Monday 14 May

Tuesday 15 May

Wednesday 16 May

Thursday 17 May

Friday 18 May

Saturday – Sunday, 19 – 20 May

 

Monday 14 May

• The Australian
  
  
  • Howard to reshape schools
    by Samantha Maiden, Political correspondent
    
    "John Howard will today outline a new push to "reshape the nation's education and training landscape" and force public schools to provide more information for parents on bullying and violence in the classroom.

    "In a major speech outlining the Government's agenda if it wins the next election, the Prime Minister will sharpen his attack on Kevin Rudd's "education revolution" with a pledge to deliver a new era of accountability for parents.

    "He will warn that principals need more support to enforce discipline in the nation's schools and parents must be given report cards on violence and disruptive behaviour.

    "In his speech to the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, he will also touch on the Government's proposals to place new compliance requirements on the next four-year $40 billion schools funding deal for the states.

    "It is the second in a series of speeches titled Australia Rising, the first of which was delivered last month in Brisbane when Mr Howard warned that only the Coalition could be trusted to deliver targets to cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions without wrecking the economy.

    "The new schools funding deal that is being prepared by federal officials will include demands for greater autonomy for principals to hire and fire teachers and requirements to publish more information for parents on academic performance and attendance rates.

    "The outcome is expected to deliver defacto league tables for parents, ensuring school performance is transparent on a range of measures. [emphasis added]

    "While the states and territories have primary responsibility for government schools, my Government is determined to lay a platform for high academic standards, good teachers, principals with real power and proper accountability," Mr Howard said.

    "Like all Australians, I am very concerned at reports of school violence and disorder. Parents would be well- served by more information about school discipline, bullying and disruptive behaviour in the classroom.

    "Parents are entitled to expect that their child is safe at school and that teachers and principals have the authority to ensure a strong learning environment. We want to provide teachers and principals with the necessary support for their essential work."

    "Mr Howard ignited a schools values debate before the 2004 election when he blamed "politically correct" teachers for an exodus to private schools.

    "In the latest salvo, he will warn that the rise of violence in schools must be tackled.

    "Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Blair last night said teachers needed more protection against violent students and parents. "We've got examples of kids bringing knives and weapons to school," he said.

    "I know of one case where very authentic-looking replica pistols have been brought in. I know of cases when students have got up in class and pointed these replica pistols at teachers.

    "Teachers are dealing with more young people with serious social and emotional problems who are in some cases arriving at school without any food. It varies from cases of parents coming in and physically attacking teachers and principals.

    "Unquestionably, there needs to be much greater support given to schools via legislation to give schools more power to remove trespassers and when we have violent parents and violent students."

    "However, Mr Blair also warned there was a continuing problem with private schools dumping difficult-to-manage students on the public sector.

    "All schools in this country receive government funding, so in my view there's got to be mutual responsibility for taking students who are troubled," he said.

    "The reforms Mr Howard will outline today are also expected to require the states to offer teachers performance-based pay and to lift literacy and numeracy standards.

    "School teachers are an important but undervalued profession. Teachers work hard in the interests of their students and my Government's role is to provide further support in their crucial work shaping the lives of future generations," Mr Howard said.

    "My Government is dedicated to promoting choice, quality and strong values in Australia's education and training system.

    "Education is crucial to Australia's future. Quality education will lift workforce participation and productivity, helping to maintain today's prosperity," he said.

    "In separate reforms, the Howard Government is also planning to unleash the same market reforms embraced by universities to shake up the TAFE sector and ensure training is more responsive to the needs of business.

    "Mr Howard will highlight a range of measures in the budget, including summer schools for teachers, a bonus pool of up to $50,000 for principals to award to teachers and reforms to increase philanthropy and business donations to the nation's universities.

    "The $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund deservedly attracted many of the headlines, but new programs to improve literacy and numeracy, more Australian Technical Colleges, summer schools for teachers and reforms to fast-track apprentices will also enhance the quality and diversity of our education and training," Mr Howard said.

    "For some years now, my Government has aimed to restore prestige to vocational education. The broad community support for Australian Technical Colleges, dedicated centres of trade excellence with incentive structures, including flexible workplace agreements and links to local industry, indicates we are on the right track."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Howard's Speech on Schools
    
    Similar stories in The Melbourne Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    

  • Reader Blogs: The intangibles of education.
    
    
    • "How much value should we put on a child’s “sense of wonder’’ and levels of cowardice or arrogance?

      "In a submission to the Senate inquiry into the academic standards of school education, the Australian Education Union argues against the use of standardised tests to measure student achievement because such facets of a child cannot be tested objectively.

      “The AEU has long been cautious about the use of basic skills tests and other standardised tests as a means of measuring the wellbeing of Australian schools,” it says.
      
      “Much of what is important in schooling is not measured by standardised tests.”

      "The submission from the teachers union includes a list of 24 examples of qualities the AEU says are “exceedingly difficult” to measure in tests, ranging from skills that tests purport now to measure such as critical thinking, curiosity, question asking and creativity to more esoteric qualities such as a sense of beauty and humour, courage, humility and spontaneity.

      "It’s true that such qualities should not be ignored or trivialised, but is it necessary to include them in a national skills test for children? Surely it would be possible to test the quantifiable facets of a child while allowing their senses of humour and wonder to flourish without the pressure of comparison? On the other hand, is a national skills test for children even useful in the first place?

      "What do you think?"

      
      There are 88 replies, including:
      
      

    • Marcus L'Estrange of St Kilda, Vic (11 May at 01:44 AM)

      "As an AEU member all I can say is the AEU submission is a load of fairy land twaddle and fails to understand why a growing number of AEU members send their kids to private schools. They do so to try and avoid Edubable - the official doctrine of the AEU and the Educational Left as evidenced in their submission."

      
      

    • davsum of brisbane (11 May at 02:02 AM)

      "Much of what is important in schooling is not measured by standardised tests.” Absolute rubbish.

      "Sense of wonder which is uninformed and unshaped is of dubious value at best. I take this comment by the AEU as an admission of complete failure on their part. They should have no part in the formulation of education policy, as they are fundamentally obscurantist and politically biased.

      "They can’t teach properly, so they rely on immeasurables. How very convenient for them."
      
      

    • R. E. L. (11 May at 07:59 AM)

      "Such airy-fairy nonsense testing is what created a new generation of illiterates in Australia.

      "Attributes such as this “sense of wonder” should be tested at tertiary level once a child has learnt to read, writeand add/subtract numbers with ease. No wonder we have so few students enrolling in the sciences and so many enrolling in the Arts!

      "Apart from that, most kids have no idea about the world out there or even have a sense of who they are until the age of 18-19 anyway. And why should they? Let kids be kids. Let them play footy and read books instead of getting drunk, having sex and not knowing when to use the words “to”, “too” and “two” (or “there”, “their” and “they’re").

      "Bring back grammar, arithmetic and literary appreciation instead of literary criticism. Save that rubbish for the Arts students and enable our future leaders to study about real life."
      
      

    • Paper (11 May at 04:32 PM)

      "I am so tired of this debate!
      

      "Seems to me the only people who don’t want this are the tachers Union. What about the rest of us - the customers? Why is it so hard to give us what we ask (and pay) for?"
      
      

    • protea of Moruya (11 May at 04:36 PM)

      "What a load of twaddle! Just an AEU ploy to avoid accountability for the dreadful lack of literacy and numeracy among school leavers."
      
      

    • Nick of Canberra (11 May at 01:41 PM)

      "This whole thing is a red herring. What does the importance of interpersonal development have to do with standardised testing for English and Maths? This is just a diversionary tactic. “Much of what is important is not measured by standardised tests”, I agree, but much of what is important is, so lets measure it."
      
      

    • Chris Curtis of The 1970s (11 May at 05:14 PM)

      "I wrote too soon when I said that it was nice to see the teacher-bashers had not come out in force for this forum. They have arrived, with their usual fact-free abuse and generalisations."
      
      
      

  • Letters to the Editor [on the same topic]
    
    
    • Sense of wonder indeed
      
      "For the Australian Education Union to declare boldly at the Senate inquiry that there is no crisis in education with regard to standardised tests (”Pupil skills tests leave out wonder: teachers” 11/5), is as blind as it’s insulting to those of us at education’s coal face.

      "I have taught Year 8 science and maths for eight years at a variety of schools across three states. Let me invite AEU President Pat Byrne into my classroom on any day she chooses to see how hampered I am in teaching the very basics of algebra to 13-year-olds. Not only is the curriculum watered down from its high standard of 20 years ago when I was at school, not only am I hamstrung with no deterrent to deal with revolting behaviour from individual pupils at times, but when I finally manage to get a stream of thought progressing in class with regards to a basic algebraic idea, I’m hampered by my assumption that anyone in the room can quickly tell me what two times eight is. My lessons often end up going backwards.

      "The students who reach my class have a disgracefully poor foundation of arithmetic, all thanks to the postmodern political poison that infiltrated teacher education during the past three decades.

      "A student’s “sense of wonder”, as identified by the AEU, is an immeasurable piece of buffoonery associated with all the touchy-feely nonsense with which the Left dumbed down our curricula. A student’s sense of wonder is of no use to the world if we cannot stringently, formally and, yes, under examination conditions, determine how much a child knows. The AEU’s comments have filled me with a sense of wonder indeed."
      
      Peter Wilson, Kew, Vic
      
      

    • "Of course statewide external assessment cannot measure everything of value in schooling. But parents still have the right to know how their children are getting on, relative to the population, in literacy and numeracy.

      "The reintroduction of external tests in recent years resulted in a serious increase in the time given to learning the basics. That is to say, accountability works."
      
      Philip O’Carroll, North Fitzroy, Vic
      
      
      
      

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Teachers in own bid for merit pay
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Australia's powerful teacher union is drawing up its own plans for performance-related pay in schools, despite opposing the Howard Government's push to introduce a federally imposed system by 2009.

    "After months of fighting Canberra over the issue of performance-based pay for teachers, the Australian Education Union is working on a proposal to reward staff with more money based on merit and professional standards after they reach the top of their salary scale.

    "One model being considered is for a new salary band to be added to the top end of the wage scale. Teachers - whose salary begins at about $46,000 and rises to $66,000 unless they take on a leadership role or extra responsibilities - could apply for a rise within the proposed new band by demonstrating what they have achieved in the classroom, as well as undertaking professional training to increase their skills.

    "Conscious of the stigma surrounding performance-based pay, union chiefs are calling their system "professional pay", with a focus on professional development and higher standards.

    "Asked if the plan was merely performance-based pay by another name, union branch president Mary Bluett said: "The reason performance pay got such a bad wrap is because (Education Minister) Julie Bishop owned it and was trying to impose her will on the states. [emphasis added]

    "But there's no doubt that the cut-off salary for classroom teachers is a disincentive to stay in teaching, and there is a real need to look at that."

    "Rewarding teachers for performance rather than just years of service has long been a political battleground between Canberra and Labor states, which last month rejected Ms Bishop's bid to introduce performance pay within two years.

    "Ms Bishop originally proposed giving teachers bonuses based on a range of measures, including improvements in student results, feedback from the school community, and the attainment of professional development and higher standards.

    "But the union and state education ministers branded the plan as ideologically driven and unworkable because it did not explain how teachers could be measured fairly.

    "At an education ministers' meeting in Darwin last month, the states rejected Ms Bishop's bid and agreed to devise their own. But Ms Bishop is again trying to force the states to introduce her plans as a condition of $42 billion worth of schools funding when the next four-year funding round begins in 2009.

    "Asked to respond to the news that teachers were drawing up their own plans to improve the way the profession is rewarded, Ms Bishop said yesterday: "This is a spectacular, although welcome, backflip..."

    "A union working party is creating the new professional pay model, which will be put to the union's national executive for endorsement in June. [emphasis added]

    "Federal Labor is also considering a policy that would give teachers more money if they undertook professional development and gained specialist qualifications in areas such as maths or science. Bonuses would also be offered to teachers who work in remote or difficult schools."

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Largesse for unis is only sleight of hand
    by Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne
    
    Some commentators have called the Federal Government's recent conversion to tertiary education belated. The word should not be "belated" but "Machiavellian". This is politics as high art.
    
    
    
    
    
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Rudd's training scheme a mistake (page 17)
    by Brian Toohey
    
    "Kevin Rudd has made a bad policy mistake by promising to give every high school in Australia a trade training role. The job is much better done in specialised technical and vocational colleges where the money can be concentrated on producing fully skilled graduates. In his reply to the Budget, however, Mr Rudd ignored the cash=starved technical colleges which can do the job properly and offered to scatter a paltry amount of money across schools.

    "He promised $500,000 to $1.5 million per school to build and equip workshops and computer laboratories - and no money for staffing them. It must be a long while since he has looked at building costs, let alone the price of equipment needed to let all students have a hands-on experience of what actually happens in a [sic] automotive workshop, welding business, commercial kitchen and so on.

    "As many teachers know, some students are highly disruptive in the school environment, but do well once they shift to a technical college.

    "However, Mr Rudd certainly needed to highlight Labor's credentials on education after Peter Costello's Budget increased spending after he earlier savaged the sector. The Treasurer won plaudits for putting $5 billion from the Budget surplus into a Higher Education Endowment Fund. As Mr Rudd notes, the annual income of about $300 million won't go far among 39 universities. But it will do more than the annual $180 million he wants to spread across Australia's 2650 high schools during the next four years.

    "Mr Costello was previously committed to putting all future surpluses into his Future Fund for the electorally unappealing, and economically useless, purpose of funding some public sector pensions. If Mr Rudd was really serious about his "education revolution". He'd shift the entire $50 billion in the Future Fund to a new education fund, add all future surpluses to it, then be able to make a worthwhile difference across the entire sector." [emphasis added]

    From The West Australian
    

    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 19)
    
    
    • One Letter noting the demise of vocational secondary schools

Tuesday 15 May

• The West Australian
  
  
  • PM targets States on schools (page 9)
    
    See below for a range of stories on this topic, from The Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
    
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • WA workers win biggest pay rises
    
    But not teachers!
    
    
    
    
• The Brisbane Courier Mail
  
  
  • Teacher cull opens vacancies [14 May]
    by Tess Livingstone, education editor
    
    "Education Queensland will spend $2.5 million to jettison 500 under-performing primary school teachers.
    
    "Under the voluntary program, dubbed the "burnt out bonus", eligible classroom teachers can apply for a grant of up to $50,000 by May 25 to help them make the transition to study, business or another career.

    "Education Minister Rod Welford said the move would open the way for new, enthusiastic teachers to take their places.

    "We are aware there are some primary teachers who would like to leave the profession and do something different," he said.

    "This program recognises the service provided to Queensland by these teachers and supports their goal of moving to a new career.

    "It's a positive for the teachers seeking change – and for the new primary-trained graduates waiting in the wings."

    "About 1200 teachers have already left Education Queensland since the Government first offered the controversial Career Change Program in 2002.

    "Mr Welford said the program was self-funding through the savings made from the salary difference between senior teachers and new graduates.

    "He said principals and regional officers would decide who was eligible for the bonus and he had made it clear the department was to be proactive in ensuring top performing teachers were not lost as part of the scheme.

    "While the teachers are not encouraged to seek work in non-government schools, Education Queensland cannot prevent them doing so. However, to obtain the $50,000, they must show details of how the $50,000 will help them establish a new career.

    "Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said the payout scheme would allow teachers "to change careers with dignity" and open opportunities for unemployed primary teaching graduates.

    "Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Associations executive officer Greg Donaldson also welcomed the move.

    "If Education Queensland is going to look at rejuvenating the teaching workforce with all the new initiatives that have been talked about lately, then we would certainly support this scheme as it is all about getting the best for our kids," Mr Donaldson said."

    Full details of the program are available from www.acceleratedpathways.com.au

    From The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
    
    See following Editorial on this subject
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    No apple for teachers [14 May]
    
    "State school teachers keen for a sea change – and who leave with a $50,000 bonus to kickstart their new lives – should consider themselves very fortunate.

    "Within the next fortnight, as many as 500 teachers will grab the money and run, bringing to 1700 the total number to do so since the Career Change Program was introduced in 2002.

    "For all that, the measure is revenue-neutral because the teachers will be replaced by recent graduates on lower pay, and hopefully these will bring more enthusiasm and zest to the job than those who are leaving. In overseeing the scheme, Education Minister Rod Welford should ensure that the best-performing long-time teachers – those who would find another job easily either in private schools or elsewhere – are not let go from state schools.

    "Losing high-quality teachers who have a great deal to contribute would be a backward step.

    "The fact that the Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Associations has welcomed the move as "great for our kids in the classroom" suggests a feeling among parents that new blood is needed to implement new classroom initiatives.

    "Under pressure from both sides of politics, parents, employers and sections of the media, education authorities are taking note of national testing results and stepping up "the basics" – especially the teaching of literacy and numeracy in the early years of school. While Education Queensland is phasing out a Reading Recovery program designed to help Year 2 children with severe reading problems, it is replacing it with five days' in-service training for all teachers and teacher aides on how to teach reading.

    "This is designed to make individual help available to all children struggling with the basics.

    "Education Queensland is also spending $10 million on individual after-school one-on-one tutoring for children with reading difficulties. While Reading Recovery had its benefits in terms of one-on-one tutoring, it only assisted 14 per cent of Year 2 students in 40 per cent of schools, so something broader is required.

    "That is because if students miss out on good reading, writing and maths skills in the early years of primary school, investments in curriculum improvements and trade courses in secondary schools, however generous, will fall on infertile ground. From the point of view of parents and taxpayers, the most alarming aspect of the reading initiative is Mr Welford's acknowledgment that teachers require special help in how to teach reading.

    "As a matter of urgency, universities need to improve their teacher training courses as soon as possible, with less theory and more practical know-how.

    "Tonight, Prime Minister John Howard is set to announce the establishment of dedicated technical schools in opposition to Labor's plans to expand the teaching of trades at secondary schools. While trade and employment training suits many students better than an academic preparation for university, skills training must complement rather than supplant strong reading, writing and numeracy teaching which is essential for every school graduate regardless of whether they are headed for the workforce, TAFE or university."
    
    From The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • PM vows return to basics in schools
    by Samantha Maiden, Political correspondent
    
    "John Howard has pledged a "back-to-basics" education revolution for the nation's schools that will target exams, plain language curriculum and discipline.
    
    "Declaring himself an "avowed education traditionalist", the Prime Minister last night outlined the Government's plan to link the next $40 billion schools funding deal for the states to improved accountability and transparency for parents, including on matters such as bullying and discipline.

    "However, Labor leader Kevin Rudd accused Mr Howard of failing to act on the question of bullying, instead recycling the values debate as a stunt to gather votes in this year's federal election.

    "In a speech to the Centre for Independent Studies, Mr Howard also took aim at the Labor legacy, describing John Dawkins's university reforms of the 1990s as one of the biggest public policy failures of the past quarter of a century.

    "I'm an avowed education traditionalist. I believe in high academic standards, competitive examinations, teacher-directed lessons based on traditional disciplines, clear and readable curriculum material and strong but fair policies on school discipline," Mr Howard said.

    "I believe English lessons should teach grammar. I believe history is History, not Society and the Environment or Time, Continuity and Change. I believe geography is Geography, not Place and Space.

    "Though a product of the government school system and proudly so, I believe in choice, a cause that our political opponents are only now showing interest in as late and unconvincing converts." [emphasis added]

    "Mr Howard also warned TAFE colleges not to use the budget's vocational education reforms asan excuse to increase fees forstudents.

    "He claimed the reforms in last week's budget to introduce tuition vouchers for children who struggle with literacy and numeracy tests, summer schools for teachers and better school reporting and power for principals would "ripple across Australia's education and training landscape for decades".

    "What links our education reforms is a simple yet powerful idea: that the way of the future is to trust the people whose decisions matter most - students and parents, employers and employees - the people whose decisions will determine Australia's future productivity," he said.

    "Mr Howard pledged he would also have more to say on the teaching of history in schools as "our main source of cultural and historical sensibility".

    "Aiming squarely at Mr Rudd's credentials to become Australia's "education" prime minister, Mr Howard said Robert Menzies "would have recoiled at the thought of capturing the virtues of education by an R-squared relationship to GDP growth."

    "It's here that we encounter the supreme irony of Labor's mantra - where education is pressed into an almost soulless and narrow form of national economic service," he said.

    "Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the handiwork of Labor's last self-styled education revolutionary, John Dawkins.

    "The Dawkins universities revolution was also supposed to deliver for our economy. In the end, all it delivered was crushing uniformity. In fact, it now ranks asone of the most comprehensive policy failures of the last quarter-century."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Full text of John Howard's speech
    
    Similar story in The Melbourne Age
    
    
    
    

  • Howard backs executive powers for school principals [late update, 14 May]
    
    Prime Minister John Howard says school principals should have the power to hire and fire teachers, and decide how much they are paid.
    
    
    Similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald [with emphasis on John Howard's threat to withhold funding from state schools unless they publish information on students' performance, introduce merit pay for teachers, and give principals the power to hire and fire].
    
    Also in The Sydney Morning Herald: School funds linked to reports on violence
    
    
    

  • Science study falling behind
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "School science courses have failed to keep pace with changes in science and society over the past 50 years, leading students to consistently bypass the subject.

    "In a paper released by the Australian Council for Educational Research today, the nation's chief scientist, Jim Peacock, and dean of science education at Deakin University Russell Tytler argue the way the subject is taught in schools is doing a disservice to science education and say a radical "reimagining" of the curriculum is required.

    "It warns fewer students are studying science at a time when Australia and other industrialised nations most need them.

    "Professor Tytler says science education in Australia is in a state of crisis, as students turn away from a subject they view as irrelevant and unconnected to their lives.

    "This flight from science is occurring in societies that are in increasing need of science and technology-based professionals to carry the nation into a technologically driven future," he says. "It is the pipeline into this pool of expertise that seems in danger of drying up."

    "A shortage of qualified scientists and science teachers is exacerbating the problem.

    "The paper argues for science education to be refocused to spark interest and excitement in the field, rather than train future generations of scientists.

    "Dr Peacock says it is time for a paradigm shift in science education and that traditional courses are "not fruitful" in a modern world where students send instant messages around the globe.

    "Professor Tytler says there is a mismatch between science as taught in schools and as it exists in the "real world".

    "Research scientists say school science does not reflect the way they work and that "the focus should be on engaging young people, not on developing future scientists".
    
    "Science education has not kept up with either the changing nature of youth and their expectations or the changing nature of science," Professor Tytler said.

    "It's still dealing with knowledge as a fixed and delivered thing rather than a practical way of thinking and problem solving."

    "Dr Peacock said the science he learned at school did not meet the needs of today's students, and scientific research was no longer an individual pursuit but a collective, collaborative effort.

    "Traditional science education is not fruitful in such an environment," he said.

    "Professor Tytler said scientific knowledge changed so quickly the focus of schools should be on teaching students to think scientifically, learning to investigate, find information and assess it based on examples from their own lives and communities.

    "The paper argues that one of the reasons for the failure of school curriculums to change with the times was "the silent choice of teachers for the status quo; one which supports and reflects their identities as knowledgeable experts".

    "The knowledge explosion significantly challenges the traditional model of the teacher as expert who delivers significant and stable science concepts to dependent students," the paper says."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Melbourne Age
    
    
    

  • Broaden student minds, unis told
    by Caroline Overington
    
    "University students are too focused on learning skills that will enable them to get well-paid jobs and not on learning for its own sake, a leading educational consultant has declared.

    "Jonathan West, of the Australian Innovation Research Centre, told the Future Summit in Melbourne yesterday that students in the US were often encouraged to "do something completely useless and extremely difficult".

    "By comparison, the emphasis in Australia was on "do something simple that will enhance your job prospects".

    "Professor West was speaking as part of a panel of vice-chancellors and education experts on Australia's educational culture.

    "He said the US, a "very capitalist country", tried to prevent its undergraduates from studying for a profession.

    "It does not see its students as clients," he said. "There, they are a product. A much higher proportion of the curriculum is compulsory. You have to study philosophy and you have to study literature, and a foreign language.

    "At Harvard, for example, you are forbidden to study business, law, medicine, because if those things were offered (to undergraduates) they would take them.

    "The point of higher education is not to be trained in an economically lucrative profession."

    "But RMIT university vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner said it was a mistake to think Australian universities were "just an enabler, to produce a skilled workforce. That is selling us incredibly short".

    "Harvard was "not a bad model, but it's not the only model," she said. "We don't actually have any evidence that studying poetry or philosophy creates more creative people than doing, say, an intense architecture degree."

    "University of Queensland vice-chancellor John Hay, who moderated the discussion, said institutes of higher learning had generally welcomed the arrival of education as a national policy imperative, saying it had not been so popular since "the respectable fraud of the Dawkins revolution".

    "Colleagues have been applauding the recent budget, but more is needed," he said.

    "Deakin University vice-chancellor Sally Walker said government had probably underestimated the cost of the education revolution.

    "We all think it's a very good thing. We're all pleased to have a highly educated population," she said. "We're all delighted with the package of reforms in the federal budget, but they are the tip of the argument when you compare us with other economies."

    "Professor Walker said a major challenge for universities was encouraging students into higher education in a buoyant economy.

    "Young people are choosing not to go to university," she said. "I'd hate to be the vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia, when you can leave school and earn $80,000 to $100,000 in a menial job in the resources sector.

    "The truth is, recessions are good for universities. In boom times, there is less emphasis on higher education."

    "University of Sydney vice-chancellor Gavin Brown said a larger problem was a shortage of funds, not least for research."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Court orders $1m payout for young life ruined
    
    Benjamin Cox has no memory of the schoolyard bullying that blighted his life.
    
    
    
    
  • Boys step up to fight playground abuse
    
    John Howard need look no further than his own alma mater - Canterbury Boys High School in Sydney's southwest - for a lesson in how to turn around violence and bullying in the schoolyard.
    
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Dead bounce brings danger of spendfest
    
    The Government's status as election underdog is safe
    
    If the popular tide has started to turn against Labor following the ALP's stumbles on industrial relations and the Government's well-received budget, it is yet to register in Newspoll. This is not to say that Kevin Rudd can relax. But it reinforces that the Government is having to work doubly hard to get its message across.

   

  
  © The Australian
  
  
  

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Choice, not just money, needed for quality in education: PM
    by Michelle Grattan
    
    "Today's education challenge in Australia is about quality rather than money, Prime Minister John Howard has declared.

    "He said that for a long time, debates in Australia focused almost exclusively on money spent, not results. This was still the territory fiercely defended by many educationalists, state bureaucracies and unions.

    "But in the end, money in doesn't equal quality out. What's increasingly clear from education debates around the world is that quality demands choice, diversity, specialisation, transparency and competition."

    "A 2004 OECD study found almost no correlation in developed countries between spending per student and outcomes.

    "Speaking to the Centre for Independent Studies on "Australia Rising to the Education Challenge", Mr Howard claimed the Menzies education mantle for his Government. "Menzies was Australia's original Education Prime Minister, long before anyone thought of crowning themselves with such lofty epithets. Last week's budget in many ways stands on the shoulders of Menzies and his enormous education legacy."

    "Countering Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's call for an "education revolution", the budget announced various initiatives, including a $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund to finance capital investment. The Government is also stepping up its intervention in the states' educational sphere.

    "Mr Howard condemned Labor for an excessively economically based approach. Labor's mantra pressed education "into an almost soulless and narrow form of national economic service. Invariably, this ends up producing not just bad education policy but even worse economic policy."

    "He pointed to the changes by Labor's John Dawkins in the 1980s, which were supposed to deliver for the economy but only brought "crushing uniformity". Spelling out his philosophy, Mr Howard said: "I'm an avowed education traditionalist. I believe in high academic standards, competitive examinations, teacher-directed lessons based on traditional disciplines, clear and readable curriculum material and strong but fair policies on school discipline."

    "Mr Rudd challenged Mr Howard's claim to be continuing in the Menzies tradition. Speaking at a function in Melbourne to mark the second anniversary of The Monthly, he said the Liberal Party under Mr Howard had lost its social conscience.

    "Mr Rudd said he wanted Labor to recapture the centre of Australian politics. "The real radicals of Australian politics now belong to the right," he said."
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • Go figure!
    by Elisabeth Tarica
    
    With pay so low, it figures that many more students look for careers outside of numbers.
    
    "... Unravelling the mysteries of algebra and logarithms is one thing but for the council members of the Mathematical Association of Victoria - meeting in what they jokingly call the "Maths Mansion" - the greatest puzzle is how they will turn around their profession's fortunes. As almost everyone agrees, maths is in crisis.

    "A reason is evident tonight: almost everyone is on the high side of 50, many near retirement. The ranks are not replenishing. Fewer students take higher-level maths at university and at secondary levels..."
    
    Solving the crisis - what needs to be done
    
    * Greatly increase the number of university graduates with appropriate maths and statistical training.
    * Broaden the maths sciences research base.
    * Identify, anticipate and meet industry needs for a pool of tertiary-trained expert mathematicians and statisticians.
    * Ensure that maths teachers have appropriate training.
    * Encourage more high-school students to study intermediate and advanced maths.
    
    Source: The National Strategic Review of Mathematical Sciences Research in Australia.
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

  • Online Poll: Are schools tough enough on bullies?
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Time to remove teacher restraints
      
      "When asked, bullies of all ages and sexes will tell you that they do it "because I can". The only way to stop them is to make them seriously reconsider what they are doing, and do what Prime Minister John Howard is apparently doing — giving teachers more power to stop it.

      "But that presupposes that the laws regarding disciplining children are amended to allow this to occur. Currently, it is simply not possible to even tell them, "No, you are not allowed to do that." Let's hope that the PM can come up with something that changes this stupidity to something useful."
      
      Geoff Cass, Tewantin, Qld
      
      

    • Here endeth the Prime Minister's lesson
      
      "In targeting bullying, Prime Minister Howard (The Age, 14/5) may well have said: "The competition to gain the services of these people is growing all the time in our modern economy. We need to be proactive to find and recruit them ahead of the other major users such as the privatised transport operators and big business senior management. We are able to assure them they will be welcome in politics and working with like-minded colleagues. We have the advantage of being able to offer greater security of employment and a more generous pension scheme than will be on offer from the AWAs that our competitors favour.

      "The situation is not yet dire, as we still have some very experienced head-kickers on the front bench and some wonderful young toughs being groomed behind the scenes, but we cannot afford to relax."

      "Mr Howard then left for a special meeting with Pastor Peter Curtis to discuss which Bible quotes could be used to justify further budgetary cuts on the aged and destitute."
      
      Peter Thomson, Richmond
      
      

    • Bully teachers
      
      "Mr Howard has discovered that there are bullies in schools. What an amazing surprise, so long after it has been highlighted in newspapers, on television programs and as the subject of state government programs. Will he now give money to the states to better target such concerns or just deliver more orders linked to his monetary controls — do as I order you or get nothing for literacy and numeracy.

      "One area of bullying that no one is targeting is that by some principals and their cronies against teachers lower in the hierarchy. The Victorian Education Department certainly does not care at all about such matters and continually ignores calls to respond to complaints."
      
      Ange Kenos, Niddrie

      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  

  Note: Several stories are linked from similar articles in The Australian, above
  

  • Editorial
    Time for schools to open their books
    
    "In the days following last Tuesday's budget, the Prime Minister, John Howard, taunted his opposite number with the huge boost that had been given to education, calling it the "real education revolution". Certainly, since Kevin Rudd became Leader of the Opposition and set out his preliminary ideas about education, and his slogan, there has been a revolution in the Government's attitude to this neglected subject.

    "Mr Howard's proposals on bullying and on greater independence for school principals appear to be a further response to the positive reception Labor has received for its education policies. His suggestions are not all new - the Federal Government has been making this case since at least 2004 - but the ideas are worthwhile, and they are good politics for the Government: they cost little and they raise the Government's education profile further after a decade in which state schools in particular have been low in its priorities.

    "The suspicion will be, though, that the Government's interest in discipline and bullying falls disproportionately on government schools; that it is too much about politics and not enough about education. That would be deeply unfortunate - because this is an issue of great importance to parents. Parents - as Mr Howard says - should have the right to know about discipline incidents at their children's schools. The facts tendered in the case of a Hunter Valley man who was tormented at school, reported in today's Herald, show how bullying can ruin lives. The NSW Government has extensive anti-bullying programs operating. It says the Prime Minister's recommendations are policy already in this state. That would be good - if the information were easily accessible. At present it is not. It is available in schools' annual reports, but is not centrally collected. Parents who want to find it must apply to each school for its annual report. Private schools, meanwhile, do not have to publish it at all.

    "Parents need to know more about the performance of all schools - and not only on questions of discipline. Choice is good in education, but the only way it can be properly exercised is if parents know how schools - all of them, private, independent and government - compare with one another. Without accurate information, parents inevitably rely on the inaccurate - neighbourhood gossip, in effect. British and US education authorities provide comparative information about all schools' performance. Why cannot Australia's do the same?"
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    

    Seven Letters on bullying, many on the theme: "It would be more to the point if the Prime Minister were to start by putting his own house in order."
    

 

• ABC Lateline [14 May]
  
  
  • Tony Jones talks to Education Minister Julie Bishop
    
    
    
    
    
• The Times
  
  
  • Secondary school to keep to one teacher for all lessons
    by Alexandra Blair
    
    "Teenagers at a pioneering school are to receive the same teacher for every lesson, every day, in an attempt to turn around its results.

    "Pupils at St Thomas Aquinas’ RC High School in Chorlton, near Manchester, will be taught by the same person for all the core subjects up to the age of 14. Specialists will be brought in for the sciences, languages, design and PE.

    "The move to replicate the primary school-style of teaching is intended to help pupils to adapt to secondary school..."

    Full story in The Times at link
    
    
    

  • Children who miss numeracy targets to get one-on-one help
    
    Plans to give struggling children intensive one-on-one numeracy training in the hope of making British standards comparable to the best in the world will be outlined today by Gordon Brown.
    
    See related story in The Guardian
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Brown promises to focus on school standards
    
    Teachers today welcomed the promise from the prime minister in-waiting, Gordon Brown, that his priorities for education will be focused on what is taught in the classroom, rather than on new school structures.
    
    
    
    

Wednesday 16 May

• ABC News
  
  
  • Opposition disputes 'mining boom' to blame for housing shortage

    "The State Opposition has disputed claims by the Education Minister that the mining boom is to blame for a shortage of accommodation for teachers in regional areas.

    "The Education Minister, Mark McGowan, says 148 teachers had to live in temporary accommodation including hotels in February, costing taxpayers almost $100,000.

    "He says there are still 29 teachers in temporary accommodation, costing about $6,000 a day.

    "Mr McGowan says mining companies are taking all the accommodation in regional areas.

    "But the Opposition spokesman for Education, Peter Collier, says the problem is not confined to mining towns.

    "It's naive in the extreme to assume that the problem with housing is occurring only in mining towns," he said.

    "It is occurring right across the state. It's occurring in towns like Kalgoorlie, like Geraldton and in major regional centres across the state.

    "We cannot put a roof over the head of our newly graduated teachers and yet we expect them to go to country towns," he said.

    "This issue should have been addressed years ago.

    "The government of Western Australia should have made allowances for accommodation for our newly graduated teachers to ensure that they do have appropriate accommodation and that they're not stuck in broom cupboards in clinical motel rooms for the better half of the year." [emphasis added]

    "Secretary of the State School Teachers Union David Kelly says the government should have planned properly for the future growth in public sector housing.

    "This problem has been around for years and nothing has been done about it and now we have the crisis," he said.

    "There used to be a few going to hotels at the beginning of the year while accommodation became available, now they're staying there for three months and longer."
    

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Teachers' hotel bill $6200 a day (page 5)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "Taxpayers are being slugged thousands of dollars a day to accommodate teachers in hotels across the State because of the shortage of government housing in the bush.

    "Education Minister Mark McGowan has revealed that at the start of the school year, 148 teachers had to live temporarily in hotels, motels or other private accommodation. The bill was $93,040 for February, according to answers he gave to parliamentary questions from Independent MP Liz Constable.

    "Yesterday, he said that by the start of second term last month, the Department of Education and Training said 29 teachers were temporarily housed in hotels and other accommodation at an estimated cost of about $6200 a day.

    "Dr Constable said the cost blowouts were another example of the department's lack of strategic planning and failure to provide adequate housing. State School Teachers Union acting president Anne Gisborne said she was surprised so many teachers were still in temporary accommodation. "I would suggest that 150 teachers requiring accommodation in first term is actually higher than you would normally expect," she said.

    "So I thin there is a housing crisis and it's unfortunately happening at the same time that we're having a teacher shortage crisis."

    "Mr McGowan said the State's booming resources sector had put pressure on government and private rental accommodation, particularly in country areas. [And of course, the State Government never considered that in its planning!  Web]

    "The Department of Housing and Works provides public housing to a range of public sector employees across the State," he said. "Over the past three financial years, 85 new properties have been constructed... for specific allocation to the Department of Education and Training. [Perhaps that was not enough, if at the start of the year, 146 teachers were living in hotels, and 29 still are?  Web] In the current financial year alone, 46 properties will have been built for DET as a cost of more than $16.5 million."

    From The West Australian
    
    Similar story at ABC News
    

    
    
    
    
  • Premier’s control ‘erodes public service independence’ (page 6)
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    "The State’s public sector watchdog has had one last go at Alan Carpenter in a final report which says allowing the Premier to control the management of the public sector has eroded the separation between the political and administrative arms of Government.
    
    "In her last report before she finishes next week after the Government declined to renew her contract, Public Sector Standards Commissioner Maxine Murray also raised serious concerns about the state of the public sector, saying it was “out of balance”.
    
    “The Premier, as Minister for Public Sector Management, delegates a number of his responsibilities under the Public Sector Management Act to the Director-General of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet,” the report, tabled in Parliament, said.
    
    “This vesting of authority in the Minister (and subsequent delegation) has, I believe, resulted in there being not enough separation between the political and the administrative arms of the executive.”
    
    "In the final part of her 10-year review of the public service, Ms Murray said she believed the public service scales had been tipped too far in favour of political responsiveness over political impartiality.
    
    "The damning report said the failure to improve the gender imbalance in chief executive appointments and senior management positions generally was highly problematic and in need of urgent address.
    
    "The report calls for the establishment of an independent body, based on the State Services Commissioner in New Zealand and the State Services Authority in Victoria, to be responsible for the recruitment, employment and performance management of chief executives."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • PLATO Nominated for Citizen of the Year "Gold Swan Award" (page 47)
    
    Honouring outstanding contribution and achievement by Western Australians committed to the advancement of the State and its people
    
    PLATO is one of 20 groups nominated for this award.
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor [late update from 15 May]
    
    
    • I disagree

      "I pay almost $30 a month to a toothless tiger called the Teachers' Union. Now I am expected to pay annual dues to a professional body with no recognisable teacher representation or platform.

      "If anyone wonders how WACOT (West Australian College of Teaching) first secured its membership, the reason makes sense as to why so many are now refusing to pay the 2007 fees.

      "Were we offered better conditions and pay, protection of rights, some help with the ever-festering sore called outcomes education? No. We were threatened that if we failed to join we would lose our employment.

      "The good thing about WACOT is that it has never failed in any of its promises - it made none.

      "It is little wonder that our profession is losing respect within the community. No self-respecting adult would allow themselves to be railroaded in this way.

      "I am now told that refusal to pay will result in loss of membership and hence employment.

      "The doctors' professional body - the Australian Medical Association - has at least a public voice when there are issues with public health.

      "Unless we end up voting in a little rotund man with a loud voice, fist raised and wearing braces, I'll gladly leave. At least that way I might redeem some self-respect."

      Christine Kelly, Spearwood
      
      
      

• The Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Serving the children of the revolution
    
    Teaching unions once again have missed the point

    "The three main stakeholders in shaping Australia's education revolution have now outlined their competing visions. The Government favours a return to a classical liberal model in which students are ensured a solid foundation in core subjects and in which teachers are valued and encouraged to update their skills. Labor, too, wants a greater emphasis on basic numeracy and literacy and to extend the teaching of trade skills in to the secondary school system. Education unions remain on the fringe, advocating the preservation of a system that evolved during the 1980s in response to high rates of youth unemployment, erroneously considered a fundamental shift that would doom future generations to the unemployment scrap heap. In response, extending the quantity of education became an end in itself, most often at the expense of the quality of the secondary and tertiary education delivered.

    "Despite the philosophical divide between the Government and Opposition on what form the education revolution should take, there is now political agreement that a solid grasp of the education basics - literacy, numeracy, history and geography - is an essential building block to enhance the life prospects of the individual and, by extension, the community. Labor has been able to move past the Latham-inspired politics of envy that ignored the trend by parents towards an independent school education for their children. Under Kevin Rudd, Labor has set out a comprehensive overhaul of the education system including early childhood learning, cutting HECS fees for maths and science teachers, and establishing a national curriculum board to develop a uniform national curriculum for English, history, maths and science. In his budget reply, the Opposition Leader unveiled an extension of Labor's vision for building trades skills by funding new resources in all secondary schools. At its core, Labor's vision is to harness education as the great driver of national productivity gains.

    "Labor's promise of an education revolution has spurred the Government to action. In his address to the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney on Monday, John Howard provided a valuable context to the way in which the Government sees its own education revolution progressing. It is rooted in giving all students a solid foundation, with catch-up vouchers for those who fall behind. Teachers will be encouraged to update their skills and rewarded for doing so. Principals will have a greater say over how their schools are run and parents will receive better feedback. The renewed emphasis on vocational or trade education will continue in dedicated centres, which will ultimately be integrated with universities.

    "In claiming Menzies as Australia's education revolutionary, the Prime Minister also rejected what he said was Labor's view of education as an almost soulless and narrow form of national economic service. In highlighting the Dawkins reforms of the mid-1990s - which ended the divide between universities and colleges of advanced education and ended up hiding youth unemployment in extended schooling and university attendance, at great cost to the quality of the product - Mr Howard has a point. Certainly, Mr Rudd has projected Labor's education revolution in terms of providing units of skills to meet economic demand in the quest for national productivity. Labor has pledged $2.5 billion over 10 years to build new Trades Training Centres and upgrade existing facilities and equipment in all of Australia's 2650 secondary schools - government and non-government. The aim is to boost Year 12 completion rates to 90 per cent, adding an estimated $9billion to the economy. Mr Rudd does not explain what this means for the existing TAFE system or why early school leavers would be tempted to stay put by a new workshop in the same institution.

    "The Government unleashed its trades education revolution at the 2004 election through the creation of dedicated trades schools that operate outside the existing system and employ teachers on workplace agreements. Mr Howard says that Labor's mini-tech presence in every school is a lowest common denominators approach that dilutes resources and does not allow for innovation. He said Labor, in opposing the Government's scheme, was driven mostly by its objections to AWAs, but giving control to a union-dominated system was a reflection of industrial relations ideology wagging Labor's policy tail.

    "As always, the reluctant participant in this debate is the Australian Education Union, which maintains the fiction, against all the evidence of illiteracy among university entrants, that there is no crisis in standards. In a submission to the Senate inquiry into the academic standards of school education, the AEU rejected the idea of uniform testing for basic skills because it could not take stock of the more subjective values such as a "sense of wonder" and levels of cowardice or arrogance. The AEU acknowledged that 7-12 per cent of students failed to meet minimum standards in literacy and numeracy but said this did not indicate standards were falling or were worse in Australia than elsewhere. This is a depressing reflection on an organisation that has allowed the profession it represents to fall into such disrepute. The lowest common denominator approach has failed not only successive generations of students, but their teachers as well. It has bred a culture that cannot attract the brightest minds and has resulted in inadequate, but uniform, rates of remuneration. The time is ripe for an education revolution. One that will give students the start they need and free their teachers from the shackles of misguided professional representation." [emphasis added]
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Choice of schools creating 'ghettos'
    by Justine Ferrari, education writer
    
    "Students in disadvantaged suburbs are bypassing local government schools and travelling to schools in more affluent areas where they achieve higher results.

    "Twenty-five years after Victorian parents were given a choice in where to send their children, government high schools in middle-class areas are flourishing and schools in poorer suburbs of Melbourne are turning into ghettos.

    "Research by University of Melbourne associate professor of education Stephen Lamb, published today, finds students at bigger schools achieve better results in statewide tests.

    "The average score in the state general achievement test on general knowledge, literacy and numeracy skills is 59.4 per cent for students from poorer suburbs attending schools out of their area, compared with 50.5 per cent for those attending local schools.

    "Professor Lamb's analysis of Victorian Certificate of Education results shows that the size of the school accounted for 34 per cent of the difference in leaving results between schools in 1994, but rose to 43 per cent cent in 2004.

    "Victoria was the first state to remove school area boundaries and give autonomy to principals, including the control of school budgets and the right to hire and fire teachers - reforms called for by John Howard in a speech to the Centre for Independent Studies on Monday..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    

    • A long way to travel, but it's worth it

    
    Similar story in The Melbourne Age
    
    
    
    

  • Blog [meaning readers can reply to it]
    A new class of political battle
    by Paul Kelly
    
    "Education has assumed a priority in Australia’s national political agenda unequalled for many years, the result of Kevin Rudd’s strategy and the Howard Government’s evolution.

    "The two templates that define this transformation are Rudd’s January 2007 paper calling for an education revolution to revive national productivity, and Peter Costello’s budget last week that gave education a new weight in Government funding.

    "Rudd’s education revolution remains his pivotal policy. It constitutes an attack on John Howard’s record but, in office, it would become a challenge for the Labor Party.

    "Rudd envisages a double transformation: “A revolution in the quantum of our investment and a revolution in the quality of our education outcomes.”

    "In short, more funding and better outcomes. Rudd reached this position after talking with economists, not educationalists. This is the insight into his thinking. His revolution is an economic policy..."
    
    "Hence education spokesman Stephen Smith says Labor aims “to boost the investment in education at every level”: childhood, primary, secondary, vocational, technical and university. This revolution demands not just a shift in finances but a cultural transformation in Australia’s educational institutions. Rudd’s pledge should be taken at face value. Labor should be assessed according to its progress towards this end, financial and cultural..."
    
    "Howard’s response signals that Rudd has made an impact. But education reform to win productivity is a daunting task for Australia. The cultural transformation it demands transcends even the financial rearrangements. This is reflected in the story of the Howard Government. Howard has had a longstanding interest in education: schools rather than universities.

    "Before entering parliament, he backed Robert Menzies’ historic early-’60s decision to begin state aid to private schools. In Howard’s second “Australia Rising” lecture this week, devoted to education, he said last week’s education budget “stands on the shoulders of Menzies” and his philosophy of university expansion, choice for parents and a vision of educational excellence based on the Western tradition.

    "Howard has funded government schools generously and private schools more generously. Federal funding of government schools has risen close to 70 per cent in real terms since 1996 while enrolments have risen only 1.2 per cent. Financial inputs are basic to the education debate, but Howard’s central theme is that money cannot guarantee quality education.

    “What is the education challenge in Australia in 2007?” Howard asked. “It turns on one word: quality. Since coming to office, my Government has sought to open up our education debate and to focus it more squarely on quality. In the end, money in doesn’t equal quality out. What’s increasingly clear from education debates around the world is that quality demands choice, diversity, specialisation, transparency and competition.”

    "Howard’s real attack on Rudd and the Labor party is that they focus on inputs, not outputs. He asks: what are the educational values that are being financed? If they are postmodernist values that reject objective tests and deny school transparency, then Australia’s productivity will fall, not rise.

    "Howard is a traditionalist who believes in tests, traditional subject disciplines, greater school autonomy and more transparency to empower parents. But these ideas have been resisted for years by state Labor governments, to different degrees, along with educational theorists.

    "The truth is that Howard, after 11 years, has had only limited success in changing classroom values. The federal Government struggles to overcome state resistance. By attaching conditions to its funds, it has created national tests for years 3, 5, 7 and 9, and by this device seeks to provide performance pay to teachers, greater autonomy to principals and more transparency for parents..."
    
    Full story [and ability to post a reply] in The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    More action essential to curb bullying
    by Michael Carr-Gregg
    
    We have an obligation to do everything possible to protect our children from victimisation
    
    "If any evidence was required of the potential psychological damage that can result from school bullying, it was provided on Monday by NSW Supreme Court judge Carolyn Simpson when she awarded 18-year-old Ben Cox about $1 million for the pain and suffering he endured as a result of years of harassment at school..."
    
    "While common sense dictates that all schools have a legal obligation to provide students with a safe environment in which to learn, there seems to be considerable variation across Australia when it comes to such policies. Disquiet with this situation appears to be growing. Recently the Association of Independent Schools of Queensland surveyed 4000 parents and found poor discipline was one of the most frequently cited reasons for parents moving their children to an independent school, along with them being "unhappy with school management/discipline policy" or "bullying".

    "The Prime Minister has sniffed the political wind and given voice to these concerns, as he asks schools to be more accountable for school violence and disorder.

    "The fact is that in schools across Australia, acts of bullying and harassment occur at least on a weekly basis, and the reality is that if these acts occurred outside the school gates, they would likely be grounds for criminal prosecution.

    "Some of the state education ministers have publicly stated that in combating bullying and harassment, they're already doing much of what the Prime Minister suggests. But they need to get out more.

    "As a frequent visitor to schools across Australia, I know there is enormous variation in the content and implementation of bullying and harassment policies; and when it comes to cyber-bullying, many schools have no policy at all..."
    
    Michael Carr-Gregg is an adolescent psychologist and ambassador for the national depression group Beyondblue.
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • The Higher Education Supplement has 22 articles plus seven Letters today, including:
    
    
    
    • Cash welcome but it's no bonanza
      
      Education Minister Julie Bishop has confirmed that universities will have to agree to deliver greater efficiencies to qualify for the transition from one to three-year funding agreements announced in last week's federal budget.
      
      
      
    • Fund will steer clear of politics
      
      Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop yesterday assured the higher education sector that the new $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund would not be used as a slush fund to shore up marginal seats. She also said it would be an important new funding source for newer, smaller and regional universities, not just the Group of Eight research alliance.
      
      
      
    • $100m [for Western Australia] to deter brain drain
      
      Medical research funding worth $100 million will help Western Australia stem the scientific brain drain and translate medical breakthroughs from the lab to the doctor's surgery. Last week's federal budget committed $100 million in funding for two new medical research hubs in WA: one for children's health research and the other for research into the genetic aspects of adult diseases.
      
      
      
    • Funding adds up for maths
      
      Vice-chancellors have an unexpected opportunity to rebuild maths departments. Jan Thomas, who took part in the 2005-06 national strategic review of the discipline, said the surprise boost in federal funding for mathematics and statistics was worth almost $3000 a student.
      
      
      
    • Deans say training deal worst possible
      
      The much-vaunted education revolution federal budget appears to give teacher training the worst possible deal, says the president of the education deans, Sue Willis. Professor Willis said funding per education student would rise from $7950 in 2007 to $8217 next year but a bipartisan federal parliamentary report had urged an increase to $10,106.
      
      
      
    • Op Ed
      Vouchers not an option in new market model
      by Catherine Armitage
      
      After his education speech in Sydney this week, the Prime Minister took some time to explain why he didn't like the idea of vouchers for schools.
      
      
      
    • Op Ed
      Cyberspace ushers in flexible degrees
      by Aban Contractor
      
      Cyberspace is emerging as a place where students can study for a degree without any face-to-face contact with a tutor. Different entry points throughout the year will allow students to enrol at a time of their choosing. Teachers and students will interact through online classrooms. Such a scenario is a 21st century solution to a 21st century problem: too many qualified students and too few places.
      
      
      
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Three on school bullying, plus:
      
      "I would like to offer my sincere congratulations to John Howard for having the guts to stand up to the states and the Australian Education Union. Apart from seriously dumbing down education in every Labor-run state, the ALP, whilst in bed with the AEU, has produced 20 years of jumbo-sized FFF. Fail, fail, fail is all they have done for our kids.

      "Mr Howard has pulled a rabbit out of his hat, and declared that schools will miss out on federal funding unless they publish data on student performance and introduce merit pay for teachers. Furthermore, principals would also be given the power to hire and fire teachers. Parents will finally be given more information about school performance, including incidents of violence and bullying. I am fed up with parents being kept in the dark, and put at the mercy of striking, bullying unions while our children can’t read."
      
      David Bernard, Hoppers Crossing, Vic
      
      
      

      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Budget fails the future and compassion tests
    by Tanya Plibersek [a Labor member of federal Parliament]
    
    "... This budget is a missed opportunity when it comes to lifting Australian productivity. The Government hasn't invested seriously in education or in broadband and the budget papers show productivity growth will fall from the end of next year.

    "Of course, the university fund is welcome, but it comes after 11 years of neglect. It also comes with a bitter pill - the uncapping of the number of full-fee-paying places for undergraduate Australian students. It is likely that some courses at some universities will eventually take only full-fee-paying students.

    "Not all young people want to go to university and Peter Costello's budget has nothing for those who don't. The three additional "Australian technical colleges" won't help much. The first students won't graduate from these colleges, which were announced at the time of the last election, until 2009 at the earliest. Including the three newly announced colleges, they will have about 8500 students, at best, enrolled by 2009. The shortage of skilled tradespeople will be 240,000 by 2016. It's a big shortfall which would best be filled by more trades in school and better support for the TAFE system..."
    
    "The Howard Government spends less on early-childhood education than any other country in the OECD. There is no better investment in the future. We know children who start school confident and ready to learn do better throughout their lives. The Nobel economics laureate James Heckman has calculated taxpayers save $8 - through lower unemployment, lower incarceration, even lower divorce rates - for every dollar spent getting a disadvantaged child to preschool.

    "Labor has promised 15 hours a week of preschool education with a qualified teacher for every four-year-old, and up to 25,000 extra child-care places in centres built on school grounds..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor
    

    • "How amusing, the Prime Minister bullying schools about student bullying."

      Lyle Keats, Miranda
      
      
      
      
      

Thursday 17 May

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • School funding attacked
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor, with Harriet Alexander
    
    "The national system of funding schools is helping entrench social disadvantage in rural and suburban Australia, a report has found.

    "Australia is the only OECD country to funnel a disproportionate level of public funding into non-government schools, it says.

    "As an increasing proportion of students move into private schools, the report, to be released today, says the tool used to fund schools was established to favour disadvantaged Catholic schools, but it now advantages the richest private schools.

    "The report's author, Lyndsay Connors, a public school advocate who chaired the former NSW Public Education Council, said it was no longer appropriate to link funding for private schools to state government school funding.

    "Commonwealth funding to schools is indexed on increases to the average amount states spend on public schools per student.

    "This method was used when the bulk of non-government schools had fewer resources than government schools.

    "But according to the report, Making Federalism Work for Schools, commissioned by the NSW Teachers Federation, the method is now being used to increase the resource gap between public and private schools.

    "Ms Connors said indexation was a financial tool that was being used as a policy device to increase grants to private schools, which receive two-thirds of their public funding from the Commonwealth. Public schools receive less than 10 per cent of their funding from the Federal Government.

    "The formula has an insidious effect," Ms Connors said. "When students leave a public school, the cost to the state government of running that school stays the same. But the cost per student of running that school rises. It is this increase that gets passed on through Commonwealth indexation, where it flows disproportionately to private schools."

    "The complexity of the language of indexation was also used to mask real cuts to university funding, Ms Connors said.

    "Despite Australia's strong economic growth, pockets of concentrated social disadvantage had become entrenched across rural, remote and suburban Australia.

    "The differences in the social background of students are sufficient to register on OECD indicators of inequality and reflect no credit on such an affluent country," she said.

    "The federal Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, yesterday disputed the State Government's claims that the Commonwealth had pegged recurrent funding for public schools to state indexation, with no real increases above this level.

    "Ms Bishop said that the Federal Government had also provided $3 billion in grants to public schools for capital works and literacy programs."

    • Six out of 10 people in marginal federal seats perceive John Howard as "the private school Prime Minister" and two-thirds believe he has underfunded public schools for the past 11 years, according to a survey conducted by the Australian Education Union. See following story on this in today's Melbourne Age.


From The Sydney Morning Herald at link




• The Melbourne Age
  
  
• Most view Howard as 'private school PM'
  by Farrah Tomazin
  
  "Most Australians see John Howard as the "private schools Prime Minister" and believe that Canberra is grossly underfunding government schools, according to a national survey.

  "With education a key battleground between political parties, an Australian Education Union poll of voters in marginal seats has placed the Coalition's funding record under a spotlight prior to this year's election.

  "The survey found that more than 60 per cent of people believe the Government favours private schools at the expense of the public education system, while less than one-third of people agree with Mr Howard's view that improving the curriculum and boosting teaching standards are the top priorities for state schools.

  "The survey also took aim at the Government's plan to give $700 tuition vouchers to parents whose children are failing in reading, writing and maths — a central plank of this month's budget — with 80 per cent of respondents saying the $457 million package should have instead gone directly to schools to employ specialist teachers.

  "Union president Pat Byrne said the poll showed that voters recognised the Government's policies had skewed funding away from public schools.

  "But Education Minister Julie Bishop said: "This is a continuation of the misinformation campaign the AEU has been running for some time. Their biased survey seeks to perpetuate the myth that taxpayer funding to public schools is unfair."

  "She said 67 per cent of students attended public schools in Australia and received 75 per cent of taxpayer funding.
  
  "The telephone survey of 400 people was conducted the week after the May 9 budget. The union is likely to step up its campaign for more public education funding prior to the election, arguing that an extra $2.9 billion is needed each year to ensure that every state school can provide a high-quality education.

  "Private school advocates say that when state and federal funding is combined, taxpayers spend $4173 per independent school student compared with $8134 per government school student.
  
  From The Melbourne Age at link
  
  
  

• Law 'lags behind' cyber bullying
  
  The law needs to be updated if authorities have any hope of stamping out the growing problem of cyber bullying, a former senior judge says.
  
  
  
  
• Letter to the Editor
  
  
  • Struggling schools
    
    "Professor Stephen Lamb is right to suggest that successive governments are to blame for the decay of poorer western and northern-suburbs schools (The Age, 16/5). The push began in the early 1990s under the Liberal government's "Schools of the Future" program, which led to competition between state schools in deprived areas and the richer state and private schools. That competition was never appropriate, as poorer schools have been historically under-resourced and don't have the same support and expertise in their communities.

    "We have developed a situation where rich schools such as Glen Waverley and Balwyn high schools become pseudo-private schools, while those in Heidelberg West and similar areas struggle with falling student numbers and crumbling facilities. In addition, their best students are creamed off by "successful" state and private schools, leaving us with a very difficult cohort of children and families to work with.

    "The Labor Government has encouraged the competition. It has become very adept at publicly comparing school outcomes and blaming neglected and poorly resourced schools for so-called under-performance. The Bracks Government was very critical of the previous government for closing schools. However, its policies are creating a worse scenario by marginalising schools in poorer areas, thereby denying a quality education to those who need it most."

    Terry Howard, principal, Bellfield Primary School, Heidelberg West

  
  
  
• The Times
  
  
  • 160 books on must-read list for boys – full of blood, guts and class heroes
    
    A list of the top 160 books for teenage boys will be published today by the Education Secretary in an ambitious attempt to encourage them to read more for pleasure and keep up with girls at secondary school. The list contains no Dickens and no J. K. Rowling, but Philip Pullman, Anthony Horowitz, Robert Muchamore, Terry Pratchett and Darren Shan all feature in a list that is full of gritty, fighting, spying, fantastical, bloodthirsty and sporty working-class heroes from authors past and present.
    
    
    
    
• USA Today
  
  
  • Calculators tell teachers which pupils need help
    Reuters
    
    "New York: Texas Instruments, whose calculators helped make the company a household name, has found a way to help teachers quickly identify students who may be failing math, Chief Executive Rich Templeton said Monday.

    "The so-called TI-Navigator sends wireless signals from pupils' handheld calculators to a personal-computer screen that lets instructors correct and analyze errors in real time.

    "The teacher can understand who's not getting it" by assessing which functions students keyed into their calculators, Templeton said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York..."
    
    Full story in USA Today at link
    
    
    
    

Friday 18 May

• The Australian
  
  
  • Maths standards worse than 20 years ago
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The maths skills of science and engineering students entering their second year of university today are below the standard of maths students leaving school 20 years ago.

    "In a submission to the Senate inquiry on academic standards of school education, academics from James Cook University in Queensland argue that they have found a "significant decrease" in the standard of maths and physics taught in Year 12 over the past two decades.

    "The low participation in rigorous mathematics in senior high schools ... is causing a crisis in university mathematics and physics disciplines," it says.

    "The academics say they are unable to teach the level of maths required for students moving into second-year subjects in engineering, physics and mathematics.

    "There is no doubt that we are now unable to teach this subject to the same depth as we were in the 70s, 80s and early 90s," they say. "The level of mathematics competence of students entering this subject has forced us to reduce the difficulty of this subject twice in the last 15 years.

    "A cursory examination of the change in our subjects indicates that it is doubtful if our students, when they finish first-year university, are further advanced than a student at the end of Year 12 20 years ago."

    "The submission is signed by the heads of the school of mathematics, physics and IT, Associate Professor Wayne Read, Professor Mal Heron and Associate Professor Kevin Parnell from the school of earth and environmental sciences and Phillip Musumeci and Peter Ridd from the school of mathematics, physics and IT."
    
    From The Australian at link

    The full submission is available at this link
    
    
    
    
  • Students resent history 'guilt'
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "High school students resent being made to feel guilty during their study of Australia's indigenous past and dislike studying national history in general.

    "The History Teachers Association called yesterday for a rethink of the type of Australian history being taught in schools and the way in which it is taught.

    "History Teachers Association of NSW executive officer Louise Zarmati said her experience teaching in western Sydney was that students were resistant to learning about Australian politics and, in particular, indigenous history.

    "This is a somewhat delicate subject but they don't like the indigenous part of Australian history," she told a hearing of the Senate inquiry into the academic standards of school education in Sydney yesterday.

    "The feedback I get is they're not prepared to wear the guilt. They find it's something that's too personal, too much of a personal confrontation for them.

    "I think it sparks a lot of racism; it certainly did in my classroom. It makes it an unpleasant learning experience."

    "Australia's indigenous history has been a contentious issue in the ongoing "history wars" over the interpretation of European colonisation.

    "Historian Geoffrey Blainey brought the phrase "black armband view of history" to prominence in 1993 to describe the portrayal of European colonisation as shameful.

    "The description was picked up in 1996 by John Howard, who later launched an offensive on the teaching of Australian history in schools. The Government is now in the process of developing a national curriculum for Australian history.

    "Until this year, NSW was the only state in which Australian history was a compulsory stand-alone subject for students in years 7 to 10. In years 9 and 10, students study 20th century Australian history focusing on the workings of government and the history of politics, and the subject is examined in the Higher School Certificate.

    "Ms Zarmati said more than 20,000 students studied history for the HSC last year, of whom more than 11,000 studied ancient history, making it the most popular history course in the English-speaking world.

    "Ms Zarmati said history teachers constantly struggled with the unpopularity of Australian history in years 9 and 10.

    "They don't really enjoy it and feel forced to do it; they don't like the politics all that much," she said. "My personal opinion is that it's the nature of the beast.

    "Teenagers at that stage aren't mature enough to understand the concepts but when they get to years 11 and 12, they really enjoy Australian history because they're looking at problems and issues and debates."

    "In other evidence to the Senate inquiry, literacy expert Max Coltheart said the federal Government's budget initiatives to improve literacy and numeracy standards with programs costing more than $500million over four years was a "waste of money".

    "The budget included a scheme granting up to $50,000 to schools that showed a significant rise in literacy and numeracy standards, and vouchers worth $700 to provide one-on-one tuition for students failing to meet minimum national literacy and numeracy standards.

    "Professor Coltheart, professor of psychology and head of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, said the commonwealth should stipulate the type of reading tests schools had to use to qualify for the grants.

    "He said children who struggled to learn to read were labelled as having a learning difficulty but they actually suffered a teaching difficulty. The budget funding would be better spent on training primary school teachers how to teach reading properly."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Publisher rejects appeal to axe editor
    by Tony Barrass and Amanda O'Brien
    
    "The West Australian Government - led by a former television presenter - yesterday escalated its war with the state's monopoly newspaper, repeating calls for editor Paul Armstrong to be sacked.

    "But West Australian Newspapers chief executive Ken Steinke last night vowed the publisher would not be intimidated, attacking the Government's threat to shift millions of advertising dollars to any start-up competitor to the newspaper.

    "West Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty yesterday again criticised The West Australian's "viciously nasty and dishonest" reporting, particularly on his other portfolio of health. And in a move reminiscent of former Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's decision to strip millions of dollars in advertising from Brisbane's Courier-Mail because of its criticism of his government and the financial affairs of his family, Mr McGinty suggested government advertising would flow to anyone who attempted to break The West's monopoly.

    "Mr Steinke said this appeared to imply that the Government would send its advertising to another media outlet if it provided more favourable coverage.

    "One would assume taxpayers' money would be spent in a way that provided the best value for money - not according to which newspaper gave the Government the most favourable coverage," Mr Steinke said..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    See following Editorial on this article
    
    
    

  • Editorial
    Cry press freedom: Journalism is under attack in Western Australia
    
    "In 1776, the Virginia Declaration of Rights proclaimed: "The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments."

    "This fundamental principle has been disregarded by West Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty, who is unashamedly attempting to blackmail the board of The West Australian, saying that unless it sacks its editor, Paul Armstrong, and meets Mr McGinty's standards, the Government will not legislate to protect West Australian journalists and their sources.

    "Let us make it clear that the journalistic standards of The West Australian are not the issue in this debate. The Australian takes the position of Voltaire, who once wrote: "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."

    "Reporters Without Borders currently ranks Australia 35th in the world out of 168 countries in terms of press freedom. Mr McGinty seems intent on pushing us to the bottom of the ladder, where we would rub shoulders with Cuba and North Korea.

    "State governments in Australia have tried to nurture a compliant media. To some extent they succeeded in Western Australia by keeping the corrupt activities of Brian Burke out of the public eye until they were exposed at the Corruption and Crime Commission. In South Australia, Premier Mike Rann's staff lobbied for the removal of The Australian's then state political reporter Michelle Wiese-Bockman because they objected to her reporting, cutting her out of the information loop. In Tasmania, the government of Paul Lennon has made personal attacks on The Australian's Matthew Denholm, most recently for reporting on the Government's handling of a proposed pulp mill.

    "It is 20 years since Tony Fitzgerald's report on political and police corruption in Queensland led to the passing of Freedom of Information legislation, but its powers have since been eroded by the High Court and the federal Government.

    "Press freedom reached a nadir with Herald Sun journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus awaiting sentence for refusing to identify a confidential source. Former Customs officer Allan Kessing is also awaiting sentence after being convicted of leaking documents revealing dangerous flaws in airport securi ty.

    "Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has promised to introduce federal laws to protect journalists from the threat of prison for refusing to reveal confidential sources, but this will mean little if states do not enact similar legislation. What is required is effective legislation at federal and state levels including Freedom of Information laws, Whistleblower laws, Shield laws and standing corruption commissions. Without these, the public cannot be alerted to corruption, dishonesty or incompetence in government or the public service."
    
    From The Australian at link [scroll down to second Editorial]
    
    
    

  • Editorial
    Labor's AWA bluff fails reality test
    
    With cracks starting to appear in Labor's opposition to Australian Workplace Agreements, it is time to ask whether the whole campaign against them has been more bluff than substance.
    
    Full Editorial in The Australian at link

   

  
  © The Australian
  
  

  • Bullied kids most at risk of online abuse
    
    The children picked on in the schoolyard are likely to be the ones victimised in cyberspace, according to an expert from the Victoria Police sexual crimes squad.
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • First Byte
      
      "Why stop at a plain English school curriculum? Let’s legislate for no technical jargon in any profession. Just imagine doctors, lawyers, economists, tax experts, IT specialists and scientists all liberated through plain English – phonetically regular, of course."
      
      Cathie Doherty, Chapel Hill, Qld
  
  
  
  
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Education Minister: performance pay, hire-and-fire system could be state-run
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "State Governments may be allowed to introduce their own forms of performance pay for teachers without having to sign on to a Commonwealth model in order to get billions of dollars in schools funding.

    "Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop yesterday signalled that she was prepared to give the states room to develop their own performance pay "elements" into teachers' wages as a condition of the next four-year financing deal.

    "In order for the states to get about $42 billion in federal schools funding, Ms Bishop has demanded they sign on to a number of contentious measures, including giving principals greater power to hire and fire, providing more information to parents on school performance, bullying and discipline, and introducing performance pay. She yesterday confirmed that private schools would be required to adopt the same conditions as state schools as part of the deal, which takes effect from 2009 to 2012.

    "Asked if she would force the states to adopt a federal model of performance pay for teachers, or if governments could create their own systems Ms Bishop said: "If there's a model that emerges from the states and that could be adapted across the country, then we would certainly take that into account. But we'd at least want the states to sit down and talk sensibly about recognising and rewarding teachers.

    "We will make it a condition of federal funding that there will be performance-pay elements in school arrangements with teachers, and we can negotiate that over the coming months," Ms Bishop said.

    "Performance pay for teachers has long been a battleground between the Federal Government and the Labor states, which last month rejected Commonwealth plans to introduced the contentious system in all schools by 2009.

    "The minister originally proposed giving teachers bonuses based on a range of measures, including improvements in student results, feedback from the school community, and the attainment of professional development and higher standards.

    "However, the states described the plan as "unworkable" and "ideologically driven".

    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Shortage of uni places to be 'wiped out'
    
    Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop has declared that unmet demand in Australian universities will be "wiped out" as a result of the Federal Government's budget changes.
    
    
    
    
  • Catholic school ousts siblings without consent
    
    A Melbourne Catholic school has removed three siblings without their parents' consent, prompting claims of discrimination, because the eldest child has a learning disability.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Editorial
    Five billion reasons why universities need a shake-up
    
    "The Federal Government's sudden and renewed interest in tertiary education, demonstrated amply in the budget, has been received almost rapturously by universities. In an election year, with an opposition making the running on an education revolution, the $5 billion fund to provide income for research and capital improvements is certainly good politics. But is it good administration? Are our universities in a fit state to take advantage of the largesse about to be showered upon them?

    "Nearly 20 years after the Dawkins reforms gave the sector its present shape, it is becoming clear that not all is well. Australia has too many universities for its size. That means that quality of education must suffer as resources are spread too thin to allow concentration of talent and experience. The signs of resources spread too thin are plain. Australia has only three or four universities that rank in various lists of the world's top 100. Those lists are based on criteria to which each list may give varying weight, but chief among them is the quality of research - as measured by the number of times staff research papers are cited by other scholars in the field. In particular, the quality of research outside large universities continues to be patchy in the extreme. When countries are compared according to their best-performing university, Australia is outranked by countries across Europe and North America.

    "The Dawkins restructure of university education reduced higher education from two tiers to one, transforming or amalgamating the former colleges of advanced education into new universities, or separate institutes within existing universities. With hindsight, this development was probably a mistake. At a stroke it turned large numbers of non-academic, vocational subjects (tourism, hotel management, health administration, to name just three) into degree courses. It required, moreover, academics teaching these and other subjects to jump through the same research hoops that those in more established courses were trained to negotiate. The result: a large number of pointless research papers, published at considerable cost for no perceptible gain, and the waste of academics' time which might have been better spent improving teaching..." [emphasis added]
    
    Full Editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald at link

    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Money down the drain

      "Is it any surprise that a NSW Teachers Federation report written by Lyndsay Connors claims that government schools are disadvantaged by the funding model used by the Federal Government ("School funding attacked", May 17)? Surely the federation's money could have been better spent on finding ways to improve teacher training or teacher retention, or addressing other educational needs, rather than producing a report with a clearly predetermined outcome that does nothing to advance education in NSW.

      "However Connors and the federation wish to present it, the facts, as reported by the Productivity Commission, are that independent schools receive an average of $5053 in taxpayer funding per student, while government schools receive an average of $10,715. Any funding above this amount for independent schools consists of private contributions made by parents with their after-tax dollars.

      "It is time the federation looked forward instead of trotting out the same tired old arguments."

      Dr Geoff Newcombe, executive director, Association of Independent Schools of NSW, Sydney
      
      
      
      

Saturday – Sunday, 19 – 20 May

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • School geography has lost its way, say teachers
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Geography is taught in schools as a series of issues pushing a particular opinion rather than giving students a grounding in basic facts about natural processes and human interaction with the environment.

    "The Australian Geography Teachers Association and the Institute of Australian Geographers told a Senate inquiry into the academic standards of school education that geography, under the umbrella of Studies of Society and the Environment, had lost its disciplinary rigour.

    "AGTA director Grant Kleeman told the hearing in Sydney that students studied global warming but not the atmospheric processes required to understand climate change and its impact.

    "The traditional discipline encouraged students to look at issues from a variety of perspectives with the expectation students then formulate their own opinions rather than inculcate them with a particular perspective," Mr Kleeman said.

    "IAG president Jim Walmsley said the teaching of SOSE into schools resulted in geography students being "issue-led rather than being rigorous in their understanding of these issues".

    "Mr Kleeman said the notion of issue-based learning was introduced in the 1970s and 80s when everything taught in schools had to be immediately relevant to the lives of students.

    "We're advocating a return to a more systematic study of geography and history, where you look at processes as the entry point of study rather than the issue," he said.

    "AGTA chairman Nick Hutchinson said the perspectives pushed in school geography included radical green opinions and neo-liberal views school, when it should have a robust core as the base.

    "In geography, we've taken on board everything from extreme environmental perspectives through to peace perspectives," Mr Hutchinson said.

    "But all the time we come back to this core of the discipline, so we can deal with an issue like deep ecology, which might be as controversial as black-armband history, but we can do it within the discipline because we have tools of dissection," he said.

    "Deep ecology is a philosophy that says animals and plants have the right to as much ethical consideration as humans.

    "The automatic reaction of most kids is they want to protect nature, the environment, animals and cuddly things," he said.

    "The job of the teacher is to show them other sides, to facilitate class discussion so they can work out their values towards issues."

    "Understanding the processes at work in areas such as the Great Barrier Reef or cyclones destroying rainforests showed students that destruction was part of the natural growth cycle, he said.

    "The AGTA says geography should be compulsory for all students in years 7 to 10 as a stand-alone subject."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    Their submission to the Senate Inquiry is available at this link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Testing methods mask our failings

    Good marks from one source can't disguise Australia's falling standards of education, writes Kevin Donnelly
    
    "How well are Australian students performing? Based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment test, they appear to be doing very well.

    "The results of the 2000 literacy test ranked Australia second out of 32 countries and in 2003 only four countries outperformed our 15-year-old students in mathematics.

    "Groups with a vested interest in arguing that all is well, such as the Australian Education Union and the Australian Council for Educational Research, quote the results in their submissions to the Senate inquiry into education standards as evidence that there is no crisis.

    "Wrong. While the PISA test reflects favourably on Australian students, it is open to a number of criticisms. As argued by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute in its Senate inquiry submission, the PISA test "is not a valid assessment of mathematics knowledge, as only a fragment of the curriculum is tested".

    "The outstanding performance of Australian students in the PISA literacy test is also open to doubt, as students did not lose marks for faulty spelling, grammar and punctuation. If our students had been corrected, many would have failed as, in the words of one researcher, "It was an exception rather than a rule in Australia to find a student response that was written in well-constructed sentences, with no spelling or grammatical error."

    "A second measure of the performance of Australian students is the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study carried out in 1995, 1999 and 2003 and involving up to 46 countries. These tests assess essential mathematics and science knowledge.

    "Australian students in Years 4 and 8, while doing well, are in the second XI as measured by TIMSS and are consistently outperformed by countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

    "In more successful overseas education systems, more students achieve at the highest level. In the 2003 TIMSS science test, only 9 per cent of Year 8 Australian students performed at the advanced level, compared with 25 per cent from Taiwan and 15 per cent from Japan and England.

    "In mathematics, only 7 per cent of Australian Year 8 students performed at the advanced level, compared with 44 per cent of students in Singapore. There is also a significant gap in Australia between better performing and less able students. Successful countries overseas are able to get more children to perform at the higher end of the scale, while Australia has a long tail of underperformers.

    "Further proof is found in a US report by the American Institutes for Research, published on April 24. While acknowledging the difficulties in terms of methodology and making comparative judgments, the report interprets the TIMSS Year 8 test results in the light of the expected levels of performance (basic, proficient and advanced) as measured by the US-based assessment of educational progress. On analysing the 1999 TIMMS results for Year 8, the US report lists the following countries as having greater numbers of students achieving at the advanced level: Singapore, 34 per cent; South Korea, 26 per cent; Hong Kong, 23 per cent; Japan, 24 per cent; and Belgium, 15 per cent. The percentage of Australian students who achieve at the advanced level is 8 per cent.

    "The situation is not as bad with the Year 8 science results: only Taiwan and Singapore appear to have significantly more students performing at the advanced level. But in the 2003 Year 8 TIMMS test, Australians students again underperformed.

    "While 35 per cent of Singaporean students performed at the advanced level, 24 per cent from Hong Kong, 29 per cent from South Korea, 30 per cent from Taiwan and 20 per cent from Japan, only 5 per cent of Australian students achieved at the top level.

    "Much has been made of the dumbing-down influence of Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education, where everyone is a winner and the curriculum promotes a one-size-fits-all approach, in explaining student underperformance. But also of concern is the way Australia carries out its national benchmark testing in literacy and numeracy.

    "The results over the past four years at Years 3 and 5 suggest all is well in numeracy. About 90 to 94 per cent of students reach the benchmark standard and in reading the figure hovers close to 92 per cent. Such results appear worth celebrating. Not so. Not only is the benchmark described as the agreed minimum acceptable standard - defined as "standards of performance below which students will have difficulty progressing satisfactorily at school" - but there is the suspicion that the bar is set so low that the overwhelming majority of children are guaranteed success."

    Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies and author of Dumbing Down (Hardie Grant Books).
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Way to unlearn past mistakes

    Independent schools are the model to which state schools should aspire wites Joanna Mendelssohn
    
    "Recently I had a reunion with my very first friend, Anne. Our parents had been neighbours so we were babies together. Anne is blessed with an analytical talent for numbers, yet is a born communicator. She became a maths teacher. For more than 35 years she has taught maths to generations of students in state schools, in the city and the country.

    "She was able to take this path because, when we left school at the end of 1967, the NSW Education Department gave her a teaching scholarship that paid all fees and a generous allowance in return for her agreement to teach. This used to be the norm across the country; bonded teaching scholarships gave ordinary Australians the opportunity for a financially comfortable university education while ensuring a steady supply of young, qualified teachers for the state system.

    "In the 1970s, with the baby boom at an end, the system changed. Suddenly there was an oversupply of qualified teachers, so newly qualified teachers were freed of both their bonds and guaranteed jobs. Those who really wanted to teach could find soul-destroying work as casual relief staff until a vacancy occurred, but many left teaching altogether.

    "Before other avenues were open to us, teaching was often seen as the ideal profession for women, but by the 1980s this was not the case; there were also problems with teacher education. Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan's research at the Australian National University has tracked the entry grades of teaching students during a 20-year period. From 1983 to 2003, the percentile rank of teaching students fell from 74 to 61, while the rank of new teachers fell from 70 to 62. The drift was to a mediocre middle.

    "In those years the teaching force in state schools, bulging with teachers who had qualified in the late '60s, became stagnant as few new staff were employed. When, after years of casual teaching, young teachers finally found a job, they were often already burned out by a system that had failed them.

    "Anne told me of the school she remembers with greatest affection. It was deep in rural NSW. Because this school was so distant from any big town, the staff had no choice. They had to live near the families of the children they taught and they had to relate to the community. Teachers also socialised with each other outside of school hours.

    "The direct result of this physical isolation was a culture of connectedness between the staff, students and community, and they worked together for the common good. Whenever I hear politicians speak of values and education in the same sentence, I think of this country school.

    "Education has been dragged to the centre stage of the political debate, where it is squabbled over as some kind of trophy in an increasingly infantile battle between politicians, teachers unions and dogma-led lobby groups. Meanwhile, parents are left puzzling their way through the verbiage as they try to decide which school can possibly deliver the most appropriate education for their children.

    "The problem with Australian schools is not whether they are independent, state or faith-based, but the size of their governing bureaucracy and the nature of the culture within that bureaucracy.

    "State schools, independent schools and faith-based schools all teach to the same curriculum (albeit a different one in each state). The first great advantage of independent schools is not their manicured sports grounds or sandstone buildings (some of the best schools have neither). It is that they are small, discrete entities. The bureaucracy has a human scale and an easily identified chain of command. Parents and children know where to go if they have a problem. Each school employs its own staff and is free to foster their professional development, and promote them when they excel. [emphasis added]

    "It used to be the case that teachers working in independent or faith-based schools tended to be poorly qualified in comparison with those in state schools. They were also paid considerably less. As the salaries and status of state teachers sank, in a kind of seesaw effect, the salaries, status and qualifications of teachers in independent schools rose.

    "The way this happened is at the heart of the state of school education today. When the state systems would not employ their newly trained teachers, private and faith-based schools leapt at the chance to upgrade their staff, and many state school-trained teachers, once rejected, now hold leadership positions in elite independent schools.

    "In the '70s and '80s, innovative principals, including Rod West of Sydney's Trinity Grammar, went out of their way to encourage first-class scholars to think of teaching as a career. Thanks to a significant real increase in school fees and increased government support for non-state schools, teachers in these schools are paid the same or more than those in the state system.

    "They do, however, earn their money, as these teachers are faced with far higher expectations. As well as teaching in the classroom, teachers in independent and faith-based schools are expected to become a part of the school community. They need to be available (often by email) out of school hours and, above all, to adopt the ethos of the school where they work. It is amazing what a school can achieve if the entire school community is travelling in the same direction.

    "The key to developing quality teachers in whatever system comes back to how they are appointed, mentored and promoted. Good schools look after their staff. Smaller, flexible administrative units make it easier for independent schools to identify the talent, mentor new staff to ease them into a career path and then promote staff or redeploy them to where they can be most useful to the school. [emphasis added]

    "By contrast, state systems are still struggling to free themselves from their historic bureaucratic past. Australia's state school systems were established well before Federation, when every state proclaimed itself to be a nation. In other English-speaking countries, where the population was less sparse, schools tended to be run by local authorities..."
    
    Joanna Mendelssohn is author of Which School? Beyond Public vs Private, to be published next month by Pluto Press.

    Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Journalists exposed as minister attacks editor
    by Elizabeth Gosch
    
    "West Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty's refusal to introduce shield media laws will leave journalists in the state and their sources unprotected simply to punish The West Australian newspaper.

    "Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said he was disappointed Mr McGinty was not taking the opportunity to introduce laws to protect communication between journalists and sources.

    "If it is related to discussion on how a newspaper reports on the state Government, that doesn't seem to be the right approach," Mr Ruddock said.

    "As revealed in The Australian this week, the discussion over state and federal shield laws has disintegrated into a personal battle between Mr McGinty and The West Australian's editor, Paul Armstrong.

    "Mr Ruddock has promised federal shield laws to protect journalists from the threat of prison for refusing to reveal sources. However, these laws will mean little if each of the states does not enact similar legislation. NSW has had similar laws in place since 1995, and Victoria intends to proceed with such legislation.

    "Mr McGinty told The Australian this week that he would not introduce the laws until the board of West Australian Newspapers sacked Mr Armstrong.

    "The board of West Australian Newspapers needs to sack the editor. It is personally driven by a particular individual," he said. "With the shield go responsibilities. And when you get a newspaper that is bigoted, lies, cheats and deceives, my view is that you don't get the shield."

    "As the week progressed, he professed his support for the laws but said they would not be introduced in WA until The West Australian began "fair and ethical reporting".

    "I would like to be able to support shield laws to protect journalists' sources," Mr McGinty said. "I've got no problem whatsoever with the very robust coverage of every media outlet in WA, except The West Australian. I think there's a problem there. I think it stems from the editor."

    "Mr McGinty said Mr Armstrong needed to take a more ethical approach. "Then the laws can come in." The WAN board is backing Mr Armstrong.

    "Premier Alan Carpenter said on Thursday that, as a former journalist, he supported Mr McGinty's calls for higher media standards.

    "Paul Armstrong is an immature, dishonest, unethical person who should not be in that position," Mr Carpenter told parliament.

    "He is an embarrassment to them, he's an embarrassment to the newspaper. He's an embarrassment to the state of Western Australia, that's the fact. He's not the person for the job."

    "The West Australian maintained the pressure on Mr McGinty yesterday with a front page headline reading: "McGinty under siege". It ran a story attacking the Attorney-General, who is also the Health Minister, over the state of WA's emergency departments."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Brought low by press laws
    by Amanda O'Brien
    
    "... A new distraction of the Government's own making quickly wiped the smile off his face after Attorney-General Jim McGinty lobbed a grenade at the young editor of The West Australian, Paul Armstrong, and not so cleverly linked the introduction of shield laws for journalists to suggestions that Armstrong should be sacked.

    It was the platform the Opposition was waiting for and it wasted no time accusing the Government of arrogance and spite, and running a Stalinist state where anyone who criticised the Government was intimidated and bullied. That issue is still resonating today while desalination plants are forgotten."
    
    Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Public school praise

      "I have just completed another prac at an inner-western Sydney high school and again saw much that counters the negative assertions so often levelled at public school teachers.

      "Each day when I arrived at 8.30am, the staff car park was full. When I left about 4pm, it was still full but for one or two spaces.

      "Discipline was effectively managed through a school-wide plan and difficult behaviours were addressed with involvement from the head teachers, principal and parents.

      "I often saw staff spend time at recess and lunch working on individual learning plans for students.

      "In short, the teachers around me handled challenging situations promptly, all the while maintaining both good humour and a professional demeanour. Now class, for homework, I'd like you all to revise your stereotypes."

      Mercurius Goldstein, Ashfield

      
      
    • Research is vital, but then so is teaching
      
      "Your editorial "Five billion reasons why universities need a shake-up" (May 18) points to the paradox of research in the university system. It points out that world academic rankings are based largely on research output but that many Australian universities struggle in this area. With reputation comes funding and students, hence its importance.

      "In the cash-strapped system there is little doubt research dominates university governance. For the academic, a research record brings promotion, prestige, travel grants and relief from the tedium of teaching larger and larger classes. A consequence is that educational basics tend to be neglected. There are no prizes for being an effective teacher, yet teaching is a primary function of a university. This culture needs to change. Why is teaching less valued than research? [emphasis added]

      "There is little doubt that some former colleges of advanced education have struggled in the transition to university status. Sandstones entered the post-Dawkins era better endowed with more developed infrastructures and reputations based on social networks and years of elitism. They were not confronted with amalgamating two or three former institutions with diverse cultures and programs, or managing multiple campuses over immense geographical areas. Funding has never fully recognised those realities.

      "Your editorial is misleading in saying the Dawkins reforms converted non-academic (and hence "Mickey Mouse") vocational courses into degree programs. A specific role of the former colleges was to address vocational areas neglected by universities. But vocational areas such as accounting, human resource management and information systems don't have to be non-academic. How are these disciplines less professional than law, medicine or dentistry, or any less socially useful? Much depends on how curriculums are designed and supported, and all universities have much to learn in that department.

      "There is an urgent need for fresh thinking on how we do higher education. Bigger is not necessarily better or more efficient, so amalgamations are not the answer. By all means, reform the system but let's not go back to the elitism of the pre-Dawkins era based on judgements about types of courses, levels of research and number of PhDs on the staff."

      H.E.Hayward, Turramurra
      
      
      

• The New York Times
  
  
  • Principals Act in Plan to Reduce Bureaucracy
    
    More than a third of New York City’s public school principals embraced a challenge from Chancellor Joel I. Klein to free themselves as much as possible from outside oversight under a new reorganization and become full stewards of their individual schools, the city said yesterday.
    
    
    
    
• The Sunday Times
  
  
  • Schools see slim profits
    by Paul Lampathakis
    
    "Some WA schools are fighting the Carpenter Government's push to dump junk food from canteens.
    
    "Sources have told The Sunday Times that several schools are resisting the policy -- because greasy nosh, such as burgers and deep-fried chips, are good earners.

    "But Education Minister Mark McGowan said he would not bend on the initiative, which was designed to combat childhood obesity.

    "We're going to hold firm because our kids' health is important,'' he said.

    "We understand (schools') reasons for being unhappy, because... chips, hamburgers, things like that, sometimes generate more sales than salad sandwiches and health bars and apples.

    "Some schools, for instance, have fast-food places over the road.

    "So they want exemptions because they don't want students going over the road to the fast-food place.

    "But I'm not going to give any exemptions.''

    "However, an Education Department statement conceded that some schools, "generally those with older students'', had raised matters about the new Healthy Food and Drinks Choices in Public Schools guidelines introduced last year.

    "And a very small number of schools have raised formal queries about the timeline for compliance,'' the statement said.

    "The department continues to work with these schools to help them move towards compliance.''

    "Also in the statement, Mindarie Senior College acting principal Janice Sander confirmed the school and its private canteen operators had "raised some matters regarding the new guidelines''.

    "(But) the school is working towards achieving compliance with the new guidelines and positive solutions for all concerned,'' the statement said.

    "The guidelines have a "traffic light'' system where healthy "green'' foods and drinks, such as bread, vegetables, fruit, lean meats and reduced fat milk, are always available in canteens.

    "Amber'' varieties such as full fat dairy foods and snack-food bars are available only sometimes, while "red'' foods, such as those that are deep fried, are banned.

    "The Education Department statement said most schools had phased out "red'' foods and drinks -- which included doughnuts and soft drinks -- and brought in healthier menus.

    "Public schools had been required to remove "red'' foods from menus by the end of first term and were encouraged to achieve full compliance by third term this year.

    "Some canteens might still have such stock, but these schools were being asked not to order any more, the statement said.

    "Mr McGowan said the Government did not want the previous unregulated situation in canteens.

    "If parents want to feed their kids unhealthy food, that's up to them,'' he said.

    "But the Government's not going to condone unhealthy food going to kids.''

    From The Sunday Times at link
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • School retreats on moving of siblings
    
    A school has backed down from its attempt to remove three siblings, saying yesterday that the students would not be turned away on Monday. [See original story in yesterday's Age.]
    
    
    
    
• The Sunday Melbourne Herald Sun
  
  
  • Cash adds up in school bank
    
    Victorian schools have a total of more than half a billion dollars tucked away in their bank accounts, new figures show.
    
    
    
    
• The Canberra Times
  
  
  • Minister rules out school backflip
    
    The ACT Government has pledged transparency in its decision-making for the future uses of the 23 public school and preschool sites closed in its education shake-up.

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This page last updated 13 August, 2008 0:38 AM