Monday 16 April

Tuesday 17 April

Wednesday 18 April

Thursday 19 April

Friday 20 April

Saturday – Sunday, 21 – 22 April

Monday 16 April

• The Australian
  
  
  • Merit pay to pose threat
    by Selina Mitchell
    
    "New teachers will earn less than they do on current pay structures, under Howard Government plans to introduce performance-based pay.
    
    "Education Minister Julie Bishop said yesterday no teacher would suffer a pay cut, but they would no longer be able to access automatic pay rises under her proposal.

    "Such a move could leave new teachers worse off than their colleagues, who are paid under the existing system, which rewards teachers on the basis of how many years they have been in the job.

    "Ms Bishop said that would not deter people from entering the profession and the scheme would not require extra funding.

    "Those who are assessed as being more skilled - their performance is better than others - would have a salary increase," Ms Bishop told ABC Radio. "Those who would not be so assessed would be paid less."

    "During a meeting of education ministers in Darwin last week, the states refused to agree to the proposal, saying it would be unworkable and could be rorted. But they did agree at a joint meeting to move towards a nationally consistent curriculum system.

    "Federal Labor education spokesman Stephen Smith said the performance-pay proposal would further dent teacher morale.

    "It's not about rewarding teachers for quality teaching; it's about cutting the pay of some teachers," Senator Smith said.

    "Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne said Ms Bishop's model was an insult to teachers, who would leave the profession in large numbers if it were to be introduced.

    "If education ministers agreed to push ahead with the scheme, rewards additional to the incremental salary scale should be included, Ms Byrne said.

    "She added it would be difficult to properly assess the performance of Australia's 250,000 public school teachers without extra funding.

    "Mrs Bishop said the pay bonuses would be based on teacher achievements, student performance, and feedback from parents and bosses."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    See similar story in The Melbourne Age
    
    
    

  • Training for all in west
    AAP
    
    "A $27 million plan to guarantee a training place for every unemployed West Australian youth has been announced by Premier Alan Carpenter to address a chronic skills shortage coupled with record low unemployment.
    
    "More than 9000 apprentice and trainee places will be created in the next four years as the state goes through an unprecedented resources boom. "We've got record low unemployment at 2.7 per cent - it's almost unbelievable for people in other states," Mr Carpenter said. "We've driven youth unemployment way down but there are still 2000 unemployed people under 19."

    "The training scheme will be rolled out immediately."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Men ditching an education
    by George Megalogenis
    
    "The jobs boom has triggered a sharp rise in the number of young men who are leaving behind full-time education, new official figures reveal.
    
    "Almost 20,000 males aged 15 to 24 either gave up their study or chose to juggle it with part-time work last year.

    "The proportion of young men devoted full-time to education is at its lowest level in more than a decade - 22.9 per cent.

    "A year earlier, the result had been 24.5 per cent, based on Bureau of Statistics surveys.

    "Some are quitting study completely, or deferring degrees to chase big bucks in the mining and construction sectors. Other are taking up part-time work..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • US-style uni eases entry requirements
    
    Melbourne University has softened entry requirements for its new US-style degrees by offering undergraduate places to people with no qualifications.
    
    
    
    
  • Defence arm to set up here
    
    The prestigious US-based Carnegie Mellon University is in negotiations to expand its operations in Australia through an institute that would compete directly with local organisations.
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    

    Most Talked About: EDUCATION

    • Free-market forces have no place in Australia's schools
      
      "I cannot imagine a system of offering higher salary incentives to teachers according to “superior performance” ever working.

      "Maybe there should be more focus at the other end of the spectrum.
      
      "Teachers whose performance is inadequate are far easier to identify: student profile is not particularly relevant in such cases. Most of these teachers will be earnest enough and with appropriate mentoring may become successful. There will still be a few who have simply chosen the wrong vocation.

      "If this aspect of the profession were addressed more aggressively then higher remuneration for all teachers would be fully warranted and very overdue."
      
      Bill Forbes, Wingham, NSW
      
      

    • "It is ironic that education appears to be treated so differently from other government sectors. From current editorial opinion and letters to the editor, it appears that every parent who chooses a private supplier must be given a tax-funded contribution, via a voucher system or some federal funding of their private school.

      "This does not appear to have a basis in the usual provision of other services, for example public transport, water, and power. If you choose to catch a taxi instead of using the public transport, you do not get the equivalent bus fare subsidy. Likewise, if you have a preference for bottled water rather than that available through mains supplies, there is no government co-payment on the basis that you are already contributing tax dollars to the provision of a water supply.

      "It seems strange that the advocates for free market dynamics, both within the media and Government, are not prepared to let the true market force act here, and insist on providing substantial subsidies to private businesses."
      
      Tony Rolton, Brighton, SA
      
      

    • "As an educator of some twenty years experience, it is painfully clear to me that most of the people debating performance pay for teachers have very little experience of contemporary schools and their students.

      "Firstly, consider that in a high school, the average teacher must meet the needs of about five classes of students (approximately 150 young people) and all of their parents.

      "Some will see you as too strict, others not strict enough, and no one will agree on the appropriate amount of homework!

      "Ability levels vary and, when A is the only grade that will satisfy, imagine trying to do your job honestly when your outcomes will be measured against the class next door.

      "Secondly, today more than ever before, teaching is a collaborative profession. Educators must work together to develop programs and pedagogical strategies to meet the increasingly complex world of their students.

      "It would be catastrophic to destroy such collegiality by pitting teachers against each other in the race for increased pay.

      "The only way to develop career paths for teachers is to reward professional development that advances their knowledge and skills as an educator.

      "I have a PhD in education and several publications in international journals. I receive no recognition at a systemic or even school level. My pay is the same as every other teacher who has completed 10 years service and I have many colleagues who have similarly used their own time and money to continue their education with the same lack of reward.

      "Being a good teacher is more than generating good grades. More than grades should be looked at when assessing teachers and their pay."
      
      Dr Glenda McGregor, Moorooka, Qld
      
      

    • "Hands up for a pay cut? What kind of ivory tower does Ms Bishop live in? When all systems are struggling to attract and maintain their teachers, she wants to introduce a scheme that will see salaries plateau, or even be cut—because of her capitalist ideology. Sure, I performance pay can work for car sales, but used away from the sales areas it is a disaster.

      "In industrial and mining areas it is a safety hazard, in health and medicine, it doesn’t work. It really would not even work in the political area.

      "Me Bishop needs to get into a car and take a drive to some schools away from her leafy green Nedlands electorate and arrive as a community member not as a politician and carefully observe the work of everyday, poorly paid, teachers (none can afford to buy in Nedlands on their current salary).

      "Don’t continue to bash these hardworking classroom teachers: no good can come of it. Help them with increased funding, smaller classes, reading programs and sound management practices with a fair and realistic appointment and transfer system.

      "Let’s drop all the ideology and put the kids first. By this measure, performance pay takes funds away from the classroom teacher and their kids.

      "The question she may well be asked is: “If teaching is so good (well paid with great holidays) ... why aren’t you doing it?”
      
      Garry Waldron, Broome, WA
      
      

    • "Can any State Government Education Minister show me a year 12 student from a government school who can write a grammatically correct, properly punctuated job application without using spell-check?"
      
      Brian Darcey, Cairns, Qld
      
      
      
      
      
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Pay cuts part of Bishop's bold plan
    by Misha Schubert, Canberra, with AAP
    
    "Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop has stood by her admission that some teachers would be paid less under a plan to introduce performance-based pay.

    "But she insisted she was not advocating pay cuts, instead urging the states to lift overall spending on teacher salaries.

    "Labor and the education union accused her of undervaluing teachers after she confirmed that introducing performance bonuses without extra funds would mean some teaching staff would miss out on automatic annual pay rises.

    "But the minister said she was trying to lift morale and reward effort with an incentive scheme that was fair, consistent and equitable. Her spokesman last night confirmed that she did not back away from the remarks.

    "Without extra funds, people progressing through the system may not earn as much," he said.

    "But her preference would be that the states commit a lot more money for teacher salaries. Her goal is not to reduce anyone's salary; it's to ensure high quality teachers are paid more."

    "A bonus scheme could leave some new teachers worse off than those in the existing system, which rewards them according to years of experience.

    "If people aren't being paid just on the basis of years in the job, the increments would not automatically increase," she told ABC's Insiders program.

    "Those who are assessed as being more skilled — their performance is better than others — would have a salary increase. Those who would not be so assessed would be paid less."

    "Yet she denied that this amounted to cutting wages.

    "I'm not talking about pay cuts. I'm talking about a differential in salaries," she said.

    "Labor's education spokesman, Stephen Smith, said the performance pay system was about paying some teachers more only by paying some less.

    "It's not about rewarding teachers for quality teaching, it's about cutting the pay of some teachers," he said.

    "Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne said the pay proposal would lead to an explosion in student testing and assessment to decide how much to pay the nation's 250,000 public school teachers.

    "For her to persist with this line that the proposal is in any way operable is insanity," Ms Byrne said.

    "Last Friday, Ms Bishop failed to convince her state counterparts to back the controversial pay proposal.

    "State governments branded the plan unworkable, and a study last week warned performance pay schemes were vulnerable to cronyism.

    "Ms Bishop has proposed offering teachers pay bonuses based on student performance, and principal and parent feedback, taking into account any disadvantages."
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • Editorial
    Responsibility lies beyond the school gates
    
    "Cyberspace can be as daunting as the universe or as restrictive as a schoolyard. The problems arise when the smaller is allowed to invade the larger. This happened last week when footage of aggressive bullying at Xavier College, filmed late last year on a student's mobile phone and distributed to others, made it into the wider domain. It has since been seen on television and the internet. Xavier has suspended five students, and the bullying allegations are being investigated by the police.

    "This came two days after police came to the school to investigate another incident: allegations that a year 11 student sold drugs on the school grounds in February. Although one student was expelled and three others suspended, police became involved only after the matter was made public. Xavier has been widely criticised by parents, students and anti-drug groups for failing to report the incident and, instead, referring the students concerned for counselling.

    "There are two factors here. The first is the anomaly between government schools, which are obliged to report all criminal matters to the police, and private schools, which as independent entities, are not. The second, by inference, is that private schools, in the belief that handling such serious matters internally is discipline enough, are putting themselves beyond the law. The crux is that all schools have a responsibility not only to students, but to parents who have every right to expect appropriate care and discipline. Drug peddling on the streets is illegal and those caught pay the consequence, as do the perpetrators of violence and other forms of public humiliation. The same should apply behind school gates, especially when those involved are young, vulnerable and susceptible. Private schools should not leave the law in their own hands."

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Whatever schools say, bullying still flourishes
    by Juliette Hughes
    
    "In the '90s I taught singing at a large state secondary school. I'd been there a few years when something strange happened at a parent-teacher night: a woman came up to me and pressed a note into my hand. "Please," she whispered. "Please read." English wasn't her first language. I opened the letter and read it while she was there. It begged me to allow her daughter, a year 9 student, into my choir.

    "She loves so much to sing," said the woman. "Please let her join."

    "But of course she can join," I said, mystified. "The choir is open to everyone."

    "I'd started a choir, but kids need confidence to sing out. To encourage students to let go their shyness, I instituted a no-bullying policy. I had two rules that were set out clearly and repeated every time there was someone new. The students knew them so well that they would recite them to any newbies. The first was that every student had a right to feel safe and accepted there. (The second rule was "don't waste our choir-time with chatter" but the first one was, I always emphasised, the important one.) I also said that it was the zero-tolerance rule; that anyone breaking it was out of the choir forever. That should do it, I thought.

    "Is she new here?"

    "She here from year 7," said the mother. "She is big, yes, but maybe she can stand at back, please."

    "I still didn't get it. Big? What did big have to do with it?

    "You know, the size rule."

    "It turned out that two of my best singers, both accomplished young girls from middle-class backgrounds, had been telling their classmate for two years that she was too fat to join the choir — that there was a "size rule". I reassured the woman that her daughter was in. Then I went and informed the music co-ordinator that the girls responsible for this situation must leave the choir.

    "Then the trouble began. A week later the music co-ordinator, a kind and decent man, told me that he had been asked to ask me to reinstate the two bullies. I refused. He supported me though he was under some pressure: the girls were popular, powerful and talented, with influential parents. But he knew as well as I that reinstating them would destroy the choir's anti-bullying policy: no student should trust it ever again. What if they apologise, I was asked. I replied that it had gone too far: they'd sat in that room for two years reciting the rule while cruelly flouting it and knowing the clearly stated consequence of doing that very thing. If they returned, it meant that the rule was void.

    "There were repercussions: the targeted girl received threatening phone calls from cronies of the bullies; her house, which was close to the school, was graffitied and toilet-papered. Nothing was done about it. The pastoral care co-ordinator declared the targeted girl to be a "drama queen" for reporting the matter. Happily, the girl became a valuable long-serving choir member.

    "At the time, the school was going through an embarrassing period: it was dealing with a couple of lawsuits from past students who had been damaged psychologically and physically by bullying that had occurred in front of teachers who did nothing to stop it. The administration wasn't learning much from this. The school's official response to the continuing victimisation of that girl was also to do nothing.

    "That was no surprise. Over the years as student and teacher I had often seen teachers colluding with bullies to keep order. Again and again I'd hear the weasel words "S/he gives as good as s/he gets". Time after time, as student and teacher, I had seen kids punished when they tried to defend themselves after repeated abuse that was committed with impunity. I had seen bully-targets going through the official channels, but with little if any change to school culture that enabled the bullying. I had moved my own kids from schools where they were being bullied, schools that had proudly proclaimed their "anti-bullying" policies. They were usually right there next to the flatulent mission statements in the school handbook.

    "The recent scandal over the bullying allegedly caught on mobile camera at Xavier College seems to surprise some people: this is after all a prominent private school noted for its religious affiliations. But those who are surprised forget one crucial thing: despite its expensive amenities and spiritual values, Xavier is in the end still a school, and schools are hog-heaven for bullies.

    "Whether state or private, co-ed or single-sex, high-flying academic or educationally basic, whether sporty, arty or sciencey, schools have anti-bullying policies — and bullies. And bullies still bully, usually without sanctions. The ones who deny this are typically either bullies or their colluders.

    "In 30 years of teaching I rarely saw bullies and abusers confronted. But on one glorious occasion as a schoolgirl I witnessed justice as my headmistress (a wonderful brave Brigidine sister) scolded and sacked a male teacher who had molested a year 10 girl. Trembling, ashamed, she had been brought to Mother Basil by her friends to tell her story. She trusted the one whose job it was to protect her, and was believed, respected and vindicated. I wish that all victims had such champions."
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    

• The Guardian
  
  
  • $1bn 'don't have sex' campaign a flop as research shows teenagers ignore lessons
    by Ed Pilkington in New York
    
    [While this story was carried in virtually all of the US media, I think this one from the UK is the most objective.  Web]
    
    "It's been a central plank of George Bush's social policy: to stop teenagers having sex. More than $1bn of federal money has been spent on promoting abstinence since 1998 - posters printed, television adverts broadcast and entire education programmes devised for hundreds of thousands of girls and boys.

    "The trouble is, new research suggests that it hasn't worked. At all.

    "A survey of more than 2,000 teenagers carried out by a research company on behalf of Congress found that the half of the sample given abstinence-only education displayed exactly the same predilection for sex as those who had received conventional sex education in which contraception was discussed.

    "Mathematica Policy Research sampled teenagers with an average age of 16 from a cross-section of communities in Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Virginia. Both control groups had the same breakdown of behaviour: 23% in both sets had had sex in the previous year and always used a condom, 17% had sex only sometimes using a condom; and 4% had sex never using one. About a quarter of each group had had sex with three or more partners.

    "Since his days as governor of Texas, George Bush has been a firm advocate of abstinence education programmes, which teach that keeping zipped up is the only certain way to avoid unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and that to deviate from the norms of human sexual activity is to risk harmful psychological and physical effects. "Abstinence hasn't been given a very good chance, but it's worked when it's tried. That's for certain," he said.

    "But even in 1990s Texas, where Mr Bush spent $10m a year on abstinence education, the state had the fifth highest teen pregnancy rate in the US. Over the past six years he has stepped up the programme to more than $100m a year. He recently braved ridicule by extending it to adults aged 20-29, an age range in which 90% of people are sexually active.

    "In the Mathematica survey, which was released by sex education activists after the health department sat on it, the mean age at which the control group, that had been taught about contraception, lost their virginity was 14.9 years. That seems strikingly low, until you look at the mean age of first sexual experience for the abstinence control group - 14.9 years.

    "In the context of findings like this, health workers and statisticians conclude that it is far better that children have safe sex, with knowledge of and access to contraception, than that they are preached a message of abstinence only to ignore it.

    "Federal funding for abstinence education began as a small part of Mr Clinton's welfare reforms but was stepped up substantially by the Bush administration. Its supporters claim that the fact that though teenaged pregnancies have fallen in the US from a high of 62.1 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 in 1991 to 41.1 births per 1,000 in 2004 shows the campaign is working.

    "But the Mathematica findings, building on earlier research, cast that optimism in doubt. Anti-abstinence activists have long argued that the movement is dangerous because it leaves young people exposed to the risk of teen pregnancy and infection because the teaching shuns any mention of condoms or contraception. Of about 19m new STD infections in the US each year, almost half are recorded among people aged 15 to 24."
    
    From The Guardian at link
    
    
    

• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Feature
    With Homework, a Helping Hand Can Sometimes Be a Hindrance
    by Valerie Strauss
    
    "Joe knew just what to do when his daughter, who was studying Roman history, came home with an assignment to build a catapult. He ordered a catapult kit from the Internet and put it together himself.

    "The task, he was sure, was not in his 12-year-old daughter's skill set, and he wanted to give her a hand. His effort earned a D, said Joe, who asked that his last name not be used to avoid antagonizing officials at his daughter's Montgomery County school.

    "His daughter's overall grade suffered from Joe's D. But what most annoyed him about the project he called "silly" was that other catapults -- clearly built by parents with more expensive kits -- got higher grades.

    "It was obvious parents made them all," he said.

    "The episode underscores a growing tension over how much parental involvement in daily homework and projects is appropriate and who is to blame when parents cross the line.

    "Educators say that the correct level of involvement depends on the child and his or her developmental stage but that some parents are so competitive that they go overboard.
    
    "You sometimes run across parents who are what I call Machiavellian parents who are trying to justify the ends anyway they can," said Dan Kent, a social studies teacher at Broad Run High School in Loudoun County. "There is such a push to get the kids in the best colleges that sometimes you find a parent who goes over the edge and does the work for the kids, even in high school."

    "Teachers also say parents don't always understand the lessons a child is supposed to learn from a particular project; making a collage, for example, isn't a waste of time, as some parents contend, but can promote fine-motor, classification and other skills.

    "But some parents say schools are demanding more parental involvement by giving assignments that children can't do on their own -- such as math problems kids don't have a clue how to attack -- and failing to draw boundaries about what is acceptable parental involvement.

    "I think teachers are well-intentioned, but some of the assignments are impossible for some kids to do," said Marcia Simon, a Montgomery public school parent of two, recalling one assignment in which her elementary school-age son had to design "a very lovely" restaurant menu with pictures and nutritional information about the food.

    "For kids who like to do art projects, it is fine, but for kids for whom this is not a strength, it was torture," she said.

    "The involvement of a parent in a child's education has long been shown to be important to student success, although research suggests that intrusive parents -- especially in adolescence -- can negatively affect developmental outcomes.

    "The most intensive involvement is seen in elementary school, especially with projects, educators say. They often require long-term planning beyond the capability of young children and resources a child can't get on his or her own.

    "Sue Ann Gleason, who teaches first grade at Cedar Lane Elementary School in Loudoun, said she doesn't believe in projects that require too much of a parent's time. But she does support enough involvement to help spark excitement in a child. "The fire doesn't stay lit if the parents aren't there to keep it lit," she said.

    "She prefers projects that "help children bring their world into the classroom," such as asking students to interview the oldest person they know. As part of a study of the past, students write about the person and include a picture in the report..."
    
    Full story in The Washington Post at link

 

 

Tuesday 17 April

• The West Australian
  
  
  • National curriculum will take years to be ready: McGowan (page 6)
    by Rhianna King, Canberra
    
    "It would be years before Australian students are taught under a national curriculum, WA Education Minister Mark McGowan admitted yesterday as debate began on how it should work.

    "After agreeing on Friday to move towards a common curriculum, the States have been told by Federal Minister Julie Bishop to begin work "immediately" in developing common standards in all subjects, with an initial focus on maths, English and science.

    "The States are being warned by academics, teachers and unions not to rush the plan, and Mr McGowan admitted it would take a few years. :We have got to do these things properly," he said. "The States have agreed that a working party will look at the issues and we're trying to do it in a non-bureaucratic way."

    "Curtin University education dean Len Sparrow said the national curriculum needed to be flexible, involving a "broad statement" for schools to follow rather than a precise check list. Teachers and universities should be heavily involved in the curriculum input and setting up the scheme. [Many would argue that university academic departments, and NOT "Faculties of Education", should be involved. Web]

    "As soon as you leave someone out they're going to be against it," he said. "There is a range of views and trying to accommodate the range is going to be difficult. And teachers and people like us will need supporting - this whole area is fraught with difficulties." [Or did your "people like us", Professor Sparrow, get us into the OBE mess in the first place? Web]

    "WA Curriculum Council president and University of WA dean of education Bill Louden said while the States were already working towards greater consistency, it would take much longer to create a standard curriculum.

    "We've been talking about national alignment in one way or another for nearly 20 years," he said. "It's not something that can be done quickly.

    "Each State has significant investment in current curriculum structure and material. I don't imagine they'll be thrown over quickly. [Perhaps WA could set the example by throwing out its half-written, half-baked Year 11-12 OBE courses? Web] There is a great deal to be done before you would get even close to a common national system." He said it would be "tactically useful" to begin with subjects where it was unlikely States differed greatly.

    "State School Teachers Union secretary David Kelly said the union was in favour of the proposal but it needed to be in the hands of educators, not politicians."

    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Teachers in ban threat on staff woes (page 6)
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    "The State School Teachers Union has threatened a work to rule and to tell members not to take part in excursions, camps and other outof-school activities after it accused the Carpenter Government of covering up the extent of the teacher shortage WA faces.
    
    "General secretary David A. Kelly said the SSTU would consider the directive to bring the extent of the problem to the Premier’s attention. The union would also consider advising teachers not to give up free periods to do relief work.
    
    "Mr Kelly predicted the teacher shortage would worsen at the end of the second term when changes to taxation laws for superannuation come into effect. He predicted a massive exodus when experienced senior teachers took advantage of changes to the laws in July.
    
    "He was aware of many teachers who were waiting for the new financial year before deciding whether to retire.
    
    “The true situation concerning the teacher shortage in Western Australia is not being fully disclosed by the Department of Education and Training and Minister (Mark) McGowan,” he said.
    
    “They have had ample time to do a complete audit of the system to see how many teachers they are down.
    
    “Let’s see the size of the problem and stop bandaiding it.”
    
    "His comments came before he meets Mr McGowan and Education Department acting directorgeneral Sharyn O’Neill today to discuss the teacher shortage.
    
    "He said unless the department put forward realistic plans to tackle the issue at the meeting, the State would not have enough teachers for the start of term two.
    
    "Mr McGowan said the Government was working hard to ensure WA had enough teachers into the future.
    
    "It had established a task force under Professor Lance Twomey to examine solutions to the teacher shortage.
    
    "The Government had also put the issue on the agenda at the recent meeting of education ministers in Darwin, which meant the matter would get the national attention it deserved."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • "I read with dismay of the failure of the States to adopt a national curriculum. This means that we are condemned to suffer more of the mess that passes for an education system in this State. Education is still suffocating under a morass of edubabble. Despite almost drowning in the spin and bulldust from the Curriculum Council, Department of Education and the Minister, the worst features of OBE continue and the race to impose untested courses in Years 11-12 continues. The only light on the hill was a possible national curriculum. Anything would have to be better than what the clowns have running here."
      
      John Paul, Busselton
      
      
      
      
• The Geraldton Guardian
  
  
  • More Class Woes [16 April]
    by Lauren Holt

    "Geraldton's teacher shortage shows no signs of abating - and one education chief has revealed teachers do not want to come to the city.

    "The latest figures show Geraldton Senior College - which has lost two teachers - has 110 year 10 and 11 students on the School of Isolated and Distance Education program for English since term one. This is set to continue well after the Easter holidays.

    "There will also be 70 Year 10 students placed on the program in term two for their social studies component following the loss of another teacher.

    "Previously, district director of Mid West education Rod Baker has said there was a shortage of secondary teachers because they had to specialise in one particular field.

    "It has also come to light that there are a substantial number of teachers waiting to be accredited, causing a backlog of teachers waiting to fill positions.

    "But Mr Baker insisted: "It's not a matter of accreditation. Teachers, for some reason, don't want to come to Geraldton, coming to the country is not attractive to them."

    "The shortage is so bad in the district that students from regional schools recognise that their education will suffer and are coming forward saying that they would like to be taken to the universities in Perth in a bid to appeal to the graduate teachers and explain what life is really like in regional areas, Mr Baker said.

    "Geraldton's Labor MP Shane Hill said: "We simply can't grab a teacher by the scruff of the neck and force them to work in Geraldton but I have every confidence in the minister."

    "Mr Hill believes the Government and the principal of Geraldton Senior College are doing everything they can to try to encourage additional teachers into regional areas but until then the SIDE program, although it is not as effective as having a qualified teacher in the classroom, is the best solution until a teacher can be found.

    "Geraldton Universities Centre at present has seven students enrolled in their Education Diploma course. The first batch of much-needed home grown teachers will graduate at the end of 2008.

    "Centre director Meredith Wills said teaching conditions were not admirable.

    "We as a community need to recognise the importance of what out teachers do, teachers really get a hard deal, and they really are expected to do a lot of work," she said.

    "A greater respect for teachers I feel would boost the number of teachers in the region."

    From The Geraldton Guardian
    
    
    

• ABC News
  
  
  • Progress reported in WA teacher shortage problem [6:17 pm]
    
    "The Western Australian Government appears to have made some progress towards addressing the teacher shortage after a meeting with union representatives late this afternoon.

    "There are 60 teaching vacancies across the state, a shortage the State School Teachers Union claims is leaving more than 30,000 students without a regular teacher. [Interesting maths, David: 30,000 / 60 = 500 students per teacher! Web]

    "The union's secretary, David Kelly, emerged from today's meeting optimistic that measures will be put in place to address the issue, but he has not ruled out an industrial campaign.

    "It's too early for us to with confidence to say the problems are solved but I believe we've made positive ground," he said.

    "Education Minister Mark McGowan says he has outlined a number of possible short term remedies.

    "Removing some of the administrative burden on teachers, reimbursing them for some of the tasks they've undertaken, making their working life more pleasant," he said.

    "The union will hold another meeting with the Education Department tomorrow."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
  • Union says Govt underestimates teacher shortage [7:41 am]
    
    "The State School Teachers' Union says government figures on teacher shortages in regional Western Australia are hiding the true extent of the problem.

    "The union says underqualified teachers are being employed to fill shortages, with cases of primary school teachers working in high schools and staff with no training in disciplines like science and English teaching the subjects.

    "The union's north west regional coordinator, Margaret Henderson, recently spent nearly six weeks visiting schools in the Pilbara and Kimberley.

    "She says at Karratha High School there are seven primary school teachers, only three science teachers are trained in the subject and subjects such as English are being taught by teachers without specialist training.

    "I was very surprised when I heard the figure of 66 being quoted as the shortage across the system because I could basically count that number in my two districts alone," she said.

    "I know there are staffing shortages throughout the system not just in the Kimberley and the Pilbara."

    "The Education Department says the teachers' union's figures are inaccurate and it is misrepresenting the situation at Karratha Senior High School.

    "Pilbara district education director Vicki Jack says there are five science teachers who have training in the subject working at the school.

    "She says there are primary school teachers employed at the school but it is not unusual for primary-trained teachers to deliver specialist programs.

    "There are four primary school teachers at Karratha Senior High School - they're in specialist areas," she said.

    "They're in the Aboriginal Tutorial Scheme and they're employed as English teachers.

    "Karratha Senior High School delivers an eight-hour specialist literacy program to all year 8 students.

    "The principal has actively recruited specialist teachers to teach in this area, some of which are primary-trained."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
  • Melbourne university criticised over discounted degrees
    
    "The University of Western Australia has criticised a leading Victorian institution for offering HECS discounted degrees to attract top students.

    "The University of Melbourne is offering a scholarship which is HECS free and valued up to 100-thousand-dollars.

    "The university's other scholarships will offer cash incentives which can be used for HECS debts or relocation and other expenses.

    "UWA's vice-chancellor Alan Robson says universities should focus on making tertiary education more accessible.

    "Professor Robson says HECs is an income contingent loan so people don't have to pay it until they're earning.

    "He says it's more important to provide assistance for students while they're studying and leave HECS debts for them to meet from the income they earn."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
  • Bell Shakespeare gets $1m for schools program
    
    "The Federal Government has given $1 million to the Bell Shakespeare Company so it can visit more schools to teach the famous writer's works across Australia.

    "The company's John Bell says at the moment there are two teams of actors in Sydney and Melbourne who visit thousands of schools.

    "He says the extra money means the company can set up teams in Perth and Brisbane, so the actors will not have to travel so far across the country.

    "Mr Bell says learning Shakespeare can unlock many doors in the arts.

    "I think it's very important that they have access to all kinds of poetry, Shakespeare being the pinnacle - I suppose in it's not just poetry, it's also drama, it's also philosophy and history all rolled into one, and I think, to me, Shakespeare is the key to many other kinds of exploration," he said.

    "If you get into Shakespeare you start studying all the other crafts to do with drama and self expression and exploration of culture."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Parents propose teachers' pay model
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Parents have joined the debate over performance pay for teachers, calling on bonuses to be given to new teachers who excel in the classroom, as well as experienced staff who agree to mentor younger colleagues.

    "Days after the states rejected Federal Government plans to reward teachers on merit rather than years of service, Australia's peak parent council has called on governments to consider a targeted stream of performance pay in schools as a way of keeping more people in the profession.

    "In a blueprint to be released next week, the Australian Council of State School Organisations argues that merit pay — coupled with lighter teaching workloads and professional development — could help in retaining teachers.

    "We often take (older teachers') experience for granted, under-utilising our greatest asset. This experience should be rewarded with recognition, lighter teaching loads and merit pay," said the group's report.

    "The report comes after state and territory ministers rejected an ambitious push by Education Minister Julie Bishop to introduce performance pay on a range of measures, including improvements in students' results and feedback from the school community, by 2009.

    "While Ms Bishop argued principals are best placed to determine which teachers deserve performance pay, the council — which represents parents in 7500 government schools — warned this was a "recipe for favouritism". Instead, an external panel should be charged with selecting teachers for merit pay, the report said."

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
  • Languages languish in schools: report
    by Jewel Topsfield
    
    "Foreign language teaching in schools has been neglected over the past decade as Federal Government rhetoric about Australian values and the "downgrading of multiculturalism" have turned the nation more inward.

    "That is the conclusion of a report commissioned by the Australian Council of State School Organisations.

    "The draft report said language teaching has also been hit by a shortage of qualified teachers, low morale and inadequate time allocated to it in the crowded school curriculum.

    "It said the co-ordination of languages between primary and high school was "appalling", with only 41 per cent of students surveyed able to continue a language learned at primary school at secondary school..."
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Teachers
      
      "Here is a message for Julie Bishop: just give teachers an all-round pay rise. That just might attract more good people to the profession."
      
      Maggie Churchward, Devonport, Tasmania
      
      
      
    • Schools must nip bullying in the bud
      
      "Childhood experts tell us ad nauseam that children need boundaries and that an integral part of the development process is the testing of these boundaries. If bullies "get away with it", even once, then they are merely encouraged to test the boundaries again.

      "You can bet that the perpetrators of the Xavier wheelie-bin incident (The Age, 13/4) did not wake up that morning and commit that act of aggression out of the blue. What happened at primary school that led them to such victimisation as adolescents?

      "I have seen first hand the results of primary school inaction against "small scale", "childish" bullying. In this case, the school trivialised complaints of bullying and instead suggested that the seven-year-old victim needed to "build resilience". The result? The bullying escalated and the victim, my child, left the school where the perpetrators remain unpunished and victorious. Imagine how empowered these bullies will feel by the time they reach high school!

      "Litigation and public scandal may eventually impact upon the way bullies are dealt with in high school — but to really tackle the endemic, ugly culture of bullying, zero-tolerance starting in early primary school is the only way."
      
      Emma Kelly, Hawthorn
      
      [Plus two Letters from former Xavier College students, one saying it's a wonderful place, the other saying it's a horrible place.]
      
      
      For info: The four students involved in the Xavier College incident faced court, and all got off with either "probation without conviction" or "good behaviour bonds". [The Melbourne Herald Sun]
      
      
      

    • Battle of the bulge
      
      "The Federal Government's plan to weigh all year 5 students as part of a four-year study (The Age, 14/4) is unnecessary and potentially damaging to our children's self-esteem. How about ensuring that all students have three hours of physical education a week and most schools have a dedicated PE teacher? We could start this in 2008, and I'm sure it would cost less than the study. Or, we could get really radical, introduce a fat tax on foods with high energy/low nutritional value and ban advertising junk food to children.

      "It seems the Government's solutions either involve a "study" or blaming the victim. Let's see some actual leadership on this."
      
      Dimity Williams, Ashburton
      
      
      

• The Australian
  
  
  • Uni to spend $100m luring top students
    by Lisa Macnamara
    
    "Melbourne University will aggressively chase the nation's most gifted Year 12 students, enticing them with HECS-free degrees and cash bonuses to study under a remodelled US-style syllabus.
    
    "The move to lure the brightest school leavers is part of an expanded $100 million scholarship scheme. It is aimed at winning over sceptical students and parents as the institution next year undergoes one of the most radical shifts seen in Australia's higher education sector.

    "The program, which builds on the university's present national scholarships, will each year offer 60 school leavers who achieve an ENTER score of 99.9 or equivalent an undergraduate degree course HECS-free. The university will provide these students with cash incentives of $5000 a year, or $10,000 for interstate students, for relocation costs..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Melbourne Age
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Schoolteaching not immune
      
      "Why is schoolteaching the only profession that holds itself immune to judgment based on performance (Letters, 16/04)? Other professions are exposed to consumer power.

      "Teachers are naturally nervous about coming out of their refuge and facing normal career pressures. So we see a flurry of letters, articles and Labor premiers reject school-based promotions as “unworkable”.

      "The present system is run by and for the unions: the students come a poor second. Let principals have the authority to promote the teachers they need to keep, and to appoint the new teachers they need to add.

      "A school with on-the-spot leadership can deliver a better service to your family."
      
      Philip O’Carroll, North Fitzroy, Vic
      
      
      

• USA Today
  
  
  • President Bush: Shootings at Virginia Tech affect all students
    
    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Monday that the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, the deadliest campus violence ever in this country, affects every student across the nation.

    "Schools should be places of safety, sanctuary and learning," Bush said in reaction to the deaths of more than 30 people on the campus. "When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom in every American community."
    

    • Responding to: 33 dead in Va. Tech shootings
      
      
      
      
• The Canberra Times
  
  
  • Homework often a waste of time: school experts [15 April]
    by Emily Sherlock
    
    Drills have 'limited effect on learning'
    
    "A suggested review into whether homework for primary school children is a waste of time has been welcomed by a leading ACT educationist.

    "The head of the School of Education and Community Studies at the University of Canberra, Professor Denis Goodrum, said "drill-style" homework had a limited effect on learning for young students.

    "He was commenting on a call by the Australian Council of State Schools Organisations a national umbrella group of school parent organisations for homework to be scrapped for primary school children.

    "Professor Goodrum said more needed to be done by schools, in cooperation with parents, to develop child-friendly and effective learning practices.

    "I think there is limited effect on learning with repetitive types of set homework," he said.

    "Instead there are many engaging ways for children to learn even visits to places like Questacon are probably more valuable or worthwhile, but is not homework in the traditional sense."

    "The parents' council called for an Australian review of homework, citing limited evidence of the benefits of homework in overseas studies and concern that homework loads were adversely affecting family life. Organisation executive officer Terry Aulich said much of the problem stemmed from the fact that homework was often poorly planned and "excessive".

    "There is little evidence to show that homework in primary school years is beneficial on a child's academic performance," he said.

    "We are not saying children shouldn't try their best but piling them up with excessive and badly designed homework is not the way to go."

    "He said many teachers often felt compelled to set regular homework although it may be of poor design with many parents expecting it to be set.

    "Mr Aulich said if primary school students did have to do homework, he recommended it should be simple and enjoyable, no more than 30 minutes a day, encouraging family involvement. There should be none on weekends.

    "However, those children or parents who wished their child to do more work should also be accommodated..."
    
    Full story in The Canberra Times at link

    • Sport seen as a better option for some younger children [15 April]
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Daily Telegraph
  
  
  • TOAD teachers paid for nothing
    by Bruce McDougall
    
    "School teachers forced out of the classroom under a cloud have been paid for sitting at home or doing little or no alternative work.

    One veteran teacher has told The Daily Telegraph he spent three years "taking the garbage out" in an education department office while allegations were pursued against him.

    Another teacher in a regional area of NSW stayed at home on full pay because education chiefs did not need him for alternative office duties.

    Their cushy lives emerged as a political row blew up yesterday over revelations in The Daily Telegraph that almost 60 teachers had been removed from the classroom due to criminal investigations, child protection allegations or incompetence – costing taxpayers up to $85,000 a week.

    Teachers attacked the Government over the length of time investigations against teachers took to complete, often months and sometimes years..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Daily Telegraph at link

    
    
    
• The Melbourne Herald Sun
  
  
  • Editorial
    Some solutions [16 April]
    
    "Today the Herald Sun offers not only a powerful picture of the menace, but ideas for a solution.

    "Four major advertising agencies agreed to produce sample campaigns aimed at stamping out bullying.

    "Their work is based around the notion of "Cruel, not cool".

    "The campaign operates on many levels and suggests a wide range of approaches through which the cycle of violence might be broken.

    "Some of the samples shame bullies for their own cowardice. Others prod schools for inaction or acceptance of playground tormentors.

    "If they have a common theme, it is to empower children, parents and schools to draw a line in the sand against bullies.

    "One key to breaking the cycle is to realise the culture of bullying makes us all victims.

    "That, conversely, means the overwhelming weight of numbers is stacked against bullies, providing we have the will to apply it.

    "It is time the end of bullying became a serious national priority - a crime, welfare, education and mental health issue.

    "Many schools now have prep-pal systems operating, where younger children have a big kid to turn to for support. The Alannah and Madeline Foundation's Better Buddies program is also helping change attitudes.

    "That's a start, but only a start.

    "Bullying is not a prank, or a rite of passage or a tradition. It is child abuse, pure and simple. And that's unacceptable."

    From The Melbourne Herald Sun at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Heads out of the sand: let's enlist schools in the battle against obesity
      

      "I am flabbergasted at the reactions to the proposed health checks on school children, including identifying obese children. It seems that everyone is more preoccupied with a few hurt feelings or offended parents instead of the obvious: obesity is deadly and poor eating habits in childhood set these children up for fatal heart attacks later. My children's school is one step ahead - actually, several steps. In our town 40 per cent of the school is Aboriginal and the school has pulled its head out of the sand and admitted that, statistically, corresponding health is likely to be poorer than the rest of the community unless something is done.

      "The school has a free healthy breakfast program to make sure no child has an excuse for chocolate for breakfast (or no breakfast at all).

      "Second, we don't have recess or morning tea - we have "fruit break".

      "Every child is expected to bring a piece of fruit. Not a fat-laden muesli bar, a sugary pretend-fruit Roll-Up and a packet of chips, but real fruit. If they're determined to bring the junk with it, they at least have to finish the fruit first. My children, previously at a well-to-do city school, no longer feel peer pressure to take piles of heart-attack snacks like "all the other kids".

      "Last, the teachers check the lunch box of each kindy kid to make sure it contains at least a sandwich. A note goes home if they only have junk food.

      "If you want to make children a healthier weight, it isn't about waist measurements and a set of scales. It's about directly influencing what goes in their mouths. When parents are forced to provide a healthy lunch and breakfast, you create healthy lifelong eating habits in the children.

      "Wake up and undermine snack food advertising by putting limits on it. We can't stop parents killing their kids with bad diets at home, but we can certainly make it difficult for them to do it in school."

      Shannon Brown, Wellington

Wednesday 18 April

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Teachers set one week deadline on shortage crisis (page 4)
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    [Actually, it's the SSTU, not "teachers", who are flapping around.  Web]
    
    "The Government has been given a week to come up with some immediate solutions to the WA teacher shortage and produce concrete figures on the extend of the problem before the State School Teachers Union meets to decide whether it will take industrial action.
    
    "Union general-secretary David A Kelly said progress had been made at a meeting yesterday with Education Minister Mark McGowan and Education Department acting director-general Sharyn O'Neill but he still had not been given any detailed data on the extent of the problem, including details of an audit he believed the department had done on teacher numbers.
    
    "He was told that the State was 60 teachers short but he suspected the problem was a lot worse. He called on the Government to release the true figures, including forward projections.
    
    "The SSTU executive is due to meet in a week to decide whether to begin an industrial campaign if the department does not provide the union with the information and answers it seeks.
    
    "The union has threatened to work to rule and tell members not to take part in excursions, camps and other out-of-school activities. It will also consider advising teachers not to give up free periods to do relief work.
    
    "Mc McGowan said he had a cordial, frank and sensible discussion with the union. He said the Government understood the difficulties teachers faced.
    
    "In the longer term, I'd like to be able to provide incentive for teachers to go to some of the more difficult to staff locations, particularly in country WA and the north of the State," he said."
    
    From The West Australian

    Question: What proportion of government teachers belong to the SSTU? What proportion of those would engage in the industrial action proposed? Web
    
    

  • Op Ed
    World of serious study does matter (page 19)
    by Tony Rutherford
    
    "... The more important loss is the loss of respect for the classical tradition, and, with that, the whole tradition of Western culture of which it was once an important part.
    
    "Quite big parts of both the school and university systems are indeed actively hostile to the whole idea of Western culture, dismissed as the creation of dead white males, or of a capitalist mentality, or these days as simply irrelevant. Importantly, all cultures are assumed to be equal, although Western culture is less equal than most. The good teaching of Latin or French or history in schools is now largely a thing of the past. What now passes as the curriculum of English — as exemplified not least by WA’s OBE material — is largely based on passé ideas of postmodern deconstruction and textual studies. It gives students a view of culture in which Hamlet and The Simpsons and cinema posters are all much the same.
    
    "Understanding film and television programs, we are told, requires just as much skill as reading a novel or a Shakespeare play. This is an often-heard point of view, embraced by modish media studies academics and curriculum-setters and foisted off on many reluctant teachers. It is, of course, rubbish. Most of us grew up able to “decode” popular culture — whether it’s The Simpsons, 24 or Four Weddings and a Funeral — without any such help. [emphasis added]
    
    "You pick it up as you go along. If you feel like bothering, that is. The point of worrying about educational curriculums is precisely that you have to be pretty determined to pick up the ability to read Jane Austen or Shakespeare or John Donne by yourself. Unless there is an understanding mentor to get you through the cultural references and the linguistic difficulties, you may never get to the point where what were once regarded as the classics of English literature (or any other literature, for that matter) are reasonably accessible.
    
    "Much the same applies to music, too. You may be able these days to get through TEE music without being able to read a note of music and without knowing that there are important fundamental differences between Brahms and rap. But Brahms needs a bit of work and rap does not.
    
    "In this casual way, those who preach that Western culture was always an elitist and minority affair achieve a neatly self-fulfilling prophecy. The notion that young people are being deprived of something really important seems not to worry them at all. And evidence that there is a sense of deprivation worries them less.
    
    "Thousands of people who saw Four Weddings went out and bought W. H. Auden’s poems. Sales of Jane Austen are doing quite nicely — although whether Austen’s new audience reads the novels as any more than genteel bodice-rippers may well be doubtful. They might, on the other hand, realise that some of Austen’s genius has been put to political ends of which she would hardly have approved. Perhaps the film 300 might even cause a few of the audience to go out and buy a translation of Herodotus and find out what the Persian wars were all about.
    
    "There was a fascinating interview in the weekend papers with Jim Penman, the man who founded the Jim’s Mowing empire. It was very much one of the stories of the Australian Dream, the man who made good.
    
    "It was perhaps surprising to learn that Mr Penman had a PhD in history. And despite this, he delivered a broadside at the numbers of students doing useless arts degrees at universities. On reflection, considering the state of the arts in most Australian universities, he may well be right.
    
    "There were two good reasons for having an arts degree. At some stage, to begin with, it gave students the chance to acquire the ability to think clearly. That was useful no matter what career eventually offered itself. And second, it perpetuated the facts and values of our Western culture. These days, such an education tends not to do much of either.
    
    "The pity of it is that Western culture needs its friends and defenders more than at any time in the past. If we don’t know what is at threat, for instance, in the war on terror, then it is no wonder that many people wonder why we bother to resist.
    
    "And when the elites who were once its guardians now detest the whole concept as much as its sworn enemies, it really is time to worry."
    
    Full story in The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Teacher who blew whistle abandoned by Minister (page 11)
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    "Education Minister Mark McGowan will not instruct his department to stop a disciplinary investigation into a schoolteacher who blew the whistle on child sex abuse in a remote Aboriginal community where three more people were charged this week with serious child sex offences..."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Bonuses, holidays to tempt graduates (page 17)
    
    WA’s biggest industries are so strapped for qualified employees they are promising university graduates cash bonuses, overseas holidays, exotic postings and starting salaries up to $110,000.
    
    
    
    
  • UWA fears students will be lured east (page 17)
    by Gareth Parker, Melbourne
    
    "The head of WA's most prestigious university admitted yesterday he was concerned that the State's best and brightest school leavers could be lured interstate after the University of Melbourne announced it would entice students with free HECS places and $5000-a-year payments while they studied..."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor (page 20)
    
    
    • Why we are resigning

      "In response to your report about teacher shortages ("Teachers in ban threat on staff woes, 17/4), I would like to make the point that, apart from retirees, there is a considerable number of senior teachers simply resigning.

      "I am a high-school teacher with 31 years of experience. I am a career classroom teacher who has always taken pride in a job well done. I love my interaction with the students, taking part in social and sporting events as well as teaching English.

      "However, I have lost faith in a system that rates self-promotion and change for change's sake - even when classroom teachers have clearly said that the change does not work.

      "I am troubled about my degree of cynicism, believing it has no place in an environment that cares of young people. I am actively seeking alternative employment, not being able to take advantage of superannuation changes to take effect shortly.

      "When is someone really going to tune in to reasons for staff dissatisfaction? Some of us simply want to chisel out a career in the classroom, but when constantly challenged about classroom practises, methodology and pedagogy and the ultimate reward is a flawed system called outcomes education, 31 years seems to mean nothing."

      Christine Kelly, Spearwood
      
      

    • Wishful thinking

      "Imagine Julie Bishop having the gall to propose that school teachers be paid salaries based on their performance. Now if only we could have the same criteria applied to politicians' performances. We wish."

      Margaret Randell, Meckering
      
      

    • Basic principle

      "The mistaken belief that education should not be subject to fundamental principles of economics has led to today's serious shortage of teachers.

      "Under present conditions the profession will attract a few idealistic individuals but the majority will be less interested in a career where remuneration is fixed at the lowest common denominator and where "time on the job" is regarded at the expense of professionalism and ability. Worse still, this system discourages many good teachers who leave the service.

      "Pursuing this line of argument, one can see that if teachers were free to negotiate remuneration packages that properly took account of the disadvantages of remote localities, the problem of shortages in those areas would also disappear, as the mining industry demonstrated decades ago.

      "Beneficiaries of the "seniority" promotion system may not welcome change but need not be disadvantaged by a new, professional, reward-based system. Existing salary levels can be retained while new incentives can be open to all.

      "This short letter addresses only the "supply" side of the teacher problem. The situation would be much worse if it were not for the lower "demand" as potential students elect not to enter the government system as the quality of the service is considered inadequate.

      "The community cannot afford an education system that continues to ignore basic economic principles."

      W A Piper, Bunbury
      

      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Don't count on osmosis to impart written language skills [11 April]
    by James Allan
    
    A Leading legal academic laments that his A-grade university students are deficient in basic literacy and English grammar
    
    "Any disinterested observer would say that the world is better today, on average, than it has ever been. People are living longer, much longer. They have more to eat. They can travel more. They have more leisure. They have more interesting jobs. A far, far smaller percentage of them are stuck as subsistence farmers. And however much things have improved for men in the past century or two, they are three or four times better again for women, at least in the Western world.
    
    "If anyone seriously wanted to debate that basic claim with a straight face, I'd be happy to do so, preferably for lots of money. I mention it simply because normally it is just out and out false to paint former times - 30, 40 or 50 years ago even - as some sort of golden age when things were so much better than today.

    "Most jeremiads, or doleful laments about the failings of the here and now, are fairly implausible, to put it as kindly as possible. Rarely do these mournful denunciations of the present stand up to comparative testing.

    "And yet there is one area of life I am intimately aware of where the falling standards grievance appears to be clearly correct. I am talking about university students and their basic grasp of literacy and grammar.

    "And let me be abundantly clear that I am talking about some of the best university students in the country. These are not just any students. They are what can properly be described as elite students, the very top high school students in all of Queensland who have managed to pass through a winnowing process that the vast preponderance of their fellow high school students fails to get through. It is extremely difficult to get into the law school at my university and the students who manage to do so have some of the best marks, and minds, in Australia.

    "Yet lots and lots of these highly intelligent tertiary students lack basic grammar knowledge. Forget gerunds or the subjunctive. They cannot cope with basic sentence construction. They use semicolons and colons without the faintest idea of how they should be used, and on a seemingly random basis. The possessive apostrophe is either wholly absent, is regularly confused with the abbreviating apostrophe, is sprinkled around in the hope of getting it correct once in a while (giving the reader such treats as the possessive its'), or all of the above.

    "Definite and indefinite articles are regularly omitted. Run-on sentences are commonplace. And it's not even an exaggeration to say that a few of them don't seem to realise that you need a verb to make a sentence, that "Being the prime minister" doesn't quite cut it.

    "Quite simply, my elite law students, or a good many of them at any rate, have been provided with almost no technical writing and English grammar skills. One must assume that the same is true of virtually all Australian school leavers.

    "Nor are these particularly challenging skills to acquire. All of my students have the intelligence to learn them in two or three weeks, in my view. They have quite literally, or so I hear on occasion, never been taught these things. Why not? It could be, I suppose, that these skills are no longer considered important. More crucial, on this view, is the fostering of children's (or should we now say childrens?) creativity and self-esteem. But if that, or some similar notion, is one of the reasons so many tertiary students seem to have atrocious writing skills, let me give you the other side of the story. [emphasis added]

    "No one can think at all without language and its labels, categories and generalisations. It follows that no one can think clearly unless they can use language clearly. To make a subtle point or introduce a fine distinction, one needs the tools that a complex and sophisticated language offers. Nor does a knowledge of these complexities and sophistications curtail creativity. Jane Austen was a master of English grammar. And what would Winston Churchill's speeches have been had he not had a superb grasp of the language?

    "Of course, one might think clarity, precision, irony, humour and even a fully developed capacity for self-expression must bow down before the need to foster students' self-esteem or creative urges. Personally, though, I've never come across any very creative writers - be they political commentators, authors of fiction, historians, what have you - whose grasp of basics was deficient.

    "Worse, or at least ironically, the absence of sound writing skills may well, in adult life, serve to lessen one's self-esteem. It may make it harder to get a job or a promotion, or may make one feel inarticulate and dumb.

    "Take law, my profession. Lawyers spend their working lives manipulating language. They draft contracts, wills, articles of incorporation and myriad sorts of letters. They argue in court. They interpret statutes. They pick over the words of judges in past cases. Their job revolves around the expert use of language. Of course a solid grounding in basic English skills is a huge advantage to them, and to many, many others.

    "Alas, a more depressing possibility in getting basic grammar skills taught today may be that a sizeable chunk of our recently graduated teachers may not know these skills themselves. Years of the osmosis school of learning to write, where you just cross your fingers and pray that by reading enough some ineffable and mysterious process will kick in and people will magically pick it up, may be coming home to roost.

    "That wouldn't be much of a surprise, would it? Merely to state the osmosis approach shows how ridiculous it is."

    James Allan, a professor of law at the University of Queensland, has taught at universities in New Zealand, Canada and Hong Kong.
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    At long last, the very model of a major university
    
    Melbourne is the first of our institutions to face facts and take its future into its own hands, writes editor-at-large Paul Kelly
    
    "The new University of Melbourne model is a turning point in Australia's institutional history.
    
    "For the first time a university and not the federal government is dictating the direction of reform.

    "It will take some years to get the country used to these changes," their architect, Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis, told this paper yesterday. "We operate on the assumption there won't be any major reversal in commonwealth funding of universities and that the federal Government's proportion of funding will only continue to fall."

    "The new Melbourne model is the Davis model.

    "It has a dual significance: as a strategy for Australia's leading university and as a warning that the public policy status quo on universities in this country is unsustainable.

    "There are many messages for policy in these reforms: that the one size fits all historical model for our universities is finished; that any university waiting to be saved by greater federal funding is doomed; that the sector will become more diverse, reflecting greater institutional differences; and that Australia needs a national government with the vision and guts to deregulate the sector.

    "Under the Melbourne model, all professional degrees such as law, medicine, engineering, architecture, dentistry and nursing will be graduate degrees. Students entering these courses will require a bachelors degree from Melbourne or elsewhere. Melbourne will offer six core undergraduate courses in arts, science, music, biomedicine, commerce and environments. The undergraduate double-degree concept is replaced by a bachelors-masters sequence. [emphasis added]

    "When the model matures, Davis says, the student body will divide 50-50 between undergraduate and graduate students.

    "Our main motive for these changes is educational," he says. "This is a more efficient way of teaching and it is better for students. Students are not required to decide their future at Year 11 or 12 but at the end of their undergraduate degree. This aligns our educational structure more with those of North America, Europe and North Asia, and gives Melbourne a more internationally geared outlook." ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link

    
    
    
  • The Higher Education Supplement has 13 articles today, including:
    
    
    • Melbourne's radical model unlikely to be copied
      by Lisa Macnamara
      
      "The University of Melbourne has predicted that a string of capital city copy cats would take up its radical new curriculum, which was officially unveiled yesterday.

      "Under the model, almost 100 undergraduate degrees will give way to six broad programs and a range of professional graduate schools. At least 50per cent of undergraduate courses and up to 80per cent in some graduate courses will be HECS places.

      "Speaking ahead of yesterday's launch of the much-hyped model, vice-chancellor Glyn Davis reiterated the virtues of the two-tier education system, saying he expected at least one campus in each of the other states would follow his lead.

      "There are a number (of universities) that could and I wouldn't be surprised if in the long run you saw an institution take a similar approach in each capital city," he said.

      "But other university leaders and sector commentators doubted there would be any widespread emulation of the Melbourne model, the success of which would rely on the strength of the Melbourne brand.

      "If any university in Australia can pull this off, it'll be Melbourne because of its reputation," University of Western Australia vice-chancellor Alan Robson said.

      "It's good that someone is trying it out but I think it's going to be difficult (to attract students in some areas)."

      "Professor Robson said Melbourne would most likely come out on top because of its aim to reduce undergraduate numbers while increasing its graduate load. "If you can increase your funding per student, you can provide a better education than your competitors and then more people will want to go to your university and you could spiral upwards away from other universities," he said.

      "But any move to replicate the model was unlikely at UWA, Professor Robson said. "I am keen to see more general education in our university graduates (but) I think there are other ways of doing that." ...
      
      Full story in The Australian's Higher Education Supplement at link
      
      
      

    • Shift towards diverse model
      There is logic in offering graduate training, writes Glyn Davis
      
      "Suddenly Australia has a spate of new medical schools. And most - at the Australian National University, Deakin, Griffith, Notre Dame and Wollongong - will offer only graduate programs. Why this drift to graduate training for medicine?
      
      "Some institutions may point to the need for a broad foundation in science before specialisation in medicine. Others may note longitudinal studies showing better academic performance - and subsequent career commitment - of graduate students. Attrition rates are lower with a graduate intake.

      "There are arguments about the maturity required to make an informed decision to enter the medical profession and questions about whether a Year 12 Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank score is the best predictor of aptitude. Graduate entry produces a more diverse student body and better translation rates from graduation to professional practice. In short, the decision to offer graduate training reflects an educational logic about how to teach and a professional judgment about who to teach..."
      
      "Graduate education for the professions has long been standard in the US. Beyond medicine, most professional education in Australia remains at undergraduate level. Students seeking breadth attain degrees sequentially or combine otherwise unrelated programs as double degrees. If our tertiary system is to be diverse, Australian students should have the opportunity to study foundational undergraduate degrees before choosing a graduate school. That means offering the full range of professional programs - from agriculture to urban planning, architecture to social work - at graduate level..."
      
      Glyn Davis is vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne.
      
      Full story in The Australian's Higher Education Supplement at link
      
      
      

    • Uni's curriculum shift questioned
      
      Rival vice-chancellors have questioned the educational value of Melbourne University's radical shift to a US-style curriculum as academics and students raised concerns over workloads and future studies.
      
      
      

    • Unease grows at gratuitous degrees

      The proliferation of honorary doctorates for public relations purposes is causing concern in academic circles, writes Dorothy Illing
      
      
      

  • Op Ed
    Michael Chaney: The vote to secure our fiscal future
    
    Sound reform, not petty politics, will sustain our prosperity
    
    "The 2007 federal election will be one of the most important in many years in regard to determining the direction of the country's future. From the Business Council of Australia's perspective, the election will determine whether we will continue moving forward or whether as a nation we will opt for complacency and let our hard-won gains slip away..."
    
    "To frame election thinking around a single, basic objective - elevating the country's living standards into the world's top-five band by 2012 - the BCA is outlining a set of reform standards for the 2007 federal election. These standards will be used by the BCA to assess whether the economic policies of the political parties contribute to passing on prosperity or eroding it..."
    
    "Education is also central to future prosperity. In a global-knowledge economy, the quality of Australia's education, training and innovation systems is vital to its future.

    "The BCA's reform standards call on political parties to review and update these systems across a number of fronts to achieve better outcomes, including raising the quality of teaching and the nationwide consistency of curriculums, and achieving uniformly high standards of literacy and numeracy..." [emphasis added]
    
    Michael Chaney is president of the Business Council of Australia.
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Teacher code tackles student relationships
    by Bridie Smith
    
    "Teachers will be banned from sending sexual text messages to pupils and warned against socialising with them under a code of conduct designed to stamp out inappropriate teacher-student relationships.

    "A draft of the guidelines drawn up by the Victorian Institute of Teaching — which regulates the profession — tells teachers what is and what may be inappropriate behaviour.

    "Sexual relationships, sexual innuendo and improper touching are ruled out. [NO SH*T! Web] Attending parties, socialising with students or inviting students to their homes are nominated as behaviour that could compromise teacher/student relationships.

    "The guidelines also ban inappropriate electronic communication between teachers and students — such as text messaging, chat rooms, emails and phone calls.

    "The introduction of formal guidelines comes after a series of sexual relationships between teachers and students in recent years..."
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • Editorial
    The very model of a modern university?
    
    "Melbourne University's brave and bold $185 million overhaul of its academic structure, announced yesterday by its vice-chancellor, Glyn Davis, is the most comprehensive and radical transformation of its kind in the institution's 154 years, let alone Australia's tertiary-education system. In moving away from the English-type degree course to embrace the two-tier teaching structure favoured in the United States, the Melbourne Model (as it is called) turns history and tradition on its head, as well as redefining student requirements and capabilities from 2008 on.

    "Over the next four years 96 existing undergraduate degrees will be abolished, to be replaced by six broad-based degrees: arts, biomedicine, commerce, environments, music and science. Professional courses — beginning next year with law, architecture, nursing and education, with medicine, dentistry, engineering and others to follow — will become second-tier graduate degrees, mostly at master's level, but sometimes doctorates. Undergraduate programs will be three years; professional programs two, excepting medicine, engineering and law.

    "Even though it is estimated that up to half the students in some professional courses will face the expense of full fees, the university has set the ambitious goal of a three-to-four HECS/full-fee ratio averaged across the courses. At the same time, the institution is introducing an ambitious scholarship program, funded from its own resources: over the next three years every VCE student with a university entry score of above 98 will be offered $2500 to enrol at Melbourne. The whole scholarship program adds $100 million to the $85 million it is costing the university to switch to the new system.

    "For the good of Melbourne University and Australian universities in general, an alternative system of higher education has been long overdue. These bodies have suffered a steady decline in public funding since the "one-size-fits-all" attitude of the late 1980s, espoused by the then federal education minister, John Dawkins. Although subsequent elections have proved voters' lack of support for increased tertiary funding, there has been wider political acknowledgement that at least some universities have the right to be different. As Professor Davis said on The 7.30 Report on Monday, it was a matter of "defining our own future rather than having it chosen for us, which is our current fate". This, he said, involved changing to a half-undergraduate, half-graduate student mixture — "a very different model of education and a very different philosophy" — that will bring Melbourne into line with some public universities in America and Europe.

    "Reaction to the plan has been largely positive, although some concerns remain about potential inequity. More important, it has been given the blessing of the Federal Government and Opposition, with Education Minister Julie Bishop helping to ensure HECS places can be moved to graduate schools in large enough numbers.

    "The upshot for Melbourne University, even though Professor Davis says the changes are not about raising additional money but providing educational choice, is that the increase in full fees should make it less dependent on government funding as well as ease the chronic overcrowding of some courses.

    "There are risks involved. Whether Melbourne will become the very model of a modern university is largely up to those who will use it: the students. There are encouraging signs: some students have deferred for a year in order to enter Melbourne in 2008. But there also has to be the change of mindset that involves the prospect of taking five years or more to achieve professional qualifications available at other institutions in three. At least there will now be a genuine choice, which can only be for the greater public good. It should be welcomed accordingly. Meanwhile, the state's oldest and most venerable university has taken to heart its motto, Postera crescam laude: I shall grow in the esteem of future generations."
    

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • New model could cut academic jobs
    
    Melbourne University academics have been warned they could lose their jobs for economic or "structural" reasons as the institution shifts to a radical US-style model of teaching next year.
    
    
    • Big night out becomes lockout for guests
      
      
      
      
  • Op Ed
    A poor start for a radical change
    by Jessica Friedmann
    
    "... The Melbourne Model is possibly the most ambitious educational reorganisation to be undertaken in Australia. Now that we've set ourselves firmly on that path, most of us are hoping we can pull it off. But if it's going to work, everyone at Melbourne — staff, students and administration — will have to work together. Misgivings and misunderstandings of the kind that are developing will only hurt the university, and something needs to be done, soon, to rectify the situation. If we can't champion transparency, disclosure and debate within the university, "knowledge transfer" isn't going to be worth a damn."
    
    Jessica Friedmann is a media officer for the University of Melbourne Student Union.
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • There are three on Melbourne Uni, including:
      
      Not the way to build a great university
      
      "Is Glyn Davis' "Melbourne Plan" destined for the same policy graveyard as Alan Gilbert's "Melbourne University Private" gambit from several years ago? Many have noted the central flaw in the proposal: namely, that many top students will prefer to take up immediate entry into prestigious courses such as law at rivals such as Monash rather than wait for an uncertain place at Melbourne three years later. What makes me angry, however, is the agenda that Davis is trying to set for Australian higher education with this plan.

      "First, there is a clear agenda in the Davis plan to effectively cut back the availability of publicly funded places in favour of fee-paying courses. Australian universities haven't been able to persuade local students to take up fee-paying places so now they are trying to bring higher-demand courses into play at the fee-paying postgraduate level. As if our degree-educated elites in Australia aren't homogenous and advantaged enough as it is, Melbourne wants to snap a few rungs off of the ladder of publicly funded access.

      "Second, there are the massive pretensions behind the plan. Melbourne thinks that it can sell this new degree structure on the back of its prestige — that is, on the back of the idea that people will ache for a Melbourne degree in the same way that they ache for an Oxford or Harvard degree.

      "There is nothing wrong with aspiring to be a great or selective institution. What is wrong is the way Davis is going about it — making education more expensive and superficially elite rather than investing in building great research departments or offering better programs with more intensive teaching as is done in top international institutions."
      
      Mirko Draca, research economist, London School of Economics
      
      
      

• The Independent
  
  
  • Academies to take over primaries
    
    Tony Blair's privately sponsored academies are poised to take over state primary schools, it was disclosed yesterday. The Prime Minister hopes the primary schools will then forge the kind of links that exist between leading fee-paying schools and their junior "prep" schools. Mr Blair, speaking at his monthly press conference, said the idea had been raised by the academies, which were "looking to incorporate into their set-up primary schools as well".
    
    
    

Thursday 19 April

• The West Australian
  
  
  • 'Malicious' to punish teacher for telling truth (page 9)
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    Whistleblowers Australia says Peter Gadeke should be thanked for exposing sexual abuse in an Aboriginal community – not disciplined
    
    "The WA Education Department's disciplinary investigations into a teacher who blew the lid on child sex abuse in a remote Aboriginal community is "bordering on a malicious prosecution", the nation's peak whistleblower group says... "The question is what has priority... government interest or public interest?" ...
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Whistleblower teacher needs praise, not punishment (page 20)
    
    "The Carpenter Government has shown a breathtaking level of hypocrisy in its punitive attitude to a teacher who blew the whistle on the sexual abuse of children in a remote Aboriginal community.
    
    "While deploring the plight of the young victims and vowing to crack down on sexual predators the Government appears intent on making the whistleblower suffer for his impertinence in going public with his concerns..."
    
    "Education Minister Mark McGowan has refused to instruct his department to drop the investigation, claiming he has no authority to intervene.
    
    "This is arrant nonsense. The Government intervenes in departmental affairs over a range of fields and issues, whenever it thinks it is necessary to do so.
    
    "Its refusal to do so in this case is a direct consequence of its embarrassment at being caught out over its lack of care for the abused children in this community and its failure to protect them from their alleged abusers..." [emphasis added]
    
    Full Editorial in The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Sexual harassment sees exit of nine school staff since 2005 (page 9)
    by Keryn McKinnon
    
    "The Education Department has sacked five male school staff members in the past two years for sexually harassing students and a further two workers resigned before any investigation into their alleged conduct could be completed.

    "Another two male employees were sacked for sexually harassing a colleague in separate cases. The figures, released by the department, reveal that in 2005 and 2006 there were 21 claims by students that they had been sexually harassed by staff, which could include teachers, cleaners, teaching assistants or office workers.

    "Of the 21 allegations by students, investigations into seven are still pending. In five cases, there was found to be no evidence of wrongdoing. Two staff members were issued with warnings.

    "The figures come after it was revealed that a prominent Aboriginal elder in a remote community charged with a string of serious child sex offences had access to children because he worked in the local school. He has been removed from the school until the issue is resolved..."
    
    "Of six allegations of sexual harassment by staff members against a colleague, two staff were sacked, three resigned before a finding was made and one matter is pending."
    
    Full story in The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    

  • Loan scheme for TAFE studies urged (page 12)
    
    See stories already on the Breaking News [below] from The Australian and The Melbourne Age
    
    
    
    
  • Super-size uniforms in demand at schools
    
    Schoolchildren are wearing clothes sized for heavily pregnant women as the obesity epidemic takes its toll on teenagers’ waistlines and increases their risk of suffering heart disease and diabetes.
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor (page 22)
    
    Three on education today, including the fiasco of teacher re-registration, performance pay and reporting student results
    
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Dumb down to smarten up
      
      "As our schools find it increasingly difficult to persuade students to accept rigorous and academic subjects at a senior level, so more universities will follow Melbourne University’s lead and offer real courses for postgrads only (Uni’s curriculum shift questioned, 18/04). What used to be done at Year 12 can then be done at undergrad level.

      "Lacking the incentive to teach at any real depth, Australian schools will become like US high schools and increasingly offer a combination of entertainment, childcare, experiences (camps and excursions) plus the basic socialisation fewer and fewer families seem able to provide.

      "We can abandon the search for effective and academic secondary teachers, which, judging from recent debate in these pages, is going to be too hard or expensive anyway.

      "Bright working-class kids who cannot afford five years of tertiary education will give up. We can delay adulthood by yet another three years and get on with wasting more time, and our economic competitors in China and India can look forward to burying us in the professional sectors, just as they are already doing in manufacturing."
      
      Bob Barden, Hallett Cove, SA
      
      

    • "Much of the whining about “falling university standards” fails to understand that in the 1960s matriculation from high school was limited to a tiny percentage of the school-age population, and therefore acted as a winnow to an existing elite who passed a small number of highly academic subjects—which prepared them for tertiary study.

      "That this has not been the case for the last two or three decades should be more than obvious, but sometimes isn’t.

      "What the “Melbourne model” does, as outlined yesterday in Paul Kelly’s article (At long last, the very model of a major university) and in Higher Education, is to transfer pre-tertiary preparation from today’s undifferentiated “everyone-gets-a-prize” Year 12 to six core bachelor degrees, with the strong likelihood that those teaching professional graduate courses will no longer have teach the ABC and add-ups.

      "Replacing stuff such as Wimmyns Perspectives on the Binomial Theorem, Western Science as a Macho-Capitalistic Construct, and Shkspr as Txt with fair-dinkum subjects will be nice as well."
      
      Leonard Colquhoun, Invermay, Tas

      
      
      
  • Push to extend student loans scheme to TAFE
    by Dorothy Illing, Higher education writer
    
    "Australia's pioneering student loan scheme HECS should be made available to 1.6 million TAFE students to ensure the viability of the nation's biggest education sector.
    
    "Three leading economists, led by the architect of HECS, Bruce Chapman, warn that TAFE could become the last post-school education sector without access to income-contingent student loans for fees.

    "If this happens, TAFE will be sitting in a very strange place," say Professor Chapman, Mark Rodrigues and Chris Ryan in a working paper for the federal Treasury.

    "This could mean that eventually TAFE would be crowded out by the private-sector alternatives and cease to be viable as an educational institution."

    "The Howard Government has gradually extended its student loan scheme for full fee-payingstudents, FEE-HELP, to the private colleges and religious institutions.

    "It is facing mounting pressure to open the scheme up further across the private education sector, a move that would be highly controversial in view of recent publicity about some unscrupulous operators.

    "The TAFE bosses yesterday gave in-principle support to a new loan scheme for their students but warned that only credible institutions must be eligible..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    The full report: "Treasury Working Paper 2007-2: HECS for TAFE: The case for extending income contingent loans to the vocational education and training sector", available at this link
    
    
    

  • Cash no key to uni success
    by Dorothy Illing, Higher education writer
    
    "Students from poor backgrounds are just as likely as those from wealthy families to finish university, once they make it into tertiary education.
    
    "Whether they attended a private or public school also seems to make little difference to their chances of completion.

    "New research shows the strongest predictor of whether a student will go on to finish university study is his or her entrance score. The findings by the Australian Council for Educational Research are likely to reignite debate about how accurate a predictor tertiary entrance ranks are of success. [emphasis added]

    "The study of university completions reveals 94 per cent of students with a tertiary entrance rank above 90 finish any course at university. That compares with only 73 per cent of students with a TER between 60 and 70.

    "Education Minister Julie Bishop said the report showed that students from disadvantaged backgrounds were just as likely as other students to complete their university course."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    But students from Catholic schools were more likely to finish: see following story in The Melbourne Age.
    
    
    
    

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Catholic students more likely to finish uni
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    Catholic school students are more likely to graduate from university, even though attending an independent or public school has little influence on course completion, research says..."
    
    "Students who attended Catholic schools had a higher-than-expected university completion rate (88 per cent) compared with other students. But there was little difference between those who attended an independent school (81 per cent) and those who went to a government school (79 per cent)..."
    
    "Melbourne University education expert Richard Teese said the research was misleading because socio-economic status and university entry scores were interlinked."
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link

 

Friday 20 April

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor (page 18)
    
    
    • "It is difficult to imagine that W. A. Piper (Basic principle, 18/4) knows anything about teaching. The mention of promotion by seniority is a dead giveaway because promotion in WA schools has been by merit for years. Not that this has solved anything: on the contrary, it seems to have produced a new breed of teachers who have learnt how to work the system by self-advertising and by promoting change - not for change's sake, but to draw attention to themselves. This, along with comments by very old teachers who remember "payment by results", is why so many are opposed to Julie Bishop's ideas."

      Rob Bannister, North Perth
      

      
      
      
• Curriculum Leadership: An electronic journal for leaders in education
  
  
  • What’s so different about multiliteracies?
    by Geoff Bull and Michele Anstey
    
    "In the media, the teaching of multiliteracies is often trivialised and caricatured: portrayed, for example, as the study of SMS text messaging in place of the plays of Shakespeare. For all their weaknesses, such arguments can still influence members of the public, most of whom do not have direct knowledge of the topic of multiliteracies from their own years at school.

    "In this article we hope to provide a more rounded view of multiliteracies. We hope to demonstrate the value of this approach to students, and to describe ways that professional learning and development about multiliteracies can empower teachers..."
    
    Full article in Curriculum Leadership at link
    
    
    

• USA Today
  
  
  • Testimony alleges mismanagement of federal reading program
    by Greg Toppo
    
    "Federal advisors mismanaged President Bush's $1 billion-a-year reading program and profited from close ties to the Bush administration, according to testimony released Thursday — in one case repeatedly rejecting one state's funding proposal until state officials dumped a successful reading test and bought one written by a top Bush advisor..."
    
    "The U.S. Education Department on Thursday released three-year test results for schools participating in Reading First, saying the percentage of students whose reading skills improved grew sharply. But department officials offered no comparable data on schools that did not use Reading First, saying that comparison is not expected until next year.

    "In the study from 2004 to 2006, the percentage of first-graders meeting or exceeding proficiency standards on reading fluency grew from 43% to 57%. The percentage of third-graders improving grew from 36% to 43%.

    "We feel like these are very impressive gains," said Amanda Farris, a deputy assistant secretary of education, who oversees the program.

    "But Farris offered no data on students attending schools that don't receive a portion of the $1 billion Reading First annual grants, saying a comparison to schools outside the program is "a little bit of a difficult question to answer" because states use a variety of tests to assess reading, even within grades.

    "Control group comparisons are expected to be part of a larger Reading First evaluation due out next year, Farris said.

    "Thursday's data release brought a rebuke from Miller, who said his committee asked the Education Department for state-by-state breakdowns of Reading First funding and assessments on Feb. 27 and again on March 29, with no reply until Wednesday.

    "He said much of the information he requested is the same as that now being released to the media.

    "It is inconceivable to me that the department withheld the requested information from committee investigators who have been conducting a formal Congressional inquiry," he said in a letter to Spellings.

    "Miller asked Spellings to tell him whether department staff "deliberately withheld" the information from the committee and when the department "first possessed the information" on types of reading assessments used by the states.

    "In a terse reply sent late Thursday, Spellings told Miller, "My staff has not deliberately withheld any requested information."

    Full story in USA Today at link
    
    
    
  • School districts experience wave of threats, lockdowns
    
    Yuba City, Calif. (AP) — A 12,000-student school district was locked down Thursday as authorities searched for a man they say threatened to make the Virginia Tech-style massacre look "mild by comparison."... The threat followed a week of lockdowns and evacuations at schools around the country in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings
    
    Similar story on CNN
    
    
    
    
• The Times
  
  
  • Expulsion of under-fives triples in a year
    
    Every day of last year more than 200 children under 11 were sent home from school for bad behaviour such as attacks on teachers and classmates, statistics show. Nearly 1,000 children were suspended for biting and kicking staff and classmates, or for disrupting class. Sixty boys aged four were expelled — three times as many as in 2003-04.
    
    Similar story in The Guardian
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • School drugs dob call
    
    The [Victorian] State Government is resisting calls to introduce mandatory drug reporting in private schools, which would bring them into line with the public education system.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Daily Telegraph
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Performance pay for MPs
    
    Prime Minister John Howard, his entire Cabinet and every Government MP have accepted a 5 per cent pay cut after interest rates rose for the fourth time since the election... Wouldn't it be nice if this fantasy came true? If the Government insisted on adopting the same working conditions it wants to foist on teachers and everyone else in the workforce?
    
    
    
    
• The Adelaide Advertiser
  

  [Two "old" stories on the AEU campaign in today's Advertiser.]

 

Saturday – Sunday, 21 – 22 April

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Premier pleads with teachers: Don’t strike (page 10)
    by Kim Macdonald
    
    "Alan Carpenter has pleaded with teachers not to take industrial action over the chronic labour shortage in schools ahead of a union vote on the matter next week, claiming it would not help solve the problem.

    "The State School Teachers Union will this weekend consider an emergency package put together by the State Government outlining a short-term solution to the problem and will meet on Tuesday for a vote on whether to stage a publicity or work-to-rule campaign.
    
    "SSTU general secretary David A. Kelly said the union would not rule out eventually taking strike action if it was necessary to get the State Government to address the shortage of at least 60 teachers, mostly in country areas, affecting 30,000 students.
    
    "The Premier said the shortage was a result of the State Government’s difficulty in attracting and retaining staff in the public service amid heavy competition from the well-paying private sector.
    
    "He said the State Government was working “overtime” to eliminate the shortage as quickly as possible, and needed to work constructively with the teachers union on the matter.
    
    “I don’t think from my observation that taking industrial action is going to help that because we already know we’ve got a problem,” he said.
    
    “We don’t need to be told that, and we already know that we’ve got to work flat-out to overcome that problem.”
    
    "Mr Kelly said the State Government was partly at fault for failing to plan properly for the falling proportion of teachers, especially considering changes to superannuation next year could make it easier for staff to take early retirement.
    
    "He said Education Department research indicated that 60 extra teachers were needed, but the union believed this figure could be much higher.
    
    "Mr Kelly said independent research from 2003 indicated that WA’s teacher shortage could blow out to 500 next year.
    
    "Mr Kelly said the union wanted financial compensation for teachers in hard-to-staff areas to cover the higher cost of living, and better accommodation in these areas.
    
    "He said some teachers were forced to live in dongas or hotels in the North-West because there was no housing for them.
    
    "Mr Kelly also announced yesterday that the union would campaign in marginal Federal seats to highlight the need for more resources for education.
    
    "He also wanted the State Government to remove some of the administrative burden on teachers, and to provide more opportunity for professional development."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    

  • The Moral Maze, by Hugh MacKay
    Tying teachers' pay to performance is flawed
    
    "... It would be hard to think of a profession more worthy of praise, and proper remuneration, than teachers. We entrust our children to them for much more than learning the three Rs: we know they will have a powerful effect on our children's attitudes and values, as well as their more formal education..."
    
    "The enthusiasm of Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop for a system of performance-based pay for teachers overlooks several things. Teachers are poorly rewarded for what they do – possibly the worst-paid professionals in the community. That's the most urgent issue to be addressed.
    
    "Teachers are under constant review and their movement up the pay scale already depends on satisfactory performance. Teachers' earnings vary from State to State but an experienced public school teacher cannot expect to earn much more than $60,000. The average age of Australian teachers is about 45 and most have been on the top of the pay scale for at least 10 years.
    
    "Teachers not up to the job should be sacked. Beyond that, the flaw in the whole idea of performance-based pay for teaching, a creative process that relies on all the subtleties of personal relationships between a teacher and each unique pupil in each class, is that it attempts to quantify the unquantifiable. As Einstein put it: not everything that counts can be counted."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 23)
    
    
    • Reward them
      
      "Recent discussions about the nation-wide shortage of teachers has forced the Federal and State governments to once again explore ways of attracting and rewarding these hard-working, underpaid professionals.

      "Unfortunately, if these explorations follow their usual course, a lot of time and energy will be devoted to the exploration process and not to the area of need. Indeed, the Federal Minister for Education has already flagged us with a "noble" but totally unworkable reward system which has provided a diversion away from the basic issue of teacher recruitment and retention.

      "The bottom line is that the qualifications (typically a four-year degree), the huge responsibility of teaching and guiding our younger generation, the long hours (don't ever believe that teachers work from 9am to 3pm) and the continuous changes in expectations from society, our teachers are grossly underpaid.

      "Recent changes to education, the increased accountability of catering for individual needs of students at educational risk and the complexity of a crowded curriculum demand an immediate 30 per cent across-the-board increase. Yes, a significant increase that is long overdue. If the Federal Minister wants to explore rewards beyond this point, that's fine.

      "In our resource-rich country, I find it incomprehensible that both State and Federal governments have avoided their obligation of ensuring that teachers are remunerated appropriately so that, in fact, there is a willing supply of secondary graduates wanting to join the profession.

      "Recently I have become intensely aware of the financial rewards reaped in the financial and commodities sector.

      "If you are involved in a trade or profession that moves iron ore from A to B, or finds and pipes gas, then you are set for life. If you are a teacher in these communities you are in catch-up mode for life.

      "In the twilight of my career, I watch in wonder at the marvellous young graduates who are filling the shoes of people like me. I marvel at their skill, patience, flexibility and work ethic, but I also wonder how long they can afford to stay in a profession that demands excellence but offers only mediocre financial rewards."

      D Lipscombe, Port Kennedy
      
      
      

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Labor promises primary school focus
    by Anna Patty
    
    "The Labor Party says that if it wins the federal election it will look at ending an anomaly in schools funding that means it costs $2000 more a year to educate a high school student than a child in primary school.

    "It would also probably reintroduce funding for special capital works, maintenance and information technology projects at individual schools. Labor says primary schools would receive special attention as part of an effort to improve the quality of early childhood education.

    "The Opposition spokesman on education, Stephen Smith, said the difference in funding for primary school and high school children was no longer justified.

    "The president of the NSW Primary Principals Association, Geoff Scott, said schools received different amounts of funding per child to cover the same education costs.

    "The amount per student should be the same whether they are in a primary school or a high school because the demands and costs are exactly the same."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed: Come, dear reader, fall under a spell
    
    The world is warming up like a microwave, Iraq is mired in chaos, a college student shot 32 people dead in Virginia. Who gives a damn about books any more? And who could possibly have time to read one?
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed: Beyond the gatekeepers, the stories of our past belong to us all
    
    The immaculately groomed and eerily unblinking federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, wants us all to know more about history - especially the "us" who are that floating group known as young Australians.
    
    
    
    
• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • US-style degrees are 'out of reach'
    by Lisa Macnamara
    
    "Melbourne University's new US-style degrees may be out of reach for many school leavers despite the campus's scholarship "bribe" to boost enrolments, Victoria's state high school principals have warned.

    "Just days after the sandstone campus unveiled a new two-tiered system of broad undergraduate degrees and specialist graduate schools, Victoria's peak body for state secondary school principals raised concerns over access to the prestigious university.

    "The school principals mostly are really concerned about the equity issues and the length of the courses, which make it more expensive to go there, and they're worried about whether their kids can afford to go there," said Brian Burgess of the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, which represents about 600 school heads.

    "The university's $100million scholarship scheme - which includes a one-off $2500 payment for all Victorian Year 12 students who achieve top university entry scores, to offset equity concerns and encourage the best school-leavers to enrol - was merely a "drop in the ocean", Mr Burgess said yesterday.

    "To me it just smacks of the private-school model, where they cherry-pick the best and the brighest and then tout that as a result of their teaching - so I'm not too impressed with that," Mr Burgess said.

    "And I'm not particularly impressed with the $2500 bribe for the kids with an ENTER score over 98."

    "But Mr Burgess's independent-school counterpart, Geoff Ryan, said concerns over equity were so far unfounded.

    "He welcomed the radical shift away from traditional undergraduate degrees to six broad programs - such as science and music - with the option of specialising at graduate schools.

    "We often have kids who go off to courses and I think they're too young to be making those decisions," said Mr Ryan, who is national chairman of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia.

    "Having done a broad undergraduate degree for three years, they're in a better position to make a choice about whether they want to be a doctor or teacher or lawyer or whatever."

    "But Mr Burgess questioned the value of the new degrees.

    "Where's the educational evidence that this model produces better-equipped graduates?" he asked. "That should be put on the table."

    "Although Melbourne University has conceded that enrolments may dip in the first few years ofthe new system, it said almost 400 students had so far deferred starting at the campus until next year, when the new syllabus willbegin.

    "The scheme has received huge support from the Howard Government, which allowed the university to shift thousands of HECS places from undergraduate to postgraduate courses to save many students from paying the full fees.

    "The new regulation will be a key feature of a marketing drive in local schools by the campus, which has launched a million-dollar advertising campaign to boost the model's appeal to prospective students and parents.

    "Mr Burgess said his school principals had not been as well informed. "While there were four or five principals consulted, in the main most had not been consulted and did not know what the curriculum was about other than what they had read in the press," he said.

    "But Mr Ryan, who is principal of Melbourne's Westbourne Grammar School, said many of his members had been kept in the loop of information.

    "Melbourne did a special thing for career counsellors, and certainly they've offered to make speakers available and information available and that's a good thing," he said."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
    

• The Adelaide Sunday Mail
  
  
  • Schools fear violent parents
    
    "Violent, abusive and threatening behaviour in schoolyards is on the rise – and parents are being blamed.
    
    "Latest figures show the number of people – mostly mums and dads – banned from public schools is rising with suspensions almost doubling last year.

    "There were cases where teachers had been injured and had to go to hospital after being attacked," Primary Schools Principal Association president Glyn O'Brien said.

    "In some cases, good teachers are being driven from the profession because of the harassment they are subject to."

    "In 2006, there were 21 people banned from state school grounds compared to 13 in 2005, according to the Department of Education and Children's Services.

    "Most of the bans were a result of violence or threats of violence against staff, students or other parents.

    "But bans only occur when the situation becomes so difficult that the parent poses a physical risk to staff and students, so these numbers represent only a small part of the problem," Mr O'Brien said.

    "Dealing with parents behaving badly was a priority, a department spokeswoman said, with $4 million spent on closed-circuit TV, lighting, fencing and alarms at schools across the state since 2003.

    "But the incidence of harassment, verbal abuse and threats by parents against staff and students was still on the increase, Mr O'Brien said.

    "One primary school principal, who did not want to be identified due to fears for her safety, said she had already called police once this year to deal with an abusive parent, while last year she hired a security guard to protect a teacher from threats of attack by the father of a student.

    "That person then rang to say I was wasting money hiring the guard to be at school because he could get to me or the teacher any time he liked," the principal said. "It's this type of threat that makes you extremely anxious for your physical safety and that of your staff.

    "I don't think the Education Department provides enough support for principals and teachers who have to deal with violent and aggressive parents."

    "Bad behaviour wasn't limited to random attacks by parents, according to the Australian Education Union.

    "At the moment, there are parents on two school councils whose malicious behaviour is causing stress and anxiety to principals and staff," union state president Andrew Gohl said.

    From The Adelaide Sunday Mail at link
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Lancet swipes at Howard Government
    
    One of the world's leading medical journals has weighed into this year's federal election, urging its Australian readers to vote against the Federal Government, which it accuses of risking Australia's reputation for excellence in medical research.
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Grave new world: a killer and his audience
    
    In space, no one can hear you scream. In cyberspace, and the media, everyone can. This week the world heard the rantings of Cho Seung-hui as he justified his murderous intentions in a multi-media presentation which he mailed to American television network NBC News. The world did not hear the screams of his victims.
    
    
    • Op Ed: Reporting of a horrific event becomes a crass spectacle
      
      
      
      
• The Times
  
  
  • These tests are damaging our children’s broad education [Sunday]
    
    It is with growing anger that Nicola Bryant (not her real name) has watched her daughter Helen prepare for her upcoming national tests. The pressure that Helen, 10, has been put under by her school has caused a chronic stomach problem that she has suffered since she was five to flare up. Bryant insists that the months of preparation Helen has been put through at her state primary in Staffordshire lie behind her daughter’s discomfort.
    
    
    
    
  • Exam board’s £120 course on ‘cheating’[Saturday]
    by Alexandra Blair, Education Correspondent
    
    "Examination bodies are making thousands of pounds selling tips to schools on how to beat the A-level and GCSE systems.

    "Senior examiners offer advice on a freelance basis and at least two boards provide courses to help teachers to improve pupils’ grades.

    "A government adviser condemned the practice as disgraceful, saying that it preyed on schools’ fears about their position in the league tables.

    "Head teachers gave warning that there would be a “major moral issue” if boards were giving unfair advantage to some pupils over others.

    "Many pupils spend the Easter holidays doing intensive tuition courses. Parents often hire former teachers to help them to prepare for exams.

    "Teachers, too, are under growing pressure to succeed. Senior examiners allegedly give seminars for up to £200 a time, offering tips on what pupils should write in coursework. Now examining bodies are also cashing in.

    "This year, the OCR board is offering teachers hundreds of courses at up to £120 each.

    "It offers a full-day course in GCSE English literature titled “Get ahead — improving candidate performance”. The board says that the course offers “guidance and practical support” for teachers preparing pupils for this summer’s exams, to “exemplify standards for the externally assessed components” and “suggest teaching and learning approaches for each component” of the GCSE."
    
    Full story in The Times at link
    
    
    

• USA Today
  
  
  • Reading program to get Justice review
    by Greg Toppo
    
    "WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department's inspector general, who spent nearly two years investigating allegations of mismanagement in President Bush's $1 billion-a-year Reading First program, has referred the matter to the U.S. Justice Department.

    "It wasn't immediately clear on Friday who the subject of the investigation might be, or whether John Higgins, who led the Education Department's investigation, asked Justice to pursue criminal charges or a civil complaint.

    "But Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee and is investigating the program on his own, told Higgins: "I think when we put the evidence together we may join you in those criminal referrals." ...
    
    Full story in USA Today at link
    
    
    

• The Brisbane Courier Mail
  
  
  • QUT drops humanities
    
    Low entry cut-offs, poor performance and heavy financial losses in traditional arts courses have prompted the proposed closure of the Queensland University of Technology School of Humanities and Human Services.
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Herald Sun
  
  
  • School delay on stabbing [Saturday]
    
    An elite private school waited two days to call police after a student was allegedly stabbed by another while waiting for a school bus. A Haileybury College student had to get eight stitches and spent two days in hospital after being stabbed with a large knife.
    
    
    
  • Children ignore food rules [Sunday]
    
    Students are breaking healthy school canteen rules and State Government soft drink bans by going to milk bars and fast food chains for their junk food 'fix'

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