and would cost state taxpayers more money.

    "If the Commonwealth wants to undertake such experiments, the Commonwealth should pay for them," he said.

    "South Australian Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith rejected the "simplistic plan", which she said could mean disadvantaged schools would miss out on the best teachers.

    "We're particularly suspicious of the federal Liberals' ideological drive to try to bully the states into supporting a plan that is unfunded and based on inadequate research." she said.

    "Victoria has also dismissed the scheme, saying the state already has a system in place that offers teachers performance incentives."
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Listen up, Julie, Kevin and Steve, merit pay is a bummer
    
    Rating teachers is an absurd idea that will only frighten off good people, writes Tony Thompson.
    
    "When I was at high school in Toronto back in the early '80s, I had a history teacher named Mr Reid. Year 11 was not a good year for me but Mr Reid's classes provided rare interest and entertainment.

    "He once turned up with hundreds of toy soldiers and model tanks to demonstrate the battle of El Alamein. Another time, we all dressed up as revolutionaries. I think I ended up as Sun Yat Sen.

    "Every night I would sit at the dinner table and tell my mum about Mr Reid's classes. She was a teacher as well and started to ask around about this genius who somehow engaged her school-phobic son. She discovered something very strange. Mr Reid was a bad teacher. His principal and many colleagues disliked him. There had been complaints and he was on the verge of reassignment.

    "Mr Reid would not have fitted into any kind of merit-based pay arrangement proposed by either major party. And neither will anyone else. It is an absurd idea because there is no realistic way to determine who is a good or bad teacher.

    "In the past 10 years I have worked with all kinds of educators in both the independent and state systems. I have worked with people whom I wouldn't let into my front yard — repellent, anti-social, rude individuals who, nonetheless, have been adored by their students. I have also had good friends, kind-hearted, committed teachers, who have bored their classes senseless. Then there are those who work hard only to further their careers, all the while ignoring their students.

    "The one kind of teacher I have never met is the one who has no effect at all. At some point, even the clumsiest, most incompetent teacher will make a connection with a student and provide inspiration.

    "The best teachers, in my opinion, are the mavericks, the troublemakers, the clowns and the eccentrics. As Jack Kerouac once said: "The only people for me are the mad ones." [emphasis added]

    "There is simply no reliable way to assess a teacher. Testing the students regularly will breed a mediocre education system where teachers teach only what is on the next test. Surveying students will be inconclusive. Students like and dislike teachers for a variety of reasons.

    "Have a look at the preposterous website ratemyteachers.com. Students criticise teachers for being boring, too strict, too slack, too short and too fat. One of my students doesn't like the fact that I talk about Bob Dylan. Another says I get good results.

    "I have a plan to ensure that I get my pay rise. I have discovered that my year 9 English students like to sit on the floor. I don't know why anyone would want to sit on a classroom floor but they beg me, class after class. If merit-based pay depends on student surveys, I shall conduct all my classes on the floor. The students will work there and so will I, if necessary.

    "Julie, Kevin, Steve, everyone, listen! It won't work. You will waste hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to implement something that will never be anything more than the appearance of a system.

    "Steve Bracks has mentioned that there is already a system in Victoria. Let me tell you about it. Every year I sit down with one of my colleagues. We have a coffee and fill in a form that no one will ever read. I then get the rise that, as it happens, I have already received. I could be screening old episodes of the Flintstones and showing my students how to roll joints and it would not affect my pay packet. Of course, I'm not doing those things because I care about my subject and my students.

    "Bill Clinton once asked Frank McCourt, the former teacher who wrote Angela's Ashes, to advise him on education policy. "Pay the teachers, Bill," was Frank's suggestion. And this I say to Julie, Kevin and Steve. Just pay us what we're worth and make sure that there are enough of us in schools to go around. It isn't rocket science and it isn't IBM. Not everything can be measured. [emphasis added]

    "Every teacher has a story about running into a former student, a really naughty one, who says something like "You were great, you told me I was a good writer and now I'm a journalist." How will an experience like that be factored in?

    "The answer is it won't. And neither will anything else to do with actual schools and actual teachers who teach actual kids.

    "This isn't the right discussion. There is a teacher shortage looming. Julie, Kevin, and Steve need to look at ways to attract teachers, not frighten them off."

    Tony Thompson teaches English at Princes Hill Secondary College in Carlton.
    

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Preschool-care investment pays dividends
    
    Why is the Government sending mixed signals on its support for children? Kenneth Davidson inquires.
    
    ... A comprehensive, publicly funded early education and care policy is expensive — Scandinavian countries spend $12,000 to $15,000 for each child aged one to six years, or four to five times the expenditure on Australian preschoolers. But this does not necessarily mean a net burden on taxpayers. This must be set against the higher workforce participation rates for women with younger children compared with Australia and the higher proportion of Scandinavian women occupying full-time professional jobs, as well as the savings in social expenditures.
    
    
    
    
  • Classroom challenge is to never stop learning
    
    It's not just students who should be constantly learning while at school. According to Carolyn Clancy, teachers also need to be students every now and then.
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Trying to measure the unmeasurable
      
      "A performance-based pay system for teachers based on student achievement in school — as appears to be advocated by The Age ("Time to do the homework on performance pay for teachers", Editorial, 11/4) presupposes that we can accurately and consistently measure student achievement in the first place. It also ignores research that shows that probably more than half of a student's achievement in education is due to the skills and abilities that they bring with them when they arrive at school. These include inherited characteristics such as intelligence and reasoning skills as well as aptitudes in areas as diverse as sport, music and mathematics. No matter how good our teachers are and how hard students work, they are not all going to be brilliant mathematicians or concert pianists!

      "A student's success at school is also greatly influenced by social and economic factors as well as such indefinable things as their aspirations and level of motivation. Many parents I speak to express the frustration of having a child who seems to have ability but who lacks the application required to excel at school. How will any government develop a system that takes into account all of these factors and then be able to say that they have accurately determined the contribution that an individual teacher has made to the learning of their students?

      "Performance-based pay is probably very useful in mining iron ore or in manufacturing motor cars where the outcomes are obvious and easily measurable. The situation is not as simple in education. Politicians need to understand that every student in our schools is different from every other student and that teachers work to the very best of their ability to educate each student as an individual. For their work, all teachers deserve greater recognition."

      Peter Hendrickson, principal, Sunbury College, Sunbury
      
      

    • Teachers need scrutiny?
      "I'm fuming at yesterday's editorial in favour of payment by results for teachers. The last line made me realise the confusion that abounds. What does payment by results have to do with scrutiny? Teachers are the most highly scrutinised of any profession. They must submit to three cycles of performance reviews a year, where the principal is entitled to demote teachers and thus lower their pay (doesn't happen very often but it can happen). Isn't that scrutiny? When politicians (are you listening, Julie Bishop?) allow their pay to depend on good results, I might think about it for teachers.

      "Incidentally, do I get back pay for 40 years of results?"

      Liesl Kosma, Brighton
      
      

    • Foregone conclusion
      
      "While I have no problem with several models for teacher performance pay being trialled next year, I have a problem that the successful one will be implemented across the country in 2009. This assumes that there will in fact be a successful trial — which flies against the nature of what a trial is. What if none of them are satisfactory: just introduce the best of a bad lot?

      "I am very sceptical that any successful model can be found. Just the fact that relative improvements on student performance are to be measured makes the questionable assumption that objective accurate measures of where a student is at any point in time can be made."

      Alan Inchley, Frankston

      
      
      
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Withhold taxes, urge teachers in pay battle (page 4)
    by Jessica Strutt and Rhianna King
    
    [Actually it's not "teachers" but rather just the renowned Mr Kelly, having zoomed off to Darwin from his home planet of Zork...  Web]
    
    "The State School Teachers Union wants the WA Government to withhold millions of dollars in taxes collected on behalf of the Commonwealth if Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop introduced performance pay for teachers.
    
    "Union State secretary David A. Kelly said Education Minister Mark McGowan had to stand up to Ms Bishop's threat to take $3 billion in Federal funding from the States if they refused to back her controversial plan..."
    
    "While we face a situation in Western Australia where 30,000 – 40,000 students will be without a teacher, Ms Bishop is drifting off with ideas of merit pay and introducing subjects including good manners and silver service into the classroom," Mr Kelly said..." [Speaking of "drifting off", Mr Kelly...  Web]
    
    [review of articles in yesterday's press, including the proposal for an independent body of teachers to establish a national curriculum, plus the AEU television campaign...]
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • School caught out when quotes double (page 36)
    by Graham Mason
    
    A southwest primary schools discovers that its federal grant is not longer sufficient, after the State Government rips off 17.5 per cent for 'management expenses'.
    
    See Peter Collier's speech in Parliament on 29 March on this issue.
    
    
    
    
  • Labor wants more tests for teachers (page 4)
    
    See more detailed articles in eastern states newspapers, already on the home page.
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor (page 18)
    
    
    • We Disagree
      
      "Clive Hamer (Letters, 10/4) trots out the old OBE platitudes claiming it "offers the possibility of individualising education". The problem, he believes, it that it is being "misused". It must have been misused all around the world, then, because it has failed.
      
      "With no syllabus and no competition, OBE has stifled education. Evidence from Britain shows that students are about two years behind comparable students from a couple of decades ago and anecdotal evidence suggests the same is true here.
      
      "Today we have teachers fighting their way through a bureaucratic nightmare, trying to provide "evidence" of students meeting vaguely worded levels of achievement then using it to support grades when the two systems do not match. We have teachers having to invent a personal syllabus and, not surprisingly, coming up with widely different results. We have students who are sick of having to "investigate" everything when they need a bit of direct instruction.
      
      "He claims that "all can reach the desired target given time". Well,set the bar low enough and all can reach it but, if you expect higher than that, we have to accept that some will not make it. Some people have a greater degree of natural talent and enthusiasm in each area of skill or knowledge. As a community we acknowledge that in sport or music, so why is it so difficult to accept it in intellectual pursuits?"
      
      B A Lee, Ardross
      
      
      
    • "Clive Hamer shows why the proponents and supporters of OBE don't understand the reason so many are opposed to it.
      
      "To claim that schoolchildren shouldn't fail but be given "small cumulative steps of achievement" is ludicrous. It does nothing to try to keep the child with his or her peers, it does nothing to teach them what will really happen when they enter the working world. In the scoring system applied to OBE there is no real way of determining how a child is doing. Progressing towards the end-of-year target is a term used in OBE to explain how a child is doing. I ask all the OBE supporters to give a definitive answer as to the precise level of achievement that a child has reached in that grading. It means nothing.
      
      "Children need to be taught that they will probably fail at something in their lives. It is wrong to give them the false idea that whatever they do to their best ability (even if it is less than 50 per cent correct) will be rewarded the same as those who do the same thing correctly."
      
      Ross Hawes, Clarkson
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Rudd plans to put trainees to test on literacy and numeracy
    
    Similar to the articles in The Australian and The Melbourne Age
    
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Issue is not drugs but know-how
    
    "The appointment of Michael Coutts-Trotter as director-general of education raises a number of issues - but his drugs conviction two decades ago is the least of them. By highlighting Mr Coutts-Trotter's heroin dealing when the central concern should be his qualifications for the job, the Opposition has shown itself to be out of touch.

    "It is old news that Mr Coutts-Trotter is a reformed addict who served almost three years' jail for peddling heroin. That was in the 1980s, and the story has been retold more than once since then. Subsequently, Mr Coutts-Trotter has been a model of rehabilitation, becoming first press secretary, then chief of staff to the former treasurer, Michael Egan, and, most recently, the director-general of the Department of Commerce. Mr Coutts-Trotter deserves nothing but praise for turning his life around so spectacularly. And the Opposition deserves only condemnation for suggesting Mr Coutts-Trotter's criminal past calls into question his suitability as director-general of education. However, the Opposition was on firmer ground when it pointed to Mr Coutts-Trotter's lack of relevant qualifications and experience.

    "As if to defend his appointment, Mr Coutts-Trotter has mentioned in interviews that he and his wife, Tanya Plibersek, a federal Labor MP and Herald columnist, have a six-year-old daughter at a public school. Splendid. But hardly a qualification to run Australia's biggest education department. Assuming there was good reason to replace the previous director-general, Mr Andrew Cappie-Wood, was there really no better candidate than Mr Coutts-Trotter? Was there no one with stronger qualifications and experience in education, or in managing a large organisation? Or an executive who combined both, as did Dr Ken Boston, a former NSW director-general of education now prominent in Britain? How are the Ken Bostons of the future to emerge when, instead of a doctor of education, NSW schools get a former spin doctor?

    "The post of director-general of education cannot be allowed to appear to be another job for the boys. Such an appointment deserves very careful consideration, especially when public schools are bleeding students to the private sector, and school education is under attack from a doctrinaire federal education minster. Headhunters should be approached, and candidates' credentials and experience measured against demanding criteria.

    "Sadly, in both the state and federal arenas, such top appointments are instead decided behind closed doors by governments with no obligation to explain their thinking. On just such a private deal do NSW public schools now depend." [emphasis added]

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Einstein's theory of creativity the wellspring of future genius
    by Walter Isaacson, Los Angeles Times
    
    Smart folks are a dime a dozen. What truly matters is creativity. As Albert Einstein put it, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

    Given our focus on science and mathematics, and our emphasis on testing in schools, we need to make sure we don't forget this.

    We tend to teach by drilling knowledge rather than stimulating imagination.

    Einstein rebelled against rote learning and that attitude helped make him the genius that he was. Likewise, our success as a nation will be determined not just by how well our schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables but by how well they promote imagination and creativity..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • You don't always get what you pay for

      "Here's some free advice for Julie Bishop in her quest to align teachers' pay with their performance ("Performance pay plan fails experts' exam", April 11). Using the startling findings of the research report commissioned by her department, which has discovered that teachers receive "a relatively modest salary", surely making the monetary reward much more significant can only attract the best and most competent people to this career and thereby result in an incremental rise in teaching standards?

      "Or maybe not. Fundamentally, the same simple philosophical approach is used to justify the generous benefits our politicians enjoy when the old saying of "pay peanuts, get monkeys" is trotted out as a defence. Unfortunately, when the vocation of politics is used to test this hypothesis, more peanuts have rarely provided anything other than much fatter monkeys."

      B. Bates, Caringbah
      
      

    • "John Della Bosca correctly observes that the Commonwealth doesn't run a school, employ a teacher or write a curriculum ("Making teachers compete for pay will do nothing for students", April 10).

      "He might also have observed that the Commonwealth is entirely responsible for the system that selects and trains teachers. If there is some deficiency in the quality of teachers, Julie Bishop has an obvious place to start her improvements."

      Peter Stamford Wahroonga

Friday 13 April

• ABC News
  
  
  • Meeting clears way for national curriculum moves
    
    "Public and private schools from all states and territories will collaborate to develop a new minimum standard national curriculum in the core subjects of English, maths and science.

    "The deal was thrashed out as state and territory education ministers met their federal counterpart Julie Bishop in Darwin today.

    "ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr says public and private schools from across the country will collaborate to develop the new curriculum.

    "The appropriate time frame to achieve that will need to be a number of a years," he said.

    "We've requested that our officials in the senior secondary reporting working group will advise the council on the implementation and provide a progress report to the next ministerial meeting."

    "The meeting also agreed to allow each state and territory to set its own school starting ages.

    "Mr Barr says it appears that the Coalition is being influenced by Federal Labor policy.

    "It's good to see that the Commonwealth is prepared to compromise on certain areas but it would appear that it's only when Federal Labor has shown leadership that the Commonwealth are going to follow what Kevin Rudd has outlined," he said.

    "But I think the important thing overall is that we're getting progress to ensure high quality education for students all around Australia."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
    
  • States, territories reject Bishop's pay plan for teachers
    
    "The states and territories have rejected the federal Education Minister's push for performance-based pay for teachers.

    "At their ministerial meeting in Darwin, they agreed to national consistency in school curriculums, but they could not agree on a school starting age.

    "Western Australia's Mark McGowan says the states and territories did not accept the performance pay proposal because Julie Bishop's model was unfair.

    "We already have as states and territories performance-based pay for teachers based upon a sensible workable model," he said.

    "What she has proposed is a grab bag of rash ideas as to how you analyse a teacher's performance."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
    
  • Union rejects push for regional-remote teacher pay parity
    
    "The State School Teachers Union of Western Australia has rejected a call for regional teachers' salaries to be brought into line with those in more remote communities.

    "The principal of the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School, Paul Matthews, yesterday called for teachers in large regional centres to be paid at rates similar to those in remote areas.

    "Union secretary David Kelly agrees salaries need to be drastically increased, but says extra incentive is needed for teachers in isolated communities.

    "The conditions are absolutely extreme out there and certainly they do need a particular incentives package to attract appropriate people to go out there who can indeed tolerate the conditions," he said.

    "Unlike other people in the service they do not have the ready access to medical and other support infrastructure."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
  • Union, McGowan to meet over teacher shortages
    
    [Has everyone forgotten the 345 teachers waiting for their registrations to be processed?  Web]
    
    "The State School Teachers Union of Western Australia has managed to secure a meeting with Education Minister Mark McGowan next week, which could avert industrial action over regional teacher shortages.

    "Union secretary David Kelly says hopes of addressing the shortage before term two starts are fading, but he is satisfied the Minister has agreed to the meeting.

    "He says the Minister is now painfully aware of the problems and hopes some solutions will be put forward to immediately ease pressure on schools carrying the burden of teacher shortages.

    "The biggest problem now is we've run out of a whole lot of days and we don't have much time to put things in place," he said.

    "But I'm going to stay positive. Tuesday's the day that we're going to hope we have something concrete, I expect that the department will send me across some graphs, materials either tomorrow or on Monday and that will give us the time to do some preparation ourselves."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
  • Local govt chief urges delay to preferential voting system
    
    "Western Australian Local Government Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich has been called upon to shelve the controversial preferential voting system until after this year's election..."
    
    "But Ms Ravlich says the preferential voting system will still go ahead at the October election as planned..."
    
    Clearly, preferential voting is the RIGHT method for electing politicians, but the WRONG method for electing WACOT teacher representatives.  Web
    
    Full story at ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
    
• Press Statement, Julie Bishop, Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training
  
  
  • "Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon Julie Bishop MP, today achieved agreement from State and Territory Governments to develop greater national consistency in school curriculum across the country.

    “State and Territory Governments have agreed to the Federal Government’s request for greater national consistency in school curriculum, testing and reporting,” Minister Bishop said.

    “After months of criticising the proposal for greater national consistency in school curriculum, State and Territory Ministers today acknowledged the merits of the Federal Government proposal.

    “This will ensure that we can achieve high quality curriculum in every classroom across the country and is a major step forward in raising standards in every school.”

    "Minister Bishop said today’s decision will also result in reduced disruption for the many thousands of families who move interstate and face problems of wide variations in curriculum content and quality.

    “State and Territory Governments have also agreed to consider further options including the establishment of a national body to oversight development of the nationally consistent curriculum, testing and reporting,” Minister Bishop said.

    “This is a victory for commonsense.”

    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Teacher pay plan will rob colleagues: states
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "High-achieving teachers would receive extra pay by cutting the wages of other teachers under a commonwealth plan to link teachers' salaries to their performances, the states and territories claim.

    "In a statement prepared by the Labor state and territory education ministers and obtained by The Australian, they point to comments made by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop that a system of performance-based pay for teachers could be implemented within current school budgets.

    "If you had a performance-pay model that paid some teachers more and other teachers less, well then it could be accommodated within current funding levels," Ms Bishop told the ABC's Lateline program on Wednesday night.

    "The Labor education ministers described her comments as absurd and an outrage.

    "We ask Julie Bishop: which teachers does she believe deserve to be paid less?" their statement says.

    "To even suggest that our hard-working teachers should take a pay cut is an absolute insult to their professionalism. The federal Government's plan is clearly flawed and its own report is inconclusive about the benefits and wider impact of performance-based pay for teachers."

    "Performance pay is expected to be the biggest sticking point when the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs starts its meeting in Darwin today.

    "The council will also consider a proposal to conduct fitness tests on all students in Year 5, to tackle obesity and diabetes. Students would have their height and weight measured, their body mass index calculated and they would be subjected to a fitness test.

    "Under Ms Bishop's proposal, fitness tests would be conducted in schools every year for four years, with an assessment given to parents and schools to help identify problems and allow early intervention.

    "Before the start of the meeting yesterday, the Labor ministers met Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith, who described the commonwealth's performance pay model as flawed and an excuse to beat up on teachers.
    
    "Mr Smith said a federal Labor government would reward teachers for specific achievements, such as working in difficult schools, in remote and regional areas, or for attaining specialist skills in literacy and numeracy or maths and science, as well as doing mentoring programs or professional development.

    "Mr Smith outlined a scheme for rewarding quality teachers where higher wages would be paid on the basis of a peer review or performance review.

    "One model would be to return the days of the school supervisor who sat in the back of the classroom evaluating teachers on the ground, he said.

    "The states and territories yesterday rejected Ms Bishop's proposal on national literacy and numeracy tests, with the results to be given to the commonwealth on a school-by-school basis.

    The states and territories objected to data being provided to the commonwealth and have asked for extra funding from the federal Government to cover the cost of a national testing system.

    "At present, the states and territories do their own literacy and numeracy tests in Years 3, 5 and 7 and the results are manipulated to compare students in different states for the calculation of national benchmark standards.

    "From next May, all states and territories have agreed to use the same literacy and numeracy tests and to include Year 9 students in the national tests.

    "The federal Government calculates the extra cost for including Year 9 in the tests is $6 million and has offered to pay half.

    "The states and territories are seeking a one-off payment of about $35 million to cover the cost of the testing regime."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Spending for kids' sweeter future
    by Stephen Lunn and Patricia Karvelas
    
    "Mother of four Mary O'Sullivan counts the cost of her kids' private school education in chocolate drops and lollipops.
    
    "Owner of A Pocket of Lollies candy store in the east Melbourne suburb of Canterbury, she knows the decision to send her children to private schools bites hard into their daily lives.

    "But Ms O'Sullivan believes the sacrifice will be worth it down the track.

    "She is the human face of the debate over private versus public schooling.

    "The key protagonist in the debate, however, is Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne, who yesterday launched an attack on Kevin Rudd's promise that private schools would not lose money if he won office.

    "If Kevin Rudd is actually serious about an education revolution then that revolution cannot be at the expense of the public education system," Ms Byrne said.

    "Labor's promise was designed to bury Mark Latham's 2004 hit list of private schools and Kim Beazley's funding freeze on rich schools in 2001.

    "The AEU has backed up its campaign with a $1.3 million television advertising campaign accusing John Howard of slashing public education and painting him asheartless.

    "The Prime Minister attacked the advertisements as "dishonest".

    "In the meantime, parents such as Ms O'Sullivan are voting with their wallets, shifting their children into private schools in the expectation they will receive a better education.

    "Ms O'Sullivan yesterday reflected on the sacrifices involved in finding, with her ex-husband, $30,000 a year to send her oldest two children to private school. They face further outlays if they are to send their youngest two children to a private high school.

    "If the public system was in good shape I would have no problems sending my kids toapublic school, but unfortunately, in my view, it isn't," she said.
    
    "I just don't have enough confidence in the public system at high school level to provide the education and facilities.

    "Everyone wants the best for their children, wants them to start their adult life with a leg-up. Choosing the private system over the public doesn't sit that easily with me because so many families don't have that choice.

    "Financially, it will be hard, but I know it will give my kids better opportunities in the long run."

    "Ms O'Sullivan said she would not like to see government funding prioritise private over public schools.

    "That might seem contradictory, but I know a lot of people who feel like I do," she said.

    "Just the same, I don't want governments to cut funding to private schools, because that would force fees up and middle-income people like me out."

    "The AEU yesterday intensified its attack on Labor's new direction on schools and demanded detail. But Labor education spokesman Stephen Smith promised Labor would "fund all schools on the basis of need and fairness".

    "Ms O'Sullivan said school fees meant she found it almost impossible to save. Her eldest, Sam, 16, is at Xavier College ($16,000-$18,000 a year, including expenses) and Milly, 14, at Genazzano (about $13,000). Plans for the youngest two - Jamie, 11, and Nick, 8, now at Kew Primary School - may have to be recast, with De La Salle, at $5200 a year, under consideration.

    "In an ideal world there wouldn't be the difference between private and public education," she said. "But there is and it's the reality we live in."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Time not an indicator
    by Justine Ferrari
    
    "Teaching must be the only profession remaining where to earn a pay rise every year all you have to do is simply turn up for work.
    
    "You don't have to prove that your students have learned anything.

    You don't have to show that your knowledge and skills are up to date.

    Any other profession is subjected to performance reviews, and pay rises are given on the basis of merit.

    Teachers' pay scales are determined on length of tenure, rising every year until reaching the top level after about eight years.

    Parents want to know that the teachers of their children are accountable for what they do; that someone is checking the success of their teaching.

    There is a strong argument that teachers as a whole are underpaid, given the important role they have in educating the next generation.

    Realistically, however, the chances of every teacher in the land receiving a substantial pay rise is less than slim.

    At the very least, there is a core group of teachers who excel who should be paid more: those who make the extra effort, who achieve results with kids on whom others have given up; those willing to tackle the hard-to-teach students in disadvantaged schools; or those willing to take it upon themselves to improve their skills or knowledge.

    It is time that the teaching profession joined the real world.

    It's time that teachers were rewarded and recognised for what they do, not for how long they've done it."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Beyond a teacher's control
      
      "Performance pay for teachers, as proposed by Julie Bishop, is akin to performance pay being introduced for doctors and nurses, who would be paid according to how may of their patients survive. Teachers, like medical professionals, are faced with individuals whose circumstances are beyond a teacher’s control.

      "I’m sure many teachers wouldn’t mind having their pay adjusted to include an increment based on the time-consuming roles they have been forced into, such as a social worker, mother, father, nurse, babysitter, ethical mentor, breakfast club cook, security guard and, sadly in some cases, the only trustworthy adult in a child’s life. Also, an annual bonus for the verbal and physical abuse many teachers are confronted with would also make them finally feel respected!"
      
      C. Connors, Launceston, Tasmania
      
      

    • Learning self-discipline
      
      "It's nice to see that someone wants evidence that homework has useful learning outcomes ("Call for better homework-home life balance”, 10/4). When I was at school, the kids who didn’t do their homework generally did badly, but I suppose that isn’t scientific evidence.

      "Good luck though in getting someone to do a scientific study. I have often asked educators for hard evidence that adding technology to the classroom has a useful educational outcome, and I’ve been fobbed off.

      "The fact is that there is very little evidence-based practice in education. In part, this is because it’s very hard to do good studies, because so much depends on the personality of the teacher and the attitude of the learner.

      "I suspect the real value of doing homework is learning self-discipline; it’s a pity then that some parents don’t like this and want their kids to grow up without ever doing anything for themselves."
      
      Philip Machanick, Taringa, Qld
      
      

    • "Julie Bishop has proposed a mixed grab bag of trial models for performance pay for teachers. Gee, her very own version of Noodle Nation."
      
      Jack Woodforde, Melba, ACT
      
      
      
      
      
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Teacher unions the guardians of mediocrity (page 16)
    
    "Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop has shown herself to be adept at talking about ideas for reform, but not so good at translating them into practice. It would be a disservice to students and school systems generally if her proposal for performance pay for teachers bit the dust.

    "Indications are that there is an implacable wall of opposition to her proposals by Labor at State and Federal levels, which is turn is influenced by the reactionary resistance of teacher unions to the reality that some teachers are better than others and to the proposition that they should be regarded accordingly. The unions seem to have adopted as their doctrine the ridiculous pretence that all teachers are equally excellent. Their hostility to drawing distinctions between genuine accomplishment and mediocrity in education is barely disguised. Ultimately, they are the guardians of mediocrity, with the lowest common denominator their standard. This is an insult to the many fine teachers who dedicate their working lives and skills to inspiring youngsters on the way to fulfilling their potential. The teacher unions pay lip service to the professionalism of such teachers, but then bluntly deny it by standing in the way of reward for it.

    "Professional people in general are judged on their performances: they succeed or languish on the basis of how well or otherwise they do their job. There is no valid reason for teachers to e treated differently.

    "There may be some practical problems in coming up with a system of assessment for identifying teachers who should get merit payments. It may be that Ms Bishop's assessment proposals need some refining.

    "Certainly, the job varies from school to school. Some teachers slog away in classrooms with disadvantaged children who will not produce brilliant results, while others in schools with children from privileged backgrounds are all but guaranteed to be able to send home glowing reports.

    "Teachers in differing circumstances face differing challenges and this can complicate efforts to assess their performances. But this should not be used to try to invalidate the principle that people who excel in their jobs should have their efforts rewarded. The problems of comparing performances of people in varying circumstances are by no means insurmountable - as has been shown in private enterprise where such assessment are done routinely. By standing in the way of acknowledgment of and reward for teacher sho excel at the job, the unions not only deny the qualities of their members, but also betray the interests of students."

    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor (page 18)
    
    
    • "Mark McGowan does not want to reward teachers on merit (Merit pay fear for bush schools, 9/4). No wonder we are facing a shortage of teachers and there is much debate on the education system. Only those educators who have no intention of performing above standard would join an organisation where you are paid on seniority rather than performance.

      "An under-performing senior educator would be rubbing their hands together. Get real, Mr McGowan, pay educators what they are worth (based on merit, not seniority) and we might just instil in our children that if you perform above the required standard, you get remunerated accordingly.

      "I'm not surprised that Mr McGowan's stance is supported by State School Teachers' Union general secretary David Kelly. Performance-based pay is not conducive to unions' collective bargaining agreements.

      "Unfortunately, it seems that the Education Minister does not have the best interests of our children as his number-one priority."

      Danny Joyce, Cooloongup
      

      
      
      
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Editorial
    As power flows to Canberra, the challenges keep mounting
    
    The Federal Government is muscling in on the states in a range of areas. That's fine, but the tough policy questions can't be ducked indefinitely.
    
    "When the federal and state governments meet today in an attempt to thrash out solutions to the nation's most urgent problems, there will be some intriguing undercurrents at work. Canberra is wading in with strong demands on the states to endorse national standards and cede power across a range of areas, from water rights to what is taught in classrooms. If you flicked through yesterday's paper, for instance, you would be forgiven for thinking that calling for standardised policy is now a standard policy of the Howard Government. Canberra wants national standards for school curriculums and assessment, remuneration of teachers, managing risky HIV-positive patients, criminal checks in the private security industry, property securities and consumer product safety..."
    
    Full Editorial in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
  • School plan for battle of the bulge
    
    All year 5 students would be required to undertake weight and fitness tests under a contentious Federal Government plan designed to tackle the obesity crisis in schools.
    
    
    
  • Single starting age makes sense, says principal
    
    Establishing a national school starting age adds up, according to one Melbourne primary school principal.
    
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • National school tests in doubt
    by Anna Patty
    
    "New national literacy and numeracy tests due next year are at risk because the states and territories say they cannot afford to implement them.

    "Labor education ministers confronted their federal counterpart, Julie Bishop, last night at a meeting in Darwin, saying the tests would cost collectively an extra $35 million.

    "They claimed schools would have to be closed to fund the new tests and questioned Ms Bishop's requirement that results for individual schools be reported.

    "The Federal Government has made it a condition of funding that states and territories implement the new national benchmark tests for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 from next year.

    "A spokesman for the NSW Minister for Education, John Della Bosca, said the states agreed that the Federal Government was not prepared to provide adequate funding for the national program. They said they would run a more cost-effective program, effectively shutting the Commonwealth out. Ms Bishop voted against the proposal."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Eight Letters about NSW's new director-general of education. Sadly, seven discuss his previous drug conviction, and only one addresses his complete lack of qualifications for the job.
      
      
      
    • The real evil behind new education chief's appointment
      
      "The real evil in the appointment of Michael Coutts-Trotter is not his previous convictions, but the clear inference of "jobs for the boys" and repayment for the party faithful that the appointment gives rise to ("Judge me on performance, says new head", April 12).

      "It is difficult to believe there is not one person in NSW with the equivalent of Mr Coutts-Trotter's managerial skills who does not also have experience in the education portfolio. That being so, the appointment is clearly not one of merit. The taxpayers of NSW are being short-changed, yet again, by a political party whose interests are in securing jobs for its mates and feathering its own bed rather than in running the state in the most efficient manner and in the interests of the people.

      "Why do we not hear the Liberal Party raising this concern against Mr Coutts-Trotter's appointment? The answer is simply that when it has its hands on the levers it does the same thing.

      "A cursory glance at government appointments over the past 20 years proves the degree to which the taxpayers have been lumbered with failed politicians, party apparatchiks and appointments made to buy silence or to repay a political favour. The result in many cases are second- or third-rate, or even worse, appointments.

      "While it is said that we get the government we deserve, on this issue, like so many others concerning political entitlement, both sides are exactly the same and the electorate is provided with no real choice.

      "Senior positions deserve an independent, non-politically motivated appointment and this will be achieved only once the power to appoint such people is removed from the ministers of state and placed in the hands of an independent statutory authority. The Department of Public Prosecutions is a shining example of what can be achieved by an independent statutory authority that is prepared to do what is right rather than what is politically expedient."

      M. Daley, Blaxland
      
      

      
      
• The Times
  
  
  • Teachers oppose big increase in childcare
    by Alexandra Frean
    
    "Childcare that would allow pupils to spend 50 hours a week in school could undermine family life, teachers said yesterday.

    "Under government plans, all schools will, by 2010, have to offer access to childcare from 8am to 6pm, either on their premises or near by. The Government wants to stop pupils being “latchkey kids” and give those in state schools the kind of extracurricular opportunities offered by the private sector.

    "But members of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) said this would deprive children of contact with their parents and put unfair burdens on teachers. Stuart Merry, a head teacher from Kirklees, told the union’s conference in Belfast: “I know children who are left with child-minders at sometimes seven and eight in the morning and who don’t see their parents until seven at night. That cannot be right in terms of family cohesion. For parents, it’s like an addendum to their social life, having a child — it’s one of those things that you have.

    “Some people will see this as just another way of dropping off children so they can get on with their busy lives,” he said..."

    Full story in The Times at link
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Teachers debate ban on faith schools
    by Donald MacLeod and agencies
    
    "A ban on all faith schools to stop religious groups indoctrinating children is due to be debated by teachers today.

    "The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) is already committed to oppose the creation of new faith schools, but a motion at its annual conference in Belfast today seeks to phase them out completely.

    "The Northern Ireland setting, where schools reflect community divisions between Catholics and Protestants, guarantees a highly charged debate..."
    
    Full story in The Guardian at link
    

    • Special Report: Faith Schools
      
      
      
  • Pass science A-levels - and collect £500
    
    Teenagers could be paid for passing A-levels in maths and science or get bursaries to pursue their studies at university, under recommendations from business and higher education leaders yesterday.
    
    
    
    
• CNN
  
  
  • Bush: NCLB not meant to punish schools, but to help them
    
    "WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, acknowledging public frustration over his No Child Left Behind Act, said Thursday the point of the law is not to punish schools that fall short, but to help them.

    "Bush suggested the White House and its allies must do a better job of explaining the goal of holding schools accountable.

    "Congress is working on renewing the law, which remains unpopular in many districts nationwide.

    "It is important for all of us to make it clear that accountability is not a way to punish anybody," Bush told supporters of the law in a meeting at the White House. "It's an essential component to making sure that our system, our education system, frankly is not discriminatory."

    Full story at CNN at link
    
    
    

Saturday – Sunday, 14 – 15 April

"And the national curriculum is out, too, though the ministers involved did not put it that way. Instead they announced they would be working towards a nationally consistent set of curriculums, and a national benchmarking authority. That sounds suspiciously like not much change at all, expressed in language of which Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud..." Editorial, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 April 2007

 

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • National model for schools
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "All school students will have to meet common standards in English, maths and science after state and territory education ministers yesterday agreed to develop nationally consistent curriculums.

    "The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, which met in Darwin, agreed to establish a working group to consider models for the curriculums.

    "This would happen in conjunction with the Catholic and independent school systems.

    "An independent body could also be established to oversee the development of and evaluate state and territory curriculums to ensure they comply with a national framework.

    "The agreement will ensure that student results are reported on the same scale and in the same way nationally, meaning that for the first time students' physics marks in Perth, for example, could be compared with those of their Brisbane counterparts. The push for a national curriculum has been championed by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop.

    "But Ms Bishop was defeated on her proposal to introduce performance-based pay for teachers. The states and territories unanimously rejected the idea of pilot studies trialling different models of the scheme and described as unworkable Ms Bishop's proposal that principals determine pay rises based on an assessment of a teacher's performance, including their students' academic results.

    "The agreement on nationally consistent curriculums followed a proposal by Victoria.

    "Victorian Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan said the national curriculums would enable states and territories to retain local emphasis while ensuring a core body of knowledge was common across the country.

    "Although defeated on performance pay, Ms Bishop was able to keep the item on the agenda for the next MCEETYA meeting, later this year, by insisting the states and territories report back on their initiatives to reward teachers for performance.

    "NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca said all the states and territories had incentive programs and, in NSW, teachers in isolated areas received a range of rewards.

    "Mr Della Bosca said the approach advocated by Ms Bishop was unfair. "If a cohort of kids do better in Year 3, why isn't the Year 2, Year 1 and kindergarten teacher rewarded as well? The way in which quality teaching is measured can't be isolated to exam results," he said.

    "West Australian Education Minister Mark McGowan said performance pay was "silly". His Tasmanian counterpart, David Barnett, said the plan was "poorly thought out".

    "The council agreed that no child should be disadvantaged by different school starting ages around the country. The commonwealth push for a starting age of 4 1/2 years was rejected.

    "But ministers agreed that children who started school in one state, before moving to a state with a higher starting age, could attend school."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Editorial
    Education vouchers, all power to parents
    
    Progress is painfully slow on much-needed reforms to break a culture of mediocrity in public schools
    
    

  The best that state governments could come up with on a national curriculum was yet another bureaucracy and a promise that it would not involve a "one size fits all" approach, which seems to defeat the point.

  "Parents of school-aged children can be forgiven for feeling punch-drunk after a week of big talk but little action towards making Australia's education system the best it can be. Parents really need only understand the following: first, they are no closer to getting a clear idea of how individual schools perform to enable an informed choice; second, education unions remain obsessed with class-war politics; third, the Labor state governments, held hostage by the education unions, refuse to even entertain federal Education Minister Julie Bishop's plan that teachers be paid for performance rather than length of service; and finally, the best that state governments could come up with on a national curriculum was yet another bureaucracy and a promise that it would not involve a "one size fits all" approach, which seems to defeat the point.

  "The least subtle illustration of the three-way campaign being waged in education between the federal and state governments and respective unions can be found in television advertisements launched this week by the Australian Education Union as part of a $1.3 million campaign ahead of the federal election. Ostensibly a campaign for greater funding for public schools, which are a state responsibility using commonwealth grants, the advertisement shows a class of children at a public school being ignored by a passing John Howard. The advertisements ignore the fact that, overall, government schools receive a higher level of government funding than private schools, with the 65 per cent of students in government schools receiving 75 per cent of total taxpayer funding. But most of all, it ignores the fact that a private school student can receive only up to 70 per cent of the funding given to a student in a public school, and possibly as low as 13.7 per cent. This leaves parents who send their children to private schools effectively paying twice -- once in taxes for the public system and then again in school fees. The teachers union campaign perpetuates the great lie that Catholic and independent schools are populated only by the children of wealthy parents. At least Labor has had the good sense to ditch former leader Mark Latham's crazy scheme to punish a hit list of private schools. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has articulated a forward-thinking agenda on education, favouring a national curriculum running from kindergarten through to Year 12 and setting literacy and numeracy benchmarks. Mr Rudd also has a track record of standing up to the teachers union in Queensland and speaking out against fashionable but less rigorous education trends such as Queensland's Studies of Society and Environment system. [emphasis added]

  "At a federal level, the consensus has shifted on education towards a concern for outcomes and away from the politics of envy. The common ground for everyone except the left-wing unions is that a mix of public and private education is desirable both for parents and the state. The continued mischief by teacher unions that complain about standards, but encourage mediocrity by refusing to accept merit-based policies, is unhelpful. It is doubly disappointing that they continue to find support in state governments that have direct responsibility for funding public schools.

  "The Australian supports public education but also supports the right of parents to choose a private school if they wish. We acknowledge that many parents make a great financial sacrifice to provide a private school education for their children. We support merit-based pay to promote excellence in teaching and we support the provision of quality information that allows the ranking of one school against another, both public and private, to enable parents to make an informed decision. The present system encourages mediocrity and creates an effective black market where only privileged insiders know what is really going on. Parents deserve to be properly armed with knowledge and the power to make their decisions. As we have previously argued, the most equitable, transparent system for education is the allocation of vouchers that enable parents to spend their public education dollar at any institution they like. Such a system would encourage schools, whether private or independent, to perform in order to attract students. There would be an added incentive to reward good teachers properly and for schools to provide the sort of information parents need to make a decision. The Government and Labor should consider introducing a voucher system as policy for the next election. We believe it would be very attractive for parents." [emphasis added]

  From The Weekend Australian at link
  
  
  

  • PM puts lid on premiers' ambitions
    
    [Prime Minister John] Howard stressed several times that he would not be handing over money for ongoing government responsibilities as opposed to genuinely new initiatives. Most parents expected their children to leave school able to add up and read and write, he said. In other words, don't expect the commonwealth to bail out the states for their failings.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • AEU ads on school funding are inherently dishonest
      
      "Australian Education Union federal president Pat Byrne declares that the script for the AEU’s $1.3million advertising blitz ("Union ‘dishonest’ in public school ads”, 12/4) was “well received during focus-group testing”. Focus groups may confirm that an intended strategy for duping the community will be effective, but they do not attest to the intellectual integrity of the message.

      "The Prime Minister presented the most relevant fact in the private-versus-public education funding debate: students at public schools receive substantially more taxpayer funds per capita than students attending private schools. Splitting taxpayer funds into state and federal components is irrelevant to the question of how to treat all taxpayers equitably. The AEU advertisements are inherently dishonest because they imply that students in public schools do not get their fair share of the overall tax dollar.

      "Current arrangements mean that parents using private schools miss out on their child’s entitlement to a free education up to the value of that currently expended within the public sector. By definition this is inequitable. The problem can be redressed by a voucher system that allows parents to choose which education provider will receive their business.

      "The latter mechanism has the bonus of injecting accountability into the system. Educators will need to attract students. Parents will have a legitimate expectation that their vouchers will meet the full cost of their child’s education. The current system leaves parents at the mercy of an inaccessible centralised education bureaucracy and an education union that is willing to further its members’ interests under the guise of promoting equality of opportunity."
      
      John Allsop, Mont Albert, Vic
      
      

    • "Your editorial on the AEU campaign ("Union campaign fails to do the numbers”, 12/4), like the campaign itself, avoids the main issue: how to ensure, through aggregate resources per student, that every Australian child, irrespective of parental income, is offered better educational opportunities.

      "The funding of non-government schools is an electoral bribe which neither side of politics, especially the Coalition, is likely to forgo — presented as a public contribution to ease the sacrifice of parents who choose to send their children to fee-paying schools, and essential to the viability of some of them.

      "There is no reason why these arrangements should not be retained provided the federal and state governments can cooperate to ensure overall standards throughout Australia are lifted, especially for those schools with lagging performances which cannot count, like the private schools, on significant parental contributions."
      
      John Piper, Waverton, NSW

      
      
      
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Education agenda is torn apart (page 8)
    by Rhianna King, Canberra

    "Labor education minister across Australia gave their Federal counterpart a double slap in the face yesterday by first rejecting Julie Bishop's push to pay teachers according to how well they perform and then challenging her to withhold $3 billion in funding.

    "And, in a further snub to the Federal Education Minister, the States hijacked Ms Bishop's plan for a national curriculum, replacing it with their own version.

    "After a heated two-day meeting in Darwin, Ms Bishop failed to convince the States to agree to her plan to have a trial of performance pay for one year and introduce it in 2009.

    "After rejecting the proposal to pay teachers based on as assessment by the principals and student results, the States agreed to continue with their own performance-based pay models, which in WA allow teachers to access three pay levels by getting additional qualifications.

    "Ms Bishop had previously threatened to deny the States $3 billion in Federal funding if they did not comply. Yesterday, she refused to say if she would carry out her threat and accused the States of being at the mercy of unions.

    "Not surprisingly, they would not agree to even a pilot of the performance-based pay model suggested by the Commonwealth because the unions just won't let them do it... the unions seem to be hell-bent on ensuring that the only way a teacher gets a salary increase is by the number of years in the job," she said.

    "WA Education Minister Mark McGowan described the Federal scheme as "wacky, flaky and uncosted". "I think her proposals will unravel," he said. "If she wants to threaten the States with 6 per cent of our total education budget, she can do that but I think she will do it at her peril." [emphasis added]

    "In another blow for Canberra, the States endorsed their own scheme for a national curriculum after snubbing Ms Bishop's model.

    "The States promised to move towards greater consistency in curriculum content in core subjects and testing and reporting methods across all grades. A working group will be set up to determine the curriculum content."

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Thumbs-down for teacher pay push
    by Farrah Tomazin, Darwin
    
    "The states and territories have rejected the Federal Government's contentious plan for performance pay for teachers, jeopardising billions of dollars in Commonwealth funding.

    "But under an agreement reached at an education ministers' meeting in Darwin, year 11 and 12 students could soon face a new national testing regime.

    "After months of pushing for performance-based pay, federal Education Minister Julie Bishop suffered a pre-election blow when the states rejected it.

    "Under her proposals, teachers would have been eligible for performance pay on a range of measures, including improvements in students' results, feedback from the school community, and the attainment of professional development.

    "But state and territory ministers branded the plan unworkable and ideologically driven, despite acknowledging that top teachers should be rewarded with more money to keep people in the profession.

    "Rejecting Ms Bishop's model may have placed at risk up to $9 billion in school funding. The Federal Government warned earlier that the changes could be made a condition of the next round of federal funding.

    "But acting Victorian Education Minister Jacinta Allan said Ms Bishop's plan was a "dog-eat-dog approach" that would have resulted in teachers competing against one another for rewards.

    "While the states rejected performance pay, nationally consistent curriculums moved a step closer as ministers vowed to work towards a more streamlined learning structure.

    "Under the yet-to-be devised system, students would be required to meet a new set of "achievement standards" at various stages of their education, firstly in English, maths and science. Using existing benchmark tests, literacy and numeracy would be assessed at years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

    "Ms Bishop and the states left open the possibility of extending the tests to year 11 and 12. [emphasis added]

    "But Ms Allan warned that any nationally consistent curriculums should not be too prescriptive, and insisted the change would not involve each state having to conform to the same syllabus across each subject.

    "In other developments, the education ministers:

    • Agreed to examine how principals could be given greater autonomy, but did not come to a conclusion on whether they should be have more power to hire and fire teachers.
      
      
    • Promised to work together to lift the number of indigenous students attending schools.
      
      
    • Failed to agree on developing a national school starting age.
      
      

  "With education a key battleground at this year's federal election, Ms Bishop said she was not surprised the Labor states shunned performance pay.

  "But Australian education expert Professor Brian Caldwell said it was time such a scheme was introduced. "We have to reward outstanding performance. We need a talent force, not a workforce," said Professor Caldwell, former dean of education at Melbourne University."

  From The Melbourne Age at link

   

  • Analysis
    Lack of detail dims a rising star
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "In a federal election year, it's hardly surprising that the Labor states refused to back Julie Bishop's plan to introduce performance pay for teachers.

    But for someone regarded as a rising star, Ms Bishop is learning the hard way that you can't expect support when such a contentious idea lacks detail.

    Ms Bishop earned no favours by demanding the states sign up to her proposals without explaining where the money would come from — a problem compounded when Treasurer Peter Costello admitted it wouldn't come from Treasury.

    She then released research that admitted "few merit pay schemes have survived when applied to teaching", and which highlighted the difficulties in introducing such a costly initiative. There has also not been an answer to how the performance of a teacher can be measured.

    The plans were branded unworkable and attempts to conduct pilot programs from next year were also rejected.

    The question is, where to from here? Even the powerful teacher union agrees that salaries need to be improved. And education ministers acknowledged that rewarding excellence is critical to quality.

    All eyes now turn to federal Labor, which is considering a policy that would give teachers more money if they undertake professional development and specialist qualifications in areas such as maths or science. Bonuses would also be offered to teachers who work in remote or difficult schools.

    But Labor is yet to unveil the cost of this policy and, as Ms Bishop has learnt, the devil is always in the detail.

    From The Melbourne Age at link

   

  
  © The Melbourne Age
  
  

  • Op Ed
    Bishop fails test
    by Hugh Mackay
    

  
  

  The strongest objection to the Bishop proposal is that it is an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable. To quote Einstein: not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

  
  "Hey, here's a bright idea: let's devise a performance-based pay system for federal ministers. It shouldn't be too hard. Some obviously perform better than others, so there must be a way to reflect that in their pay packets.

  "You could have positive loadings for media profile, aggression in question time, work-rate and personal grooming. Although, come to think of it, "media profile" is a bit subjective: what if they come across as shifty or smug? Perhaps we could have negative as well as positive loadings for media. I guess that would be up to the PM to judge, case by case.

  "Then we'd have to put something in for "ideas". Original thinking, perhaps, or number of submissions to cabinet? No, that could be abused. Number of speeches given, newspaper columns written, with an extra loading for anything written personally by the minister.

  "You could have negative loadings for unbridled ambition — or should that be positive? Another one for the PM to decide. Perhaps a small penalty for "perceived lying". Certifiable madness: that would be a negative. Although there, too, there's entertainment value to be taken into account. Distracting the electorate must be worth something.

  "And votes, of course. I nearly forgot votes. Increasing your margin since the last election: that's an easy one to quantify. Hmm. There could be trouble if we try to cut the pay of ministers whose margins go backwards. Perhaps we could add in a charisma loading, and there'd have to be some compensation for boundary changes. Ah, the boffins could work something out.

  "The logical place to start would be with Julie Bishop, federal Education Minister, whose obsession with performance-based pay for schoolteachers has raised serious questions about her judgement, her sensitivity and her grasp of reality.

  "Even if it's a good idea, it's a plan doomed from the start, because it carries no promise of extra funding. The same pie is to be cut differently, Bishop proposes. Pay loadings for the brightest, shiniest teachers and, er …

  "Come in, Smithers. Bad news, I'm afraid. Your 25 years' loyal service is appreciated and all that. Impeccable marking of homework. Giving up your last holiday for the music tour. But your classroom work, we've had reports — well, the fact is, the pie is only so big and this school only gets a tiny slice of it and Jones is our undoubted star — the kids love him, the parents love him, we all love him — so he's got to get an increase which means — what's that? No, Smithers, I'm sorry. It doesn't mean you'll stay where you are on the pay scale. We're going to have to drop you back a notch. It's called a negative loading. More for Jones, less for you. Better luck next year, eh? Send Jones in, will you."
  
  "According to the Australian Council for Educational Research, the average age of teachers is about 45, and most have been sitting on top of the incremental scale for at least 10 years. Teachers' careers plateau quickly, because their pay is so modest. The limit, for most Victorian teachers, is about $66,000, starting from a base of $46,000.

  "Would you face a classroom of kids, day after day, for that? Would the minister? Is that a sufficient reward for the dedication displayed by the vast majority of teachers? Does that sort of money even begin to recognise the kind of motivation that drives some teachers to provide breakfast for kids from disadvantaged homes, or to spend endless, extra, unpaid hours in rehearsals for music and drama productions, or to persist, year after year, in the face of pupils who are determined to be insolent and disruptive?

  "Principals can do better, especially if they move to the private sector. In Sydney, the headmistress of a top selective high school recently tripled her pay — to $350,000 — by switching to one of the city's toneyist private girls' schools.

  "The strongest objection to the Bishop proposal is that it is an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable. To quote Einstein: not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Yet we live in a society obsessed with quantification: we even have national indices of happiness, but that doesn't mean we're any closer to cracking the code.

  "Performance-based pay makes sense in many contexts. Widget manufacturers can expect to boost their pay by making more, or more profitable, widgets; the CEOs of public companies can tie their remuneration to the bottom line or the share price, though even in private enterprise, it's the market, rather than performance, that determines most pay rates.

  "But teachers? This proposal is corporatisation gone mad; economic rationalism carried to absurdity.

  "A recent letter-writer to the editor of an interstate paper recalled two Latin teachers at his high school. One was tough, ran a disciplined classroom and got all his charges through their exams. The other was more relaxed but more passionate, renowned for classroom chaos and his pupils produced a mixed bag of results. Yet the second produced a steady stream of committed classicists, some of whom, inspired by that teacher's enthusiasm for his subject, rose to great academic heights.

  "Think back. How would you rate your own teachers? Were the "best" necessarily the ones you liked best, or the ones for whom you produced your best work, or the ones whose personal example inspired you — perhaps in areas that had little to do with the subject in hand?

  "In any class of 25 pupils there will be, in effect, 25 teachers. Teaching is about the relationship between a teacher and each of his or her pupils. Those relationships are as subtle, complex and non-rational as any other. Each pupil responds uniquely to each teacher.

  "There's a sting in the tail of all this. Our state education systems, around the country, are degenerating, but the problem is not with the teachers; it's with the appalling lack of resources. We are creating two tiers of secondary education, and the public tier is increasingly for those who simply can't afford the private alternative. If that's the Government's intention, perhaps the fuss about performance-based pay for teachers is merely a distraction from the looming crisis in public education.

  "As for Bishop's own performance on this issue, it looks like about 3/10 for preparation, 5/10 for imagination, 9/10 for bravado, 2/10 for sensitivity and zero for political skills. I suspect her report card will say "can do better". And maybe she can, if she focuses on her more realistic aspirations for a national curriculum for core subjects."

  From The Melbourne Age at link
  
  
  

  • HECS places to go as uni looks to a model future
    by Adam Morton
    
    "Melbourne University plans to cut government-subsidised HECS places for undergraduates by about 7000 over the next 20 years.

    Under a proposal of the university's transformation into a US-style model, seen by The Age, it would offer nearly 3000 fewer HECS places in 2026 than it does today. The other 4000 places would be moved to graduate students taking new professional courses, to be introduced from next year.

    About three out of four students enrolling in the professional degrees would have a HECS place, contradicting fears that most graduate students would face expensive full fees.

    Details of the most radical shift in Melbourne University's 154-year history come as it prepares for Tuesday's launch of the so-called "Melbourne Model".

    http://www.unimelb.edu.au
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Hidden results
      
      "In mid-2005 I was shopping in the supermarket in Smith Street, Fitzroy, and, while travelling up to the car park in the lift, a young woman asked if I was a teacher, and then followed up with "Is your name Mr Hewat?" She told me her name and said I had taught her for a short time at an outer-east school 16 years or so earlier. She said I had also taught her brother, who had more to do with me than she had. Her brother always spoke of me as being supportive as he was often in trouble at school. Her mother often spoke with gratitude for my work with her son. The woman said her brother now had five children and was bringing them up on his own while holding down a job.

      "It may sound conceited to write of this experience but I often feel I have not done a lot with my life. I have not climbed mountains, become a famous explorer/writer/surgeon. But it is nice to know that even ordinary people can have an effect on others and, while not obvious at the time, it is noticed by some. As even I did not know of the effect I apparently had on this young man, how do the proponents of merit-based pay expect to judge the effect any given teacher has on students?"
      
      Brian Hewat, East Melbourne
      
      

    • Lingering lessons
      
      "Eighteen years ago, my maths teachers' performances were extremely useful after leaving school. They gave me the technical skills for my university course. Ten years ago, the seeds sown by two zealous English teachers germinated at a time when I needed them for a job involving extensive writing. I detested home economics with a passion in 1984 (and my marks reflected this), yet I am using skills learnt there every day. And the lessons learned from one history teacher (a subject in which I neither excelled nor failed) have greater impact and relevance (and led to better informed decisions) than from any other teacher. Should the performance of teachers — a rich, multi-dimensional, and complex thing — be reduced to a narrow metric reflecting only one aspect of the people they help shape? I think not."
      
      Paul Edwards, Carlton North
      
      

    • Give us time to teach
      
      "As an expert teacher of 30 years' experience, I am exasperated by the proposals put forward by Julie Bishop (The Age 11/4). I have been at my current school in the western suburbs for 13 years and have seen teachers come and go. Very few underperform. To achieve results a school needs to generate a positive learning environment. This happens when there is an atmosphere of co-operation, interaction and motivation to do your best, and is particular to each school and the personalities that make it up.

      "Teachers are overloaded with paperwork for excursions, suspensions, ordering materials, class preparation, reports, references, school outings, performances, professional development and the like, including having to prove their ability three times a year. I wonder where the time is to come from for the preparation of "written explanations of how they teach" and "detailed video recordings that show exactly how they are contributing to the increased learning of students?" Can a "video moment" capture the perseverance and effort that contributes to a positive working relationship between a student and teacher?

      "I work four days a week, and in that time I am expected to face classes for 17 hours, plus preparation time, as well as take on the roles of indigenous co-ordinator, festival co-ordinator, head of department, gallery manager, and a lunchtime yard duty, an extra replacement class when someone is absent, a form teacher and "in my spare time" rewrite my subject curriculum this year. Please, start giving us time to teach and applaud the co-operation, motivation and excitement in learning that is achieved. This proposal is divisive and overloads an already under-resourced system."
      
      Charlotte Clemens, North Fitzroy
      
      

    • Teachers

      "Julie Bishop's threat to withhold funding for state schools unless they accept her performance-pay agenda makes it crystal clear that she is more concerned about her ideological agenda than the educational wellbeing of schoolchildren."
      
      Richard Fone, Camberwell
      
      

    • "Thank you, Tony Thompson (Opinion 12/4), for your commonsense view. These things are not measurable — they are experienced. Thirty-plus years ago one nun changed my learning attitude and my perception of myself as a student, and she was paid nothing! Well done, Sister Pauline."
      
      Sue Anson, Mount Macedon

      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Bishop's proposals rebuffed
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    A nation finds ways to tie itself in knots
    
    "Yesterday was not an auspicious day for Australian federalism. The ideas of the federal Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, on merit pay for teachers have gone completely by the board at the meeting of state and federal education ministers in Darwin. And the national curriculum is out, too, though the ministers involved did not put it that way. Instead they announced they would be working towards a nationally consistent set of curriculums, and a national benchmarking authority. That sounds suspiciously like not much change at all, expressed in language of which Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud..."
    
    "The Council of Australian Governments is a singularly suggestive title. How many governments are there running Australia? The answer is nine - and each is apparently able to stymie or water down, if it chooses, any efforts the others may make from time to time to streamline or rationalise the administration of the country. How many governments does one country need? The foolish decisions of the Australian colonies' early railway engineers to build tracks with differing gauges are the enduring symbol of the drawbacks of a federal system. The states have at least taken that lesson to heart in some areas: power supply voltages are the same; we all drive on the same side of the road. But in so many other areas our metaphorical gauges still differ. The hobbles they impose are enduring, and our eight provincial parliaments labour year in and year out to produce more of them, while twice a year their leaders troop off to Canberra and promise solemnly to undo one or two of them, or at least to make them a uniform shape.

    "Future generations may well look back on this period of Australian history and shake their heads as they ask: why did this country put so much effort into persisting with a system that routinely produced such irrational and second-rate outcomes?"
    
    Full Editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

• The Independent
  
  
  • We need to teach pupils the great books [12 April]
    by David Willetts
    
    "What our national curriculum should contain has always been a hotly debated topic. No more so than in English literature, where the problem of which authors, books and plays pupils should study has always caught the imagination.

    "It is not difficult to understand why. Literature gives us a sense of who we are and where we come from. Like our shared history, we can trace a common sense of identity and understanding through our past into the present.

    "In recent years, the notion that there should be a canon of Western literature studied in schools has, in the words of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), become "an unpopular idea".

    "Two years ago the QCA launched a "national conversation" about the future direction of how English should be taught in schools. Its English 21 project has begun to reconsider whether there should be a canon of literature in our changing society. One of the purposes in doing so is "to consider what 'heritage' means in our multi-ethnic, multicultural society".

    "As a result, the QCA's prescribed set texts for GCSE are being updated. Yeats, Byron and Joyce are out, to be replaced by more modern and fashionable writers such as the comedian Meera Syal. The reasons for these shifts are confused. Arguing for her inclusion, the QCA states that Syal represents an "authentic voice" about other cultures. What is wrong with Yeats, who might be seen as an authentic voice for Irish culture?

    "The National Assessment Agency, an arm of the QCA, has also suggested that 14-year-olds should not read Othello, as its themes of race and sexual jealousy are "too mature and sensitive" for this age group. It is this kind of cultural relativism and crisis of confidence in our own traditions that Allan Bloom warned about so powerfully in his Closing of the American Mind.

    "So what would an ideal list look like? We should have a canon that reflects not only the full chronological sweep of the English language, but also the richness and variety of our different types of literature.

    "The 17th and 18th centuries fare poorly. In the prescribed list at Key Stage Three there is no work for the period between Shakespeare and Pope. Who has been included and who hasn't also seems somewhat arbitrary. Swift has made the grade, but not Daniel Defoe, Hardy at the expense of DH Lawrence. In the current lists, poetry does better at the expense of the novel. While the romantic poets feature in abundance, there is no space for the great novels of Conrad and DH Lawrence, which would find an avid teenage readership.

    "At present we have a rather alphabetical list of prescribed authors, without explanation for their inclusion. Instead, we must ensure that a wide panorama of exciting and enjoyable literature covering every age is taught. Pupils must also be given the opportunity to learn about the major forms of literature and to enjoy the freedom to read books of their choice.

    "The abundance of poetry in the lists reflects a wider problem in how literature is actually taught in schools. Until Alan Johnson ordered that a set list of classic authors be taught to 14-year-olds, the QCA had not prescribed any writers except Shakespeare in its new draft KS3 English curriculum, saying simply that literature studies should include "stories, poetry and drama written before, during and after the 20th century".

    "Without clear guidelines setting out what should be studied, schools have been allowed to move away from teaching entire books, and to focus on single poems or gobbets of text. In the Key Stage Three English tests, pupils are only examined on two or three extracts from Much Ado About Nothing from Acts One and Two. The same problem has arisen with the National Literacy Strategy, where a focus on texts rather than books has seen pupils' enjoyment of reading fall since its introduction.

    "It seems that the QCA is waking up to the problem that such an approach can cause. Their annual report on English admitted that by releasing reading material before GCSE exams they had allowed pupils to predict questions, a problem that they confess has grown worse since 2002.

    "We need more of the great stories of literature, such as Conrad's Nostromo, Golding's Lord of the Flies, or Pullman's His Dark Materials. We should be focusing not just on teaching a canon of literature, but ensuring that it is taught properly, to the last page. Only then will pupils enjoy real books rather than reconstituted Turkey Twizzler-style gobbets from books.

    The writer is Conservative spokesman on education

    From The Independent at link
    
    
    
    
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  • Call to give students condoms
    
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  What a waist: Sam Dimons, 14, tries a pair of 117cm school pants for on size.
  Photo © The Sunday Melbourne Herald Sun

 

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This page last updated 13 August, 2008 0:37 AM