Monday 28 January

Tuesday 29 January

Wednesday 30 January

Thursday 31 January

Friday 1 February

Saturday – Sunday, 2 – 3 February

 

Monday 28 January

• The Age
  
  
  • State schools struggling to find teachers
    by Farrah Tomazin
    

    "Victorian state schools faced with teacher shortages are being forced to "wine and dine" job applicants, use unqualified teachers or poach staff from interstate in a bid to fill positions.

    "As students return to school this week, a new survey has found that almost half of state secondary schools are experiencing problems filling teaching positions.

    "The issue appears to be compounded in schools near the NSW and South Australian borders, where up to a quarter of schools reported having teachers leave last year to teach interstate.

    "The findings are likely to prove a political sore point for the Brumby Government in the lead-up to a 24-hour schools strike on February 14, when up to 25,000 teachers are expected to walk off the job over wages and working conditions.

    "Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said the fact that Victoria had the lowest-paid teachers in the country had made it increasingly difficult to attract and retain staff, many of whom left for more money in the private sector, non-government schools or interstate and overseas.

    "And some principals admit they are going to great lengths to "schmooze" university graduates or would-be staff, particularly in rural schools.

    "Edenhope College principal Lynden Fielding said it was not unusual to woo prospective teachers by wining and dining them, or to pay for hotel accommodation and to show them the sights of her town, which is about 25 minutes from the South Australian border.

    "Ms Fielding said she had even spent two days last year personally calling up to 25 maths and physics teaching students at Monash University in the hope that one would apply for a position that was available at her school.

    "Attracting quality teachers is tough, particularly for schools like Edenhope, which is five hours out of Melbourne. If we're contacted by a university for a student placement, we nearly always say yes," she said.

    "Other schools have reported using "instructors" — staff who are not qualified as teachers — to take some classes.

    "Wodonga Middle Years College principal Vern Hilditch said schools near the border were often treated as "holding schools" by teachers who wanted to pick up a job in NSW, where they are paid 15% more.

    "He said the Government's offer of a wage rise of 3.25% a year — far short of the 10% the union is pushing for — was not good enough to attract or retain many teachers.

    "It is rare for teachers to be as concerned as they are about how they make ends meet. But 3.25% does not even match the inflation rate," he said."
    

    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Keeping our teachers
    by Philip Riley
    

    A genuine education revolution would ensure appropriate training and support for the profession.

    "If the Rudd Government is serious about engineering an education revolution it will need to deal with the rate of attrition for new teachers as a matter of high priority.

    "Recently 2424 HECS places were offered for teacher training in the first round of university offers. Nearly half these places will be needed to fill positions vacated by teachers with fewer than five years' experience. If the new student teachers follow the same path as their predecessors, and if things don't change there is no reason to expect that they won't, nearly half of them will teach for no longer than five years. About a quarter of them will last only one. Then they will have to be replaced.

    "Industry sources suggest that the cost of training lies somewhere between one and three years' annual salary. On those figures, in Victoria alone the Government will be spending $46 million to $138 million for little direct benefit. Nationally, the figures are astronomical. For a new Government, committed to reining in wasteful spending and generating an education revolution, these are important considerations. Why are so many teachers leaving the profession early?

    "Money is clearly an issue. The systematic devaluing of teachers in economic terms was recently outlined

    "by Josh Gordon and Tim Colebatch (Opinion, 16/1). Pre-service teachers know that they are not going to be richly rewarded financially before they apply for their courses. Yet they still apply, albeit in declining numbers. While the salary issues and working conditions do need to be tackled, particularly in Victoria, new teachers leave early for other reasons as well.

    "From kindergarten upwards, teachers will be faced with moral and ethical dilemmas when they become privy to sensitive and confidential student information. This information about students' lives will be acquired alongside attempts to interest them in finger-painting, quadratic equations, foreign languages, the school musical and the myriad other activities associated with a rounded education. And many new teachers will become distressed at the information.

    "But once teachers have the information, whether they wanted it or not, questions arise that inevitably test their resolve. What information, if any, should they report and to whom? Will a tenuous relationship with a student, carefully built over time be irrevocably damaged if they report what they hear? What would the educational implications be for the student? Who benefits? Who loses? Is what I heard true or just a wind-up?

    "Mandatory reporting laws are clear as are teachers' responsibilities in such cases, but plenty of information relayed to teachers by students falls well short of mandatory reporting. This is not to say that it can't be disturbing for teachers, because it can. What is worse is that they are generally left on their own with little formal training in how to cope with their students and their own emotional volatility.

    "No wonder a recent survey in Britain found that teachers' stress levels matched those of police and ambulance officers. Like other front-line workers, most teachers will also find themselves in emotionally charged situations at some point. But unlike the other front-line workers, they receive little or no training in dealing with difficult people. For many, the more they care about their students, the worse it is for them. This is one of the reasons why nearly 50% of new teachers leave the profession early. The cost to the community in providing training for teachers who do not last long in the job is immense.

    "Recent research suggests that pre-service teachers expect that the rewards of the job will come from the relationships they form with their students and the chance to have a significant impact on the lives of young people. For many teachers this is exactly what they experience when they join the profession. And, despite the fact that they would like, and deserve, to be better paid, they stay in the job because of the rewarding and important work.

    "But many new teachers report that they are under-prepared for the difficulties associated with life in many classrooms. Unless they chance on a skilled mentor who is able to guide and protect them, these new teachers are likely to find the emotional aspects of the job overwhelming — hence the high rates of attrition. So what can be done? Recent research suggests the answer lies in expanding pre-service teacher training to include adequate study of the dynamics of personal relationships.

    "Having trained and worked as both a teacher and a counselling psychologist, I have been struck with the similarity of the issues facing teachers and counsellors who work with young people. Yet only counsellors receive specific training in how to manage themselves and their students/clients in difficult situations. Teachers are left to work it out for themselves. We have the training courses that would adequately prepare them already in operation.

    "What is needed to solve the problem of teacher attrition is a significantly increased investment in teacher education courses. This will actually reduce teacher education costs through cost savings. The pay-off comes by slowing the early exit by teachers. Also, investing in teachers is the most efficient way to invest in students.

    "Government funding to universities for teacher training is inadequate. This has created pressure on faculties to cut contact hours, increase class sizes and transfer knowledge through technology; all aimed at cutting the cost of delivery. These cost savings lead to early career attrition because teachers have not been adequately prepared to build and maintain relationships with students, particularly challenging students.

    "When teachers move into classrooms, it is their ability to form and maintain relationships with students, sometimes in difficult circumstances, that will form a large measure of their success or failure as professionals. It will also be a significant factor in their decision to stay in the profession. Teachers who stay teaching repay the cost of training. Continuous training of replacement teachers is a significantly higher cost to the community than adequately training teachers in the first place.

    "Increased investment in teacher education aimed at helping students acquire some of the skills taught to counselling psychologists would ensure that new teachers start their careers far better prepared for the reality of life in the classroom from their first day on the job. They would not be left in difficult classroom situations with little or no theoretical or practical support. This would see more of them enjoy their initial experiences and therefore stay in the profession. The net saving for increased spending on teacher education by government would run into many millions of dollars, even if attrition was reduced by only 10%."

    Philip Riley lectures in school leadership at Monash University and is a registered psychologist.

    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Author Reinvents Science Textbooks as Lively, Fun Narratives
    by Valerie Strauss
    
    "To middle school teacher Chad Pavlekovich, most science textbooks are dull and lack the context students need to understand scientific principles. That's why he is exposing students in the town of Salisbury on Maryland's Eastern Shore to three new textbooks that are unorthodox in concept, appearance and substance.

    "The "Story of Science" series by Joy Hakim tells the history of science with wit, narrative depth and research, all vetted by specialists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first book is "Aristotle Leads the Way," the second is "Newton at the Center" and the third is "Einstein Adds a New Dimension." The series, which has drawn acclaim, chronicles not only great discoveries but also the scientists who made them.

    "These books humanize science," Pavlekovich said.

    "We teach students this equation and this theory or this topic and that idea, but we never discuss the scientist behind it or how that scientist made the discovery," he said. "It helps students to understand how they struggled and overcame great obstacles to do what they did."

    "Hakim has also drawn attention for lively U.S. history textbooks she authored in a series used from elementary school through college. Her science texts, published by Smithsonian Books, target middle school..."
    
    Full story in The Washington Post at link
    
    
    

• The Melville City Herald [Week of 26 January]
  
  
  • Scholarship delay as course start
    by Chris Thomson
    
    "Applicants for $60,000 government teaching scholarships are yet to be told if they've got one, even though Murdoch University's teacher education course has already started for 2008. "Fairness dictates that it would be inappropriate to determine who the recipients of the scholarships may be until all interviews are completed," WA education department chief recruiter John Serich told the Herald.

    "In a bold bid to tackle WA's chronic teacher shortage, education minister Mark McGowan last year announced scholarships up to $60,000 would be offered under a $19 million training program.

    "By the due date of November 5 last year, 184 applicants had thrown their hats into the ring. However, the process was extended until December 24 to attract specialists in areas such as English, Japanese and Physics.

    "Applicants by the original deadline were not told of the extension.

    "With Murdoch University's teacher training course having already started on January 21, budding teachers are now left twiddling their thumbs.
    
    "Many applicants have jobs they'll find difficult to leave at the drop of a hat. Most are relying on the scholarship to take a year out to study.

    "Murdoch's Dean of Education said he was unaware of the delay, and that it was up to the education department to administer its own scholarship processes.

    "For 20 years our course has started at this time of the year," Barry Kissane added. "Some people may well have been relying on the scholarships, I don't know."
    
    "Curtin University's course starts on February 19. Edith Cowan's starts late Burberry, followed by UWA's on March 3.

    "Following the deadline extension 306 applicants are now awaiting a decision.
    
    "Feedback received through the interview process has shown that the opportunity to apply for a scholarship is highly valued by candidates," John Serich said when asked if the unheralded delay could sour his department's reputation as an employer of choice."

    From The Melville City Herald
    

 

Tuesday 29 January

• ABC News
  
  
  • Cyber teaching for Goldfields students
    
    "The shortage of teachers means students in the Goldfields will be taught some subjects via video and phone conferencing when classes resume next week.

    "Remote teaching technologies were introduced last year when the Eastern Goldfields College did not have a geography teacher and the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School could not offer certain maths and science classes.

    "The Goldfields Education Director, Larry Hamilton, says he will not know which subjects will be taught using video and phone conferencing until he speaks to the principals of the affected schools this week.

    "He says while he would prefer face-to-face teaching, the tight labour market is making it difficult to attract teachers.

    "We've got jobs for the people with those sorts of skills but attracting them to these places is not always possible, particularly in an era where we've got full employment essentially," he said.

    "There is a lot of competitiveness between enterprises for people, I think we've just got accept that that's the case and do our best."

    "Mr Hamilton concedes it is not an ideal scenario.

    "Teaching's basically the sort of work where relationships between people are really important, when a teacher and a student have a really good relationship the results are better."

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • UWA to overhaul degrees
    
    "The University of Western Australia is looking at a major overhaul of its undergraduate degrees.

    "Among options being considered are proposals to lengthen current three year degrees or for undergraduates to take compulsory general units.

    "This is similar to US universities where undergraduates must complete a basic degree before going on to specialise.

    "Emeritus professor of higher education, Ian Reid, is conducting the review, and says academic excellence is a priority.

    "But, he says it is also about providing students with breadth as well as depth.

    "There is the possibility of radically simplifying the range of degrees offered by the university so that even though students still do everything from engineering to commerce to law to medicine, etc, instead of having separate degrees for each of these, there might be just two or three degrees that the university offers," he said.

    "The president of the student guild, Nikolas Barron, says some of the proposed changes may have a big impact on students.

    "He says lengthening the time it takes to do a degree could be a problem.

    "Realistically, providing the best education in the world isn't going to matter if people can't access it and people don't want to access it because of the pressures that it will place on them, both during the time that they're at university and afterwards when it comes to repaying the debt that they owe," he said.

    "The public can make submissions on the options until the end of this month."

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Professionals see teaching as the perfect career change
    by Bridie Smith
    

    "Almost 30 professionals and tradespeople will enter the classroom as qualified teachers this week, as the State Government tries to plug the growing teacher shortage.

    "While the Opposition has dismissed the scheme — which targets professionals working in maths and science-related fields to teach in hard-to-staff state schools — as a temporary solution, many of the former scientists, plumbers, chefs and builders argue that teaching has been the perfect career change.

    "Among them is 47-year-old Ken Johnsen, a former electrical fitter with Telstra, who will begin his second career today at St Albans' Brimbank College as an electrical technology teacher.

    "Mr Johnsen, who will teach years 7-12 students as well as some vocational education and training students, was among a group of 30 professionals who completed a two-year course last year and are undertaking full-time teaching at schools across the state.

    "I've always thought teaching would really suit me," Mr Johnsen said. "And by doing it this way, I got to study, get paid and then move into a new career."

    "Mr Johnsen opted for a trade after leaving school because he wanted to start earning as soon as possible. But he said teaching had always been on the wish list.

    "Under the scheme, participants — who range from their mid-20s to early-50s — work four days a week at a school as a trainee teacher with a mentor. They have a reduced workload and spend the fifth day on paid study leave.

    "They get a basic salary of $41,005, plus a study allowance that ranges from $8000 to $14,000 depending on the type of school. Teachers who complete the training are employed at the school on a permanent basis.

    "It's one of the best things I've ever done," Mr Johnsen said. "I really enjoy teaching."

    "Such enthusiasm will be welcomed by the State Government at a time when the teacher shortage is predicted to worsen in the next two years, as Melbourne University shifts to postgraduate teaching degrees under its US-style Melbourne Model and the profession ages. More than one in three Victorian state school teachers are aged over 50.

    "A teacher supply report by the Victorian Institute of Teaching found there would be 201 fewer graduate secondary teachers next year, compared with this year.

    "Figures released earlier this month by the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre showed fewer school leavers were aspiring to the profession, with data revealing a 6.8% fall in the number of students opting to study teaching this year — what the teachers' union puts down to poor pay and job security.

    "Education Minister Bronwyn Pike said the professional trainee teachers brought valuable skills and experience to state schools, but shadow education spokesman Martin Dixon said the scheme was a temporary fix.

    "It's a way of trying to get teachers into the system quickly, when really, the big issue needs to be tackled about why young people aren't getting into teaching," he said."

    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Clarification

      "The worsening of teachers' working conditions referred to in the letter from Chris Curtis (Letters, 28/1) did not necessarily apply to every school in Victoria. He was referring to the school at which he taught."
      
      

    • Thanks, from in front of the class

      "First day of term, 1970. Altona North Tech … the end of the known world. What was I doing there? Simple. I had no choice because I was on an Education Department studentship.

      "For 30 pieces of silver, I'd sold my soul to the classroom. By the time my three-year obligation was up, I, like most studentship holders, was hooked. Reasonable pay, reasonable holidays and a manageable workload.

      "Thirty years and numerous inner-city secondary schools later came retirement. A journeyman's contribution to education … yes, I had mediocre qualifications and, no, I never aspired to become principal.

      "But, as Carolyn Webb (Opinion, 28/1) generously affirms, I feel sure I made a difference. The call for higher qualifications and an increased salary will attract some into teaching, but the lack of job security and constant need for self-appraisal can only alienate committed teachers.

      "It has been said that "those who do, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, teach teachers". Maybe it is still a fair call."

      Andrew Jones, Torquay
      
      

    • An educated plot

      "It seems clear from recent publicity that all is not well in Victorian education. Might I suggest there are two reasons for the teachers' plight.

      "Firstly, the administrators in the Education Department appear to have understood only part of competitive market economic theory. Even the pin-up boy of the market forces set, Alan Greenspan, recognises the folly of making teaching unattractive.

      "Secondly, the Victorian Education Union leadership has been a relatively subdued witness to Labor's amateurish attempt at a business model for education. It's almost as if the AEU leadership subscribes to this model. How strange would that be?"

      David Serocki, Box Hill North
      
      
      

• The Australian
  
  
  • Even public schools are getting pricey
    by Sanna Trad
    

    "While Jeremiah Jones dreads returning to class after six weeks of blissful summer holidays, his mother is dreading the ever-increasing bills that come with sending children to school.

    "Jeremiah, 13, is one of more than a million students around the country who will return, most somewhat reluctantly, to school this week.

    "The term will begin for government and non-government schools today in NSW, Victoria, the Northern Territory and Queensland, and tomorrow in South Australia.

    "ACT students will return to school next Monday, while students in Western Australia will return the following day. Students in Tasmania will not be back at school until February 14.

    "Jeremiah, who attends Condell Park High School in Sydney's southwest, is starting Year 8.

    "I'm not too nervous about the new year because I started high school last year," he said.

    "I was very nervous on my first day, but I will be more settled down this year."

    "Jeremiah attends a public school but that doesn't spare his parents hefty bills for excursions, fundraising and uniforms. Some parents who send their child to a public school spend more than $5000 a year on expenses, including fees, books and laptops.

    "Jeremiah's mother, Jennifer Jones, said she had noticed a significant increase in school costs in the past few years.

    "I've noticed that school fees keep going up," the mother of seven said. "They go up by a small amount each year, but there's a significant increase in the cost of schooling.

    "All my children attend public schools. A few years ago they didn't have to pay school fees - they were voluntary contributions - but now they really press hard on you to pay and they've itemised some of the costs so they have become compulsory. Before, you just had to pay textbook fees, but now there are all kinds of costs."

    "For some education departments around the country, meeting their teaching requirements for the start of the new school year will be a challenge.

    "Australian Education Union president Angelo Gavrielatos said teacher shortages were a serious problem.

    "The shortage is being concealed to a significant extent because teachers are being forced to teach outside their subject area," he said. "This is a serious matter. We need qualified teachers teaching our students, in every location across the country.

    "There are 600 teacher vacancies in Western Australia alone, and in South Australia schools are being forced to seek teachers from outside their borders."

    "Teachers in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia are engaged in salary negotiations.

    "In this year of teacher shortages, it is more important than ever that teachers are offered a competitive salary that can allow us to attract and retain teachers in the required numbers," Mr Gavrielatos said."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Call to abandon linear model of education
    by Catherine Armitage, Higher education editor
    

    "Universities need to flick their switches from "transmit" to "receive" to adapt to new patterns of knowledge transfer, a visiting expert on innovation has warned.

    "Michael Gibbons argues that universities must abandon their centuries-old model of linear knowledge transfer and instead open their doors and minds to knowledge exchange with competitors and students.

    "This would be “a revolution of the first magnitude,” said Professor Gibbons, director of science and technology policy research at Sussex University in the UK.

    "University people, left to themselves, always want to go back to first principles" of identifying a problem and solving it, he told the HES.

    "Universities need to develop a cadre of people who are good at finding out what already exists and using that in the innovation process.

    "If someone has already done it, you might as well move on. It is not a second-rate activity, it is a tough intellectual grind."

    From The Australian at link
    
    A longer revised version of this story was published on 30 January. Entitled Knowledge exchange key to new ideas, it's available at this link.
    
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Know your place ...
    
    A new book suggests none of the 'radical' education initiatives of the past 20 years have made any difference to the social segregation of schools. Report by Jessica Shepherd
    
    "The English education system is sliding back into Victorian times with today's schools almost as segregated by social class as they were in the 19th century, a controversial new book argues. The Education Debate, published tomorrow, draws a parallel between today's academies, faith and comprehensive schools, and the elementary, grammar and public schools of more than a century ago.

    "Its author, leading educationalist Professor Stephen Ball of London University's Institute of Education, claims that despite government rhetoric over the past 20 years, class inequalities are now almost as stark as they were in the Victorian era.

    "The debate follows an attack on the independent sector by Dr Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, who said earlier this month that private schools perpetuated an "apartheid" system of schooling, creaming off the most able students and leaving state schools to flounder.

    "In the Victorian era, Britain had a rigid class structure. The working class went to elementary schools, the middle class to grammar schools and the upper class to public schools. The Church and charitable individuals had considerable influence over the system. And all this is happening again at an ever-increasing pace, to the detriment of our society, says Ball, who is also an editor of the Journal of Education Policy.

    "He argues that faith schools are now primarily for the middle class, community schools increasingly for the working class, and private and public schools have been kept the preserve of the upper class.

    "Since the 1970s, education policy has been about 'radical' change, but the education system remains split along class lines," Ball says.

    "The class gap in participation rates in higher education is larger than ever before, despite the overall increases in participation; the poorest children, those with special educational needs, recent arrivals and those for whom English is not their mother tongue are clustered in certain schools. We are seeing the recreation of almost all the elements of the Victorian class-divided education system." This, Ball says in his "forensic analysis" of education policies over the past 20 years, is despite "unprecedented government activity" in education.

    "Between 2000 and 2007, the government issued 459 separate documents on the teaching of literacy in schools, he found. Our lack of progress, as far as inequality is concerned, is in part - despite the paperwork - because governments have only listened to the middle classes, Ball says. He claims inequality in the classroom has been tagged on to the long list of Labour and Conservative governments' priorities, rather than forming a central tenet in their decisions on education.

    "The north London family, with the Blairs as the archetype, is the dominant species in the world of English education reform, Ball argues. The Blairs chose an opted-out faith school for their son Euan - the London Oratory school.

    "Throughout history, the middle class has been seen as a problem whose [educational] needs need to be responded to, while the working class has been seen simply as a social problem," Ball says.

    "Our education system has always provided the means for middle-class families to gain social advantage and to separate themselves off from 'others'. Grammar schools, parental choice, ability-grouping, faith schools, gifted and talented have all been a response to middle-class concerns."

    "And while we're turning the clock back to Victorian times, we've also become obsessed by education's contribution to the economy rather than its value per se.

    "Education is a servant to the economy," Ball says. "Education is now thoroughly subordinated to the supposed inevitabilities of globalisation and international economic competition."

    Education and economics

    "Education can no longer be understood separately from economic policy, Ball claims. The meaning of education and what it means "to be educated" have changed.

    "Today's education policy is peppered with contradictions and Ball names a few of them. The government encourages parents to choose the "right" school for their children. This incites them to "look elsewhere" for schools. As a result, schools are disconnected from their local communities, particularly in cities. But the government is also concerned to renew neighbourhoods, to combat crime and antisocial behaviour.

    "Schools are given more autonomy than ever, but also subjected to a more detailed intervention in every aspect of school life.

    "Competition between schools for pupils is encouraged but, at the same time, schools are expected to cooperate with one another and share good practice.

    "Ball describes teachers as living in a "system of terror. Performance is measured by databases, appraisals, annual reviews, report writing, quality assurance visits, regular publications of results, inspections and peer reviews. And yet it is not always clear what is expected. Not infrequently, the requirements of such systems bring into being unhelpful or indeed damaging practices, which nonetheless satisfy performance requirements."

    "Pupils and students are now consumers, their learning experience a commodity that hopefully can be exchanged at some point for entry into the labour market, he says.

    "What response can those who helped shape education policy over the past 20 years give to such a stinging attack?

    "Charles Leadbeater is one of the intellectuals of New Labour and has been an adviser to the former Department for Education's innovation unit and the No 10 policy unit. He says this study is "unduly pessimistic and seems to ignore or neglect the mass of innovative practice that is taking place, some sanctioned by government, others in the wings of the system."

    "Yes, education policy has done too little to budge basic inequalities. In some ways the narrative of education has become too driven by a narrow account of economic imperatives. Education is too driven by national curriculum and assessment.

    "But there are many more opportunities for children to learn in new ways, partly with the help of new technologies. Many schools, especially primaries, are developing more personalised approaches. That is also taking root in the secondary sector, where it is most needed."

    "Leadbeater says the agenda of the last 10 years - of top-down targets, "national straitjackets" - is starting to run out of steam. "This is partly as results plateau and people look for a new narrative to energise the education system," he says.

    Winners and losers

    "But many academics and others in education will agree with Ball's findings. Professor Sally Tomlinson, senior research fellow at the department of educational studies at Oxford University, is one. She has come to the same conclusions as Ball in her analysis of education policy over the past 50 years. "Education," she says, "has moved from being a pillar of a welfare state, as intended by the postwar Labour government, to being a prop for a ruthless global market economy, which richly rewards winners and is draconian in its treatment of losers.

    "Larger numbers of young people now obtain educational qualifications, mainly due to comprehensive education and the work of further education colleges. But this has led to more support for exclusive strategies. These include A* A-levels, Oxbridge setting its own exams, vocational diplomas. Examination of the beneficiaries of 'high quality' education shows that, however it is defined, this kind of education has always been monopolised by higher socio-economic groups with some concessions to lower-class 'gifted' individuals."

    "There is one clue, however, that we'll only turn back the clock so far. "Gordon Brown is already different to Tony Blair," Ball says. "At least he is prepared to talk about inequality."
    
    From The Guardian at link

Wednesday 30 January

• Mark McGowan Media Statement
  
  
  • Teacher workforce strategies working
    
    Strategies by the State Government to tackle Western Australia’s teacher shortage are already beginning to pay off with vacancy rates for the start of the 2008 school year around half of what they were at the same time last year.

    Education and Training Minister Mark McGowan said there were currently 21,500 teachers signed up to work at WA’s 770 public schools, leaving a shortfall of 134 positions (100 full-time and 34 part-time) throughout the State.

    There were 264 vacancies at the same time last year.

    Mr McGowan said the majority of vacancies this year were for secondary teaching positions in the Fremantle-Peel, West Coast, Swan and Canning education districts. The Pilbara also had more than 10 vacancies.

    “I can assure the community that schools have strategies in place to deal with the situation and every regular class will have access to a teacher,” he said.

    “Over the past year, the Government has been relentless in its approach to workforce issues in the State school system.

    “While the vacancy rate is still too high, the fact that no school has more than five vacancies indicates that a number of the strategies we put in place throughout 2007 are beginning to bear fruit.

    “For example, due to our early graduate recruitment program, we have managed to employ 628 graduates to date, compared with 487 at the same time last year.

    “We have also appointed a further 48 teachers from overseas to start work during the 2008 school year.”

    The Minister said longer-term initiatives, such as the additional scholarships announced in October last year, were on-track to deliver teachers to country areas from 2009 onwards.

    “Many of the scholarships effectively lock graduates into Government contracts of up to four years at locations of need,” he said.

    “Successful applicants will begin coming through the system as of 2009 and deliver a steady stream of new graduates for State schools over the next five years.”

    Mr McGowan said 144 teachers currently working in desk jobs would also return to the classroom as part of the ‘Classroom First’ strategy.

    “I expect further positions to be filled as a result of the ‘Let the teachers teach’ initiative, which will encourage schools to employ non-teaching staff to fill positions that do not require a teaching qualification,” he said.

    “This will free up teachers to get back to what they do best - teaching.

    “For example a school’s computer network and infrastructure could be maintained by a computer technician, freeing up a teacher to return to classroom teaching.

    “Local clusters of schools will also be encouraged to share teaching resources with nearby schools that may not be fully staffed.”

    The Minister said the majority of industries in WA were having difficulty attracting qualified staff and this included the teaching profession.

    “Not all public schools in WA are affected by teacher shortages,” he said.

    “There is a larger supply of teachers for primary schools, which cater for about 65 per cent of our 250,000 public school students.

    “While we don’t have an across-the-board shortage, we do have a particular need for secondary teachers, particularly to take classes in Physical Science, English, Design and Technology, Maths and Society and Environment.”

    Mr McGowan said the Carpenter Government would continue to work hard on continuing current recruitment initiatives and developing new strategies to boost the workforce into the future.
    
    ABC News story based on the media statement
    
    Similar story in The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
    
    

  • Also from ABC News
    

    • Rudd names head of national curriculum board
      
      "Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has appointed a Melbourne academic to lead a new body charged with developing a national curriculum for schools.

      "Professor Barry McGaw from the University of Melbourne is a former director of Education for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development).

      "Professor McGaw will lead a 12-person board made up of representatives from the states and territories and the Catholic and independent schools sectors.

      "Mr Rudd says a national approach is needed to raise standards and make sure students complete their studies.

      "There is clear, indisputable international evidence that the more we have kids retained through to year 12 or year 12 equivalent then the better the outcome for them personally and the better to the overall contribution to the economy," he said.

      "Mr Rudd has described the board's task as formidable.

      "The objective we've set is for a national curriculum in the four key subject areas of English, History, Maths, Science to be delivered, as we're starting now in early 2008 by early 2011," he said.

      "It's a three-year task, it'll be tough and very intensive work."

      "Professor McGaw says he is confident the new National Curriculum Board can build on previous efforts to standardise the school curriculum.

      "This time around there is a real chance I think to do things nationally and effectively but the purpose has to be not achieving consistency for consistency's sake, but raising the performance levels," he said."

      From ABC News at link
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • Teachers walk legal minefield
    by Bernard Lane
    

    "Those slick advertisements could land universities in court.

    "(If) there are students out there watching those very expensive advertising campaigns saying you'll be in New York in three years earning a fortune, they're likely to sue," says PhD student Rosemary Dalby.

    "For her Queensland University of Technology thesis, Dalby is weighing the arguments for and against a duty of care that would require teachers to teach well or face an action for damages.

    "In the 2001 Phelps case, involving a failure to diagnose dyslexia, the British House of Lords signalled its willingness to impose a broad duty of care on schoolteachers.

    "Eighteen months into her PhD, Dalby is somewhat sceptical about such a cause of action.

    "For one thing, how do you prove the link between a breach of the duty and the damage done?

    "Even so, she believes educators are likely to face more lawsuits. And because universities are dealing with adults, they are vulnerable to a wider range of legal attack, including breaches of contract and of trade practices law.

    "We're not as litigious a country as the US, but we are getting much more so," she says.

    "We are more aware of law, we're a more legalistic society.

    "And there is that element: I want to get what I've paid for. It's no longer free."

    "She suspects that the legal onslaught has already begun. But cases tend to be settled before they reach court or and the public eye. Dalby has mixed feelings about more litigation on campus.

    "She says it might make universities more accountable: they'll have to live up to their claims or tone down their boastful ad campaigns.

    "At law school two decades ago she had "some appalling teachers; we all know they're out there".

    "And after all, fear of litigation has been long familiar in some parts of the education system.

    "That's what a phys ed teacher lives with when they do archery and a kid runs across the playground," she says. Yet as an ex-teacher herself - someone who knows what it's like to be "sweating in front of teenagers, being abused" - she feels for an educator who becomes a defendant."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Unis engineering a skills revolution
    by Milanda Rout
    

    "High school students as young as 14 will be targeted by universities as the nation's next engineers in an effort to ease the skills shortage gripping the profession.

    "Fifteen public and private schools have signed an agreement with five universities that offer engineering - the Australian Technology Network of Universities - to identify and encourage more school-leavers to choose engineering as a career path.

    "The ATN will help develop a specialised curriculum for students in Years 9 and 10 at the schools and report back to the federal Government, whose financial backing for the project includes $5000 grants to the schools, on the progress of the project.

    "The engineering industry says there is a shortfall of at least 20,000 graduates for the profession and it is likely to worsen unless immediate action is taken.

    "ATN chair and RMIT University vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner said the group, which accounts for 26 per cent of the country's engineering graduates, was determined to do something about the skills shortage.

    "Partnering with senior schools to identify and encourage tomorrow's engineers is a unique and fascinating way forward for universities," she said.

    "Professor Gardner, who will today sign a memorandum of understanding with the schools at the ATN annual conference, said the universities would work with the individual schools - three each in Victoria, Queensland, NSW, South Australia and Western Australia - to tailor curriculum and other activities to allow students to "experience the engineering world".

    "It may well be that an environmental engineering component fits best for one state, while an electronics component more appropriately suits another," she said.

    "Overall, though, all students will be exposed to all key elements of a career in engineering in a time frame which allows them to make an informed decision."

    "Engineers Australia chief executive Peter Taylor said there was a "desperate shortage" of engineers in Australia. "There is no way that we can expect to satisfy this demand for engineers while we continue to graduate fewer than 6000 each year."

    "He said universities across the country were going into schools to help promote the profession to youngsters and the ATN plan was part of that strategy.

    "RMIT TAFE student Dylan Interlandi, 16, said he enjoyed studying engineering as part of his apprenticeship to become a refrigeration mechanic. "I think it is a great career and there are plenty of good opportunities once you are qualified," he said."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Let's debate what we should know
    by Luke Slattery
    

    "Here is an idea for deep education reform that won't break Kevin Rudd's first, and fast-diminishing, budget: sponsor a debate on literacy, cultural capital and the curriculum. Or, to put it plainly: What Australians Should Know.

    "Public debate on this incendiary subject really took off with two works of social criticism published 21 years ago in the US, and has never really lost its fire. Between 1987 and ‘88 Chicago University philosopher Allan Bloom’s highbrow critique of the higher education system, The Closing of the American Mind, rode the best-seller lists ahead of University of Virginia English professor E.D Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy. Both academics were traditionalists, though not necessarily political conservatives (Hirsch has always proclaimed his liberal credentials); they aimed to centre the school and university system on great, or canonical, books and ideas; and to anchor the national culture to this solid pedagogical core.

    "Their opponents were the canon-busting insurgents busy trashing the curriculum for its deification of dead white males, to use a refrain popular at the time. Aflame with anti-foundational continental theories that come under the broad rubric of postmodernism, they wanted the education system to speak to a diffuse polyglot culture. The conservative rejoinder was nicely captured in a phrase by Saul Bellow: “When the Zulus have a Tolstoy, then we will read him.” Bellow, incidentally, was a friend and admirer of Bloom’s.

    "With an articulate and powerful duo like this on their team it’s little wonder that the traditionalists got more public airplay than the insurgents. Throughout the 90s, in fact, it seemed that publishers were on the lookout for any grumpy professor with a case against the canon busters then upending the traditional curriculum. Popular titles in the genre include Roger Kimball’s Tenured Radicals and The Rape of the Masters, Keith Windscuttle’s The Killing of History; Bernard Bergonzi’s Exploding English; Bruce Wiltshire’s The Moral Collapse of the University. Titles like David Denby’s Great Books clearly come out of this debate, though their intention is more expository, and perhaps conciliatory.

    "In contrast, I can’t think of one mainstream work written to explain why the canon needed busting, and how the American or any other mind might be widened by this break from tradition. Which is surprising, as there is a splendid, ready-made literary model of a classics basher in Voltaire’s Candide. Moans the Venetian nobleman Count Pococurante, when asked about Homer: “I have sometimes asked learned men if they found this book as tedious as I do. Those who were sincere all confessed that it dropped from their hands, but they felt obliged to keep it in their library, like a relic of the past or like rusty coins with no current use.” Virgil’s Aeneid, for its part, is “frigid” and “displeasing”. Milton is simply a “barbarian who made a tedious commentary on the first chapter of Genesis in ten books of rugged verse”. While broadly sympathetic to the traditionalists, I’d like to read a pococurantist shredding of the canon, if only to expose the sham learning behind all those popular guides to the classics.

    "The multiculturalists’ failure to compete with the lively public rhetoric produced by Bloom and his clan didn’t, in retrospect, seem to matter much. The culture wars took place in a corner of the public sphere - the books were widely reviewed and discussed, and just as widely worried about – that barely touched the power sources of the education system. With the result that the New York Times was recently able to announce, in a piece surveying Bloom’s inheritance, that the multiculturalists had won the canon wars: “Reading lists were broadened to include more works by women and minority writers, and most scholars consider that a positive development.” In Australia, too, reforms to the school and university curricula were rolled out seemingly beneath the high-level turbulence created by Bloom, Hirsch and Windschuttle, as if on another plane: for two decades public policy more or less ignored public debate.

    "Now that the culture wars have lost their spark it should be possible to rekindle a debate about what-we-should-know in terms that are more appropriate to the first decade of the 21st century than the last two decades of the 20th, and in a rather more civil and less huffy tone. Interesting questions revolve around the value-shared cultural knowledge: if Shakespeare is important, is he important to everyone? And nationality? What would an Australian canon look like? Who, to invoke Bellow, is the Australian Tolstoy? I think, in short, that it’s possible to have these kinds of conversations in an ecumenical and analytical spirit, and important to do so.

    "One of the most powerful critiques of Allan Bloom was launched by his Chicago University colleague Martha Nussbaum within months of the publication of the book that would bring him fame and wealth. In the New York Times Review of Books, Nussbaum, a classicist, stressed the value of active practical reasoning and self-examination – Socratic values – and questioned the assumption that a “single curricular solution” would be appropriate in a diverse country. The pedagogical tension identified by Nussbaum - between great works and personal wisdom - is as relevant today as it was two decades ago. As relevant as it was two millennia ago.

    "Some sort of national attempt to get to grips with these issues and aerate the big questions would be an important cultural moment and, quite possibly, a lot of fun. I can think of no better prelude to Australia Day 2009, especially for a fiscally constrained government keen to assert its credentials in education."
    

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • University bypassed in teacher downgrade
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor
    

    "TAFE teachers, who also deliver Higher School Certificate vocational courses, will no longer need to complete university training under a State Government decision to lower the level of their qualifications.

    "As about 740,000 students return to school today, teachers say they are concerned the TAFE teacher qualification is being downgraded.

    "The State Government wrote to teachers late last year informing them of its intention to change the standard TAFE teaching qualification from a university diploma to a level-four certificate in training and assessment, delivered through TAFE or private community colleges.

    "The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Maree O'Halloran, yesterday said HSC students who study vocational education and training courses through TAFE would feel an adverse impact from the decision.

    "That starts to worry us because a premium is not being placed on the qualifications required to be a teacher," she said.

    "Ms O'Halloran said she feared the decision would lead to compromise in the level of qualifications required of school teachers, as has happened in Britain, where teachers' aids had been employed to teach classes.

    "Forty per cent of the teaching profession in NSW is eligible for retirement within five years.

    "We are very worried this decision to lower the qualification for TAFE teachers may move across the school boundary," she said. "So far we have been able to staff the 2200 schools in NSW, but we are very worried about the shortage we are facing with so many experienced teachers leaving the system."

    "A report by the Australian Council for Educational Research, released last week, found that staff shortages were being hidden by principals asking teachers to teach outside their area of expertise.

    "The NSW Minister for Education, John Della Bosca, said the Department of Education was still consulting the profession about changes to TAFE qualifications. He said the decision aimed to remove barriers preventing industry experts becoming permanent TAFE teachers, particularly in areas of skills shortages.

    "The proposed minimum teacher training requirements for all TAFE teachers will be standardised as the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment," he said. "This is already the standard for part-time casual and temporary teachers in TAFE NSW and is also the standard for VET teachers in all other states.

    "In order to encourage new teachers to pursue relevant higher qualifications in the first two years of their appointment, TAFE will waive the fee for the TAFE-delivered Diploma of Training and Assessment or refund 50 per cent of their Higher Education Contribution Scheme and provide two hours' professional development per week."

    "A spokesman for the NSW Department of education said more than 60,000 kindergarten students would start school this year and 974 teachers and 72 new principals had been recruited to start work. Four new schools would open..

    "The department said it spent $26 million on capital works and maintenance in schools over the summer break."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

  • School leaving age set to rise

    The NSW government wants to raise the minimum school leaving age from 15 up to 16, or even possibly 18, from the start of next year.
    
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Students deserve genuine educational reform
    by Neil Hooley
    

    "It seems that the energetic critics of schools in Australia have sniffed the wind and are claiming that the new Federal Government has adopted an essentially conservative educational agenda. This is a clever device, a means of expressing qualified support for the incoming administration while at the same time, maintaining their extremist conservative positions.

    "A realistic and progressive view of education is required to counter this situation and to advocate a genuine revolution in public education policy.

    "Strangely enough, proposals for a progressive revolution in Australian education need not involve large amounts of money. It should go without saying that in one of the world's wealthiest countries an adequate resource base should be provided and that funding levels for teachers, buildings and equipment are not in dispute. We can then turn our attention to what really counts, how the most appropriate and progressive environment for learning can be established for all children.

    "In the first instance, we must have a much more sophisticated analysis of questions related to equity, disadvantage and poverty. Why is it that where a student lives can still be an accurate predictor of exam results? Does society have the view that families who have a reasonable income are more intelligent than those who do not?

    "In a democratic country like Australia we must surely accept that all children are capable of meeting agreed outcomes provided that the conditions for learning are appropriate.

    "Children and indeed adults, generally go about their learning by incorporating three main approaches. There is usually some activity with materials and words, there is some connection between what is already known and what is being encountered and some attempt at explaining what is happening.

    "Interspersed throughout are changes to what was originally intended, changes to the activities, changes to the possibilities and changes as to how to proceed. We see all of these processes at work whether observing children at the beach, or observing scientists in the laboratory.

    "What this means for good teaching therefore is that all classes for all subjects need to combine a mix of approaches so that students can have direct experience of an idea or practice, they are encouraged to discuss and reflect on that experience and to make changes to see what occurs.

    "This approach emphasises a framework of inquiry where learning evolves from personal experience and where more abstract thinking is firmly located in concrete expression. Knowledge is being constantly built by the child, rather than being continuously transmitted by the teacher.

    "Inquiry learning connects more closely with the life experience of children and with how the brain works. Acting as a neural network, the brain incorporates and reconstitutes experience into new patterns of understanding in a dynamic, changing process. This compares with the filing cabinet view of learning, where static copies of reality are neatly filed for use when needed.

    "Attempting to file predetermined, abstract thought without the experience of active, concrete, experiential knowledge is very confusing alienating children from learning and producing deficits in understanding.

    "Arising from an inquiry approach to teaching are inquiry approaches to the monitoring and assessment of learning. This is the second initiative required for a genuine revolution in education. The philosophy of inquiry suggests that schooling is not so much concerned with the acquisition of truth, but the investigation of practice.

    "The latter does not preclude the former. It could be argued for example that an active process of experiment and reflection will lead to a more comprehensive and generalised understanding of the issue under study, than a mere requirement that preformed truth be accepted.

    "If different children go about their learning differently, if they combine active, concrete and abstract thought differently and if they construct different conclusions at different times, then it makes little sense to judge preset learning at preset times. In fact, the education system is disadvantaging children if it attempts to do so.

    "We need to monitor the learning progress of children in relation to agreed criteria and celebrate the learning that does occur as departure for ongoing investigation.

    "What happens if the process of inquiry learning results in children constructing the wrong ideas? Whether a conservative approach of passive transmission leads to children understanding the intended idea, is also a question to be asked. But for inquiry learning it is probably the wrong question.

    "At any point in time, a child will have a particular understanding that progressive educators will not consider as being wrong or unacceptable. It is the child's understanding at that time and in co-operation with teacher and classmates that forms the basis for new active learning.

    "From an educational point of view, it is difficult to justify a strictly time-based judgement of learning and to punish children through a multi-level graded system of assessment. Apart from the doubtful accuracy of this approach, most testing concentrates on the recall of knowledge and not the more integrated, creative and imaginative areas - students are not penalised for being precisely wrong, but are recognised for being vaguely right. Demanding that students are precisely right reflects a cultural view of schooling where knowledge is set by the few for the many.

    "It is a false dichotomy to argue that student background is unimportant and that good teaching will overcome economic and social barriers. Good teaching must precisely draw upon the child's daily and family experience to engage with significant ideas and to connect current knowledge with the emerging.

    "Students from what are generally seen as disadvantaged backgrounds are just as capable as anyone else, but schools need to provide the experiences and connections that support engaged learning.

    "It may be thought that these are modest demands for an education revolution. Inquiry teaching, learning and assessment however are not the dominant features of our schools at present. Many teachers across different subjects and year levels do attempt to work in this way, but their commendable effort is still in the minority.

    "The ideology and pressure of the examination system at year 12 also exerts a powerful conservative influence for teachers and parents that is difficult to resist. But if these issues are not taken up in a serious way then the revolution in education will exist in name only."

    Neil Hooley is a lecturer in the School of Education, Victoria University.

    From The Age at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Teachers should strike for more pay

    John Brumby and his yes-men have manipulated opinion against our teachers.

Thursday 31 January

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Editorial (page 20)
    Hard to believe Carpenter and his army of spin doctors

    "The events of the past week have served to reinforce the immense distrust among West Australians in what politicians have to say..."

    "And the Government's spin machine continues to treat the public with little respect as it tries to put a positive glow on the vast number of problems which it should be ashamed to preside over.

    "Yesterday, Education Minister Mark McGowan tried to claim success in the fact schools were 134 teachers short for the start of term one next week, about half the number of vacancies the public education system faced at the same time last year.

    "But the reality is 144 teachers have been pulled off desk jobs in district education offices to fill the vacancies. Those support staff will no longer be available to assist classroom teachers. And without their return to the classroom the shortages would be exactly the same as they were last year. It is a classic case of shuffling the deckchairs rather than solving the problem of attracting new teachers to the profession..."
    
    Full Editorial in The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Schools go back short of 134 teachers [Front page]
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "Thousands of WA children will start school next week without a regular teacher after a mult-million dollar Government campaign failed to fix the State's chronic teacher shortage.

    "Education Minister Mark McGowan conceded yesterday that State schools still needed another 134 teachers to fill classrooms when the new school year began.

    "News of the embarrassing shortfall came as Mr. McGowan refused to release a State Government-commissioned report into the teacher shortage which has been in its possession for the past six weeks.

    "Last year, State schools were left scrambling to find 264 teachers for classes at the start of the year. To prevent a repeat of last year's debacle, this year the Government provided lucrative scholarships, embarked on expensive overseas and interstate recruitment drives, recruited teachers halfway through their final year of study and offered big pay rises to first-year teachers.

    "The Education Department has appointed 48 overseas teachers for 2008, but just 21 will be available for the start of the year. It was unable to provide figures on how many teachers had been recruited from interstate.

    "The drive to recruit graduates before they were snapped up by private schools resulted in 141 more graduates than last year, rising from 487 to 628.

    "The department also ordered 144 bureaucrats who have teaching qualifications to return to the classroom from their desk jobs in central and district offices or from secondments to the Curriculum Council.

    "Mr. McGowan admitted the teacher shortage would take many years to overcome. "It hasn't been fixed," he said. "It is still an issue. However, it has improved on last year."

    "He said schools still needed teachers in the four key secondary subjects of science, English, maths, and society and environment.

    "Most vacancies were for high school teachers in the Fremantle-Peel, West Coast, Swan and Canning education districts. The Pilbarra district also had a shortfall of more than 10 teachers. The school with the biggest shortfall is Gilmore College in Kwinana, which is down five teachers.

    "The Opposition and the State School Teachers Union, which this week was still predicting the shortage could be as high as 600, claimed the true picture would be known only after teachers returned to schools.

    "SSTU president Anne Gisborne said the strategy which had proved most successful in boosting numbers - ordering teachers in desk jobs back to schools - had also resulted in less support for teachers and a reduction in specialist programmes for students, so it could only ever be a stop-gap solution.

    "Shadow education minister Peter Collier accused the government of burying the final report prepared by teacher shortage task force chairman Lance Twomey because it is likely to recommend salary increases for teachers.

    "He said Mr. McGowan was deliberately delaying its release until after negotiations for a new enterprise bargaining agreement for teachers had finished.

    "Ms. Gisborne said the report should be made public so its recommendations could be incorporated in negotiations for the new agreement.

    "Mr. McGowan said he would release the report after it had been considered by cabinet."

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Alston (page 20)



© The West Australian




• National Curriculum target date set for 2011 (page 6)
  by Rhianna King

  "The Federal Government has taken the first step towards creating a national school curriculum, appointing education expert Barry McGaw to develop common standards - but any changes will be at least 3 years away.

  "Professor McGaw will head a 12-member board which has until 2011 to create the curriculum to cover from kindergarten to Year 12. It will initially cover maths, English, science and history and eventually geography and the languages.

  "Professor McGaw is a former director of education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris and is now the director of the University of Melbourne's education research institute.

  "He said yesterday that OECD national benchmarks had shown that Australian students were falling behind their competitors. "They're not at the top end of understanding highly complex text in the way that we expect 15 year olds to do if they're going to build seriously in their further study on their reading capacity," he said.

  "Professor McGaw said while the States had previously been reluctant to embrace a national curriculum, he felt there was now a different mood. "This time round there's a real chance, I think, to do things nationally and effectively," he said. "But the purpose has to be not achieving consistency for consistency's sake but for raising the performance levels."

  "He said the best elements from each State would be combined to create the curriculum and he though WA ought to feature strongly because of its high ranking in OECD surveys on reading, maths and science.

  "He believed there should be a degree of prescription in the national curriculum, but also the capacity for professional decisions within schools.
  Professor McGaw said he had an open mind on the topic of a national school certificate, but said it was important to develop the curriculum before making that decision. Lifting the school retention rate, preventing the confusion for students who moved interstate and ensuring Australia was more internationally competitive were Labor's motivations for establishing a common curriculum.

  "Prime Minister Kevin Rudd admitted the task was formidable. "We've got 34 separate organisations contributing to the development of curriculums across the country at the moment," he said. "It will require co-operation. I know enough about Federal-State relations to know that that itself is going to be an arduous task."

  "WA Education Minister Mark McGowan said Professor McGaw was an outstanding educator with considerable expertise in education and curriculum issues. "I have always supported a more nationally consistent curriculum that includes strong local content," he said."

  From The West Australian
  
  Similar stories in The Australian, Age and Sydney Morning Herald below

   

• Letter to the Editor (page 22)
  
  
  • Schools should be a priority

    "Today my wife and the other teaching staff at her school officially return to work after the Christmas break and to a classroom environment that does little to assist teachers in their education of the children.

    "Air-conditioning to the classrooms is of the evaporative kind but has to be run at the minimum speed to avoid blowing papers in the room. This virtually makes it ineffective.

    "In a few months, when the cool weather sets in, there will be no heating.

    "The school board and the P & F have indicated their intention to partially or wholly fund the installation of heating/cooling to classrooms but old wiring needs to be replaced, the cost of which is an expense that the school cannot bear by itself. A business case has been presented to the Catholic Education Office but has indicated that it is unwilling to meet the rewiring cost.

    "In 2007, the Archbishop of Perth launched a programme in which every family in every Catholic school in Perth was asked to contribute an amount of $20 each year for the next three years towards the restoration and modernisation of St. Mary's Cathedral in the city. The same was also asked of all parishioners in all Perth Parishes. The Archbishop is ultimately responsible for Catholic education in the Archdiocese and there is an indication here where priorities seem to lie. The building of edifices seems to take preference over the provision of facilities and environments conducive to effective teaching and learning.

    "The school is undoubtedly not alone and I'm sure many ministry teachers also suffer the same intolerable workplace conditions. Pleasant teaching conditions equate to better teaching and education but some people seem to have trouble grasping this concept and direct funds and energies into more visible ventures."

    Name and address supplied

    
    

• The Australian
  
  
• Op Ed
  Drop the spin and work on education
  by Tony Smith
  

  "As more than 3.5 million students cover their new books, pack their bags and get into their uniforms to return to our 9600 schools this week, the new Rudd Labor Government has the opportunity to drop its election campaign spin and start working to solve the core problems holding back our school system.

  "But if they are to begin the transition, today's Council of Australian Governments working group meeting of state and federal education ministers will have to be more than a back-slapping, buck-passing love-in.

  "No doubt much of the meeting will discuss the finer details of Julia Gillard's roll-out of computers in boxes to schools for students in years nine to 12.

  "But to deliver a real "education revolution", today's meeting in Canberra will need to discuss more than which bureaucracy will deliver which computer in a box to which school.

  "Instead, it must move past computers and tackle the core problems crippling our schools. Top of the list should be escalating teacher shortages.

  "While no school will say no to more computers, as one teacher said to me, the computers will be "of no use if there aren't the quality teachers there to teach with them".

  "Attracting our best and brightest to teaching is proving more and more difficult, and keeping those who we manage to attract is just as hard.

  "As the recent Australian Council for Education Research survey of 12,000 teachers and school leaders uncovered, crippling teacher shortages are proving to be one of the greatest problems undermining our education system.

  "The report not only found two-thirds of public schools had difficulty retaining staff, but that there were chronic shortages of qualified maths, science, IT and languages teachers, with many teachers teaching outside their field of expertise in order to cope.

  "Add to this a 6.8 per cent decline in demand for places in undergraduate teaching courses, 40 per cent of the teaching workforce expected to retire in the next six years and 68 per cent of early-career primary teachers unsure how long they will continue teaching because of "better career opportunities outside teaching" and "dissatisfaction with teaching" and 20 per cent of teachers actually leaving within their first three to five years, and you have a severe problem that needs to be addressed by Gillard and the Labor states as a matter of urgency.

  "If any other profession or company in Australia was failing to attract quality employees and was losing their best staff as well, you'd find much quicker action than what's being taken in the education sector.

  "Few would disagree with the proposition that a school can only be as good as its teachers, and there is plenty of research to suggest that along with the quality of the curriculum, teachers have the greatest impact on how well students learn.

  "While computers in schools might be a great additional resource, they are no substitute for good teachers and a strong curriculum that ensures literacy and numeracy standards will be met and children will have the fundamental building blocks for a life outside of school.

  "As Clive James pointed out in The Australian last year, equipping every Australian child with a computer "is less likely to guarantee an education revolution than to provide an incentive for children to multiply their illiteracy". While a revolution would mean "restoring the erstwhile capacity of Australia's young people to read, write and do elementary arithmetic in their heads".

  "It is therefore why Gillard and her state counterparts must begin thrashing out what can be done to not only recruit our best and brightest teachers, but keep them, whether it be through higher salaries, better recruitment, greater accountability, better incentives such as performance pay, greater principal autonomy or a changed professional culture.

  "Addressing this problem is beyond party politics and not just a problem that has sprung up this week as schools return. Nor is it a problem confined just to Australia, as Alan Greenspan recently pointed out in his book, The Age of Turbulence when he suggested one of the greatest problems in the US today was the lack of basic literacy and numeracy skills due to a glut of maths teachers who "have been replaced with teachers with degrees in education but much too often with no math or science degree or competence".

  "But it is a problem that for too long has been swept under the carpet by the Labor states and ignored by the very union that is supposed to represent teachers.

  "Kevin Rudd and Gillard have promised wall-to-wall Labor governments will mean a new dawn for federal-state "co-operation". Today's test will be whether the COAG working group meeting will provide any real solutions to teacher problem shortages or simply more "co-operation" to ignore the problem."

  Tony Smith is the Coalition spokesman on education.

  From The Australian at link
  
  
  

• Rudd's pick to seek national curriculum
  by Patricia Karvelas, Political correspondent
  

  "Kevin Rudd has handed a Melbourne academic the "formidable challenge" of leading the creation of a new national schools curriculum.

  "The Prime Minister yesterday named Barry McGaw as head of the new National Curriculum Board, to be established by January 1 next year with a mission of forging a single national curriculum.

  "The Labor Government's national curriculum, which will be implemented in 2011, will initially cover English, mathematics, science and history from kindergarten through to the end of high school.

  "Professor McGaw, director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute, will lead a 12-person board comprising representatives from state and territory governments, Catholic and independent schools.

  "Mr Rudd warned that it would be difficult to put a national curriculum in place because the states were attached to their own systems and had resisted adopting new approaches.

  "In terms of the task ahead, it's formidable. This is an area of work which historically has been paved with good intentions, but with very little outcome," Mr Rudd said.

  "Our intention is to make a difference, but it's going to be very hard and we recognise that. It's a three-year task - it'll be tough and intensive work. The nation hasn't done this before, so I'm being entirely up-front with you about how complex I think it's going to be."

  "With the national workforce increasingly mobile, the Prime Minister said, it was illogical that 80,000 children whose parents moved last year had to face a new curriculum at new schools this week.

  "He warned that the education system was not world-class because of the different curriculums across the country.

  "Right around the country this week we've got some 80,000 kids who are starting school in a different state or territory," Mr Rudd said at a public school in the NSW town of Queanbeyan yesterday. "If you're a mum or dad or carer for those kids, there are a whole lot of problems in moving from one state or territory to another because, frankly, the curriculums don't speak to each other."

  "Mr Rudd said Australia had 34separate organisations contributing to the development of curriculums, and more than 18 different senior history and English courses.

  "This had created significant disparities in educational attainment between states and territories, with a 26 per cent difference in the proportion of Year 3 students who meet national reading benchmarks.

  "Professor McGaw said the mathematics performance of Australian students was declining in comparison with those of other countries, and a national curriculum could help Australia become internationally competitive.

  "You could argue that we're small enough to do things as a whole," he said.

  "Professor McGaw said the states had never used the opportunity of having different curriculums to drive improvements."

  From The Australian at link

  Similar stories in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  

• Op Ed
  Revolution run by establishment
  by Kevin Donnelly
  

  Barry McGaw’s appointment as head of the proposed National Curriculum Board, the body charged by the Rudd Government with designing a school curriculum to be followed by all states and territories and implemented in 2011, should not surprise (writes Kevin Donnelly).

  "McGaw was involved in writing “Federalist Paper 2”, the state and territory Labor governments’ blueprint for education released last year, and he was employed by then Labor premier Bob Carr to review the NSW Higher School Certificate in the mid-1990s.

  "As a past head of the Australian Council for Education Research and a senior bureaucrat with the European-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, McGaw is part of the education establishment.

  "He is a trusted old hand. His appointment signals the status quo in education will be preserved and that Kevin Rudd’s education revolution is about playing it safe, instead of much-needed change.

  "McGaw is not a curriculum subject expert.

  "His formal qualifications relate to educational psychology and psychometrics, and most of his career has been spent designing forms of testing to measure educational outcomes - such as the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment.

  "As many educators across Australia know, focusing too much on accountability by imposing onerous and time-consuming testing regimes overwhelms teachers, reduces education to what is easiest to measure and detracts from the joy of teaching.

  "The history of developing anational curriculum in Australia is a minefield fraught with failure.

  "The Curriculum Development Centre’s “Core Curriculum for Australia’s Schools”, created in the 1980s, and the Keating government’s national statements and profiles both failed.

  "One reason is that curriculum development was carried out by representative committees made up of the usual suspects divorced from the realities of the classroom and the experience of teachers - a model the federal Government seeks to follow.

  "A second reason is that curriculum change was imposed from on high and schools had little, if any, flexibility to fashion what was taught to their local needs.

  "The challenge will be to develop a curriculum that best supports teachers and strengthens standards.

  "It will also be vital to see whether Rudd’s national curriculum will be compulsory or whether schools, especially non-government, will have the freedom to shape a curriculum that best suits their unique communities."

  Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies and author of Dumbing Down (Hardie GrantBooks)

  From The Australian at link
  
  
  

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Making schools relevant for all the big challenge
    

    The conversation about schools is always a little depressing at this time of the year. The general theme of the back-to-school period is the rising costs of education, as well as the usual scoring and ranking of students.
    
    

  • NT students lag behind in literacy

    About a third of year three students in the Northern Territory are failing to meet minimum reading and writing benchmarks, a national report shows.
    
    

  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • We'll pay a heavy price for lowering standards for TAFE teachers
      

      "At a time of a critical national skills shortage, the downgrading of public education systems and the commercialisation of education at all levels, Australia desperately needs highly qualified TAFE teachers that their students can respect and with qualifications they can trust.

      "The downgrading of NSW TAFE teacher education ("University bypassed in teacher downgrade" January 30), which set the quality standard for the rest of Australia, is an unnecessary and retrograde step that, like many other education changes, is greatly weakening education as a key component of Australia's economic competitiveness, security and prosperity.

      "As a company director and university-educated person from industry, who has lectured on a casual basis over a number of years to entry-level full-time TAFE teachers at the University of Western Sydney in the bachelor of adult education, I was really impressed with the way this course took experienced and competent tradespeople and technicians, and transformed them into well-trained, confident TAFE teachers..."

      John Girdwood, Clovelly
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Pressure builds on education spending
    by Farrah Tomazin
    

    "The Rudd and Brumby governments are under renewed pressure to bolster education spending amid new figures showing Victorian students continue to be the lowest funded in the country.

    "As more than 530,000 students returned to school yesterday, the Productivity Commission's annual report shows that Victorian children each receives an average of $8686 in government funding — almost $1000 less than those in NSW and almost $2000 less than Western Australia..."
    

    Full story in The Age at link

Friday 1 February

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Exam Audit sparks new fears for OBE (page 3)
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "Fresh fears have been raised about new outcomes-based education courses to be taught in schools from Monday after the Curriculum Council was forced to order an independent audit of two flawed exams in courses offered to Year 12s for the first time last year.

    "As schools prepare to offer another 13 OBE courses to Year 11s this year, the council has set up an independent review of TEE papers set for engineering studies and media production and analysis.

    "Shadow education minister Peter Collier said the problems showed that the introduction of OBE courses two years ago had been too hasty.

    "It does raise more questions now as to whether or not neo curses in their current form are adequately prepared," he said.

    "Parents, teachers and principals raised an outcry last year after students sat the engineering exam, complaining that the paper bore little resemblance to earlier sample exams supplied by the Curriculum Council and that they contained questions not in the syllabus. Media teachers also attacked their paper saying it was poorly constructed and failed to adequately examine material covered in Year 12.

    "Following a range of feedback from students, parents and teachers regarding the 2007 engineering studies examination, I have decided to institute an independent review of the examination," Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood said in a letter sent to engineering teachers this week. A copy of the letter has been obtained by The West Australian. "Recommendations are to be made concerning improvements to the production of the paper."

    "Retired high school principal and former head of the WA Secondary School Executives Association Ray Maher will review both exams. He will examine how members of the panel who set the exams were selected and appointed, the selection of the independent exam reviewer and final checker and the role of Curriculum Council officers and employees in the process.

    "A separate review is also being conducted into problems that arose when a new online marking system was used for media exam papers.

    "Mr Wood said yesterday the reviews would be completed by next month but the conclusions would make no difference to the results of students who studied media and engineering last year.

    "Engineering studies teacher Ralph Bradstreet, from Mazenod College, said the decision to audit the exam proved it had extensive problems. A media teacher said it was heartening the council had acknowledged problems with the 2007 exam.

    "New courses being examined at Year 12 level for the first time this year include physical education studies, earth and environmental science, applied information technology and English as an additional language.

    "First time courses for Year 11s include outdoor education, psychology and philosophy and ethics."

    From The West Australian

    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Stop holding back top students: curriculum chief
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Australia has fallen behind in reading because there is too much focus on lifting the results of struggling students, rather than also making our top students perform even better, says the man spearheading the Federal Government's first national school curriculum.

    "Melbourne University professor Barry McGaw said yesterday that Australia's international ranking had dropped in recent years because too much emphasis had been placed on boosting the results of students at the bottom end of the performance scale, and not enough on improving the skills of those at the top.

    "Educators and governments should "behave like women and multi-task", he said, by working to lift the game of all students.

    "The debate should not be constructed around the notion that you can only do one thing at a time. In other words, we should focus on the whole range of performance. At the bottom end, you might say that we need more specialist support, but at the top end, we should have all teachers push students out with high-level reading skills and so on," Professor McGaw said.

    "It's perfectly true to say that we should be worrying about kids who don't get the basic skills. But if we talk as though that's the only problem, I think we begin to lose focus on the development of really high-level reading skills — they're the skills on which further learning depends."

    "Professor McGaw's comments came a day after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Education Minister Julia Gillard appointed him as the chairman of the National Curriculum Board, which will spend the next three years developing a uniform school curriculum for students in prep to year 12.

    "The change will mean that by 2011, students could be studying the same curriculum in English, maths, science and history, regardless of which state or territory they live in.

    "But Professor McGaw's view that more emphasis should be placed on boosting the skills of Australia's high-performing students is at odds with that of some educators, who believe lifting the results of struggling students should be the top priority.

    "The fundamental issue is about supporting kids from low socio-economic backgrounds who are at that tail end," said Australian Principals Association president Andrew Blair.

    "Professor McGaw, a former director of education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, yesterday drew on recent figures showing that Australian students had slipped in maths and reading.

    "The figures, based on the latest data from the Program for International Student Assessment, which measures 15-year-old students on their literacy and numeracy skills, found that in those areas, Australia had fallen behind other OECD members it was previously on a par with, namely Switzerland, Canada and Macau.

    "In an interview with The Age, Professor McGaw also said:

    • Any plans to develop a nationally consistent curriculum could fail without additional resources for schools.
    • Phonics (the method of teaching children to read and pronounce words by associating letters with the sounds they represent) should be prescribed in a national curriculum for students in the early years of school
    • While English, mathematics, the sciences and history would be the first subjects reviewed, the curriculum board would also examine how teaching of foreign languages could be improved in schools.
      
      

  "Ms Gillard yesterday moved to reassure parents that the introduction of a national school curriculum would not disrupt their children's education.

  "Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith said transitional arrangements would need to be put in place, "but this cannot be an excuse for the Rudd Government to waste time improving the curriculum".

  From the Age at link
  
  
  

• ABC News
  
  
  • 11th hour bid to strike new pay deal for teachers
    
    "The State School Teachers Union is returning to the negotiating table today to try to strike a new pay offer.

    "The union has already rejected two offers from the Education Department, saying a 13 per cent rise over four years is insufficient.

    "Most public students return to school on Monday, but teachers are refusing to participate in after school activities and they are not ruling out further industrial action if negotiations stall.

    "The union's president, Anne Gisborne, says they are working to ensure that key elements such as class sizes and ongoing professional development are retained within any agreement.

    "They need to build on the foundation of the second offer and put more into areas such as salary, planning time for teachers and administrators, and also the area of addressing workloads," she said.

    "Ms Gisborne says it also want to know whether the Education Department has transferred some teachers from crucial areas to address teacher shortages.

    "We believe that those shortages, in part, have been covered by the removal of teachers from other tasks. Crucial tasks around curriculum support, development of curriculum materials, and the capacity for schools to deliver specialist programs to targeted groups of students."

    "The Education Department has released a statement saying both sides have indicated their willingness to negotiate in good faith, and in view of that commitment, it expects the union to suspend any form of action."

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • WA unions reject wage restraint call
    
    West Australian unions say the state's workers should receive significant real wage increases, despite calls by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, for everyone to show restraint.
    
    
    
    
  • Tasmanian students' education lagging
    
    New figures show Tasmanian students score below the national average in most literacy, numeracy and writing benchmarks.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Curriculum switch will be smooth: Gillard [late update from 31 January]
    AAP
    

    "The federal Government has moved to reassure parents concerned the introduction of a national school curriculum could disrupt their children's education.

    "Education Minister Julia Gillard said today the Government would take steps to ensure the switch to a national curriculum was as smooth as possible for existing students.

    "Steps will be in place to minimise disruption - in much the same vein as Labor's planned transitional industrial arrangements for people on Australian Workplace Agreements.

    “Part of what we're doing is getting the national curriculum board to develop the national curriculum,” Ms Gillard told the Nine Network.

    “That's obviously going to have to come with transitional arrangements.

    “What we want to achieve is national curriculum so the kids that move from state to state ... are not looking at unfamiliar textbooks and screwing up their faces at the teacher going, 'What's going on here, I've got no idea'.”

    "Kevin Rudd yesterday appointed Melbourne academic Professor Barry McGaw to oversee development of a national curriculum covering English, mathematics, science and history.

    "If negotiations with the states are successful, the curriculum will come into effect in time for the 2011 school year.

    "Ms Gillard said a national curriculum would make life easier for the 80,000 children who move interstate with their families each year.

    "But teachers are demanding to have a say in the development of the new national system.

    "Professor McGaw's panel of 12 on the national curriculum board will include “representatives” of the state and territory governments, Catholic and independent schools.

    "The union representing public school teachers is demanding that practising teachers have their voice heard in formulating the new curriculum, which is scheduled to take effect in 2011.

    "Australian Education Union president Angelo Gavrielatos said the union was prepared to work co-operatively towards a national curriculum, providing the final product was flexible enough to allow for local and regional variations.

    "But he warned Labor not to exclude classroom teachers from the process.

    “Our major difficulty with where we're at at the moment is the view that somehow teachers won't be involved in curriculum design,” Mr Gavrielatos told ABC radio.

    “What we say to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard is that any process aimed at delivering or designing curriculum without the direct involvement of practising teachers ... is flawed.

    “Teachers must be involved in the curriculum design process.”

    "But the national curriculum was not an end in itself and depended on schools being adequately resourced, he said, renewing calls for a $2.9 billion funding boost.

    "His call came as a Productivity Commission report showed one-third of year three students in the Northern Territory are failing to meet minimum reading and writing benchmarks."

    From the Australian at link
    
    

  
  
  • Op Ed
    Education system must lift its game
    by Adam Lewis
    

    "Like many people, I sent my children off to school this week for their first day of the year hoping their education prepares them for a fulfilling and challenging future. But there is something perplexing about the Australian education system: parents are supportive and we hope our kids will do well; most teachers have good intentions to see students meet their potential; and governments (and parents) spend a lot of money on education -- so why are our schools not performing as well as they should?

    "Australia has nearly tripled real education spending for each student since 1970 and yet our system has barely improved.

    "Similar results have occurred throughout the world. McKinsey & Company studied 25 of the world's school systems and examined what high-performing systems have in common and what tools they use to improve student outcomes.

    "Our findings, recently published in a report entitled "How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top", are that although Australia's education system delivers good results, it remains outside the top tier of countries such as Hong Kong, Korea and Finland, which produce excellence in learning outcomes. To get into the top tier we need to lift our performance across the board, but particularly in maths education. According to the OECD, Australian students are ranked 7th overall, but 11th in maths. We are also outside the top tier in skills required for 21st-century employment, such as complex problem solving.

    "We must address the variability in school results, which sees too many underperforming schools and too few outstanding ones. For example, in the case of the Victorian Certificate of Education, 18 per cent of Victorian schools are below standard (defined by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority as a mid-range score) and less than 10 per cent of government schools deliver what could be regarded as exceptional results.

    "From my experience of having children in the public school system, the data supports some of the dissatisfaction that we parents have with Australian schools.

    "However, before we call for massive spending increases, let's not forget that education expenditure has increased 9 per cent on average a year this decade and teachers' salaries have grown in real terms. Combine this with improvements in student-teacher ratios, and we should be justifiably disappointed that performance has not consistently lifted. Governments should not try to spend their way out of this problem. The best education systems, such as those of the Czech Republic, Finland and Singapore, spend lower than the average on education and have higher class sizes. But we will need to pay our better-performing teachers more money. The best-performing education systems are in countries where teachers are paid more attractively.

    "Good intentions and increased spending are not enough to improve Australian schools. Fundamental changes are required in classrooms in teacher-student interactions. Our research finds that three things matter most here: getting the right people to become teachers (and keeping them); developing them into effective instructors; and ensuring that the system can deliver the best possible instruction every time.

    "Education departments can change structures, governments can increase spending, we can endlessly debate about the curriculum and can even reduce class sizes - but research indicates that all this does not have much impact on student outcomes. The main driver of variation in student learning is the quality of the teachers. Academic research has found that if two average eight-year-old students are given different teachers - one a high performer, the other a low performer - the students' grades diverge more than 50 percentage points in three years.

    "To improve teacher quality, our research makes three recommendations:

    • Top-performing school systems consistently attract high performers into teaching by making entry to teacher training highly selective, developing effective processes for selecting the right applicants, and paying good (but not exorbitant) starting compensation. Getting this right drives up the status of the teaching profession, enabling it to attract even better candidates.
    • Once you have good teachers, they need to be developed into good instructors. Top-performing school systems employ interventions that make teachers aware of individual weaknesses, gain understanding of best practices and motivate them to improve. Poor-performing teachers need support to improve their effectiveness, but there is no room for those that continually underperform.
  • Greater uniformity in outcomes is another key characteristic from countries with the best education systems. Schools have to deliver for every child. That means producing good outcomes in maths and sciences, not only the humanities, for both boys and girls, and schools in lower socioeconomic suburbs as well as those in more affluent areas. Setting high expectations for student achievement, monitoring performance, and intervening when expectations are not met, ensures high-quality instruction is delivered uniformly to all children in the system.
    
    

  "Education is important to the entire community. Although university training or trades skills are important, due to the speed of change and complexity of modern society, the need for basic skills in numeracy, literacy and socialisation are critical. If the school system does not equip young people with the right skills to operate in a more dynamic world, then it is often too late by the time they get to university or TAFE. If Australia is to play a prominent role in the global knowledge economy of the 21st century, being merely above average in school education will not be good enough.

  "We have to create an environment in which our kids love to learn and our teachers are motivated and rewarded to facilitate this process. No single player in the education system can fix it by themselves. What is more, some of the emotion that exists in education has to be removed. Instead, we need a fact-based approach that allows good performance to be rewarded and underperformance to be reversed."

  Adam Lewis is managing partner of McKinsey & Company, Australia and New Zealand

  From the Australian at link
  

  
  
  • Numeracy down for remote students
    Samantha Maiden, Online Political Editor
    
    "The majority of indigenous children and students in remote areas of Australia are failing to meet national benchmarks for numeracy.

    "Education Minister Julia Gillard today released the results of the 2006 National Reading, Writing and Numeracy Benchmark .

    "While majority of Australian students in Years 3, 5 and 7 achieved the minimum benchmark standards in reading, writing and numeracy, she said boys’ results for literacy and levels of achievement amongst Indigenous students and students living in very remote regions, remained significantly lower than the overall standard.

    “The results for Indigenous students in year 7 numeracy for instance showed that less than half, 48 per cent, met the benchmark in 2006,’’ she said today in a statement.

    "Disturbingly, 47 per cent of very remote students achieved the benchmark in year 7 numeracy compared to 72 per cent of remote students.”

    "Ms Gillard said she did not believe there were “significant differences” in numeracy between boys’ and girls’ achievement, however in reading at all levels fewer boys than girls achieved the national benchmarks.

    “This report demonstrates the urgent need for an Education Revolution to ensure all Australian kids get a world class education,’’ she said.

    "The introduction of national literacy and numeracy tests in May 2008 will provide the first truly accurate picture of how our kids are progressing.”

    "For the first time, students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 across the country will sit the same tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions and Numeracy from May this year.

    “These national results, combined with the development of a national curriculum, provide an opportunity for collaborative reform which genuinely raises standards,’’ Ms Gillard said.

    "The previous Liberal government encouraged a culture of blame which undermined transparency and blocked meaningful reform.In contrast, the Rudd Government is committed to working with school systems in every state and territory to deliver a world class education system.”

    "The 2006 national benchmark results report is available at: http://www.mceetya.edu.au "
    
    "Information on the new national literacy and numeracy tests is available at: http://www.naplan.edu.au "
    

    From the Australian at link
    

Saturday – Sunday, 2 – 3 February

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Teachers pay row looms over school start (page 6)
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "State school pupils face an uncertain start to the academic year on Monday after the teachers' union chief refused to set a date by which it would ramp up industrial action if the State Government did not meet its demands for higher pay.

    "Teachers last week foreshadowed launching more aggressive action in the next few weeks if there was unsatisfactory progress in the pay dispute and yesterday State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne said it had not set a timetable for further action.

    "The West Australian understands that the union executive has discussed plans to hold a half-day stop-work meeting in the fourth week of term but Ms Gisborne refused to confirm that yesterday.

    "I haven't heard anything of that nature at this point in time," she said.

    "The union is negotiating a new enterprise bargaining agreement after 89.79 per cent of members rejected the Government's second pay offer of 13 per cent over four years late last year. Negotiations continued yesterday but made little progress. It is likely that it will take weeks to thrash out a new pay deal.

    "The union has already told its members in a statement known as "directive one" to cut all extracurricular programmes such as after-school sport, to take effect on Monday if there was no satisfactory progress in negotiations by the start of school.

    "Ms. Gisborne said that even though the union had considered further directives, nothing had been set.

    "There is no directive two on the table at the moment," she said. "We will contemplate that in response to the (Education) Department's negotiations and how they respond to us. The impact of directive one will also be taken in to account.

    "We could be successful and the department come back with a fantastic offer next week and that would be as far as we could get.
    
    "The union has indicated previously that it is contemplating turning away students from overcrowded classes and refusing to write report cards.

    "The department has asked the union to suspend any form of action while negotiations continue. However, Ms Gisborne said that plea was not likely to dissuade teachers from taking work-to-rule action from next week. The union also plans its own audit of schools in the first few weeks of term to gauge the extent of the teacher shortage. Education Minister Mark McGowan conceded this week that State schools would start the year with a shortfall of 134 teachers but the union believes that number could be much higher."

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Groundhog day for WA schools
    Pam Casellas Blog
    
    "Every year it’s the same story – just days away from the start of the school year and there is doubt and confusion over how many teaching gaps will emerge on the day that children turn up.

    "And every year there are stories of new teachers not being told where they have been posted until virtually hours before the doors open for the first time.

    "How can this happen? Last year, a newly-qualified teacher of my acquaintance spent December and January trying to find out where she would be posted.
    
    "She had asked to go to any school in the Kalgoorlie area. There are, after all, several to be staffed in and around the town.

    "No word came from the department, despite many phone calls, until just a day or so before school started when she was told she had been posted to the Kimberley. She accepted the post and, luckily for the department, has been happy in the job.

    "But surely that’s not good enough? The department cannot expect teachers to uproot themselves in such a short time.

    "In some cases, being posted to the country means leaving rented accommodation, finding somewhere to live in perhaps a remote area, moving possessions, farewelling family – in the case of newly-qualified teachers, perhaps for the first time.
    
    "Oh, and preparing themselves for their new and very important job.

    "No wonder so many of them never work for the government, and find jobs in the private sector where they have some certainty of what they’ll be teaching and where they will be living.

    "It was suggested to me that part of the reason for this annual postings chaos is that department staff in charge of staffing don’t return to work from their Christmas break until well into the new year.

    "Surely that’s not true? Surely they would have a minimum break, and be back at their desks to work through a process which admittedly must be difficult, as soon as possible?

    "The department defends itself in this annual staffing nightmare by saying it doesn’t actually know how many teachers it will have until the first day, because some teachers they assume will be back at work, have actually decided over the summer to resign.

    "And only tell the department on the first day of term?

    "The department labours under the obvious handicap of simply not having enough teachers to go round.

    "Boosting numbers is a challenge it has not fully been able to meet.

    "But one can’t help wondering whether, if it treated those that it has, particularly the new and enthusiastic, much better, it would not lose quite so many."

    From The West Australian at link [Read comments invited at that link]
    
    
    
    

  • WA children near bottom on three Rs (page 6)
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "WA primary school children are among the worst in the nation in reading, writing and maths, a national comparison of Years 3, 5 and 7 pupils has found.

    "State-by-State comparison of tests that were done in 2006 found that many WA students failed to reach national minimum benchmarks in six out of nine categories, making them the second-lowest ranked next to those from the Northern Territory.

    "About 15.6 per cent of WA's Year 7 students failed to meet the reading benchmark, 15.3 per cent of Year 5's failed to meet the writing benchmark and 11.6 per cent of Year 3's did not make the numeracy benchmark in the results released yesterday by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.

    "The level of achievement dropped even further among WA's Aboriginal students, with 51.8 per cent of the Aboriginal Year 7's failing to meet the numeracy benchmark and 53 per cent falling below the reading benchmark.

    "Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said the results showed that the majority of Australian students in Years 3, 5 and 7 achieved minimum benchmark standards. But she was concerned that levels of achievement among indigenous students, literacy in boys and students living in remote regions was significantly lower than the overall standard.

    "Nationally, the results for Aboriginal students showed that less than half - 48 per cent - met the 2006 benchmark in Year 7 numeracy. Just 47 per cent of very remote students met the benchmark in Year 7 numeracy. Fewer boys than girls achieved the national benchmarks in reading at all levels but there were no significant differences between boys' and girls' achievement in numeracy.

    "Children sat different tests in different States and Territories in 2006 and the results were statistically adjusted by assessment experts to allow comparisons on a common scale.

    "WA Education Minister Mark McGowan said it was not valid to compare results from two-year-old tests as they were different in each state. He cited WA's success in global academic testing of 15-year-olds by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development because students sat the same test across the nation. The OECD tests showed that WA students ranked third in the world in science and second to the ACT for reading and maths.

    "Unlike the other States and Territories, WA releases its results on the Years 3, 5 and 7 testing each year as the results become available," he said. "These results are two years old and we've since released results for 2007."

    "In May, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 across Australia will sit the same tests in reading, writing and numeracy and language conventions for the first time."

    From The West Australian
    
    Similar story in The Sunday Times
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor (page 23)

    • The teacher crisis will get worse

      "No, Mr. McGowan, the teacher shortage has not improved on last year.

      "If the figures (Schools go back short of 134 teachers, 31/1) are correct, there is in fact an increase in the number of vacancies for teachers for the start of the year compared with this time last year.

      "If there are 134 vacancies in schools and another 144 vacancies caused by the removal of teachers from district offices, central office and the Curriculum Council, then there is a total shortfall of 278 teachers compared with 264 this time last year.

      "The current situation is worse by 14 teachers.

      "The Minister is mischievous in trying to rob Peter to pay Paul and pretend that he has improved on the situation.

      "Not only has the situation become worse, the Minister has managed to alienate a big percentage of the teaching workforce by his actions to bring about the improvement.

      "He has alienated most teachers by offering beginning teachers a 10 per cent increase in their salaries while offering only 4 per cent to those have for many years borne the brunt of increasing workloads, poorly managed changes to the curriculum and the demands of teacher shortages.

      "Those 144 who were summarily removed from their jobs and returned to the classroom must feel extremely undervalued, let alone how they must feel about the destruction of their career aspirations.

      "And, in removing the 144 support teachers, the work which they did has now been to teachers and administrators in schools who are already doing their own jobs.

      "It is disappointing that the Minister appears happy to be so carefree with his figures. His department's officers are to be congratulated for their efforts to improve the situation. However, the Minister needs to recognise that the situation has become worse.

      "The problem for him is that without a wages and conditions agreement which truly addresses the needs of the teachers currently working for his department, the situation will only continue to worsen."

      D.H. Phillips, White Gum Valley
      
      
      

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    A resistant reading of postmodernism
    
    Proficient literacy is a building block for life
    
    "Design a travel brochure for tourists landing from the moon; compare a few lines of Keats with an SMS message; explain why the chair is a "text"; design a Dolly cover; identify how the "discourse of masculinity" is "foregrounded" in Target's pyjama ads. Parents familiar with such drivel, served up as English, understand the literacy wars. So does The Australian, which has campaigned for years for rigour and quality to be restored in school curriculums. Just as vigorously, the paper has advocated the use of best practices in teaching children to read. The rationale is hardly rocket science. Literacy skills are the foundation of all further education and for poorer children, offer a pathway to rewarding careers and financial security. Such logic, however, eludes many who train teachers.

    "Years of news stories, features, commentaries and editorials in this newspaper have prompted Monash University Associate Professor of Education Ilana Snyder to pen a 248-page book, The Literacy Wars. Her stated goal is to hold the paper to account. And The Australian is more than happy to be held to account. In turn, however, it is our duty to hold education systems, universities, politicians, teachers' unions and academics - including Dr Snyder - up for scrutiny on what is a significant issue for Australian children, their families, employers, and the nation. Dr Snyder accuses the paper of a crusade to "dictate a reactionary model for the secondary school English curriculum". We also stand accused of giving undue prominence to the use of phonics in teaching reading, as recommended by the national literacy report, Teaching Reading in 2005. Our advocacy of correct grammar, classic literature, now rebranded "the Western canon" and literacy basics is decried as a push to restore "something resembling the cultural heritage model associated with Matthew Arnold at the end of the 19th century". Our more subtle aim, Dr Snyder contends, relates to "the moral ordering of life and the regulation of people". In the jargon forced on secondary students, who dare not admit they see through it if they want to snare good grades, the "dominant reading" of The Literacy Wars "foregrounds" the "discourses" of education, popular culture and gender. It "privileges" postmodernism but a "resistant reading" suggests opponents, whose ideas are "marginalised" as "gaps" and "silences" have a point.

    "The supreme irony is that while railing against the "conservative" views of our commentators, who she describes as "potent politically", Dr Snyder and those who hold the same views - undoubtedly a majority in university education faculties - are reinforcing social inequality. As professors Ken Wiltshire of the University of Queensland and Kevin Wheldall of Macquarie University argue, it is working-class white children, migrants and indigenous children who have most to lose from the relaxation of standards. Many middle-class children receive worthwhile help with early reading at home, and encouragement to read good literature. This helps them survive the system relatively unscathed. Many poorer children, however, have no such support and they struggle. As Professor Wiltshire says, literary theory has a place, but is better suited to universities where students have been well grounded in literature.

    "Much of Dr Snyder's vitriol is directed towards former prime minister John Howard. While acutely aware of educational shortcomings, his government, unfortunately, was largely unable to rectify the problems, although it made headway in national literacy and numeracy benchmark testing. If Kevin Rudd is to deliver the much-needed "education revolution" he must make an overhaul of teacher education a condition of university funding. Like all fads, critical literacy and gimmicky methods of teaching reading will pass, with some states already showing signs of improvement. The fads, however, continue to do damage as many of their proponents, supposed adherents of the liberal Left, enforce them with the rigidity of 1920s and 1930s totalitarianism."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    In plain English, a war worth fighting
    by Kevin Donnelly
    

    "In her advocacy of new-age and politically correct approaches to English teaching, represented by postmodern theory, critical literacy, gender politics and embracing computers and the internet, Monash University's Ilana Snyder makes no bones about why she wrote hew new book The Literacy Wars and who the enemy is.

    "The opening and closing chapters begin with references to The Australian's campaign for a more traditional approach to English, where the literary classics are centre stage and phonics and grammar play a significant role.

    "Snyder writes: "However, it was the Murdoch paper's crusade against contemporary approaches to literacy education that motivated me to write the book. It is time to hold them to account."

    "Parents and the public might like to believe the fourth estate has every right to reveal shortcomings in the nation's education system and to hold those responsible to account for failed experiments such as whole language and critical literacy, but not Snyder. Not only does she label the paper's stance and commentary on English teaching as ideologically driven and misleading, but commentators associated with the paper, including Luke Slattery, Christopher Pearson and me, are condemned as conservative, elitist cultural warriors guilty of manufacturing a literacy crisis.

    "Notwithstanding its flaws, The Literacy Wars deserves to be read. While attacking so-called conservative critics for getting it wrong, Snyder admits that during the 1970s and '80s grammar disappeared from the classroom.

    "She also admits there is no evidence that new technology raises student achievement, and accepts the truth of many of the criticisms detailed in The Australian when she states: "The issue of fragmentation of the curriculum is real and there are also problems with political correctness as it has played out in Australian schools."

    "The Literacy Wars provides a useful summary of how English has developed since the early '70s, including the use of the personal-growth model and process writing, where the child's experience is paramount and creativity replaces formally teaching grammar, spelling and syntax.

    "But Snyder's treatment of recent literacy debates is confused and one-sided. Take the issue of falling standards. The Australian's criticisms of professional associations and teacher educators relate to the fact, as the result of a dumbed-down English curriculum, that many students enter secondary school without the basics, and first-year university undergraduates have to take remedial classes.

    "One expects a literacy expert such as Snyder to be clear on the issue of standards; unfortunately she is not. First, readers are told it is impossible to decide if standards have improved or declined: "Reading and writing are dynamic practices, changing over time."

    "Two pages later, she argues there has not been "a general decline in literacy standards" and, notwithstanding her statement that it was impossible to judge either way, in the final chapter she says: "Allegations of declining standards and literacy crises are not tenable."

    "As shown by the 2000 and 2006 results in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's program for international student assessment, where Australian students dropped from second to sixth in terms of literacy performance, there is evidence that standards have fallen. Research by Canberra-based academic Andrew Leigh also concludes that "troubling new evidence suggests that literacy and numeracy scores have stagnated or fallen since the 1970s, despite the doubling of resources".

    "Snyder is also incorrect in attacking Australia's education system for being what she terms "high quality/low equity", an argument, often put by the University of Melbourne's Barry McGaw, that, compared with other countries, not enough is being done to help disadvantaged students.

    "As noted by Geoff Masters, the head of the Australian Council for Educational Research, the claim is wrong. Masters states, after analysing the 2006 PISA results: "Another indicator of the world-class nature of our education system is the observation that the relationship between socioeconomic background and student achievement in Australia is weaker than the OECD average. In the popular jargon, Australia is a 'high quality/high equity' country."

    "The failure to take note of research evidence is not restricted to Australia. Snyder condemns the type of testing associated with US President George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" initiative, claiming that a back-to-basics approach does not work. According to a report by the Washington-based Centre on Education Policy, released midway through last year, such is not the case. After analysing the data from 50 states, the conclusion is that the majority show improvements in learning outcomes as measured by reading and mathematics test scores.

    "In the final chapter of The Literacy Wars, Snyder states: "It is time to abandon the language of attack and accusation to concentrate on improving literacy education for all Australian students." It's a pity she does not follow her own advice.

    "Instead of welcoming public debate led by The Australian, she accuses the paper of manufacturing a crisis to increase sales and simply wanting to promote the conservative Howard government's political agenda. One wonders how those on the cultural Left will deal with Education Minister Julia Gillard's description of herself as an education traditionalist and the Rudd Government's back-to-basics approach to curriculum?

    "Instead of accepting that critics are motivated by a desire to empower students by giving them a rigorous education, Snyder also argues that those advocating the classics and curriculum are disinterested and driven by a desire to win the class war and to denigrate the work of government schools.

    "Debates about grammar, according to Snyder, reflect a "clash between proponents of social control and the proponents of social autonomy" and such battles are "as much about the restoration and renewal of traditional hierarchical relations in society as they are about schooling".

    "Ignored is the argument of David Kemp, a former minister for education under the Howard government, that the best way to help disadvantaged students is to teach them the basics and introduce them to the enduring works of the Western tradition.

    "Snyder's apparent position that many students are destined to failure due to their disadvantaged background and therefore schools cannot be held accountable for how well they learn, is self-fulfilling and defeatist if taken seriously.

    "Also ignored is The Australian's role in outing an exclusive Sydney-based non-government school for making students deconstruct Shakespeare in terms of neo-Marxist, postmodern theory. The reality is that politically correct approaches to curriculum affect government and non-government schools alike."

    Kevin Donnelly taught English for 18 years and his PhD thesis examines developments in English teaching since the late 1960s. He has been a member of state and national curriculum committees and is a past member of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English."

    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • 'Skills tests put students at odds'
    by Tess Livingstone
    

    "An academic and former high school teacher has returned fire in the literacy wars, claiming that universal skills tests advantage "certain groups of students and marginalise others".

    "Monash University's Ilana Snyder accuses The Australian of running an ideological campaign against outcomes-based education.

    "In a new book, The Literacy Wars, Dr Snyder questions the motives of those favouring a return to a more rigorous and literature-based senior English curriculum.

    "And she questions this newspaper's advocacy of correct grammar and basic literacy skills, labelling it as a push to restore "something resembling the cultural heritage model associated with Matthew Arnold at the end of the 19th century".

    "Some students possess the cultural and social capital that helps them to understand the particular language associated with testing and to decode the questions, but for others there are no such advantages," Dr Snyder argues.

    "As a result, differences in literacy achievement as measured by standardised tests need to be approached with caution."

    "If a test measures print-oriented skills, for instance, this might disadvantage children "who prefer digital forms of literacy".

    "Dr Snyder goes on to argue that literacy itself is a "highly contested word".

    "It is not a notion like 'car' or 'holiday' which demand a reasonable level of agreement about their meaning," she writes.

    "Macquarie University Professor of Education Kevin Wheldall said such theories were "barking mad".

    "Many middle-class children will learn to read and to appreciate literature in spite of what happens at school," he said. "I am concerned about the children who are not surrounded by books at home and whose parents are not able to help them with reading and writing.

    "If I was cynical, I would say those who oppose teaching phonics and giving all children the chance to appreciate literature are out to keep Aboriginal children, poor white kids, and migrants for whom English is a second language, in their place. To use the awful jargon, the current approach privileges those who have help at home.

    "I come from a working-class family in England and had it not been for the 11-plus exam (a test taken at the end of primary school in England) getting me into a grammar school I would probably be a baker like my father rather than a professor of education."

    "Dr Snyder, an associate professor of education who taught high school English for 10 years, repeatedly singles out this newspaper's reports, editorials and columnists -- including Kevin Donnelly, Luke Slattery and Christopher Pearson -- for her criticism.

    "She admits it was "the Murdoch paper's crusade against contemporary approaches to literacy education" that motivated her to write the book. "It is time to hold them to account."

    "Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of The Australian and The Weekend Australian, said he was more than happy to be "held to account" and the literacy wars were not about a conservative versus leftist political agenda.

    "A good grounding in reading, writing and maths, followed by a broad, traditional liberal education gives children, especially the poor, the best chance to do well in life," Mr Mitchell said. "Dumbing down the curriculum hurts everyone, but it hurts disadvantaged children the most."

    "He said The Australian had run a wide-ranging debate on a very important subject, covering all points of view.

    "Yesterday, Dr Snyder said that she had written the book because she was "irritated by the polarisation of the debate" and by what she regarded as "misrepresentations of what is taught in English and in teacher education at universities".

    "In the book, she is critical of The Australian for embracing the findings of the Teaching Reading report from the national literacy inquiry, which called for a return to phonics as part of the mix in teaching reading.

    "The inquiry, headed by Ken Rowe, found that trainee teachers needed to be taught how to teach reading through phonics as well as whole-word recognition.

    "Yesterday she said that, like the inquiry, she favoured students being taught to read with a combination of phonics and whole word recognition. "It's not a case of either/or," she said.

    "Describing herself as a "book lover", Dr Snyder -- who enjoys Philip Roth, Ian McEwan, Shakespeare and the Greek playwrights -- said she had no objections to students studying Shakespeare from modern perspectives such as Marxism.

    "She also said it was essential that students studied popular culture such as teenage magazines and films so they were able to be critical of it. "Fights over a Marxist interpretation of Shakespeare or a text message on an exam miss the point," she writes.

    "At their core, the literacy wars are the result of competing views and beliefs about society -- what it is, what it has been, and what it should become."

    "Dr Snyder now wants the debate to move to the issue of extra funding for state schools. In her book she accuses The Australian of a "particularly ferocious campaign" against outcomes-based education, introduced as "a way of increasing social justice" and in response to the quest for greater accountability.

    "Dr Snyder says the push by "conservatives" for a return to more traditional English literature in secondary school is "related to deeper political discussions about the moral ordering of life and the regulation of people".

    "Ensuring students study "books from the Western canon" can "also train students to be governed by an aesthetic and moral code associated with the cultural heritage model, an approach that originated in Victorian England with little relevance to Australia at the beginning of the 21st century."

    "Dr Snyder said research showed that working with computer games in literacy classrooms "provides students with additional means of expression and communication to those dependent on print skills".

    "University of Queensland professor Ken Wiltshire said the critical literacy movement offered nothing positive to the education debate. "It seeks to destroy the fundamentals and principles of sound curriculum development as practised in all countries of the developed world and most emerging ones as well," he said.

    "Make no mistake, this author is part of a sinister assault on Australia's educational standards and values. Her approach, like the movement she represents, is an elitist one, since the only students who are really competent to handle critical literacy are the ones who already have an excellent grounding in the basic literature."

    From The Weekend Australian at link
    

    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Technology opens the doors to global classrooms
    by Jimmy Wales and Richard Baraniuk
    

    "As the founders of two of the world's largest open-source media platforms, Wikipedia and Connexions, we have been accused of being dreamers.

    "Separately, we became infected with the idea of creating a Web platform that would enable anyone to contribute their knowledge to free and open learning resources.

    "Jimmy started with his popularly generated encyclopedia. Rich developed a platform for authors, teachers and students to create, remix and share courses and textbooks.

    "Almost everybody dismissed these dreams. With the support of untold legions, from Nobel laureates to junior high school kids from East Timor to East Los Angeles, Wikipedia and Connexions have spread around the globe and today are organic, growing information bases used by hundreds of millions of people. We want to infect you with the dream that anyone can become part of a new movement with the potential to change the world of education. This movement can redefine forever how knowledge is created and used.

    "Today, some US community college students have to quit school because their textbooks cost more than their tuition; and some third graders have to share maths books because there aren't enough to go around. But imagine a world where textbooks and other learning materials are available to everyone for free over the Web and at low cost in print..."

    Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
    

  
  

  • Howard skills school gets lifeline
    
    Funding has been guaranteed for another of John Howard's technical high schools, despite the Rudd Government's policy to replace them by building up the resources for existing schools.
    
    
    
    
    
• The Sunday Times
  
  
  • Class sizes may be increased
    by Stephen Drill
    
    "Australia's new education tsar says he supports large classes.
    
    "Barry McGaw, charged with co-ordinating a new national curriculum, said reducing class sizes was a waste of money and more specialist teachers should be hired to help struggling students instead.

    "The decorated academic and policy maker argued that slow learners slipped through the cracks just as easily in smaller classes as they did in larger classes.

    "Teachers unions have pushed for reduced class sizes, but I think it's not the most important thing,'' he said.

    "It's a waste of money. You don't get the best bang for your buck.''

    "Finland, which has the highest literacy rate of 15-year-olds in the world, invested heavily in the early years of education, Mr McGaw said.

    "Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appointed Mr McGaw as chairman of the National Curriculum Board this week.

    "But WA State School Teachers' Union president Anne Gisborne rejected outright the push for bigger class sizes.

    "She said the union feared larger classes could be taken up as a solution to current teacher shortages.

    "She warned that bigger classes would be detrimental to already overworked staff. Students would receive less one-on-one support.

    "Ms Gisborne said students in smaller classes had stronger friendships and more respect for teachers.

    "There is significant research that indicates a connection between the size of the class and the capacity of the teacher to deliver quality programs to our students,'' she said.

    "It is logical that children get more attention in smaller class sizes.''

    "Ms Gisborne said the union was pushing to reduce secondary school class numbers from 32 to 30."

    From The Sunday Times at link
    
    
    
    
  • Teachers dispute set to disrupt school children [from 1 February]
    by Paul Lampathakis
    
    "Thousands of WA children will experience disruption when they go back to school on Monday because of the teachers' pay and conditions dispute.
    
    "State School Teacher's Union president Anne Gisborne confirmed tonight that planned action would go ahead - with teachers not participating in any voluntary out-of-school-hours activities they normally supervise - unless paid - as of February 4.

    "Ms Gisborne said the Education Department had not come to a meeting with the union this afternoon with a reasonable counter-offer, after teachers rejected Education Minister Mark McGowan's second pay deal in December.

    "The teachers' stand, which comes on top of expected teacher shortages of about 134, will have an impact on events such as excursions, coaching sessions, trips, camps and concerts.

    "We are not in a position where we've got a satisfactory response to the rejected second offer,'' Ms Gisborne said.

    "Salary is a significant element that needs adjustment."

    "We are still continuing to seek a pay increase that will leave our teachers at the top of the incremental salary scale, as the best paid teachers in Australia.''

    "She said there had been no consideration of additional planning time for primary teachers or teacher administrators.

    "They're (the department) really not resourcing for workload alleviation,'' she said.

    "There was also no response to an element in our claims, where we were looking for reduced class sizes. For nine to 15-year-olds, we would want a class size of 30. At the moment we have 32."

    "We're hoping to have an arrangement to continue reducing class sizes because it's better for the kids.''

    "She said the pay agreement was one of the "key planks'' in the WA Government's strategic action to address the teacher shortage crisis that was being faced now and which would continue to grow in coming years.

    "The Minister said earlier this week that we're 134 teachers down,'' she said.

    "In a primary school, only one teacher affects 32 children and in a high school about 120 children a week.''

    "Education Department executive director of human resources John Serich said both the union and the department had today indicated a willingness to negotiate the pay deal in good faith.

    "Because of this, the department hopes that the union agrees to its (the department's) request, not to take industrial action while talks are underway,'' he said."

    From The Sunday Times online / PerthNow at link
    
    
    
    
  • Kindy kids going hi-tech
    
    "Children as young as two should use computers regularly to help them compete in the digital age, educational experts say.
    
    "At age 3 they should be able to do basic computer tasks, University of Western Sydney academic Joanne Orlando said.

    "In some childcare centres one-year-old babies use computers with their carers, and most centres have at least one computer for their children's use.

    "As thousands of youngsters prepare for the start of kindy, Ms Orlando warned they would be expected to know how computers work.

    "The internet can be used as a valuable source of educational material, and writing or drawing programs are a great way to allow your child to express themselves creatively without having the physical limitations of their own inexperienced handwriting,'' she said.

    "Begin by teaching your child to type their own names, or work with you in searching for information on their favourite topic.''

    "Priscilla Clark, director of FKA Multicultural Resource Centre, said computers were useful for children, but there was no substitute for learning English from the people around you, rather than sitting in front of a computer."
    
    From The Sunday Times at link

    Are you happy with the state of WA's Education system? Post [a comment at that link].
    
    
    

• The Age [Saturday]
  
  
  • One in five students falling short in maths
    by Farrah Tomazin
    

    "The Federal Government has conceded it faces an uphill battle to lift education standards as new figures show one in five students fail to achieve basic maths standards by the time they start high school, while indigenous children, boys, and those in remote areas continue to lag behind.

    "Two months after Labor was swept to power promising an "education revolution", the annual National Report on Schooling has found that 20% of year 7 students do not meet national numeracy benchmarks, and a further 11% do not have basic reading skills.

    "Literacy continues to be a problem in Victoria, which is the lowest ranking state when it comes to year 3 reading, despite students being the best performers in writing.

    "One in three children are not completing year 12, according to the report, with indigenous students and children in remote schools well behind their counterparts.

    "Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard yesterday said she was worried about some of the findings, and admitted that "significant challenges remain" to ensure all students achieved the standards expected of them.

    "But she said the report showed state and territory governments were working on improving results, prompting criticism from the Opposition, who accused her of failing to hold Labor leaders accountable.

    "Julia Gillard has to remember that it's her state Labor counterparts who are responsible for setting curriculum and upholding standards," said Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith.

    "The National Report on Schooling is based on state-by-state testing for years 3, 5, and 7 in the key areas of reading, writing and maths. While most students in Australian schools are meeting national benchmarks, the report also showed:

    • Around 50% of year 3 indigenous students in remote schools meeting basic standards in reading and writing, with just over 25% of students in year 5 meeting the benchmarks in maths.
    • About 67% of students are completing year 12 nationwide, with roughly the same completion rate in Victoria.
    • The number of students not meeting benchmarks tends to increase in later school years, which some argue is the result of tougher testing at year 7 level compared to primary school.
      
      

    "Many year 3 students in Victorian schools continue to struggle, but the figures show the state is the nation's best in writing and numeracy, with year 5 and 7 students also outweighing the rest of the country in reading and writing.

    "To see our students travelling so well at crucial points in their schooling is very encouraging news for teachers and parents," said Victorian Education Minister Bronwyn Pike.

    "But State Opposition education spokesman Martin Dixon said the results were a sham because each state had different testing regimes, such as the time of year the test was taken, meaning you could not make fair comparisons between students.

    "Conscious of discrepancies, state and federal governments have moved to streamline the way students are tested in Australia, with a new national test for literacy and numeracy starting in May.

    "The change means that the state-based testing for students in years 3, 5, 7, and 9 will be replaced with one uniform test, to be sat over the same three days, from May 13. The results of the tests will not be released publicly, but will be given to individual schools and parents, and the aggregated results reported nationally against key benchmarks."

    From The Age at link
    
    
    

• The Sunday Age
  
  
  • The Ethicist: striking
    
    What should you do if you belong to a union that asks you to go on strike?
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Pay is just part of the equation

      "Reversing the dramatic pay cuts of the last three decades (“To attract quality teachers we need to pay competitive wages”, 27/1) is only one of the steps required to rebuild education in Victoria. We also need to reverse the decline in staffing, working conditions and security of employment.

      "Between 1992 and August 1998, the previous government removed 6,787 teachers from our classrooms, forcing the primary pupil-teacher ratio up from 15.8:1 to 18.2:1 and the secondary ratio up from 10.8:1 to 12.7:1.

      "The current government has almost completely restored primary numbers, but has failed to repair the damage to secondary staffing, whose ratio of 11.9:1 is still too high.

      "In 1992, the previous government passed the Public Sector Management Act, dictating teacher agreements and forcing up teaching loads and class sizes. The current government has left the increased secondary teaching loads in place, while the required time allowance pool (deductions from teaching for leadership positions), which used to be a minimum of 90 minutes per teacher, was cut to zero with union agreement in 2004.

      "After 1992, the previous government put new teachers on short-term contracts as a way of intimidating them. Under the current government, almost one in five of our underpaid, overworked teachers is still on a short-term contract.

      "Even though pay and conditions are poor, they are exactly what teachers themselves voted for in 2004, so it is not surprising that the government is resisting teacher’s demands in the expectations that they will surrender as they have done in previous campaigns

      Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge
      
      
      

• Salon.com
  
  
  • We're failing our kids [from 30 January]
    by Garrison Keillor
    
    No Child Left Behind has plenty of flaws, but throwing it out because it's a Republican plan is morally disgusting.
    
    "Back in the day, we fundamentalists didn't mess with angels, sensing that Catholics owned the angel franchise, part of their dim smoky world of bead-rattling and hocus-pocus and lugubrious statuary, so instead we focused on the Holy Spirit who dwelt in all of us true believers and told us what to do and what to say, which is convenient for people with plenty of self-confidence. You read some Scripture and work up a sweat over it and stand up in the sunlit sanctuary, no dinging or chanting, no costumes or choreography, and you open your mouth and out comes Truth, such as the doctrine of Separation from the World, which was appealing to those of us with no social skills -- if people didn't like us, it was proof of our righteousness.

    "The idea that I was right and most other people were wrong stuck with me through my cocksure youth and some of middle age, but then comes the perilous passage of life when a man lies awake thinking about the prostate and the mitral valve, and your interest in Truth fades a little compared to your interest in winged beings who might come and rescue people in serious trouble. Nowadays I think more about angels. And sometimes I slip into Catholic churches to sit and commune with any resident angels and to light a few candles, especially for young people in trouble.

    "The sorrows of old age are tedious; it's the disasters of the young that tear at your heart. The son of an old friend has a bad accident and damages his spinal cord and now is in rehab, trying to put as much of his life together as he can. The daughter of an old friend is shot in broad daylight in the streets of Johannesburg, carrying her infant. A young man's little boy sprouts a horrible brain tumor and the father suspends his studies for several years to care for him, meanwhile his wife leaves him. These are grievous situations for which I sit in a cold empty church and look at St. Michael and ask him to intervene.

    "And then there is the grief that old righteous people inflict on the young, such as our public schools. I'm looking at U.S. Department of Education statistics on reading achievement and see that here in Minnesota -- proud, progressive Minnesota -- on a 500-point test (average score: 225), 27 percent of fourth-graders score below basic proficiency, and black and Hispanic kids score 30-some points lower than white on average, and the 30 percent of public schoolkids who come from households in poverty (who qualify for reduced-price school lunches) score 27 points lower than those who don't come from poverty.

    "Reading is the key to everything. Teaching children to read is a fundamental moral obligation of the society. That 27 percent are at serious risk of crippling illiteracy is an outrageous scandal.

    "This is a bleak picture for an old Democrat. Face it, the schools are not run by Republican oligarchs in top hats and spats but by perfectly nice, caring, sharing people, with a smattering of yoga/raga/tofu/mojo/mantra folks like my old confreres. Nice people are failing these kids, but when they are called on it, they get very huffy. When the grand poobah Ph.D.s of education stand up and blow, they speak with great confidence about theories of teaching, and considering the test results, the bums ought to be thrown out.

    "There is much evidence that teaching phonics really works, especially with kids with learning disabilities, a growing constituency. But because phonics is associated with behaviorism and with conservatives, and because the Current Occupant has spoken on the subject, my fellow liberals are opposed.

    "Liberal dogma says that each child is inherently gifted and will read if only he is read to. This was true of my grandson; it is demonstrably not true of many kids, including my sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter. The No Child Left Behind initiative has plenty of flaws, but the Democrats who are trashing it should take another look at the Reading First program. It is morally disgusting if Democrats throw out Republican programs that are good for children. Life is not a scrimmage. Grown-ups who stick with dogma even though it condemns children to second-class lives should be put on buses and sent to North Dakota to hoe wheat for a year.

    "St. Michael, I beg you to send angels to watch over fourth-graders who are struggling to read, because the righteous among us are not doing the job."

    From Salon.com at link
    
    (Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)

    © 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

All Alston cartoons are © The West Australian Newspaper
All media quotations, photographs and cartoons © their respective publishers

This page last updated 11 August, 2008 11:36 PM