Monday 21 May

Tuesday 22 May

Wednesday 23 May

Thursday 24 May

Friday 25 May

Saturday – Sunday, 26 – 27 May

 

Monday 21 May

• The Australian
  
  
  • Teacher quality shows in students [Lead national story]
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "An Australian-first study has successfully linked teacher performance with student results, bolstering the federal Government's efforts to introduce performance-based pay.

    "The study examined the literacy and numeracy test results of more than 90,000 students with more than 10,000 teachers in Years 3, 5 and 7 between 2001 and 2004, tracking the same group as it advanced through the school system.

    "It found that classes taught by the best teachers scored twice as high as those taught by substandard teachers. The top 10 per cent of teachers were able to achieve in six months what the bottom 10 per cent of teachers took more than a year to do.

    "The study, to be released today by the Australian National University, debunks claims by teacher unions that teacher performance cannot be confidently measured by looking at the results their students achieve in universal tests.

    "It also finds that additional qualifications, such as a masters degree, which are increasingly being suggested as the basis for performance-based pay, have little effect on results.

    "Female teachers were slightly better than their male peers at teaching literacy, and the students of experienced teachers achieved higher test scores.

    "Education Minister Julie Bishop said the results made a mockery of claims by the Australian Education Union and Labor that a teacher's performance could not be measured.

    "The study, by economist Andrew Leigh, also finds that demographic differences between teachers account for less than one-hundredth of the variation in their student scores, suggesting other factors such as a teacher's IQ or classroom skills are much more important.

    "The study examines the results for the same group of students every two years, with the same parents. The only variable was the teacher, disputing the idea that a student's socio-economic background determined their academic performance. Dr Leigh compared the literacy and numeracy test results of individual children under different teachers as they moved through school - and benchmarked them against other students in the same year - to show which teachers "value added" by improving the individual's test scores. [emphasis added]

    "The study found students' results could be improved by swapping teachers from the bottom 25 per cent of performance with those in the top 25 per cent. A teacher in the top 25 per cent achieved in three-quarters of a year what a teacher in the bottom 25 per cent did in a full year. A teacher in the top 10 per cent achieved in half a year what a teacher in the bottom 10per cent did in one year.

    "Dr Leigh said it was reasonable to assume that indigenous students had poorer teachers and, if their classes were given teachers in the top 25 per cent, the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous students in literacy and numeracy would be closed in seven years.

    "It's been something of a mantra that all teachers do about the same but this shows there are big differences between teachers," Dr Leigh said. He said the results highlighted that the current method of paying teachers was not based on any factors important to improving student results.

    "Currently, the factors we take into account are just experience and extra qualifications such as masters degrees," he said. "This suggests that's not rewarding the big differences in the profession."

    "Ms Bishop said the report "shows it is possible to identify the most effective teachers, which also makes it possible to reward the best teachers for their performance".

    "The report provides evidence of wide variation in teacher effectiveness. It shows that it is possible to measure the impact of teachers' performance on student performance," she said.

    "Ms Bishop also said the findings questioned Labor's policy on linking teachers' pay to gaining higher qualifications, given it found teachers with higher professional qualifications, including masters, were no more effective in raising their students' scores.

    "Pat Byrne, the federal president of the AEU, which rejects the idea of linking teachers' pay to their performance, said yesterday she did not always agree with Dr Leigh's methodology or conclusions and wanted to see the research before commenting.

    "Dr Leigh was confident that anyone in a school would know which teachers would score among the best in his study.

    "The principal knows; other teachers know; the parents know; there's a huge degree of consensus about this," he said.

    "Teacher quality matters. A poorer teacher makes a big difference to your kid; poorer teaching can drag kids down."

    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar stories in The Melbourne Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    Andrew Leigh's research paper Estimating Teacher Effectiveness From Two-Year Changes in Students’ Test Scores is available at this link
    
    
    
    
  • Ads in the works to counter claims on schools funding
    by Samantha Maiden, Political correspondent
    
    "John Howard's taxpayer-funded advertising blitz could be expanded to include a prime-time campaign to tackle teachers' unions "misinformation" on schools funding.

    "As the Government rolled out a multi-million-dollar campaign last night to sell the new "no- disadvantage test" for workers signing AWAs on less than $75,000 a year, a schools campaign was under consideration.

    "Education Minister Julie Bishop confirmed that options were being considered to combat union-funded advertisements attacking the Government for federal aid to private schools.

    "The consequences of an ongoing, blatant misinformation campaign by the unions, on behalf of the Labor Party, is that the public is being misled," she said. "The Australian Government must set the record straight and is considering its options."

    "Her office said yesterday there were no advertisements scheduled to run in the next 24 hours, but government sources have revealed that planning is under way to unleash a significant taxpayer-funded TV campaign.

    "The union advertisement shows a class of children at a public school preparing for a visit by the Prime Minister, only for him to drive straight past. The voiceover tells viewers that since the Government was elected, the share of funding for public education has decreased to 35 per cent, despite 70 per cent of Australian children attending public schools.

    "Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith said a schools campaign would represent a "blatantly political advertising campaign" that would be funded by taxpayers.

    "Four months out from an election, the Australian public has every right to be cynical of a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign that seeks to defend 11 long years of complacency and neglect by the Howard Government in education," he said.

    "Such a blatantly political advertising campaign only underlines the fact that the Howard Government will do anything and say anything in order to hold on to power."

    "Responding to the union advertisements last month, the Prime Minister warned that the campaign ignored the reality that while 67 per cent of students attended public schools, they attracted 75 per cent of total state and federal education funding.

    "The Labor Party will face a test this week when the Greens introduce legislation requiring the total amount of taxpayers' money spent on government advertising to be included in every advertisement.

    "The aim of the bill is to name and shame governments who use taxpayers' money on blatantly political advertising. It will allow taxpayers to see exactly how much of their money is being spent by self-serving governments," Greens senator Bob Brown said.

    "So, for example, each of the Work Choices ads from 2006 would have had to disclose the $55 million cost of the campaign. The Government will not be able to hide the amount it spends on advertising, as it is doing now with its new Work Choices ad campaign."

    "Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey on Saturday defended the campaign but refused to reveal the cost.

    "A spokeswoman for Mr Hockey said yesterday it was unclear how much the television, radio and newspaper campaign would cost until monitoring was conducted."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Principals rethink merit pay
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor
    
    "NSW school principals are designing their own plan to reward quality teaching in defiance of the Federal Government's push to link performance pay to student results.

    "The body representing 460 high school heads has rejected the Government's "ideologically driven" model. They are wary of Labor's alternative, saying it is still too thin on detail.

    "The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the council's plan would be "based on merit rather than performance".

    "[The federal Minister for Education] Julie Bishop's performance pay is going to be based on results of students in tests and that is a very narrow performance measure," he said.

    "But teachers who take on additional responsibilities, who undertake additional professional learning, who contribute to the further development of other teachers, merit extra pay." [emphasis added]

    "From January 2008, first-year teachers in NSW Government schools will earn an annual salary of $50,250 and receive an increase each year for the following nine years up to $75,000. They will then receive no further increase unless they take up a position as a head teacher, deputy principal or principal.

    "Top principals earn $119,000. In all there are 21 pay points in teaching, based on merit, years of experience and school size.

    "The principals suggest creating extra salary steps for teachers who, for example, complete master's degrees and use them to help their colleagues. This would recognise the collegiality of the profession, where a number of teachers may contribute to a pupil's development.

    "The state Minister for Education, John Della Bosca, has also said he is open to a system of merit pay not based on student results.

    "Mr Della Bosca and his state and territory colleagues last month rejected Ms Bishop's proposal to pilot performance pay in schools from next year, saying they would develop their own plans. Since then, Ms Bishop has said schools will be rewarded with up to $50,000 for outstanding results in numeracy and literacy. Schools could divide the money among their best teachers.

    "Federal Labor has said it would reward quality teaching using a merit-based system that took into account extra qualifications, professional development and working in rural and remote areas.

    "The Prime Minister, John Howard, has said that from 2009 he would tie Commonwealth funding to the states and territories to the introduction of performance pay for teachers, giving principals more autonomy to hire and fire and providing parents with more detailed information on school performance. That information should also include cases of bullying and violence.

    "The principals' plan is separate to another being devised by the national teacher union, the Australian Education Union."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

  • School to reward staff who are on the ball
    
    The principal of St Luke's, Jann Robinson, will give $6100 each to a handful of her best teachers, as judged by an independent board, on the basis of teacher portfolios and interviews with peers, parents and students.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Wider and broader education

      "Your editorial "Five billion reasons why universities need a shake-up" (May 18) revisits a profoundly elitist view of the role universities in our society. Surely solutions to a complex array of social, environmental and ethical issues, to which your editorials rightly and frequently draw our attention, require a populace that has access to a broad liberal education, such as that provided by the newer and regional universities. Why should not the 1.8 million people of Greater Western Sydney, historically under-endowed in service provision and infrastructure, have access to a local university, including one that conducts teaching and research in medicine and public health?

      "The benefits of properly resourced public universities extend well beyond those that undoubtly flow from good research. They include an active, well-informed and critical citizenry. This is not necessarily appreciated by cynical governments or, it seems, newspaper editors, but it represents one important aspect of a mature and robust democracy."

      Mike Clear, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Penrith
      
      
      

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Best teachers 'twice as good' (page 7)
    
    See stories on this topic from The Australian, Age and Sydney Morning Herald, above
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 21)
    
    
    • Why I quit
      
      "Why be a teacher? After 32 years as a high school science/biology teacher in the government system, I have finally retired.

      "The last six years of my career covered the middle school and OBE experiments. The only reason I had stayed with the system is that I actually like the majority of the students. The reason I feel ashamed is that I stayed too long and have witnessed the deliberate destruction of the State system by both Federal and State governments. I have seen heads of departments sacrificed to protect the political idiots foisting flawed ideas on to the system and ladder-climbers defending rubbish ideas to cover their rear ends to maintain or advance their position.

      "Any person who seriously considers teaching as a vocation must be either stupid, or an older person with not a lot else in their lives. I just wanted to teach, not spend the majority of my time involved in classroom management. I now find much more satisfaction assembling valves for a plastics factory, even though the money is only 60 per cent of what I received teaching. It is now too late for me and out of my control. Please, for the sake of our children, things have to improve."

      Grant Horne, Dwellingup
      

      
      
      
• Education Review [16 May]
  
  
  • More Curriculum Debate Needed
    by Geoff Masters

    "Last month’s historic decision of state and commonwealth education ministers to begin introducing a national curriculum raises a question about the kind of curriculum now required in our schools. Is the challenge simply to iron out differences between existing state curricula? Is the answer to be found in curricula of the past? Or should we be taking this opportunity to redesign the school curriculum for the future? These questions deserve careful and broad community debate.

    "First, a school curriculum should provide young people with an excellent preparation for further learning, life and work beyond school. A question for debate is how well the present curriculum is doing this. For example, are current physics, chemistry and biology courses the only or best ways to prepare young people for careers in science, engineering and technology? Given that the nature of scientific work itself has changed, with more scientists working in multidisciplinary teams, often in more commercial contexts; that Australia faces a shortfall of perhaps 20,000 scientists over the next six years; and that relatively small numbers of senior secondary students are now taking these subjects, should we be radically rethinking the senior science curriculum?

    "How well do schools currently prepare young people with skills for life and work, including skills in teamwork, communication and problem solving? What about attitudes and values? Is there a place in the curriculum for features such as the International Baccalaureate’s community service requirement? Posing questions of this kind is not an attempt to water down standards, or an attack on academic rigour; these questions must be debated if the school curriculum is to remain both rigorous and relevant.

    "Second, a school curriculum should make clear what students are expected to learn, know and be able to do as a result of going to school, as well as specifying minimally acceptable standards for skills such as literacy and numeracy.

    "This focus on the desired outcomes of schooling is in contrast to an earlier preoccupation with inputs. In traditional classrooms, the job of teachers was to teach the syllabus, and the job of students was to learn. If teachers covered the syllabus, then they could be judged to be ‘teaching’, even if nobody in the room was learning. Today, greater efforts are being made to clarify and measure desired student learning. Not surprisingly, those who would prefer a return to the past oppose this focus on ‘outcomes’, erroneously linking it to a range of other perceived ills, such as constructivism, whole language and fuzzy maths. But the question for debate is what outcomes we now want from our schools.

    "Third, a school curriculum should promote the development of higher-order skills and deep understandings of subject matter. The development of basic skills is an essential but not sufficient objective of a national curriculum. For example, the ability to read and understand an opinion piece such as this depends first on basic skills in recognising and decoding words. But a deeper understanding requires skills of critical analysis: perhaps an ability to read between the lines; an understanding of the nature of an opinion piece; an appreciation of the stance a newspaper has taken on an issue; and an understanding of the connections and motivations of the writer. Higher-order skills of this kind are a defence against the control and manipulation of information and debate and are essential skills in democracies like Australia.

    "Research into human learning has made clear the importance of deep understandings of concepts and principles. Knowledge of facts and procedures is crucial, but deep understandings allow knowledge to be organised and conclusions to be reached about what knowledge is relevant to a problem. School curricula that emphasise large amounts of factual content can work against deep understanding. International studies show that, while Australian students are outperformed by students in many other countries on tests of factual knowledge, they are among the best performers in the world on tests of higher-order reading skills and the application of mathematical and scientific concepts to everyday problems. Should we be giving greater emphasis to factual learning in our schools?

    "Fourth, a school curriculum should be flexible enough to allow teachers to address individual needs and local contexts. Children begin school with very different levels of development and readiness, and large differences between students are found in each subsequent year of school. In some subjects, such as mathematics, these differences appear to increase over time, so that, by the end of primary school, the highest achieving students can be as much as six years ahead of the lowest achieving students in their grade. Under these circumstances, treating all students as though they are equally ready for the same syllabus can lead to frustration for less advanced students and boredom for the more advanced.

    "Research is clear: a one-size-fits-all approach is less likely to result in successful learning for all students than teaching which first identifies and then takes account of individuals’ levels of progress and readiness. Research also is clear about the importance of connecting teaching to the interests and motivations of individual learners, of helping students to understand the relevance of what they are learning and of giving students a positive image of themselves as learners. Efforts to develop more customised (or student-centred) approaches to teaching and learning are not a ‘new age’ obsession with making students feel good, or a rejection of the importance of explicit teaching; they are research-based strategies for improving learning. The question is: What kind of curriculum best supports these strategies?

    "The time is right for a vigorous debate on these and other questions about the Australian school curriculum."

    This article was originally published in Education Review. (‘More Curriculum Debate Needed,’ by Geoff Masters, Education Review, Vol 17, No. 03, May 16 2007, P19.)
    
    
    

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • School fund-raisers pay staff
    
    A quarter of [Victoria's] principals rely on school-raised funds to help pay staff wages, a survey of the state's government school principals has revealed.

Tuesday 22 May

• The Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Reward for results
    
    Of course better teachers create smarter students

    "Here is a simple question, with a simple, yes or no answer: does a good teacher deserve to earn more than a bad teacher? Surely the answer must be yes. But for years, it has been no. The Australian Education Union has long insisted there is no room in the education system for merit-based pay.

    "It says it is impossible to measure a teacher's performance, and that student grades are no reflection on the teacher. That idea was sorely tested yesterday when an Australian National University economist released a new report, based on a study of some 90,000 students, that shows the opposite. You can, in fact, sort the wheat from the chaff.

    "As The Australian's education writer, Justine Ferrari, reported, ANU economist Andrew Leigh has completed a study that shows students in classes taught by the best teachers score twice as high as those taught by dud teachers. Students with great teachers are able to learn twice as quickly as students in classes with less talented teachers.

    "But can those good teachers ask for a performance bonus, or a merit-based pay rise? Under the current system, no.

    "For talented teachers, the situation is surely intolerable. Imagine the morale in the school staff room, where the unskilled and uninterested teachers are taking home the same pay as those who are inspired, and inspiring. And there is nothing the good teachers can do about it, other than become fed up themselves, and leave the profession for something where talent is properly rewarded.

    "To its considerable credit, the Howard Government is determined to work the reform through the system. From next year, schools can get up to $50,000, to divide among best teachers. And teachers who continue their studies during the summer holiday will receive an additional $5000 from the federal Government. The union is working up its own plan. It would prefer to give extra money to teachers who take on "additional responsibilities" or take extra courses. But what is the primary responsibility of a teacher, if not to teach, and teach well?"
    
    From The Australian at link [scroll down to the third Editorial]
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Only average recall but deep levels of understanding
      
      "It's not surprising that somebody who has published a book asserting that Australian schools are failing would have difficulty accepting international evidence to the contrary.

      "Nor is it surprising that Kevin Donnelly, in his weekend article ("Testing methods mask our failings”, Inquirer, 19-20/5), would attack the messenger. In recent months, he has dismissed educational leaders Barry McGaw, Geoff Spring and Ken Boston as “educrats”, well-understood technical terms as “edubabble”, and efforts to clarify and measure desired educational outcomes as “postmodern dumbing down”.

      "Now Dr Donnelly is attempting to discredit the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which twice has found Australian 15-year-olds to be among the best performers in the world. Strangely, he also concludes that the independent research body that conducts PISA in Australia – the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) – must have a vested interest in making Australia look good.

      "ACER has consistently reported our finding that, in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Australian Year 4 and Year 8 students do not perform as well as students in many other countries in answering factual questions (For example, What are congruent triangles?). But we also have reported that, in PISA, Australian 15-year-olds are among the best in the world in applying mathematical and scientific understandings (For example, Calculate the average speed in kilometres per hour of a person who walks 89.6 metres in a minute).

      "Far from masking the truth, PISA has deepened our understanding of how Australian students are performing. By international standards, our students appear to have only average levels of factual recall, but relatively deep levels of understanding and skill."
      
      Professor Geoff Masters, CEO, Australian Council for Educational Research, Camberwell, Vic

      [While condemning Dr Donnelly for "publishing a book", perhaps Professor Masters should have mentioned his own vested interests and/or all of his publications supporting his 'take' on the results?  Web]
      
      
      
    • "Andrew Leigh’s latest research ("Teacher quality shows in students”, 21/5) just adds to the weight of evidence now accumulated both in Australia and overseas that the single most important variable in the learning achievement of children and young people in our schools is teacher quality.

      "It is not postcodes, or family type, or other demographic characteristics which for years have been cited as excuses for paucity in student achievement. Clearly, the facts are that if you have a great teacher, you are likely to be a good and motivated student with achievements to match. On the other side of the coin, if you are lumbered with a mediocre teacher, you are more than likely not going to fare well. The old adage “if the student fails, the teacher has failed” could never be truer.

      "It is time to redefine disadvantage; not as being the postcode which will predetermine one’s destiny but as the competence and quality of the teachers in the staff room."
      
      G. R. Horsell, Croydon, SA

      
      
      
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • ALP reversal on student union fees
    
    Upfront compulsory student union fees would not be re-introduced at universities under a Labor government, in a radical reversal of its previous opposition to the Government's ban on the fees.
    
    Similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
    

Wednesday 23 May

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Balga Works was paid on Carpenter's watch (page 4)
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    "The Education Department poured more than $185,000 of taxpayers' money into the bungled Balga Works Program for disadvantaged youth while Alan Carpenter was still the education minister, it has finally been revealed.
    
    "Mr Carpenter told Parliament last year that the program was closed in October 2006 but answers to questions also show that the Education Department paid out almost $221,000 to the Balga Works Program one month later, in November..."
    
    "Shadow education minister Peter Collier said it took six months for him to get the response from the Education Department to the questions he had asked in Parliament.
    
    "He said the issue was a political hot potato which three successive education ministers, Mr Carpenter, Ljiljanna Ravlich and Mark McGowan had all dodged responsibility for.
    
    "Someone's got to be responsible, for goodness sake, you've got millions of dollars being funnelled into a program that had no authority," Mr Collier said..."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor (page 20)
    
    
    • Two Letters on education, one on adjusting the curriculum and teaching methods to cater to non-academic students, and the other on Andrew Leigh's research on teacher effectiveness.
      
      From yesterday's West, "Don't widen gap between schools", a look at the demographics resulting from more and more academic students shifting to independent schools.
      
      Full Letters in The West Australian
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • How ideology rules the classroom
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Teaching practices are based on ideology and gut instinct rather than rigorous scientific research to provide evidence of the most effective techniques for the classroom.

    "In submissions to the Senate inquiry on the academic standards of school education, a number of academics argue that the educational establishment responsible for training teachers and writing curriculums rejects research evidence in favour of individual opinions.

    "Educational researcher and psychologist Molly de Lemos says the fundamental problem in education "is that it is being driven by ideology" rather than scientific research. "Many of the educational experts that are influential in determining educational policy ... are so ideologically driven that they are unable to look objectively at the scientific evidence, preferring instead to rely on their own expert judgments, irrespective of whether or not these judgments are supported by the objective evidence," Dr de Lemos says.

    "Her view was echoed in a submission by Kerry Hempenstall, educational psychologist at RMIT, and in evidence given by Max Coltheart, a reading scientist from Macquarie University.

    "Dr Hempenstall, a former teacher who now specialises in literacy, says there is a "science-aversive culture endemic among education policymakers and teacher education faculties".

    "Education has a history of regularly adopting new ideas, but it has done so without the wide-scale assessment and scientific research that is necessary to distinguish effective from ineffective forms," his submission says.

    "Dr Hempenstall said yesterday that education had developed as if it were an artisan activity - with a set of beliefs that made science not just a parallel universe but one in which it was actively resisted.

    "He said teaching faculties had an ideological barrier to research which asserted that research was not useful in improving teaching practices.

    "The argument is that learning is a natural process for children and you should interfere as little as possible," he said.

    "Dr de Lemos, an honorary fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research, says the common myths in Australian education include the belief that learning to read is a natural process, like learning to talk or to walk, when in fact research showed that learning to read was "an acquired skill that has to be specifically taught".

    "Another common myth was that it was more important to teach higher-level thinking skills than facts and content, and that expertise was based on higher-level thinking.
    
    "Higher-level thinking skills and concepts cannot be directly taught in a content-free context," Dr de Lemos says.

    "The content knowledge comes first, the higher-order thinking skills come next. Expertise is based on accumulated knowledge. What distinguishes the expert from the novice is how much they know, not how well they can think."

    "In evidence to the inquiry in Sydney, Professor Coltheart said the federal Education Department did not value scientific input, "so the opinion of a principal is just as important as the opinion of a fellow of the Academy of Sciences who works on reading".

    "Professor Coltheart said few members of education faculties were scientists - meaning those who conducted research and published it in peer-reviewed journals. Of the more than 450 fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, only 19 were from the discipline of education.

    "ASSA executive director John Beaton said becoming a fellow of the academy was a rigorous process, with only about half of those nominated being accepted.

    "Mr Beaton said education was not one of the strongest disciplines in research, but that partly reflected the smaller pool of people. Most fellows of the academy were involved in education or teaching in some way.

    "He said education was divided into two camps - those favouring the more traditional style of an assemblage of facts, and those who preferred a less structured approach, whom he described as "the post-everythingists".

    "They're from a determined sociological or political phenomenon, the famous post-everythingists - the post-modernists, post-rationalists, post-breakfastists," he said."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Schools threats prompt safety assurance
    
    A spate of incidents involving alleged online threats and plots against students and staff at NSW schools today forced police to issue reassurances to parents that their children are safe.
    
    
    
    
  • The Higher Education Supplement has 17 articles today, including:
    
    
    
    • Science left to count cost
      
      One measure of an advanced and advancing country is what it puts into its science, and by that yardstick Australia continues to fall short. In the wake of all the institutional forelock-tugging over the 2007 budget, a cooler appraisal would be that it didn't do much for science.
      
      
      
    • Return to Asian studies
      
      In this year's post-budget stoush, most attention has been on the ALP's stance on Australian Workplace Agreements or, certainly in university circles, the Government's $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund. Largely lost in the fine print of Kevin Rudd's budget reply speech was one of the most positive pledges in recent years for the future of Asian studies in Australia.
      
      
      
      
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • It was all in their heads
      
      "Professor Geoff Masters (Letters, 22/5) made Kevin Donnelly’s point extremely well.

      "To be excused for not knowing what congruent triangles are but praised for the simple arithmetical conversion of metres per minute to kilometres per hour, indicts ACER, PISA, the OECD, the AEU and all the other acronyms pretending all is right with education. In my day, there were kids on radio shows that could do that sum in their heads."
      
      Geoffrey Luck, Mittagong, NSW
      
      
      

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    If you want private education for your kids, pay for it yourself
    
    Parents' obsession with finding the perfect school for their perfect child is nauseating, writes Catherine Deveny.
    
    Plus online feedback: Should private schools receive government funding?
    
    
    
    
  • Rebekah's eight-year battle teaches schools a lesson
    
    The state Education Department has been criticised for discriminating against a disabled student by failing to provide a teaching aide. And its program for students with language disorders needs a comprehensive review, according to a tribunal ruling.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Schoolboys plotted massacre of students and teachers over net
    
    Two school students used the internet to discuss carrying out a gun massacre among a spate of threats in NSW in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre in the US.
    
    
    
  • Students, ALP at odds over how to fund campus activities
    
    Labor's decision not to reverse the ban on compulsory student union fees if elected has opened an unusual chasm between the party and students.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • The wrecking of British science [22 May]
    
    If the world's future lies in scientists' hands, the answers are unlikely to come from the UK unless we reverse decades of political neglect, argues Nobel laureate Harry Kroto

Thursday 24 May

• The Melbourne Age
  

• Second chance at Monash
  by Bridie Smith
  
  "Students who just miss out on their preferred course at Monash University will get a second chance at entering from next year, when the university tests a new undergraduate selection model.

  "Vice-Chancellor Richard Larkins said yesterday that the university would take into account applicants' General Achievement Test result as well as their ENTER score.

  "The GAT, an aptitude assessment of all year 12 students, is conducted by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority each June.

  "Professor Larkins said that only students whose results fell just short of a course's ENTER cut-off would be considered under the scheme. A few hundred students are expected to benefit. He said the scheme recognised that, for some students, "the ENTER doesn't give a fair representation of their ability".

  "The scheme will apply to most courses, but not medicine or some science courses where additional entry assessment already exists.

  "The three-year trial is aimed at increasing the number of students from low socio-economic areas and to see how students with a higher GAT result performed at university.

  "Monash Student Association president Zoe Edwards said the ENTER system was sometimes "a barrier to access" for people from low socio-economic backgrounds."
  
  From The Melbourne Age at link
  
  
  

• Tougher rules hit students in need of education help
  by Bridie Smith
  
  "State-funded help for students with language disorders has become so hard to get that one psychologist working in the Education Department says eligible students must now "fall into the same linguistic category" as children attending special developmental schools.

  "Until 2005, children funded under language disorder categories had to have expressive or receptive language skills below a score of 70. To qualify now, children must have a score below 55, in addition to displaying "critical needs" such as being unable to understand safety instructions.

  "That's a huge, huge drop," said the psychologist, who did not want to be identified. "It puts those kids into the same category as children who are in special developmental schools."

  "The psychologist, who has worked for many years at the department assessing children, described the funding for students with language disorders as "a state disgrace".

  "She said that following the changes to the funding criteria in 2005, the number of students she saw missing out on help had blown out from a handful to dozens. It has been estimated that the new criteria have saved the Government tens of millions of dollars a year.

  "However, the Education Department is adamant that all students requiring support — including those who received individual funding under the old system — have access to support through the Language Support Program..."
  
  Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
  
  
  

• Op Ed
  Ignorance and prejudice feed Deveny's myth of 'snob' schools
  
  Many private schools are bastions of community and care, not privilege, writes Michelle Hamer.
  
  "Is it Catherine Deveny's mandate to write obscenely ill-informed, stick-it-up-the-"snobs" opinion pieces? If so, she is certainly fulfilling her role this week in her sledging of private schools and the parents who choose them.

  "Deveny complains of "social apartheid", yet her piece is one of the most divisive pieces of writing I've read since her ridiculous rant at mothers who choose caesarean birth.

  "She takes vehemently against a social group she sees as separate to her own. But, more than this, she is guilty of being ignorant and twisting figures to suit her own prejudiced opinion. Independent schools do not, have not ever, and probably will never, receive more funding than government schools.

  "According to figures from the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services 2007, in 2004-05 the state and federal governments provided combined funding of $1.57 billion to Victorian non-government schools, compared with $5.22 billion to government schools.

  "Victorian government schools received total government funding of $9700.03 per student, while non-government schools received $5451.26 per student.

  "And although independent and Catholic schools educate 34.9 per cent of Victorian schoolchildren, these schools receive only 23.1 per cent of total government funding.

  "Deveny has considered the federal funding of state and private schools in isolation, without including the state money each system receives.

  "A percentage of my taxes are spent on public schools, yet I choose to pay private school fees for my four children. If I put my children into state schools it would cost government almost twice as much to educate them as it does now.

  "I am a survivor of the state school system — just. I was bullied, harangued, ignored and under-educated at the "closest secondary school" back when your school was chosen purely by geography, as Deveny has decided is good enough for her brood.

  "It didn't kill me, but neither was it romantically rough-and-tumble. It was just rough and horrible.

  "Despite this, I thought state schools would be the place to educate my children. My parents had brought me up to believe, like Deveny, that the blazer-wearing "snobs" of the private sector were all privilege and no brains.

  "Three short years in an underfunded, under-resourced, worn out state education system quickly demonstrated that, at least in the schools in our area, the free option couldn't compare with the private..."
  
  "Quality education should absolutely be free — and in some instances it is — but the state system is patchy and unreliable. I would be overjoyed to enrol my kids in the nearest state school if I thought it could offer the depth of experience and opportunity their current schools offer.

  "I'd much rather not be broke, believe me. I want the state and federal governments to make education more equitable, so that every child in Australia can expect to be nurtured, well educated and supported in government schools, but until this happens I will make the choice that I think is best for my children. I won't buy a new car, a new house or take overseas holidays; instead I'll invest in my children's education because this is my right and my choice. [emphasis added]

  "Deveny feels liberated that she has put no thought into her children's education. That's her right, and if she aspires for them to be tradespeople, then that's fine too.

  "Why then is it not OK for me to choose my children's schools carefully and aspire for them to do, and be, whatever they like, without narrowing their choices with my own prejudices?"

  Michelle Hamer is a Melbourne writer and parent of four privately educated children.

  Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
  
  
  

• Letters to the Editor
  
  
  • Schools blossom with our support
    
    "Bravo, Catherine Deveny (Opinion, 23/5). Public schools improve in direct proportion to the number of families that send their children to the nearest one, and then become active in making it a community-oriented place of learning.

    "If my preschoolers come out of the public system with resilience, a sense of community and the resources to learn what they need to learn, I will be happy. If parents feel this is not enough, and they aren't able to support their local school in teaching their own children, they should have the choice of private education. And pay for it.

    "My education was public and my brother went to a private secondary school. Even with a part scholarship, his cost was $15,000 more than mine — and our VCE scores were roughly equal. Money does not equal education."
    

    Bec Yule, Northcote
    
    

  • Cold, hard facts on public schools
    
    "Many public schools are appalling. Some lack heating and air-conditioning, some have toilets that don't work properly, and many have unworkable class sizes. Students will do better in an environment where their first concern isn't keeping warm.

    "The assumption that private schools mollycoddle students is out of touch. It's funny that remedial classes in public schools are not referred to as hand-holding.

    "The arrogant assertion that private schools do not provide an opportunity to learn resilience, motivation and tolerance proves Ms Deveny does not know much about them, or she thinks these virtues are based on one's income. I suspect the public schools near her place are in a nice, middle-class area, so no, it probably won't make a difference to her kids' education. But the chip on her shoulder might."

    Vanessa Lowe, Balaclava
    
    

  • Funding equation
    
    "There, there, Catherine Deveny, time for a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down. It is interesting how such people highlight the Commonwealth contribution to education in private schools compared with public schools but never provide comparative figures for states. Children in public schools are funded significantly more than those in private schools."

    John White, Dubbo, NSW
    
    
    
    

• The Australian
  

  • Op Ed
    Americans show the way on humanities
    by Neville Meaney
    
    The value of a good liberal arts degree should not be dismissed
    
    "Critics of the Queensland University of Technology's decision to close down its School of Humanities and Human Services and cease to offer a bachelor of arts degree have claimed that such an action is contrary to what it means to be a university. There is much to be said for this view.

    "After all, the humanities, nowadays fused with the social sciences, have traditionally been a core element in the curriculums of what is called a university. From their foundation in medieval Europe, universities have put the study of the humanities in one form or another at the centre of their intellectual life. In the US, which has become something of a model for Australian reforms of tertiary education, two of the most eminent institutions of higher learning, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Californian Institute of Technology, titled themselves institutes rather than universities for the very reason that they were established primarily to teach and research in the areas of science and technology.

    "For Australia today, however, what may seem a more germane question about the humanities is not whether an institution lacking these subjects can be called a university but whether the humanities can be justified in taking their place alongside the physical sciences in universities.

    "None of the many recent schemes for restructuring universities have addressed this issue. The government reports preceding the reforms have made conventional gestures to the role of arts faculties. After stating that higher education was "a primary source of the skill we need in our cultural, artistic, intellectual and industrial life", the Dawkins report of 1988 proceeded to recommend changes that treated universities primarily as engines for economic growth and improvements in Australians' standard of living. Future allocation of funds would serve the needs of the economy and labour market. The highest priority was to be given to the fields of engineering, science, technology and business studies.

    "Nowhere have governments or their advisers in carrying forward their plans for the reshaping of universities explained in any serious way why the humanities should not be valued as highly as the physical sciences and accorded equal treatment.

    "In the US there is no question about the importance attached to the humanities. The normal pattern for undergraduates is to do a four-year liberal arts degree before studying for professional qualifications. America's two greatest institutions of science and technology have arts course programs in their curriculums. The Americans give the humanities such a place in tertiary education because they believe that the disciplines that study the human condition make an indispensable contribution to the intellectual life of their country.

    "Australians, by contrast, seem sceptical about the humanities since, unlike most of the physical sciences, they do not produce observable and quantifiable results. Because the physical sciences are able to elucidate laws that can predict the behaviour of matter and thus enable us to achieve mastery over the material world and improve the condition of society, they are embraced. The humanities, since they study people as cultures or members of cultures, can never in principle attain the same precision or accuracy in analysing human nature or predicting social behaviour.

    "People cannot be held within the constraints of a would-be scientific law, and by their behaviour, sometimes self-conscious behaviour, they mock those scholars who presume to discover such laws. Moreover, the scholars are themselves part of that which they study and cannot help but be influenced by the values they bring to their studies and the times in which they live.

    "Despite the lack of clear practical outcomes, the humanities have much to offer which should command intellectual respect. In addition to preserving and building on an intellectual tradition, they take part in an informed argument about meaning that draws on the past and submits it to critical scrutiny. It is an argument about how culture and society should be understood. It is an argument in which all modern societies are constantly engaged and to which the humanities bring insight based on knowledge.

    "Intelligent young adults, going through a critical stage in creating their social identities and searching for ideas that will give them a ground on which to stand, instinctively appreciate the role of the humanities.

    "How otherwise can one explain why, against all the discouragement of political leaders and society at large, so many - and most of these not seeking a teaching career - continue to enrol in arts degrees in all the big universities? What the humanities and social sciences need most from governments is not new buildings or new research centres but greater teaching resources in order to enrich the experience of these arts students.

    "It is natural that there should be a degree of tension between the humanities and the secular authorities. Hence the so-called culture wars. These conflicts over different visions of society are to be found in both Australia and the US.

    "In Australia, the exchanges between the parties have been dominated by name-calling and political labelling. By contrast in the US, where the contending tribes are delineated more sharply and their causes advocated more vehemently, the arguments range more widely and the issues are canvassed more profoundly.

    "In America's cultural wars there has been much more open interaction between the antagonists, and the process has been much more a learning experience for the participants. Perhaps the greater respect that is given to the humanities in US higher education can explain this difference. Perhaps it can also account for why the Americans can produce a television drama such as The West Wing."

    Neville Meaney is honorary associate professor of history at the University of Sydney.
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Merit pay for teachers
      
      "South Australia already rewards excellence in teaching with a system of merit pay that is credible, rigorous and embraced by the profession ("Reward for results”, Editorial, 22/5).

      "Our Advanced Skills Teacher scheme, in place since the early 1990s and expanded in 2005, gives our best teachers a chance to be recognised and rewarded with higher pay. Merit is judged upon demonstrations of exemplary teaching practice, sharing innovation with other teachers, developing subjects and programs and planning for school improvement.

      "We know that South Australia’s future rests on fostering the best and brightest in the teaching workforce to give our children the best opportunity to realise their potential."
      
      Chris Robinson, Chief executive, Department of Education and Children’s Services

Friday 25 May

Teacher Shortage Crisis:
DET Condemned for "Extraordinary Mismanagement"

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Teacher warning ignored: report (page 7)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "The Education Department ignored warnings of an imminent teacher shortage and its recruitment strategies have been woefully inadequate, a scathing independent report has revealed.
    
    "The report by international recruitment firm Gerard Daniels predicted even bigger teacher shortages next year if immediate steps were not taken to overhaul the department’s recruitment and retention practices, which were antiquated, impersonal and complex.
    
    “We argue some of the changes to the workforce could and should have been predicted by the department,” it said. “Anything short of a proper investment in workforce planning and human resource and staffing systems will be a waste of time and energy.”
    
    "Mr McGowan said the cost of sweeping changes to teacher recruitment practices for State schools was estimated at $18 million over four years but he would not reveal how much the Government was prepared to spend.
    
    “We’re going to put extra resources into recruiting teachers,” he said.
    
    "Mr McGowan said the department would start recruiting graduates in June rather than December to help stop private schools cherry-picking all the best new teachers before they sat their final exams. He added the department was working on a package to lure back thousands of retired teachers to the workforce, as well as continuing its recruitment efforts overseas and interstate.
    
    "He also foreshadowed plans to pay bigger bonuses and offer other incentives to teachers prepared to work in difficult-to-staff remote schools. He said that only 3 per cent of recent graduates said they would work anywhere in the State, compared with 80 per cent 15 years ago.
    
    “What we also need to do is reexamine the issue of requiring new teachers to go to the country,” Mr McGowan said. “It was abandoned 10 years ago, it has to be looked at again.”
    
    "But he did not believe that big pay rises for all teachers would solve the staffing crisis. Mr McGowan commissioned the Gerard Daniels report in January after State schools were left scrambling to find teachers to fill more than 250 vacancies across WA at the start of the school year.
    
    "Despite promises the problems would be fixed by Easter, schools are still short by 28 teachers and yesterday Mr McGowan said he could not guarantee that schools would be fully staffed at the start of next year.
    
    "State School Teachers Union general secretary David Kelly said the report’s conclusions were no surprise but the shortage could be fixed if the Government improved teachers’ salaries, conditions and housing.
    
    “While their recruiting practices are inadequate, the bottom line is that they have allowed a situation to be created where teaching is no longer considered as a serious career option for young people,” he said.
    
    "Shadow education minister Peter Collier said the fundamental issues raised in the report should have been addressed years ago."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    McGowan must make inept bureaucracy accountable (page 16)
    
    "There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence that the Department of Education and Training is a poor employer. The accounts teachers, or disillusioned former teachers, give of departmental incompetence and indifference point to an impenetrable and self-absorbed bureaucracy with little sense of obligation to schools or the wider public.

    "Some of that kind of criticism, of course, could be put down to the tensions that can arise in the normal course of events between employees and employers. But few, if any, major employers would have such a consistently poor reputation among employees as does this department.

    "And now the low opinion of the department is official. The Gerard Daniels report on its staffing practices leaves no room for doubt about its inadequacies, to put it mildly.

    "It could hardly have been more damning, though in some ways it served merely to formalise what many people already knew or suspected.

    "The recruitment firm described as clearly inadequate what it called the department's workforce planning and governance of human resource management generally.

    "As the largest employer in Western Australia, and an employer dependent almost entirely on professional human capital, we would expect to see a much more sophisticated approach to workforce planning, recruitment and retention," a summary of the report said.

    "This is a polite and formal way of drawing attention to dismal failure. And it is clear from the report, as it is from any commonsense assessment, that the department was woefully inept in its efforts to predict teacher needs and meet this in a booming WA labour market.

    "It is almost beyond belief that Education Minister Mark McGowan was left in a position at the beginning of the school year of having to profess surprise "to a degree" at the consequent shortfall of about 260 teachers. The department had consistently denied the prospect of a worsening teacher shortage over the previous few months.

    "It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Minister was misled, or at least ill-informed. Yet it is a fair bet that no one was held accountable for this, especially since he said at the time that he did not want to blame other people for the need for a last-minute scramble to try to fill teacher vacancies.

    "The department, with the way it treats teachers and its incompetence, not only fails to recruit enough teachers but is instrumental in driving practising teachers into retirement or other jobs. Its high-handed management of the outcomes-based education disaster is just one example of this.

    "The report recommends what amount to bureaucratic changes. These may or may not be worthwhile, but inherent in them is the risk that the focus will be on bureaucratic arrangements and who gets what job, not on achieving some semblance of competence in staffing schools.

    "Mr McGowan must impose on the department a new culture of accountability, of holding people responsible for failure and measuring performance by achievement.

    "Similarly, he must be prepared to reward good teachers with significantly higher salaries, if he wants to retain them in, or attract them to, State schools and overcome the shortage crisis the department's incompetence has visited on the education system." [emphasis added]

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Most education chiefs operate in an acting role
    
    "Nine of the 12 senior executives in the Education Department are in "acting" roles, it was revealed in Parliament yesterday.

    "This led shadow education minister Peter Collier to claim the high number of acting executives was creating instability in the education portfolio.

    "He said acting executives were likely to be far more compliant towards the Government's wishes to try to keep their jobs.

    "To questions from former Liberal leader Colin Barnett during a Budget estimates committee session, Education Minister Mark McGowan said only three of the 12 senior executives were permanent placements.

    "The department's director-general was an acting head.

    "Mr McGowan said the application process to find a new permanent director-general was complete and Premier Alan Carpenter was considering the recommendation of the Public Sector Standards Commissioner."

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • State facing years of teacher shortages
    by Amanda O'Brien, WA political reporter
    
    "Extraordinary mismanagement of teacher recruitment has put Western Australia at risk of teacher shortages for years to come, an international recruiting agency has found.

    "The Gerard Daniels agency accuses the state Education Department of "clearly failing" to develop a workforce strategy, and says officials should have foreseen the problems now being experienced, including some schools still being short of teachers halfway through the school year.

    "Teacher recruitment processes were antiquated, and the department's recruitment website one of the worst the agency had seen.

    "The agency report, marked strictly private and confidential, was unexpectedly released yesterday by Education Minister Mark McGowan, who commissioned the investigation in January when schools were short more than 250 teachers statewide.

    "Mr McGowan said the shortage had now been cut to 28 teachers but he admitted there was a serious problem in attracting more teachers, particularly for country areas.

    "Western Australia has the oldest teacher profile of any state or territory, ensuring major challenges ahead as the rate of retirements increases.

    "If immediate action were not taken, the Gerard Daniels report said, years of shortages would result. Graduates were dropping with "application fatigue" after being forced to fill in the same handwritten personal details on up to eight different forms. If they got through that hurdle, many rejected the offers made to them because they were so inadequate.

    "The report said about $18million was needed to overcome the shortages, and recommended structural changes to the Education Department. [emphasis added]

    "Promising to provide money to tackle the problem, but unable to say how much, Mr McGowan said the Government was trying to recruit teachers from Britain, and to encourage retired teachers to return to the workforce, particularly those interested in moving to a country location.

    "But Gerard Daniels said a survey of recently resigned teachers found widespread disillusionment, and 61 per cent said they would not recommend the department as an employer.

    "The study found 44 per cent would contemplate returning under the right conditions, but the agency warned that the department's "employment brand" had been damaged.

    "Despite being the state's largest employer, it was a matter of "grave concern" that the department did not attract recruits.

    "The booming resources sector had provided much competition for staff.

    "The department should be held out as an iconic employment brand," Gerard Daniels said. "It is one of the oldest continuous employers in WA. We recommend that the department re-engineer its brand, including its job offer to graduates."

    "State School Teachers Union secretary Dave Kelly said the report vindicated everything the union had been telling the Government for years.

    "He said the starting salary of $45,000 for a graduate teacher who had done four years of study was ridiculous against the wages being offered to young unskilled workers in the resources sector.

    "Mr Kelly said pay rates must be raised, and innovative incentives were essential to get teachers to move to country areas. Basic requirements such as housing must be addressed urgently.

    "We have teachers being forced to live in motel rooms for months because there's no housing provided - it's shameful," Mr Kelly said. "These problems are not suddenly appearing. We've warned about what was happening for years."

    "He said suggestions by Mr McGowan that he might reinstate a rule to force graduate teachers to work in country schools was not the answer.

    "Mr McGowan said the teaching workforce was larger than the Australian army in an area bigger than Europe, and overall the department was doing a good job."

    From The Australian at link
    
    The Sunday Times Online also carried this story, and you can read / add comments at this link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Education Department slammed in report
    
    "An international recruitment firm has delivered a scathing report into the way the Education Department recruits and retains teachers.

    "The report by the firm, Gerard Daniels, argues the Department should have predicted it was facing a teacher shortage, and its work force planning is clearly inadequate.

    "The report says the Department will be in a worse position next year unless it takes immediate action to address the shortage.

    "It says that changes will require additional funding to make a significant difference and warns that anything short of a 'proper' investment will be a waste of time and energy."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    

• Education Minister Mark McGowan's Media Release
  
  
  • Major shake-up of teacher recruitment practices recommended
    
    "Sweeping changes will be made to teacher recruitment practices at the Department of Education and Training as a result of a report released by the State Government today.

    "Releasing the ‘Review of Teacher Recruitment Practices’ prepared by international recruitment company Gerard Daniels, Education and Training Minister Mark McGowan said the report recommended a major shake-up of recruitment procedures.

    "Mr McGowan said the report, which he commissioned in late January, was highly critical of the current teacher recruitment system.

    “The report has found the department’s recruitment system is antiquated, impersonal and too complex,” he said.

    “It also suggested that some of the changes to the workforce could and should have been predicted by the department.

    “Put simply, the consultants have been brutally honest about the problems within the recruiting system, which needs to be more sophisticated, flexible and streamlined, in keeping with its role as the State’s biggest employer.”

    "The Minister said he would be working through the recommendations individually as part of a considered and thorough response.

    "In the meantime, the Government was taking urgent steps to prepare for the 2008 school year, including:

    • starting recruitment of teaching graduates in June - six months earlier than previously;
      
    • working on a package to lure some of the thousands of retired teachers back into the workforce; and
      
    • continuing with overseas and interstate recruitment efforts.
      
      

  "Further strategies would be announced at a later date.

  "Mr McGowan said one of the problems facing the department was a decrease in the supply of teachers and an increase in demand.

  “Since coming to office in 2001, the State Government has increased the number of positions in the teaching workforce by 1,300, which means more positions need to be filled each year,” he said.

  “At the same time, there has been a decrease in the number of students studying teaching at our universities and a decline in the number of graduates accepting a position in the public system.

  “We are also finding that those who do accept a position are much more selective about where they want to work.

  “Fifteen years ago, 80 per cent of graduates were willing to work anywhere in the State. Now, just three per cent of graduates are available for State-wide appointment.

  “This creates extreme pressure on our ability to staff schools in country areas.”

  "The Minister said it was estimated that 25 per cent of qualified teachers were likely to be employed elsewhere due to the buoyant economy.

  “We want to bring those teachers back into the classroom, which is why we commissioned this report and set up a high level taskforce to look at the problem over the next 10 to 20 years,” Mr McGowan said.

  “The taskforce, which is chaired by former Vice Chancellor of Curtin University of Technology, Professor Lance Twomey, will begin consulting with the community on a number of the issues raised in the Gerard Daniels report in the near future.”
  
  From The Education Minister's website at link
  
  

Saturday – Sunday, 26 – 27 May

• The West Australian
  
  
  • OBE in limbo after teachers win delay [Front Page Headline]
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "The State Government was facing fresh calls last night to delay outcomes-based education indefinitely or scrap it altogether after teachers warned that three-quarters of the OBE courses due to start next year were flawed.

    "So-called "teacher juries" set up by Education Minister Mark McGowan have found that just 11 of the 38 Year 11 OBE courses scheduled for next year should go ahead.

    "Some were rejected because there were no sample exams prepared and syllabuses and grade descriptions were not finished. Others, including history, literature, geography and biological science, needed to be rewritten completely.

    "The Government has promised not to implement until 2009 any courses the juries rejected.

    "The damning verdicts came as it emerged that OBE was partly to blame for a dramatic increase in the number of State school teachers resigning and retiring.

    "Fresh Education Department figures reveal the number of teachers leaving has leapt 60 per cent in the past three years, with 478 primary and secondary school teachers quitting in 2006, compared with 298 in 2004. The number of high school teachers who resigned from teaching in that time nearly doubled, from 54 in 2004 to 90 in 2006.

    "Teachers who assessed the OBE literature course said it lacked literary content and was too theory-driven.

    "History teachers said the marking load in the new course could be four times greater than now.

    "Biology teachers said parts of the new course were too difficult and geography teachers said their course was "considered unworkable and in need of a major review and overhaul in all areas".

    "Other key subjects the juries rejected included chemistry, physics and economics.

    "Many of the deferred courses were meant to be in place this year but were delayed when teachers threatened to boycott them.

    "The Curriculum Council has designed 50 OBE courses, eight of which have been implemented, including English.

    "But the decisions of the teacher juries mean just 19 will be in place when school starts next year.

    "Mr McGowan said he created the juries to get unfiltered advice from classroom teachers.

    "I do not regard this outcome as a failure but rather a success in ensuring we make our education system as good as it can be," he said. "We will now be working hard to ensure the new courses are of the standard teachers expect when they are introduced." [We are expected to believe that this patch-up, unlike all the others, will make them acceptable?  Web]

    "But OBE critics seized on the damning verdicts as more reasons for the Government to abandon the controversial system.

    "Marko Vojkovic, president of teachers' group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, said the rejection of so many courses meant OBE should be dumped.

    "After seven years of trying to get it right and numerous rewrites, the teachers have had their final say and they do not want it," he said.

    "It's a recipe for disaster to let more OBE courses go ahead. There are still obviously serious problems with OBE English, so why introduce more courses that are going to create even more confusion?"

    "Shadow education minister Peter Collier said it was time the Government reconsidered its approach to education because the constant rolling out of piecemeal changes created havoc for schools and parents.

    "There is enough disquiet in terms of the philosophy of OBE that it is time that we had a moratorium on any further changes and we reassess where we're going," he said. [emphasis added]

    "Curriculum Council chairman Bill Louden said the delays were important in rebuilding trust with teachers and the community because it showed the council was listening. [Wow! After SEVEN YEARS, and all the wheels fell off, THEN they actually listened to teachers!!  Web]

    "A report released this week by recruitment firm Gerard Daniels found dissatisfaction with OBE was among the top five reasons teachers gave for resigning. Others were general dissatisfaction, workload, lack of support and new career paths. [emphasis added] [A cynic might suggest that all of those were triggered by OBE.  Web]

    "But Education acting director-general Sharyn O'Neill said there were several reasons why teachers quit and staff numbers rose 800 during the report's timeframe."

    From The West Australian
    
    See related story from ABC News, below

    
    

  • Engineering aptitude test for uni (page 66)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "A new aptitude test for prospective engineering students could eventually replace tertiary entrance exams for gaining university entry.

    "Curtin University engineering dean Tony Lucey said the TEE would remain the primary means of selection at first, but conceded the aptitude test could possibly provide an alternative to TEE exams down the track.

    "The 2 ½ hour test that five universities across Australia will test for the first time in September is aimed at attracting more students into engineering to overcome a nationwide shortage of engineers.

    "At the moment it's not a replacement," Professor Lucey said. "We should obviously go cautiously because the TEE subjects are well tried and tested and we have a very good sense for how students will perform when they come to university."

    "The new test would consider aptitude rather than existing knowledge and skills and would be used to provide supplementary knowledge about students' ability.

    "Even though the aptitude test may one day be used instead of the TEE to select engineering students, Professor Lucey said students would still need to have an appropriate technical background. He said it would be an advantage to the community if there were other mechanisms other than the TER.

    "He said many people were frightened of studying engineering because they thought it was too hard. "I think the test marks a kind of opening up the access to university study in engineering," he said. "This test gives potential students confidence they have the aptitude to study engineering."

    "The engineering selection test assesses students' aptitude to think scientifically, solve quantitative problems and critically analyse information.

    "It was developed by the Australian Council for Education Research for the Australian Technology Network of Universities, of which Curtin is a member.

    "Professor Lucey said students who did well in the aptitude test but had not studied prerequisite TEE subjects would be encouraged to take a bridging course."

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Brough to push for no school no welfare
    
    See similar stories in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Weekend Australian, below.
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Outcomes-based education a 'failed philosophy'

    "There are renewed calls to scrap outcomes-based education (OBE) in Western Australia after teacher juries set-up by the Education Minister found three-quarters of the courses were flawed.

    "The courses were due to start next year.

    "President of People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, Marko Vojkovic, says the Government should call a halt to the implementation of all OBE courses.

    "Mr Vojkovic says it is a chronic waste of money trying to introduce the courses when schools could better use funds to upgrade infrastructure and equipment.

    "He says no amount of refining will make the courses better unless the assessment process is changed.

    "The level of cynicism in teaching right now has never been higher," he said.

    "We keep seeing these redrafts, these re-writes and it always comes down to two basic things - which is the method of assessment, which is the levelling and the outcomes themselves. They just don't work.

    "He says no amount of refining over the past eight years has made the courses more workable.

    "We have wasted millions and millions of dollars on a failed philosophy when there's so many things where the money could be used," he said.

    "It's an absolute tragedy they've wasted so much money."
    

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
    
• The Sunday Times
  
  
  • Community work to teach respect
    by Joe Spagnolo
    
    Is the Minister looking for a diversion?  Web
    
    "Every high school student in WA could be forced to do community work as part of Education Minister Mark McGowan's plan to teach children respect.
    
    "Old-fashioned values such as helping elderly people across the road would be instilled in a new generation of West Australians, the minister said.

    "Instead of spending hours in front of computers and on mobile phones, children would be exposed to a new way of life -- made to spend time at Red Cross outlets, soup kitchens and nursing homes, cleaning up waterways and wetlands, revegetating bushland and working with younger children.

    "Foreshadowing moves to extend former premier Geoff Gallop's $2 million program to include younger children in Years 8 and 9, Mr McGowan said youngsters had to be taught to be less selfish and think about others.

    "State and private high schools have begun to introduce Dr Gallop's controversial compulsory new program, which requires almost 30,000 Year 10 students to do 20 hours community service.

    "But Mr McGowan wants to go further, declaring it is time WA schools began producing better citizens -- not just academically competent students.

    "We want all students in schools -- both government and private -- to be well rounded, with a sense of community obligation,'' he told The Sunday Times.

    "Life in WA should not just be about taking care of yourself, but also about benefiting the broader community and other people.

    "Young people need to have this instilled into them so that they realise they should carry this value throughout their lives.

    "The vast majority of our young people are great people, but what I want to see is young people recognising their responsibilities to society.

    "We can't just worry about ourselves. We need to make sure we worry about others, as well.''

    "As part of its push to produce community-conscious children, the State Government is spending $2 million making sure that by the end of this year all Year 10 students will have begun the community service program first mooted by Dr Gallop during the 2005 election campaign and piloted last year.

    "Students will have until the end of Year 12 to complete the 20 hours' community service, which is supervised by teachers and recorded in logbooks.

    "Children who fail to complete the program won't receive their WA Certificate of Education.

    "We will watch its progress and look at that option (of extending the program to Years 8 and 9 students) in the future,'' Mr McGowan said.

    "Morley Senior High School principal Gay Fortune, whose students have been spending time doing art classes with elderly residents at the Ella Williams House in Noranda as part of the program, said that teaching students community values was invaluable.

    "It's about having connectiveness to the community,'' she said. ``In terms of building up a cohesive society, this is a really important initiative.''

    "Ella Williams resident Betty Reed said today's young generation needed to get more involved in the community.

    "It makes them realise that the community is for them, rather than turning their backs on it,'' she said."
    
    From The Sunday Times at link
    You can post and view Readers' Comments at that link.
    
    Similar story from ABC News

    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Indigenous school plan criticised
    by Joel Gibson
    
    "A former Liberal Aboriginal Affairs minister has labelled as empty rhetoric comments by the federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, that Aboriginal children should learn English.

    "It's a very good thing for [state and federal] ministers to make grand declarations about kids needing an education," said Fred Chaney, who held the portfolio from 1978 to 1980. "They are responsible for the education systems that are not delivering that education at the moment."

    "Mr Chaney said the Federal Government lacked the education infrastructure to implement its own Aboriginal education policy, a document that has been settled in the past 12 months by the council of federal, state and territory education ministers.

    "I've read that policy. I think every paragraph in it is good, and my view would be that there is no [education] system in Australia that can deliver that policy."

    "Unless educational policy was in the capacity of every school, "it's just words", Mr Chaney said. "What we need is a commitment to resourcing schools in human and financial terms to meet those very desirable objectives."

    "Mr Brough said on Thursday that too many indigenous children had a rudimentary knowledge of English, when their native languages were spoken by only "200, 300 or 400 other people".

    "He said his plan to ensure they learnt English had the support of grandparents in indigenous communities who wanted their young people to have the same opportunities as white children.

    "But NSW's first Aboriginal MP, Linda Burney, accused Mr Brough of hypocrisy.

    "Aboriginal kids do need to be bilingual, but it's a bit rich coming from a person who actually is part of a government that took away funding for bilingual programs in the Northern Territory."

    "The Opposition indigenous affairs spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said talk of learning English was rhetoric unless it was backed with funding."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    See related article in The Weekend Australian
    
    
    
    

• Op Ed
  Students have role in fight for fairer education [25 May]
  by Angus McFarland, president of the University of Sydney Students' Representative Council
  
  Later this year 600,000 students will go to the polls at the federal election, many for the first time. While higher education appears to have become a significant battleground between Labor and the Coalition, neither has been successful in making a pitch to win the large and potentially influential student vote.
  
  
  
  
• Jail threat to students [25 May]
  
  All students aged 10 and over will be warned that phone cameras, text messages and toy guns turn them into potential criminals, according to a directive sent to all NSW principals yesterday. The Education Department directive follows a series of allegations of criminal behaviour by students, but was criticised by principals as an overreaction aimed at protecting bureaucrats. It came amid a storm over the police handling of a case involving two Crookwell High students who were removed from school for allegedly plotting a massacre.
  
  
  
• Uni was warned about Asian campus debacle [25 May]
  
  The University of NSW rushed through plans for its now collapsed Singapore campus so quickly that the university's governing body was given just 30 seconds to scrutinise the proposal, a senior academic says.
  
  
  
  
• Letters to the Editor
  
  
  • A quiet time at roll-call

    "I empathise with the public school teacher Julia Roohan when she pleads for understanding (Letters, May 25). One of my more incisive moments was at a dinner party where parents were bemoaning the copious amount of homework set by the children's private schools. Another couple present, both teachers at public schools on the fringes of Sydney, commented: "Homework? What's that? We're lucky if they turn up."

    Elizabeth Maher, Bangor
    
    

  • Liberal education at risk

    "Les MacDonald is quite right in suggesting that we all need a good liberal education as well as vocational training (Letters, May 25). It is very sad to see such school subjects as geography losing numbers to semi-mindless subjects such as business studies. It is also sad to see arts faculties in universities having to fight to keep subjects and courses alive. Subjects at risk include Latin and classical Greek, which should be alive and kicking at any good institution of liberal education. It is true, of course, that some arts academics have tried to dig their graves by having courses with a blatant Marxist or feminist bias, but that is no excuse for governments and universities to act like money-oriented Philistines."

    David Morrison, Springwood
    
    
    

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • English teachers lacking in skills
    by Patricia Karvelas and Peter Lalor
    
    "Aboriginal children are receiving inadequate English-language education because teachers visiting their communities lack proper skills.

    "Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough told The Australian this week that Aboriginal children should learn English so they could get jobs and have more options in life.

    "But linguist and Aboriginal language specialist Margaret Mickan said the problem was that Aboriginal children were not getting adequate teaching.

    "We haven't had teachers who teach English as a second language," Ms Mickan said. "We've had teachers coming into the schools often without the skills to cope with children who don't speak English."

    "Mr Brough's proposal to force Aboriginal children to learn English, revealed in The Australian, won support from John Howard, who said indigenous people had no hope of being part of mainstream Australian society unless they could speak English.

    "If you require them to go to school they'll have to learn English," the Prime Minister said. "The children of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants are forced to learn English because they go to school. Equally, Aboriginal children should learn English because they should be required to go to school."

    "But the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Education Union argues Mr Brough's attitude to indigenous education verges on racism. Spokesman Adam Lampe said the "big stick" approach was culturally insensitive, particularly the proposal to withhold welfare payments from parents who did not ensure their children attended school.

    "It singles out a group as if they are the problem, and it seems to me that quarantining welfare payments because they are not being successful at learning something is racist," he said.

    "NSW's first indigenous state MP, Linda Burney, said: "Aboriginal kids do need to be bilingual but it's a bit rich coming from a person who actually is part of a Government that took away funding for bilingual programs in the Northern Territory."

    "Former tennis champion and Reconciliation Australia co-patron Yvonne Goolagong-Cawley backed Mr Brough.

    "Reconciliation Australia board member Fred Chaney said the Government needed to offer more than rhetoric: "You're going to need to increase resources, you're going to need to do the job better, you're going to need to make sure you've got high-quality staff on location."

    From The Weekend Australian at link
  
  
  
  
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Parents get powers to start own schools
    
    Parents in England were today promised help to set up their own schools if they are unhappy with what is on offer in their area. Hailed as a "radical" step by schools minister Lord Adonis, new regulations make it compulsory for an open competition to be held before any new primary school is established.
    
    
    
  • Outrage at plan to force Aboriginal children to learn English
    
    A plan by the Australian government to force Aboriginal children to learn English ignited fierce debate today, with some activists calling the plan racist and insulting.
    
    
    
    
• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Teens warned on medical courses
    
    Teenagers desperate to get into medical school are being charged up to $1700 for training courses that promise to help them pass the entry exam but show no evidence of success. Private operators are offering coaching for UMAT, the test many medical schools use to allocate places. But the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), which runs the exam, say it is an aptitude test that cannot be studied for.
    
    
    
  • Proof it pays to stay on in school [25 May]
    
    Money talks. So, for all those students looking for an added incentive to finish secondary school, look no further than a report released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The research paper, which reveals the exact dollar value for students who complete year 12, shows that men who finished year 12 in 2001 will earn $258,900 more in their lifetime than their counterparts who didn't complete school.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Sunday Telegraph
  
  
  • Class had 29 teachers a year
    
    The NSW Government has ordered a review of relief teaching after a mother claimed her nine-year-old son had 29 teachers in one year... The extraordinary situation has triggered calls from the NSW Teachers Federation for a permanent relief teacher to be appointed at every school.
    
    
    
    
• The Brisbane Sunday Mail
  
  
  • Schools learn to make cash
    
    Queensland's top public schools have become multi-million dollar businesses, turning over hefty sums every year from fundraising activities.
    
    

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