Monday 25 August

Tuesday 26 August

Wednesday 27 August

Thursday 28 August

Friday 29 August

Saturday – Sunday, 30 – 31 August

 

Monday 25 August

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Education gets top spot in Barnett’s poll launch (page 6)
    by Amanda Banks and Daniel Hatch
    
    “Liberal leader Colin Barnett pledged yesterday to make education his highest priority, unveiling a $470 million package for new and improved schools and to increase the pay of teachers.
    
    “Mr Barnett, who used the party’s election campaign launch at the University of WA to announce the plan, said a Liberal government would build at least 14 new schools over six years at a cost of $300 million and spend an additional $50 million for long-overdue upgrades to older schools.
    
    “He said the Liberals were determined to restore confidence in the public education system, which had 14,000 fewer students than when Labor was elected in 2001, and would give principals more authority to allow them to better manage schools.
    
    “Describing the Labor Government’s handling of the drawn out pay negotiations with the State’s teachers as “shameful, Mr Barnett said a Liberal government would give teachers an extra $120 million on top of the Government’s $755 million offer.
    
    “Our community has to accept that we need to pay and reward our teachers better” he said.
    
    “But Education Minister Mark McGowan urged teachers to be sceptical about the Liberal offer.
    
    “Our pay rise would make our teachers the best paid out of all the Australian States,” he said.  “Mr Barnett has just thrown out there an unfinished, not costed, transparent bribe which his past performance shows he wouldn’t deliver.
    
    “When Colin Barnett was education minister in 2000 the offer he put to the teaching workforce was 10 per cent over three years, there were far fewer teachers in classrooms around WA and furthermore, he put employees on workplace agreements.”
    
    “Mr McGowan said the $300 million capital works commitment amounted to a slashing of the Government’s capital works program.
    
    “We’re opening 15 new schools next year, we’ve got 26 under construction and we’ve opened more than 60 schools in our time in office,” he said.  “What he’s proposing is over six years to open 14 additional schools and they’re under funded by $50 million.”
    
    “State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne said while any move to improve teachers’pay would be welcomed, the union was strongly opposed to any plans to privatise school cleaning and gardening.
    
    “But it is good to see both parties appear to be serious about the ongoing issues of the standard and maintenance of Government schools, especially ones that are older because we all know teachers and staff who work in conditions that are less then appropriate for the provision of modern-day education,” she said.
    
    “Mr Barnett also used yesterday’s rally to promise that the Liberals would match Labor’s commitment of recruiting an extra 500 police officers over five years…”
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Libs promise behaviour management in schools [late update: online only]
    by Kate Campbell
    
    "The Opposition has promised $39 million to better manage difficult students.

    "Alongside his education minister Peter Collier, Liberal leader Colin Barnett this afternoon announced that if elected he would also reinstate the school-based police officer program.

    "The new commitment includes $18 million to fund behaviour management programs, $10 million for chaplaincy services, $7 million to employ an extra 50 school based psychologists and $1 million to employ an additional ten behaviour management specialists."
    
    From The West Australian online at link
    
    Here is the complete policy document [4-page Word .doc]
    
    Similar story on ABC News
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • WA Libs make education key priority
    by Jo Prichard
    
    "More schools and better pay for teachers were promised to voters at the West Australian Liberal Party's campaign launch in Perth today.
    
    "Opposition Leader Colin Barnett told several hundred supporters at the University of Western Australia's Octagon Theatre that a Liberal government's first priority would be education.
    
    "Labor had squandered the spoils of the state's economic success, he said.
    
    "Labor has wasted these last eight years,'' Mr Barnett told a gathering furnished with noisy election paraphernalia.
    
    "This has been an unprecedented opportunity for Western Australia and they have wasted it.
    
    "Many Western Australians have missed out on the benefits of the economic boom. Many families are finding it tougher to make ends meet.''
    
    "The first priority of a Liberal government would be education, [emphasis added] and it would set aside $300 million for 14 new schools over six years, some to be built in partnership with the private sector.
    
    "Another $50 million would be spent upgrading and repairing old schools.
    
    "Teachers would also benefit from $120 million in salary and wage increases over the current three-year agreement, Mr Barnett said.
    
    "A previous Liberal government introduced a kindergarten program for every four year-old and a pre-primary program for every five-year old,'' Mr Barnett told the crowd.
    
    "Ten years on, no state has matched that.
    
    "There are now 14,000 less students in our system than there were in 2001.
    
    "For the first time in our state's history, our government school system has actually declined under Labor.'' ...
    
    "Education Minister Mark McGowan today said Labor's pay offer to teachers would make them the best paid in Australia..." [emphasis added]
    
    [The Minister seems to have a problem with simple maths. If his offer is "great" and the Libs are offering more again... Duh!  Web]
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Big Apple a poor example
      
      "Julia Gillard is wrong when she says that parents’ choosing a school is a little more than guesswork ("Gillard admits school choice is guesswork”, Inquirer 23-24/8).
      
      "Far better than handing out myriad departmental figures and drummed-up statistics, schools invite parents to see them in action, to actually talk to children and staff and to take away documents such as council minutes, balance sheets, syllabuses, submissions and a school charter.
      
      "Many schools have orientation days: new students experience the future first-hand.
      
      "I am a former principal. A chill ran down my spine when I read she had taken advice from Joel Klein, New York City’s education chancellor on school exposure. Having spent some recent time in New York observing their state system, I would liken it to the Third World rather than something we would choose here. Their curriculum has no art, no physical education or sport, no library, no recesses, no drama—just a narrow-minded canon-of-knowledge syllabus that must not be deviated from.
      
      "Failure to pass the endless stream of tests means that children are kept back a year. When their schools are reviewed as poor, they can be closed. The enrolment is given vouchers to entitle entry to “good” schools, already full. In that way deterioration is guaranteed at both ends of the scale.
      
      "I came quite close to the process of New York City school reviewing; it was heartless and cruel to hardworking staff who had the task of lifting results up by their bootlaces in crowded and under-resourced conditions with enrolments of no chance. I had the impression that closure was a foregone conclusion, too, even when the parents loved their school."
      
      Graeme Lee, Fitzroy, Vic
      
      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • Liberals promise more money for troubled students
    
    The West Australian Liberal Party has promised to spend an extra $40 million over four years on behavioural management in public schools.
    
    
    
  • Govt to trial welfare cut scheme in NT, WA
    
    The Federal Government has Western Australia and the Northern Territory on board to trial its new program to cut welfare payments to the parents of children who do not go to school.
    
    
    
  • Students vulnerable to campus violence: Curtin Guild
    
    The President of the Curtin Student Guild says it is disappointing the University has not done more to protect students from violence.
    
    
    • Curtin University to review security after spate of assaults
      
      
      
      
• SSTUWA
  
  
  • Negotiating News Round 29: Withdraw Goodwill
    
    TAFE Committee calls on lecturers to withdraw goodwill
    
    At the TAFE Committee Meeting 21/8/08, the following motion was carried unanimously:
    
    That TAFE members of the SSTUWA re-apply bans on overtime, submitting results and enrolling students, commencing Monday 25/8.
    
    TAFE members are urged to comply strictly with the conditions of the Certified Agreement.
    
    THE CALLING OF THE STATE ELECTION NOW PUTS THE UNION INTO ARBITARATION FOR OUR RIGHTS AND CONDITIONS.
    
    We must all now focus on arbitration preparation. To assist we ask that all members when asked to contribute to this preparation do so as thoroughly and as quickly as possible. Please watch your emails for calls for information and assistance.
    
    601 DAYS SINCE LAST SALARY INCREASE
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • The Monday Education Section has nine stories, including:
    
    
    • Too much testing makes Jack a dull boy
      
      Do Australian students need an additional round of tests?
      
      
      
    • Phone a friend — welcome to the new face of exams
      
      Educators have backed a NSW school's controversial decision to allow students to use the internet and iPods during an English exam.
      
      
      
    • The secret to higher exam scores
      
      Children of Asian parents, particularly Chinese, have long stood out in Australia with their high scores in the VCE and other final-year examinations. Now a new study has found the secret to their success: it begins in the home and the way their parents teach them good study habits from an early age.
      
      
      
  • Op Ed
    Rethinking indigenous policy
    
    The Government should be guided not by ideology, but by evidence of programs that have been shown to work.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Two on TAFE funding
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Catholic teachers seek 16% pay rise, more credit
    
    Catholic school teachers in NSW will be urged to endorse a 16 per cent pay claim and an additional $10,000 for those accredited as "accomplished" teachers, as recommended by the Independent Education Union Council at the weekend.
    
    
    
  • In a class of their own
    
    A Sydney school has more than 90 students in one kindergarten class in what is being hailed as the future of learning.
    
    John XXIII Catholic Primary School at Stanhope Gardens has introduced "team teaching" to its kindergarten class with the approval of the Parramatta diocese Catholic Education office.
    
    The children spend the day in a large "learning space" under the supervision of three teachers and one full-time teachers' aide, with a part-time fourth teacher and teachers' aide.

 

Tuesday 26 August

• The West Australian
  

  • Calculators ‘damaging young’ (page 5)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “A senior academic has attacked the growing use of calculators in schools, saying they damage young minds and should be banned from the TEE.
    
    “Curtin University Institute of Theoretical Physics director Igor Bray said that while older students should learn to use calculators as a tool in class, there was little value in assessing a student’s capacity to use a calculator in an exam.
    
    “I’m not interested in someone being able to press a few buttons,” he said. “As a scientist, I want a depth of understanding.”
    
    “Professor Bray said that primary schools did “considerable damage to young minds” by allowing children to use calculators because it stopped them developing mental agility.
    
    “Just like a lack of physical exercise leads to needlessly overweight children, a lack of mental exercise leads to needlessly intellectually weak children,” he said. “It is better for a child to engage for five minutes in some mental mathematics and get the wrong answer than use a calculator and get the right answer in just a few seconds.”
    
    “Students taking new maths courses that start for Year 11s next year have been told they must use computer algebraic system (CAS) calculators, which are considerably more advanced than the graphics calculators schools have used for a decade.
    
    “The CAS calculators are so powerful that the Curriculum Council, in consultation with teachers, decided that a portion of the final Year 12 maths exam would be entirely calculator-free from 2010.
    
    “But Professor Bray said the exam should be calculator-free. While he acknowledged that students had been allowed to use calculators in maths exams for more than 20 years, the technology was now much more advanced.
    
    “The problem with these CAS calculators is you can do so much, you can store cheat notes, all sorts of things,” he said. “I don’t think they should use any calculators in exams because they can hide students’ ineptitude. It would be much better to have sets of questions for the examination that don’t require that use of a calculator.”
    
    “Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood said the calculator-free section of the new maths exams would ensure students developed fundamental number and algebraic skills. Using calculators for the remainder of the exam would allow examiners to assess higher-level understanding.
    
    “I would not like to see us move back 30 years to slide rules and tables books,” he said.
    
    “Murdoch University education dean and maths specialist Barry Kissane said the new Year 11 maths courses were designed to expose students to suitable tools and procedures for maths in the 21st century, including computer software, spreadsheets, the internet and calculators.
    
    “Only calculators are realistically available in an exam, so they offer the best chance for there to be some coherence between what is taught and what is examined,” he said.
    
    “Mr Kissane said teachers had agreed to change to CAS calculators after careful debate. Before calculators, students did by hand what could know be done with a few keystrokes.”
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Libs $39m plan to put police back in schools (page 9)
    by Kate Campbell
    
    “Troubled schools will be allowed to have their own designated police under a Liberal government as Opposition Leader Colin Barnett yesterday promised a $39 million package to improve behaviour management in public schools as part of his education platform.
    
    “Mr Barnett and shadow education minister Peter Collier pledged to reinstate school-based police, dismantled by Labor, and said the officers would be sourced from the extra 500 police the Liberal Party promised recently.
    
    “Mr Collier said participation would be voluntary, officers would be junior and involved on a part-time basis, and predicted only a “miniscule” number of schools would be involved. But he refused to say how many officers would be needed and how much it would cost.
    
    "This prompted Education Minister Mark McGowan to accuse the Liberals of producing another “unfunded and uncosted promise”, which was a sign they were not ready to govern.
    
    “But Mr Barnett said the preventative police plan would help stop antisocial behaviour and violence against teachers and students.
    
    “Under the Liberal plan, $7 million would be spent to employ 50 extra school psychologists, $18 million would be directed to fund behaviour management programs such as more counselling and additional support for teachers and 10 extra behaviour management specialists would be appointed.
    
    “An extra $10 million would be provided to the school chaplaincy program and an additional $3 million for CARE (Curriculum and Re-engagement in Education) schools.
    
    “But the Opposition was at odds with Labor over the ratio of school psychologists, with Mr Colliers saying there was one psychologist for every 2000 students, while Mr McGowan claimed that ratio was one for 1200.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Opposition holds off on welfare cuts for truancy (page 10)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “The Rudd Government face another Senate ordeal with the Opposition refusing yesterday to immediately back a trial program suspending welfare payments to Perth parents whose children habitually wag school.
    
    “The Government hopes to begin its pilot program in time for the start of school next year, with Cannington one of eight trial areas.
    
    “The scheme will also be tested in six Northern Territory districts and another metropolitan area.
    
    “Education Minister Julia Gillard said up to 20,000 children nationally were regular truants.
    
    “Under the plan, parents on income support would have to show evidence their children were enrolled while schools would be obliged to tell the Government of attendance problems.
    
    “If a child missed school repeatedly without an acceptable excuse or failed to respond to warnings to attend, families could have their dole or parenting pensions suspended for up to 13 weeks. Family tax benefits and rent assistance would be untouched.
    
    “Opposition families spokesman Tony Abbott said the coalition wanted to see the finer details before deciding whether to vote for it, despite the Howard government proposing a similar idea to pay welfare in the form of food and clothing vouchers to the parents of truants in 2006.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor (page 23)
    

    • Arrogant team
      
      “Our dear Premier shouldn’t be so selfish as to confess to being personally arrogant. He should include his whole Government.
      
      “Start with Ljiljanna Ravlich and the OBE, which she championed in the face of overwhelming public and professional opposition. She has treated the electorate with complete contempt.
      
      “Continue with Eric Ripper. While he was amassing huge budget surpluses, he refused to cut stamp duty for first-home buyers. This helped to give WA the worst home affordability index in Australia. But Eric had his surplus – he didn’t care about the electorate.
      
      “Then go on to anyone who had anything to do with the ridiculous Neale Gong saga.
      
      “And don’t forget all the ministers who have resisted giving teachers, nurses and police a decent wage – while all along the Budget surplus was increasing.
      
      “Mr Carpenter should remember to invite all these people along to the post-election wake – so he can remind himself of the reasons for his Government’s defeat.”
      
      Peter Wilson, Duncraig
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • Liberals call for school food programs to combat indigenous malnutrition
    
    The Liberal candidate for the Kimberley has suggested increasing publicly funded, school based food programs to reduce malnutrition amongst indigenous children.
    
    
    
  • Major TAFE shake-up planned
    
    The Victorian Government will announce a major shake-up of TAFE fees today. Fees for basic numeracy and literacy course will be reduced, but the cost of diplomas and advanced diplomas will go up.
    
    
  • University style loans for Vic TAFE
    
    The overhaul will guarantee a place for every worker that wants to upgrade their skills. The program will give diploma and advanced diploma students access to university-style loans to make study more accessible.
    
    
  • Premier gives a TAFE training guarantee
    
    Industry groups have welcomed the Victorian Government's decision to improve skills training by overhauling the TAFE system. The Government is spending $316-million to give every person who wants to upgrade their skills a place at TAFE.
    
    
    
• WA Today
  
  
  • $39m to ensure better student behaviour: Libs
    
    "The Liberal Party says it will reinstate school-based police officers if it is elected government as part of a $39 million package to try to ensure better behaviour by students at public schools.
    
    "It would also fund 50 more school-based psychologists, give $10 million more to the chaplaincy program and allow schools to determine their own behaviour management programs.
    
    "Education spokesman Peter Collier said teachers and students needed to be able to go to school secure in the knowledge they were entering a safe environment.
    
    "In order for that to occur, we must have early intervention strategies at both the primary and secondary school levels," he said.
    
    "Liberal leader Colin Barnett said there was a "general view" that public schools were inadequately resourced to deal with increasing verbal and physical abuse by students against teachers.
    
    "This had led to a "consistent drift" of students to private schools, which dealt "more effectively" with discipline and values.
    
    "If we hope to alter this perception, it is absolutely imperative that we significantly increase resources to improve behavioural and pastoral care strategies in our public schools," he said."
    
    From WA Today at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • A console source of trouble
    by Gerard Noonan, Social Issues Editor
    
    "Primary school principals are fed up with a rise in the number of children arriving at school inattentive, disruptive and under-motivated and in many cases are blaming parents for the attitudes of their children.
    
    "A study released by the Australian Primary Principals Association today shows a disproportionate number of these children come from disadvantaged households.
    
    "But the principals say the situation is also being exacerbated in their schools by so-called "helicopter parents" who hover around their children, rescuing them whenever they experienced pressure or adversity.
    
    "As a result children were not good at solving their own problems, and were bad social problem solvers," the principal of one unidentified school told the survey.
    
    "When children haven't had a good night's sleep or breakfast, they perform at school as if they have learning disorders."
    
    "The association's national president, Leonie Trimper, said many primary schools in the state, Catholic and private sectors were increasingly under the hammer.
    
    "Students with disabilities and extreme behaviour are becoming an increasing issue for many primary schools because they soak up so many resources," she said.
    
    "One principal described them as "Millennium Kids", putting it down to diet, lack of sleep and watching television or using computers in their bedrooms.
    
    "Government data shows the proportion of special needs students in schools had almost doubled in the decade to 2006.
    
    "The association, which represents 7200 primary school principals, commissioned a study looking at three "average" schools during term two this year. The suburban and rural schools each had a stable and experienced leadership team and teachers.
    
    "In one state school, the deputy principal said there were only three or four students with "serious" behavioural problems.
    
    "But they're the ones that take up everyone's energy - some of the behaviour is trivial but it's happening all the time," he said.
    
    "The principal of the same school said a common problem was parents who wanted to be their child's best friend. "I had a father come to see me recently because he was having problems with his son. I said to him: You cannot be Tyson's best friend; you have to be his parent," she said.
    
    "The association is calling on state governments to review resources for students with disabilities and extreme behaviour."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Leaders marked down for bad behaviour
    
    Scandals and appalling behaviour by a string of West Australian MPs had Premier Alan Carpenter and Opposition Leader Colin Barnett under pressure last night during their only public debate in the lead-up to the September 6 election.
  
  
  
  
• The Age
  
  
  • Brightest and best to help difficult schools
    
    Top university students will be headhunted by the State Government and offered financial incentives to work in Victoria's most challenging schools under a radical plan to tackle underperformance.

    University graduates from all courses — not just teaching degrees — will be aggressively recruited, given weeks of intensive training and ongoing mentoring to cope with life in some of the toughest classrooms.
    
    

  • TAFEs to get 900 extra teachers
    
    Victoria's embattled TAFE system will get 900 extra teachers as the Brumby Government moves to counter a backlash against contentious plans to overhaul training courses across the state.
    
    
    
  • Students lap up school's cure for wagging
    
    A dollar a day keeps truancy at bay at St Albans Meadows Primary School, where each year 5 and 6 student now has a laptop computer.

    It's one of a range of creative methods — from text messages to catchy slogans — that schools are employing to cut truancy.
    
    
    
    

• BBC News
  
  
  • All pupils to learn about slavery
    
    Britain's involvement in the slave trade is to be studied by all secondary pupils in England from September.
    
    
    
    
• The New York Times
  
  
  • 10 City Schools to Focus Reading Skills on Content
    
    In a bid to correct what he called a “knowledge deficit” among New York City public school students, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced on Monday a pilot program that would overhaul the way children in 10 city schools are taught to read... The Core Knowledge curriculum... is heavily focused on content, vocabulary skills and nonfiction books, based on the belief that when students struggle in middle school and beyond, it is largely because they lack basic knowledge in subjects like history, science and literature.
    

 

Wednesday 27 August

• The West Australian
  
  
• Op Ed
  Education campaigns fall short (page 21)
  by Tony Rutherford
  
  "This may well be one of the craziest elections ever foisted on a long-suffering electorate. Since the day the WA poll was called, apparently in something of a panic, it has been characterised by an unusual degree of absurdity, at least on the part of the Carpenter Government.
    
  "The inevitable parallels between various government ministers and the Beijing Olympics — take your pick between gymnastics and high diving — have been frequent and justified. “Backflip with two somersaults and a double roll” — that sort of thing.
    
  "The timing of the election itself has probably been the most athletic spectacle: Labor always strongly supported four-year fixed-term elections, it then called one nearly six months early and then announced that if elected at an early election it would prohibit early elections.
    
  "There must be some kind of tin medal that can be awarded for this sort of performance. And with so many of the backflips, one wonders what sort of attitude to the voters is being displayed: do they really think that our memories are so short that we can’t keep track of an issue from one day to the next?
    
  "My tentative theory, for what it’s worth, is that Labor actually has too much money, too many resources and too many clever advisers. The ideas just keep coming, just a bit too thick and fast. There’s no sense that they have an overall view of what the aim of their campaign is — apart, that is, from retaining power at all costs. The Liberals, on the other hand, are severely under-resourced, from every point of view, and have no real alternative but to plod along as best they can. Their proposals may be fewer, but at least they have so far been more or less consistent.
    
  "This has given the Liberals a small advantage. Instead of proposing one bandaid after another, they have chosen to focus so far on a relatively small number of issues. And, unlike the Government, they have been able to acknowledge the presence of the proverbial elephant in the room: education.
    
  "The polls have shown that education is one of the top issues for voters in this election. It is surprising that it is not the top issue. It should be. While health and law and order are important issues, issues on which the Government has a poor record, both in terms of delivering a good service and delivering on extravagant past promises, education is the one in which it has utterly failed. The record of its three ministers — Alan Carpenter, Ljiljanna Ravlich and Mark McGowan — is one of neglect and mismanagement.
    
  "So far, despite some important unresolved issues, Labor has failed to come up with policy recommendations which would make any difference. The pay deal, cynically delayed until just before the election, is unresolved because of the election and there are signs that its mismanagement of the issue has caused deep distrust and resentment among teachers. Perhaps worst, the Government has not made the one simple promise that would make most difference to the way students are taught: it could and should have made a simple announcement that OBE was to be abolished, root and branch. That it has not yet done so shows that it has learnt nothing at all in the past seven years. OBE typifies all that is wrong with the system: the micro-management by bureaucrats, the persistence with progressive policies that make a difference only for the worse, the focus on inputs instead of outcomes.
    
  "The Liberals have so far said some sensible things on education: about teachers’ pay, about school infrastructure and so on. But they, too, seem not to have seen the importance of OBE. This is a major disappointment, one which needs addressing. It’s difficult to imagine that any Liberal candidate has canvassed a teacher and not got the message, very plainly. So far, neither party has said anything which will actually reverse the decline in our public school system. Perhaps they are both a bit scared of major policy initiatives. [emphasis added]
    
  "It is interesting to contrast this timidity with the recent flurry of news about the Federal minister, Julia Gillard. Completely belying much early scepticism (my own included), Ms Gillard now seems genuinely serious about getting on top of the education section of her considerable policy portfolio.
    
  "She has recently, for instance, floated the idea that training should basically be funded by what amounts to a voucher, redeemable by trainees at the institution of their choice, public or private, school or TAFE. Even though it is a development, rather than a reversal, of the Howard government’s own funding scheme, it is useful and will make for a market which responds better to the needs of both trainees and their prospective employers. It should also prove to be less bureaucratic than the present system.
    
  "Ms Gillard has also been advocating the release of much better information about school performance, much to the irritation of her State colleagues. And she has been on a few interesting visits lately during her travels: not least to see the head of New York’s public school system, Joel Klein, who has been trying to turn around one of America’s most dysfunctional school systems for some years now. Mr Klein is serious about his job. He even shuts down schools that don’t perform. By the standards of any senior State education bureaucrat in Australia, he is a radical. “The way you change things is by making information publicly available so that parents can raise hell and force change in the system. The job of the public school system is to educate kids, not simply move them through the process,” he said.
    
  "The political problem here is that a Federal minister can force change on to the State systems by using Commonwealth funding in a polite form of blackmail. If that is so, the question is why the States don’t get their own act together. When a system is as bad as is ours in WA, you would think that someone would summon up the courage to act decisively.
    
  "It will be interesting to see what the next 10 days will bring."
  
  From The West Australian at link
  
  
  
  
• Labor pledges $1.5b for WA schools [online only] [Too bad there won't be any teachers to staff them...  Web]
  by Aleisha Preedy
  
  "The Labor Government today pledged to spend $1.5 billion on building and replacing 36 schools across WA. Of that, $1 billion is to refurbish existing schools.
  
  "Under the plan, Labor will spend more than $300 million refurbishing existing schools if re-elected on September 6.
  
  "The announcement comes after the Liberal Party announced a $490 million package for new schools and to upgraded older schools.
  
  "Premier Alan Carpenter said it was the biggest and most expensive school infrastructure project in the State’s history.
  
  “School appearance and the quality of facilities is an important measure of standards in the eyes of the community and our planned investment will help realise Labor’s ambition of developing a world class education system,” he said.
  
  “We have to keep pace with the demand for new schools in developing areas but this package reflects our continuing commitment to renew our older schools.”
  
  "Mr Carpenter said he planned to negotiate Federal Government funds for a further 16 trade training centres in WA schools, 10 of which were promised for regional areas.
  
  "As part of the package, the Pilbara mining town of Karratha will have the most expensive school ever built in WA at $77.5 million."
  
  From The West Australian online at link
  
  
  • Liberals accuse Labor of plagiarising school policy [ABC News]
    
    
    
    
• Academics back ban on calculators (page 11)
  by Bethany Hiatt
  
  “Academic criticism of the growing reliance on calculators in schools gathered pace yesterday as the head of mathematics at the University of WA threw his weight behind calls to ban the devices from the TEE and reduce their use in primary schools.
  
  “UWA mathematics and statistics head of school Les Jennings said many academics backed comments by Curtin University physics professor Igor Bray that students should use calculators in high school but they had no place in exams.
  
  “He also agreed with Professor Bray’s claim that over-reliance on calculators in primary school caused “damage to young minds” because it prevented children from developing mental agility.
  
  “Year 11 students who will start new maths courses next year must use computer algebraic system (CAS) calculators which are far more advanced than graphics calculators now used.
  
  “A decision to also make one-third of the TEE maths calculator-free from 2010 was a step in the right direction, Professor Jennings said, but calculators should be banned from exams altogether to push students to make more use of their brains. 
  
  “The argument is that you can do bigger and better problems with a calculator, but unfortunately a calculator gets used on the itty-bitty problems as well, so you don’t get the exercising of the brain along the way, just the fingers,” he said.
  
  “Professor Jennings said teachers still had not got the balance right between calculator use and mental maths, so first-year university students were not as competent in maths as previous students.
  
  “UWA maths lecturer Mike Alder said standards had fallen. “What we’re worried about is that graphics calculators have removed the need for some kind of thoughts and they’re now going to bring in a new kind of calculator which can do algebra,” he said. “The kids’ algebra is already awful.  I’ve seen an appalling degeneration over 25 years in simple technical competence.
  
  “But Mathematical Association of WA president Michelle Ostberg said CAS calculators would help Year 11 and 12 students better grasp abstract concepts and would only be used by students who were university bound.
  
  “She said technology use was part of everyday life. “As educators we would be negligent if we ignored this aspect in teaching and only prepared students for an artificial world which required knowledge of rote-learned written algorithms such as long division, “ she said.
  
  “Ms Ostberg said WA students performed well on international testing and it was “ridiculous” to suggest that primary students were being taught to use calculators rather than basic numeracy skills.
  
  “The mental agility to which Professor Bray refers was only ever evident in those students who had a natural ability in the area or who supplemented their school studies with a high degree of routine practice,” she said.
  
  “Ms Ostberg said students were taught a range of strategies and to only use a calculator when it was more efficient to do so.
  
  Ïn fact, students are becoming significantly better at using mental strategies and can perform these more effectively than most adults can performed their rote-learned paper and pencil approaches,” she said.”
  
  From The West Australian
  
  
  
  
• Rudd to push for reporting on schools
  AAP
  
  "Schools will have federal funding tied to new league-style tables that will publicly compare their performance against rivals.
  
  "The move, outlined by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, aims to ensure parents have the best chance of making informed decisions when choosing where to send their children.
  
  "Every kid in the country deserves a decent start, it doesn't matter where they come from, every kid in the country," Mr Rudd said.
  
  "At the National Press Club, Mr Rudd outlined a three-pillar policy for the reform of education in schools - the next step of Labor's so-called education revolution.
  
  "Improving the quality of teaching and providing resources to disadvantaged school communities are the other central elements of the plan.
  
  "But the coalition rejects it's a revolution, accusing Labor of another bout of the me-tooism that plagued last year's federal election.
  
  "Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith said the government planned to improve teacher quality, teacher pay and transparency, which were all reforms the coalition had been pushing for years.
  
  "Unfortunately, the Labor state governments and teachers unions blocked many of these crucial reforms at every turn," he said.
  
  "Copying the Howard government's education policies is the easy part, but actually implementing them will be the real test."
  
  "The most contentious element of the reform agenda will be a proposal to make individual school performance reporting a condition of the next national education agreement, which takes effect from 2009.
  
  "Within a year, we want to see increased information available for Australian parents," Mr Rudd said.
  
  "And within three years, a report that shows not just how their child is doing, but how their child's school is performing compared to similar schools."
  
  "Under the strategy, schools continuing to underperform after an injection of funds would be expected to take radical steps to lift their game - such as sacking the principal or merging with another school.
  
  "Mr Rudd admits his push to make schools more accountable will be unpopular, particularly with teacher unions.
  
  "Some of the unions have been completely resistant, it's fair to say, and we expect a fair bit of argy-bargy ... but we don't intend to shirk from it," he said.
  
  "However, he disputes the new scheme is the same as "simplistic" league tables that pit well-to-do private institutions against struggling public schools.
  
  "Comparisons will be made between government and non-government schools with common characteristics and socio-economic profiles.
  
  "The Australian Education Union (AEU) labelled the plan "SchoolWatch", akin to the government's policies to tackle rising fuel and grocery prices.
  
  "Mr Rudd will put the policy to states and territories when they sit down with the commonwealth at the end of the year to nut out the next round of education funding.
  
  "States will be asked to consider new standards to reward principals and the best teachers, part of a strategy to improve the overall quality of teaching.
  
  "The government wants to recruit the best and brightest into the profession and address a system where teachers have to move out of the classroom to earn more than $75,000.
  
  "Under its proposals, principals would be given more autonomy to make staffing and salary decisions at a local level.
  
  "Mr Rudd acknowledged his ambitious plan would be costly but would not say how much.
  
  "However, he indicated that an average-sized school which had been deemed disadvantaged would need an extra $500,000 a year to help underachieving students."
  
  From The West Australian online at link [same AAP stories in other online newspapers]
  
  
  
  
• The Australian
  

• Educators refuse to chip in for ad campaign
  by Paige Taylor
  
  "The West Australian teachers union has refused to help the Carpenter Government get re-elected, declining to contribute to a union-movement advertising campaign starting today.
  
  "Militant unionist Kevin Reynolds has also refused to contribute funds of the union he leads, the state Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, towards UnionsWA's 30-second television advertisements.
  
  "The advertisements decry the state Liberals' record on industrial relations, claiming: "Under the last Liberal state government, it was working people who paid the price."
  
  "State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne said the union's state executive could decide to pitch in for the cost of the campaign retrospectively when it next met on September 12, six days after the state election.
  
  "But she said there were sensitivities after such a long and bitter pay dispute, and when about 15,000 members were still considering an offer from Education Minister Mark McGowan.
  
  "She said the offer came with the best teachers' pay in Australia but many were unhappy with the attached conditions.
  
  "While the mining section of the CFMEU has agreed to chip in for the advertisements, The Australian understands that Mr Reynolds refused to donate from the coffers of the construction division he heads.
  
  "Mr Reynolds quit the ALP last year and is a strident critic of Premier Alan Carpenter, who has forced out of the party both Mr Reynolds's wife, Shelley Archer, and Mr Reynolds's friend Brian Burke.
  
  "But UnionsWA has received an unexpected boost from the conservative police union, which has decided to join the body after being unaffiliated for about 40 years.
  
  "West Australian Police Union president Mike Dean said his union was not aligned to any political party but he feared a Liberal state government could bring back individual contracts for police officers.
  
  "These eroded pay and conditions for many junior and middle-ranked officers under the Court Liberal government in the 1990s, he said.
  
  "I would be very, very concerned if they brought that back," he said.
  
  "The police union's affiliation with UnionsWA is not complete and it has not been asked to help pay for the anti-Liberal advertisements, which will air on the three commercial television networks during the evening news and prime-time programs."
  
  From The Australian at link
  
  
  
  
• Rudd budget to cost 1000 teacher jobs
  by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
  
  "Public schools face a funding cut in real terms from the federal Government equivalent to losing 1000 teachers in the next four years.
  
  "An analysis of the Rudd Government's first budget by a former adviser to Jenny Macklin says commonwealth funding to government schools will fall almost 2 per cent over the next four years based on current arrangements, after rising about 10 per cent under John Howard.
  
  "Funding for non-government schools is projected to slow but still increase slightly in real terms by more than 3 per cent.
  
  "The report to be released today by the Australian Education Union is an analysis of the 2008 budget forecasts. It was written by Jim McMorrow, an honorary associate professor in education at Sydney University and former commissioner of the Commonwealth Schools Commission and deputy director-general of the NSW Education Department.
  
  "Mr McMorrow was also adviser on schools policy to Ms Macklin before the election when she was the Opposition's education spokeswoman.
  
  "The report comes as unions launch a national campaign attacking the federal Government's funding for public schools, including placing full-page advertising in newspapers, including The Australian today. The Rudd Government is about to enter negotiations with the states and territories for the next four-year schools funding agreement to start next year.
  
  "One of the Government's key election promises was that no school would lose money under a federal Labor government..."
  
  Full story in The Australian at link
  
  Similar story in The Age
  
  
  
  
• System has to get with the times
  by Stephen Matchett
  
  "In a world where researchers have established a correlation between surgical skills and proficiency playing computer game Super Monkey Ball, Martin Westwell wonders why people bang on about back to basics in education, because the basics are not basic any more.
  
  "From gaming platforms to online social networking, media technology was creating new environments that young people used to change the way they learned, the founding director of Flinders University's Centre for Science Education told the HES.
  
  "Almost every back-to-basics policy in education is the result of a change in the world that the system (and often wider society) didn't understand or know how to deal with," Professor Westwell said.
  
  "The challenge was to adjust education to suit the circumstances people at school already existed in, rather than futilely seeking to force new ways of learning into old-fashioned forms.
  
  "There is an enormous amount of ambiguity out there," he said. "Older people are not engaged with technology like the young: while young people know all about gaming, their parents and teachers don't." Parents and teachers needed to learn about gaming and social networking to keep up with the way the children in their charge acquired and analysed information, he said.
  
  "Professor Westwell joined Flinders from the University of Oxford, where he was deputy director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind. Initially interested in organic chemistry, he switched to neuroscience and its interface with education.
  
  "Today that inevitably involves assessing the digital domains youth inhabit. In particular, his interest reaches far beyond the easy assumptions that games are educationally irrelevant. Rather, Professor Westwell argued that the technologies underpinning the wired world could shape young people's learning and their lives. Thus he pointed to the importance of executive brain function - the ability to sustain or appropriately adjust attention, switch strategies, eliminate errors and overcome impulses, all good gaming skills.
  
  "Professor Westwell said a 10-year-old's executive function was a better indicator of earning potential at 30 than reading ability.
  
  "The skills gamers acquired were not all considered beneficial. He pointed to Medal of Honour as a complex game presenting players with huge amounts of detail, but the capacity to recognise and respond to that did not equate to absorbing information from books, which required concentration on a set of symbols on a page that conveyed all the information.
  
  "And there was no doubt that sanguine shoot 'em ups were dangerous, making young children, especially boys, more violent and fearful: "The research is settled on this," Professor Westwell said.
  
  "The challenge for the education system was to change what was taught and how it was communicated, to suit circumstances that were new but here to stay.
  
  "But to work out ways to do that, education systems had to inform and empower teachers.
  
  "A real understanding of technological change involving the young is only visible when neuroscience and psychology are used with teachers' expertise," he argued. "Their relationship with kids is just as important as external connections.
  
  "So we need mechanisms to make evidence available and engage teachers with it."
  
  From The Australian at link
  
  
  
• Fees plan recipe for exclusion
  
  La Trobe University vice-chancellor Paul Johnson has criticised Group of Eight proposals to deregulate fees and allow universities to raise tuition prices as an unnecessary recipe for social exclusion that is out of step with the federal Government's equity and access agenda.
  
  
  
• HECS-style loans extended to vocational students
  
  Student loans and higher fees may become commonplace across higher level vocational courses after Canberra yesterday backed Victoria's training shake-up.
  
  
  
• Cave men weren't stupid - research
  
  Neanderthals were not as stupid as they have been portrayed, according to new research today showing their stone tools were as good as those made by the early ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens.
  
  
  
  
• Letters to the Editor
  
  
  • Truancy has hit epidemic proportions in our schools
    
    "Nothing could demonstrate more vividly how out of touch many politicians really are than the sudden awakening that truancy is a fundamental and catastrophic problem in Australian education. Any teacher, canteen manager, local police officer, shop owner or retiree can tell you that attending school is near the bottom of the to-do list for hundreds of thousands of students and many of their parents around the nation, black, white or brindle. It has been for decades. It’s as Australian as meat pies.
    
    "For a vastly underestimated number of Australians, successfully concluding a basic 12 years of schooling really doesn’t matter as much as time off for a birthday, to greet granny from the north, to buy an iPod, to take a holiday mid-term with mum or dad, or just to hang about at the shopping centre. It has reached epidemic proportions. And the children of the “battlers” are the most severely disadvantaged by it."
    
    Garry Bickley, Elizabeth Downs, SA
    
    
    
  • "Kevin Rudd is beginning to show signs of true leadership. I totally support his government’s proposal to suspend welfare payments to those Aboriginal parents whose children consistently fail to attend school. The connection between a good education and future employment prospects is well undertood, as is the fact that Aboriginal truancy runs as high as 90 per cent in some communities. Those parents who do not accept active responsibility for ensuring that their children attend school, in my view, are guilty of a form of child abuse. It is arguable that such serial offenders should be charged with this offence."
    
    Michael Gamble, Belmont, Vic
    
    
    
  • "I wonder if Julia Gillard has fully thought through her plan to punish welfare dependent families whose children are truants. What does she imagine is going to happen to the children once their already vulnerable parents are denied sustenance? And what of the truant children from wealthy families? Or is the Labor Government only intent on demonising the poor for cynical political gain."
    
    Doron Samuell, Bellvue Hill, NSW
    
    
    
  • "I’m highly amused by the move to deduct welfare payments from parents whose children are chronic truants and not at all surprised by the party-room revolt from the Labor Party. Nobody seriously wants to do anything about truancy. Any day of the week, the shopping centres are full of students who should be at school and nobody ever does anything about them.

    "As a retired teacher, I remember schools cushioning serial truants with excuses such as “they’re doing it tough at home” etc, etc, ad nauseam. Killing them with kindness and denying them an education in the process."
    
    Susan Leembruggen, East Maitland, NSW
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • Expert warns of public school funds decline
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "The Federal Government's education revolution will see public school funding continue to fall over the next three years and parents increasingly turn to the private system, according to a study by one of Labor's former chief education advisers.
    
    "New research from University of Sydney expert Jim McMorrow has warned that public education funding will fall from its 1996 level of 43% of the federal schools budget to 33% by 2012, unless dramatic action is taken.
    
    "While the report points out much of the problem is due to the funding arrangements inherited from the Howard government — namely the contentious socio-economic status funding model for private schools — it found Labor's first budget "markedly slowed the growth of education funding", from 10% a year under the Coalition, to 1% a year.
    
    "Likening the projected three-year funding decline to losing 1000 teachers from government schools, Dr McMorrow calls for a "root and branch" review of funding between the state and federal governments, and an immediate investment of $1.5 billion to create a more equitable system for students.
    
    "It is as if the machinery inherited in the Howard government's policies is driving the Rudd Government's agenda," said Dr McMorrow, Labor's former policy adviser to education shadow minister Jenny Macklin.
    
    "If … action is not taken soon, the long-term decline in the Commonwealth's funding to public schools will continue to its inevitable progress towards the Commonwealth abrogating its responsibility for public schools."
    
    "The report — commissioned by the Australian Education Union — also says:
    
    * The drift of students from public to private schools will continue over the next three years, with students in independent and Catholic schools set to increase by 3.1% compared with an 0.1% fall in government school enrolments.
    
    * That if increased federal funding for non-government schools in the May budget was expressed in terms of the capacity to pay teachers, the number of private school teachers would rise by 2630 by 2012.
    
    * The report credits the Howard government for giving all schools much-needed upgrades, but shows that during its years in government, public schools gained an extra $2 billion, while private schools got $4.7 billion.
    
    "Historically, the vast majority of funding for public schools has come from state governments, while Federal Government gives more to private schools.
    
    "The report comes as Education Minister Julia Gillard prepares to negotiate a new four-year funding deal with the states, and also embarks on a review of the socio-economic status model, under which private schools are funded on the basis of the income, occupation and education of parents within the school's census district.
    
    "Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos accused the Government of embracing a "corrupt, distorted and indefensible" private schools funding model.
    
    "Ms Gillard said she was working with the states and territories to provide extra resources for schools. She said all schools would gain from initiatives such as the Government's $1.2 billion plan to boost computers in secondary schools, its $2.5 billion pledge to develop trade training centres in schools over the next 10 years, and its $577 million program to bolster literacy and numeracy."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Call to bring back the school nurse
    by Nick Miller
    
    "Typical schoolyard woes used to be bumps, colds, scrapes and scratches. But with diabetes, obesity, asthma and dangerous allergies increasingly common, the Australian Nursing Federation is calling for the return of school nurses to their traditional place in the education system.
    
    "The latest published figures show a slight rise in the total number of nurses in Victorian schools — but a significant drop in the number in the public system.
    
    "The benefits of having a permanent school nurse are extraordinary, but we are still seeing numbers drop away," said ANF federal secretary Ged Kearney.
    
    "On the national level the Government is talking about reforming the health system and tackling childhood obesity — but nobody has thought of something as simple as a nurse in every primary and secondary school..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link

 

Thursday 28 August

• The West Australian

  See the articles (below) from today's Australian for details of Federal Labor's latest 'education revolution / devolution'.
  
  

• Editorial
  Now is the time to reclaim our school system for the public (page 20)
  
  “People who expected a vigorous contest of ideas on education policy in the election campaign have been disappointed so far. There has been a bit of political jostling on policies for school buildings and their maintenance and attention directed at teachers’ pay, what to do about disruptive students and so on. School buildings are important, of course, but it would be reassuring if the major parties were prepared to take more interest in what goes on in them.
  
  “Neither of them has shown any willingness to go to the essence of the problem in WA education: the fad-ridden public school system is selling our young people short. Education bureaucrats and academics have hijacked school curriculums and overridden the interests of students, parents and the wider community.
  
  “There is an overwhelming case for the politicians of whichever party wins the election to reclaim the State school system on behalf of the public which is supposed to serve. Parents of schoolchildren don’t march in the streets or hold protest rallies at Parliament House, but many of them know that the public education system is betraying many students at the most fundamental level by failing to equip them with the basic skills of language and numeracy at the standard they need for fulfilling lives.
  
  “They know, too, that the system is designed to exclude their influence in any but the most token of ways. If anyone wants to dispute that, he or she should look at the fuss that has accompanied the proposal that parents should be given school reports that they can understand. This most fundamental of principles has been made to look like a radical idea in a system governed by bureaucratic decree and social theory.

  “Though parents often get on well with teachers, the system is designed to give them little influence or useful information. It is built on evasiveness about the essentials of school performances. Reflex opposition to the release of information that would allow schools’ performances to be publicly assessed and compared is institutionalised in education bureaucracies.
  
  “It is not surprising that the Federal Government has seized on this and proposes to make school performance reporting a condition of the new national education agreement with the States. When Kevin Rudd said he knew some would resist this, he showed he knew routine avoidance of accountability was entrenched in education bureaucracies. And he was spot-on when he said there was little doubt that more transparency would reveal some schools might be seriously underperforming.
  
  “The State Government has been in denial on this and remains a captive of its bureaucrats, though surely it must be aware of widespread dissatisfaction with school standards among parents and employers and in universities. It continues arrogantly to ignore the people and impose on them a system that falls short of their expectations and the standards they are entitled to demand – just as it does in the justice and health portfolios.
  
  “The Opposition has been pussyfooting around on this and avoiding the commitment that is needed: a return to core values of proficiency in language and arithmetic and a work ethic that rewards effort and genuine achievement. A good start would be to undertake to purge schools of outcomes-based education and the mickey mouse soft options that go with it.” [emphasis added]
  
  From The West Australian
  
  
  

• Alston (page 20)



© The West Australian [28 August 2008]



• Education chief stays silent on use of calculators in exams (page 4)
  by Michael Bennett
  
  “The head of the Education Department has refused to say whether she thinks calculators should be banned from the TEE despite calls from senior academics to implement a ban amid claims the devices are over-used.
  
  “A spokesman for the department said yesterday it was not up to director-general Sharyn O’Neill to ban calculators. Use of calculators was a matter for the Curriculum Council.
  
  “UWA academics have backed Curtin University Institute of Theoretical Physics director Igor Bray, who said that older students should learn to use calculators as a tool but there was little value in assessing a student’s capacity to use a calculator in an exam.
  
  “Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood said the issue was not black and white.
  
  “An exam would be introduced in 2010 that would include a section without calculators.
  
  “The Year 12 examinations will have a 50-minute calculator-free section,” he said. “Calculators will be banned in this section. This will help ensure that students develop and are examined in fundamental number and algebra skills.”
  
  “Education and Training Minister Mark McGowan rejected the academics’ calls, saying that it would be ridiculous to ban calculators.
  
  “Students need to be able to learn mathematics with and without a calculator and that’s why we have a calculator-free exam section,” he said.
  
  “UWA mathematics and statistics head of school Les Jennings said students should use calculators in high schools not in exams.
  
  “He agreed with Professor Bray that over-reliance on calculators in primary school caused damage to young minds because it prevented children from developing mental agility.
  
  “UWA maths lecturer Mike Alder said standards had fallen. “What we’re worried about is that graphics calculators have removed the need for some kinds of thoughts and they’re now going to bring in a new kind of calculator which can do algebra,” he said. “The kids’ algebra is already awful.”
  
  From The West Australian at link
  

  • NEWS BLOG - Should calculators be used in the TEE?
    
    
    
    
• Teachers union staff spurn deal (page 4)
  by Flip Prior
  
  “The beleaguered State School Teachers Union, which is already reeling from a damaging split among executives over the Government’s pay offer, has suffered the further embarrassment of having its own staff refuse to endorse the deal and then launching an extraordinary attack on the union’s senior executives.
  
  “A statement from furious legal and industrial advocates and organisers posted on the union website has accused union president Anne Gisborne of secrecy, ignoring their expertise, excluding them from negotiations and compromising their efforts to keep members informed.
  
  “The staff said they refused to endorse the pay agreement struck between the union’s executive and the Government because of concerns over breaches of union policy, salaries and allowances and failure to address occupational health and safety.
  
  “They also declared invalid the executive’s moves to bind them to endorse the agreement.
  
  “The dispute is another blow to efforts to resolve the long-running teachers’ pay row. Members are to vote on the Government’s latest offer on September 12, a week after the State election. The agreement, announced on July 21 by Education Minister Mark McGowan and Ms Gisborne, includes increase of between 15.84 per cent and 21.67 per cent over three years.
  
  “The State executive narrowly passed a resolution to put the agreement to members after protracted negotiations, but several on the executive later claimed they felt pressured to support the deal. Teachers at several schools have since passed “no confidence” motions in Ms Gisborne and secretary David Kelly.
  
  “Union industrial staff are fuming at being left out of “secretive” discussions.
  
  “They also are angry that their offers to assist in drafting a proposed enterprise order – a new starting point for negotiations under arbitration and the union’s plan B should members vote against the agreement – have been ignored. Worried members say the enterprise order offers stripped-back conditions and lower pay. But The West Australian understands that the union’s enterprise order is still a “work in progress” and is not likely to be available to members before they vote on September 12, meaning members intending to vote “no” have little idea of their alternative.”

From The West Australian



• Collier says deal will give teachers 2pc more pay (page 6)
  by Bethany Hiatt

“Teachers will get 2 per cent more in across-the-board pay increases if the Liberal Party wins government, according to shadow education minister Peter Collier.

“The party this week pledged to give teachers an extra $120 million on top of the Government’s pay offer. It claimed this would be on top of a $755 million offer on the table, but Labor says its offer is actually $945 million over five years.

“Opposition Leader Colin Barnett refused to provide any more detail when he announced the offer, saying it would be up to teachers how the $120 million was divided.

“But Mr Collier said yesterday he expected it would be used to top up teachers’ salaries.

“What we intend to do is to sit down with teachers and say how do you best want us to pay this?” he said. “Ideally it would be an across-the-board salary increase for all teachers. It works out about an additional 2 per cent over the current agreement.”

“Teachers are voting on the Government’s offer of pay rises of between 15 and 21 per cent over three years in a postal ballot that closes a week after the State election.

“Union activist Marko Vojkovic said teachers needed more detail on how the $120 million would be allocated before they went to the polls on September 6.

“Mr Vojkovic, who also chairs education watchdog PLATO, which has organised much of the opposition to the pay deal, said it was unrealistic to expect teachers to accept the Liberal Party’s offer without being able to compare it with the Government’s offer.

“The Liberals’ education package was infinitely better than Labor’s but “we need to see hard percentage figures”, he said. [emphasis added]

“But Mr Collier said he could provide no more information than the fact that teachers should get an extra 2 per cent.

“He said he would pull the pay dispute out of arbitration in the WA Industrial Relations Court if teachers rejected the Government’s latest pay offer.

“State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne welcomed the Liberal offer.

“Education Minister Mark McGowan accused the Opposition of indulging in an unfunded, transparent bribe.”

From The West Australian



• Carpenter pledges extra $310m for schools (page 6)
  by Jessica Strutt

“Alan Carpenter yesterday promised an additional $310 million for upgrading and maintenance on public schools.

“The Premier said Labor would spend $1.5 billion over the next four years on new and improved schools, which he said was “the biggest single injection of spending into our schools in the State’s history”. But he later conceded that most of yesterday’s funding announcement had already been included in Budget forward estimates and just $310 million was new money.

“Making the announcement at Mt Lawley High School, Mr Carpenter said Labor would build 36 new schools over four years, including 15 to be opened next year.

“Shadow education minister Peter Collier said Mr Carpenter’s announcement was an “act of deceit”.

“He said Labor’s attempt to misrepresent the facts showed it was panicked because the Liberal Party had set the agenda on education and the Carpenter Government was “desperately playing catch-up”.

“Labor has been caught out misrepresenting the facts,” he said. “What they are doing is they are pretending that they were building new schools whereas every school announced today was already in forward estimates, everyone,” he said.

“To actually re-announce something and tart it up as being some new announcement is a disgraceful indictment of this Government.” [emphasis added]

"Late yesterday, a spokesman for Education Minister Mark McGowan said the Government had been “quite plain” in a policy document provided to journalists yesterday that what it had announced was already in the forward estimates.

“The document was handed to reporters after Mr Carpenter had held his press conference.

“What we’ve announced today is where the schools will be and which ones we’ve committed to and sort of what order,” he said. “The new schools are part of the forward estimates but (previously) we’ve not revealed where they’ll be.

“The $310 million is new and Alan said that in his press conference. It adds up to $1.5 billion all up, now we’ve been quite clear about that.”

From The West Australian




• Letter to the Editor (page 22)
  

  • Forgotten Teachers
    
    “Congratulations to Colin Barnett for making education his number-one priority in this election (report, 25/8). It is a bold move but an important acknowledgement that education and teachers have been neglected in this State for too long. Children are our greatest resource and education is the fire that refines this resource for the long-term benefit of the community and the individual. Of note is the statement: “Our community has to accept we need to pay and reward our teachers better.” However, the concerns of teachers have been voiced for many years. For example, the teacher shortage in selected areas of education was foreshadowed in 1994 but ignored by governments from both sides of politics since then. Teachers, parents and the community, while being cynical, will watch with interest the development of this promise and what Labor is prepared to do to raise the status of the teaching profession and education.”
    
    Brian Lindberg, chair of the board, WA College of Teaching

  
  
  
• The Australian
  

• Editorial
  The revolution we simply had to have
  
  Rudd's reforms challenge the education establishment
  
  "Kevin Rudd has been accused of being a Prime Minister without a narrative. Yesterday he responded by outlining an ambitious plot that offers plenty of drama and the chance of redemption. Mr Rudd presented the manifesto for an education revolution that will improve the quality of teaching, bring schools, teachers and principals to account and concentrate resources on the disadvantaged. There will be zero tolerance for poor performance. His revolution challenges the power of the education establishment and promises to shift the balance decisively from the provider to the consumer, putting the interests of parents and children ahead of state governments, bureaucrats and teaching unions. The Prime Minister predicts that there will be "argy bargy". That, we respectfully suggest, is an understatement.
  
  "The changes Mr Rudd proposes are long overdue and reflect a groundswell of concern about a teaching industry predisposed to mediocrity. It is the kind of reform The Australian has long advocated. Mr Rudd's predecessor, John Howard, talked a good game on education and supported parents' rights to choose private schools, but successive education ministers, including Brendan Nelson and Julie Bishop, avoided serious reform of the public sector.
  
  "Public schools have been protected from scrutiny by state governments. Education Minister Julia Gillard admitted in The Weekend Australian last week that parents had no guarantee their child's school met even the minimum educational standards. Teaching unions have resisted performance pay, favouring a flat remuneration scale offering teachers no reward for excellence and no sanction for failure.
  
  "Mr Rudd's ambition is to restore the teaching profession's reputation as a noble calling that attracts the best and brightest. He will introduce national standards by which principals and teachers can be judged. Teaching and leadership excellence will be rewarded. The recruitment crisis exacerbated by the imminent retirement of the disproportionate number of teachers now in their late 50s or 60s will be addressed.
  
  "In a further challenge to the teaching establishment, responsibility for hiring, firing and remuneration will be devolved to principals. Schools will be given a year to provide more information to parents and three years to report their performance, measured against other schools. As Mr Rudd acknowledges, some parents may vote with their feet, moving their children out of failing schools: "We make no apologies for that."
  
  "State education bureaucrats would have hated what they heard yesterday. The Rudd revolution is a projection of commonwealth power into state territory, necessary because the states have failed to deliver an education system fit for the 21st century. Education departments have been hoodwinked into adopting faddish curriculums, accelerating the slide in numeracy and literacy and depriving students of basic skills in a rapidly-changing world. Mr Rudd must be prepared for resistance, although he holds the purse strings.
  
  "He can expect resistance, too, from the regressive wing on his own side of politics, the same morally arrogant voices who argued against economic rationalism in the Hawke and Keating years, opposed last year's Northern Territory intervention and are now decrying the Labor Government's steps towards welfare reform. They are voices Mr Rudd appears to have the confidence to ignore.
  
  "The Australian has been an un-apologetic critic of the Rudd Government's fridge-magnet politics fearing that stunts such as FuelWatch, GroceryChoice and the alcopops tax were distracting from real reform. Yesterday, we saw signs of a more assertive and progressive leader, one driven by conviction, not spin, the Mr Rudd we were anticipating when we endorsed his candidacy last November. He has set himself a challenging task. We wish him well."
  
  From The Australian at link
  
  
  
• Standoff on Julia Gillard school reforms
  by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
  
  "Negotiations between the federal and state governments over school reforms are growing tense, with state education ministers complaining they are being cut out of the decision-making process.
  
  "At a meeting of education ministers in Sydney last Friday, the states accused federal Education Minister Julia Gillard of following the policy agenda of the Howard government and of being controlled by the federal education department.
  
  "One state minister told Ms Gillard her proposals looked like the Howard agenda and said she was following the advice of the same people in the department who advised her predecessors, Brendan Nelson and Julie Bishop.
  
  "The meeting, described as "cooperative but direct", was held at the request of the states to discuss initiatives being developed through the Council of Australian Governments that remove state education ministers from the process. The Rudd Government's reforms are being developed at COAG by the productivity working group, chaired by Ms Gillard..."
  
  Full story in The Australian at link
  
  
  
• Comment
  Gillard speaking for parents, children
  by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
  
  "Julia Gillard is one of only two education ministers in the nation without children, and she is the only one speaking out for parents.
  
  "Every parent has the right to know their child's school is as good as the one down the road.
  
  "If a school fails to meet a minimum standard of quality, principals should be held accountable, teachers should be removed, the school should close. Every child deserves no less.
  
  "At present in Australia, there is no way of guaranteeing to parents that their local school is doing all it should.
  
  "Accountability is virtually non-existent and choosing schools, as Gillard said in The Australian last week, is based on guesswork, rumour and crossing your fingers.
  
  "The Rudd Government is staring down state governments and teachers' unions afraid of being held accountable.
  
  "In doing so, it is holding true to the Labor tradition that the disadvantaged are lifted up in society through education.
  
  "Gillard and Kevin Rudd are unequivocal in their aim: every child in Australia, no matter where they live, how much money their parents earn, or what language they speak, is entitled to a good education.
  
  "Every child is entitled to leave school able to read and write, to be given the opportunity to achieve the best they can at school and afterwards. Every school has a responsibility to give children that opportunity.

  "It's that simple."
  
  From The Australian at link
  
  

• Welcome move, but critics await detail
  by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
  
  "State governments, principals, business and teachers in independent schools yesterday supported the thrust of Kevin Rudd's commitment to make schools more transparent and accountable.
  
  "State education ministers said school reports were already comparing their results with similar schools, and any move to recruit the best and brightest graduates into teaching was welcome.
  
  "Ministers welcomed the negotiations, but said the detail of the Prime Minister's proposals was critical in winning support.
  
  "But teachers unions gained an unlikely ally in their opposition to moves for schools to report student performance from the organisation representing the parents in government schools..."
  
  Full story in The Australian at link
  
  
  
• PM ties school funds to results
  
  Kevin Rudd will demand states take tough action against failing schools, sacking principals and teachers and even closing sub-standard schools, as a condition of a multi-billion-dollar education fund to ensure all students have a good education.
  
  The Prime Minister's address to the National Press Club, entitled: Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution in Our Schools.
  
  
  
• Kevin takes on the bad cop role
  by Dennis Shanahan, Political editor
  
  "It's hard to believe that when dealing with the diplomatic Kevin Rudd and the hardline Julia Gillard on a joint negotiation, the good cop in the duo is the iron lady and not the Prime Minister.
  
  "But that is what has emerged with the Rudd Government's education revolution.
  
  "Rudd has proposed a series of school reforms aimed at helping disadvantaged children, lifting teaching standards and giving parents the power to judge the relative quality of their school - private, religious or state - and invested it with his own authority.
  
  "Rudd has lined up the state governments and the teachers unions and told them he wanted action. He has called for parents to "vote with their feet" and move their children out of unsatisfactory schools. He has challenged state governments to close those not up to scratch.
  
  "It's an extension of tough love for education and a dose of painful politics for the states.
  
  "The substance of the proposals is excellent, equitable and long overdue. They are designed to help students, empower parents and encourage greater regard and recognition for the vocation of teaching..."
  
  Full story in The Australian at link
  
  
  
• Paper to spell out student goals
  by Lauren Wilson
  
  "Primary school principals have called for a national curriculum that spells out exactly what students should be taught, even down to when students should be able to spell specific words.
  
  "In a draft discussion paper, the Australian Primary Principals Association - which represents primary principals in state, Catholic and independent schools - say the national curriculum should focus on what is taught in schools rather than how teachers conduct their classrooms.
  
  "The syllabus-style national curriculum being proposed by the APPA should not exceed 40pages, however, and should avoid unnecessary complications and overlaps.
  
  "Many previous curriculum projects have taken no account of the demands on teachers working in primary classrooms with responsibility for a number of subjects," the paper says. "The national curriculum should assist in uncrowding the curriculum rather than making it worse."
  
  "The paper proposes that a national curriculum should focus heavily on literacy and numeracy rather than other areas such as history and science, particularly in the first three levels of school.
  
  "No history national curriculum should be developed for the first three years of schooling, and the science national curriculum should be very limited in scope in the first three years," it says..."
  
  Full story in The Australian at link
  
  
  
• Truancy to be monitored in welfare move
  
  School authorities will have the power to choose whether to dob in welfare recipients who fail to ensure their children attend lessons under new laws introduced in parliament yesterday.
  
  
  
• Program propels teachers to higher level
  by Sian Powell
  
  "As a teacher who has worked in Australian schools for 20 years, Joanna French welcomes the education revolution with open arms.
  
  "Deputy principal of Clemton Park Public School, in Sydney's Earlwood, Ms French has already reached a level of seniority within the NSW education system.
  
  "But she will now apply for professional accreditation under a NSW program at the new "professional leadership" level..."
  
  Full story in The Australian at link
  
  
  
• Carpenter counters Barnett school plan
  
  West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter yesterday attempted to outmanoeuvre the state Opposition over its prized education policy, announcing a $1.5 billion package that included an extra $310 million in school upgrades and maintenance.
  
  
  
• Overseas students held like terrorists
  
  Nearly 300 overseas students have been thrown into detention centres in Sydney and Melbourne in the past three years after falling foul of Australia's immigration laws.
  
  
  
• Letters to the Editor
  

  First Byte
  

  • "Clever of the Australian Education Union to reinforce the message in its full-page advertisement (27/8) by including a sentence which is both ungrammatical and misspells the word “fulfil”.
    
    Peter Barclay, Glen Osmond, SA
    
    
    
  • "I don’t think that the parents of the 40 per cent of children attending non-government schools would agree with the statement, embodied in the advertisement, that “only Australia’s public schools ensure every child has the opportunity to fulfill (sic) their potential”. Only the Australian Education Union believes that."
    
    John Young, Epping, NSW
    
    
    
  • "In his speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Kevin Rudd declared war on the provider capture of public education. The Coalition must support him in this."
    
    Barry Wells, Cairns, Qld
    
    
    
  • "Are we ever going to see a halt to the blame game played ad nauseam by Kevin Rudd and his disciples?"
    
    Keith Ellem, Tarrawanna, NSW
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Julia Gillard joins Lateline [transcript]
    
    
    
  • 7:30 Report: Kerry O'Brien speaks with Kevin Rudd [transcript]
    
    
    
  • Gillard defiant on school reform plans
    
    Education Minister Julia Gillard has defended the Government's new education reforms, saying doing nothing is not an option. The Government says it will make federal education funding conditional on the publication of details about schools' performances, with teachers and other staff facing the threat of dismissal if their schools consistently underperform.
    
    
  • Public school system accountable: McGowan
    
    "Western Australia's Education Minister, Mark McGowan, says the public school system is already accountable.
    
    "Under plans announced by the Prime Minister, it would be a condition of school funding that information about how the schools perform be publicly available.
    
    "Principals have attacked the plan as corrupt and disastrous and the Opposition says it was announced yesterday as a distraction from problems with the economy.
    
    "Mr McGowan said information about West Australian public schools and their results is already available on the internet.
    
    "There's absolutely nothing wrong with having accountability and that's what we have," he said.
    
    "We installed this system of making sure that we have your testing results and and all that information about individual schools out there and online about public schools.
    
    "If Julia Gillard is talking about making sure it's a level playing field across private and public schools, that's a good thing."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Rudd to education unions: get with the times
    
    Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has urged unions to support his education reforms or risk being left in the past.
    
    
    
  • Union unimpressed by Rudd's school rehash
    
    The New South Wales Teachers Federation has criticised the Federal Government's latest plans to improve school standards.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • School v school: PM's rule
    by Michelle Grattan, Farrah Tomazin and Dan Harrison
    
    "States will have to provide detailed reports on the performances of individual state schools to qualify for federal funding, under the next phase of Kevin Rudd's "education revolution".
    
    "Flagging the tough new rules, the Prime Minister said yesterday that where a school failed to lift its performance, education authorities should sack the principal, replace senior staff, reorganise the school or even merge it with a more efficient school.
    
    "The uncompromising plan, which has strong echoes of the former Howard government's approach, brought an outcry from education unions, support from principals' groups and cries of plagiarism from the Coalition.
    
    "Mr Rudd promised new money and a partnership with the states - which run government schools - but insisted that strict conditions be met in negotiations now under way for a new four-year funding agreement.
    
    "He declined to specify how much Canberra would provide, but said governments would need to commit about $500,000 a year for an average-sized disadvantaged school.
    
    "Advocating a new reporting system, Mr Rudd said: "We do not have accurate, comprehensive information to allow rigorous analysis of what schools and students are achieving. This must change." He said the information must go beyond "simplistic league tables".
    
    "He expected that some would resist the changes and warned that "greater transparency will reveal some schools in Australia may be seriously underperforming … We should not tolerate underperformance."
    
    "He said he would take three central pillars of reform to the next Council of Australian Governments meeting in October. These were improving the quality of teaching, properly transparent reporting and lifting achievement in disadvantaged schools..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    A policy that should teach us some lessons about opportunity
    by Shaun Carney
    
    "If you were looking for a sign of how political discourse shifts when a country changes governments, you could do worse than to look at the reaction to the Rudd Government's pilot scheme to fight truancy, which would withhold welfare payments to parents of children who did not attend school regularly.
    
    "In unveiling the scheme on Monday, the Government followed procedures used to great effect by the Coalition under John Howard, feeding the announcement to The Daily Telegraph, the Sydney tabloid that has traditionally eaten up that sort of supposedly punitive policy approach with a spoon.
    
    "Later in the day, the Government confirmed the Telegraph story. Meanwhile, the subject was chewed over on talkback radio. By and large, the reaction was lukewarm — sceptical at best, negative at worst. By yesterday morning, a full 24 hours after the announcement had entered the news cycle, the responses had hardened; it was hard to find any group within the education and welfare sectors that embraced the proposal.
    
    "That might have been expected. Less expected was the reaction from those who aren't regarded as being part of what used to be called, in the Howard era, "the elite".
    
    "In recent political history a government that purported to go after welfare recipients who some might consider are not living up to their responsibilities could get public support and a handy electoral return. But apparently not now, at least not as it applies to parents making sure that their kids go to school and stay there.
    
    "Why should this be? There are a range of possible explanations. Despite the early high-profile efforts of the Howard government to go after some people on welfare, notably its wildly popular work-for-the-dole scheme, a widespread entitlement mentality certainly took hold on its watch, with families and pensioners anxiously awaiting their annual top-up cheques of public money. Maybe some people figure that if the Government starts to tighten up on the handout to that bloke over there, they'll come after theirs next..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link.

 

Friday 29 August

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Labor, Libs refuse to kill off OBE
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    "The major parties have refused to abolish all aspects of outcomes-based education from kindergarten to Year 10 if they win the election.
      
    "Education Minister Mark McGowan dodged questions yesterday on whether he would commit to abolish OBE completely, instead issuing a statement outlining what the Carpenter Government had done to move away from a purist OBE model.
      
    "While shadow education minister Peter Collier promised the Liberal Party would scrap so-called “levels”, which are at the heart of OBE assessments, he would not commit to removing the outcomes-based curriculum framework.
      
    "He said a Liberal government would undertake an independent audit of the curriculum framework before deciding whether to dismantle it.
      
    "Teachers lobby group PLATO, which played a pivotal role in the Government’s backdown on OBE for Years 11 and 12 last year, last week demanded that Labor and the Liberals commit to abolishing OBE from kindergarten to Year 10 by removing levels and the curriculum framework.
      
    "The group wrote to political parties asking them to state their positions on the controversial topic. Critics claim that OBE creates a lowest common denominator with little distinction between high and low achievers.
      
    "Labor abolished levels for Years 11 and 12 last year and restored traditional grades. But levels remain from kindergarten to Year 10, even though this is largely hidden from parents.
      
    "PLATO chairman Marko Vojkovic said last night his group would not direct teachers how to vote at the election but would analyse the parties’ responses to its letter and allow them to decide for themselves.
      
    "He said the Liberals’ pledge to scrap levels and conduct an audit had put it ahead of Labor’s position but neither party had gone far enough.
      
    "His group would continue to lobby the parties in the final week of the campaign to ensure the curriculum framework was scrapped.
      
    “The Liberals are ahead in terms of their commitment to analysing OBE and evaluating it . . . but they are not going as far down that track as we would like,” Mr Vojkovic said.
      
    "Mr Collier said the Liberals’ commitment to remove levels would end the most contentious parts of OBE.
      
    "He said education in terms of curriculum had become completely politicised under Labor and he pledged to reinstate an education system without a political slant. [emphasis added]
      
    "Mr McGowan said it was an inconvenient truth for the Liberals that leader Colin Barnett was the “high priest” of OBE because he introduced it as education minister and abolished syllabuses. Mr Collier’s OBE position “changes like the wind”.
      
    "Mr McGowan said he had reintroduced the kindergarten to Year 10 syllabus and returned to traditional marking. He said there had been a return to common sense in the assessment of student work."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Comment
    Still Year 1 in education revolution
    by Andrew Probyn, Federal Political Editor
    
    "When Kevin Rudd hobnobbed with generals covered in medals at the NATO summit in Bucharest a few months ago, he set about trying to get the conflict in Afghanistan into some sort of Ruddist order.
      
    "The Prime Minister’s idea for integrating the military and civilian strategies in Afghanistan was to set “KPIs”, or key performance indicators, to benchmark what was being achieved and what was failing.
      
    "To tackle the $US4 billion ($4.7 billion) Afghan opium trade flooding the streets with dirt-cheap heroin, Mr Rudd lobbied for satellite imagery to be used in annual performance measures of efforts to eradicate the poppy fields.
     
    "The idea had some merit — and limited success — but the thought of this bookish newcomer from Down Under with a passion for bureaucratese telling battle-scarred generals how to run their war was amusing, especially when those he lectured had a more troubling KPI — the mounting body count of NATO soldiers and Afghan civilians.
      
    "But Mr Rudd, bless him, has no other way. He’s an evidence-based policy sort of guy. A lover of process, of reviews, inquiries and papers, green or white.
      
    "It’s no wonder he nicked John Howard’s idea to compel States to start rating schools of similar student mixes and comparable socioeconomic status and making this a condition of school funding beginning next January.
      
    "In areas of well-trodden social policy such as education, very few new ideas haven’t already been dreamt of, applied, discarded or, as in the case of school-performance ratings, stymied. So it is with the education “revolution” that Mr Rudd and Julia Gillard spoke of more than 18 months ago. It is not so much one of a fresh approach but implementation of a policy blocked by the teachers unions and, to some extent, the Labor States. In its essence, improving primary and secondary education should be pretty simple: resource the schools well and make sure the people teaching the kids have quality. The first is the easiest to solve if you’ve got lots of money. The second is far more difficult to achieve. As the Howard government proposed before him, Mr Rudd backs rewarding teachers who excel with higher pay and bonuses. In his speech to the National Press Club mid-week, he also foreshadowed establishing programs similar to those in place in Britain and the US where highly talented graduates are given an accelera pathway into teaching and put into the most challenging of schools at increased salaries. They are monitored by businesses with an option of employment after they complete their teaching assignment, albeit hoping that the graduates stick with teaching to make it their life profession.
     
    "Worthy though this approach is, it’s hard to see how it would make much difference beyond the margins or achieve the venerable ambition the Prime Minister enunciated with these words: “We need to re-establish in Australia that teaching is a great profession and a great calling for the best and brightest of our university graduates.”
      
    "Sadly, the teaching profession has been in decline for at least a quarter of a century. The growth of the corporate and information technology industries has swallowed up more and more graduates attracted by higher pay. Consequently, entry scores into teaching courses have slipped.
      
    "For example, where entry scores for the University of Sydney’s bachelor of education course in 1977 were almost as high as law and considerably higher than economics, they now rank third by a substantial margin.
      
    "Research published this year on teacher aptitude by Australian National University researchers Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan pinpointed some rather disturbing trends.
      
    "They found that 25 years ago the average person entering teacher education was at the 74th percentile of the aptitude distribution and the average new teacher was at the 70th percentile.
      
    "Twenty years later, in 2003, the average percentile rank of those studying teaching had fallen to 61 and the average rank of new teachers was 62.
      
    "Among females, who make up about three-quarters of new teachers, the figures were worse. Whereas the average woman studying teaching in 1983 was at the 72nd percentile of academic achievement, it fell to the 60th percentile by 2003 (curiously, for men the aptitude of those entering teaching increased between 1983 and 2003, from 71st percentile to 74th).
      
    "Confirming pay was the big driver in discouraging the brightest students from entering teaching courses, the researchers also found teacher pay for women fell from 114 per cent of average pay of a non-teacher with an undergraduate degree in 1983 to 103 per cent.
      
    "For men, teacher pay fell from 108 per cent to 91 per cent.
      
    "To be blunt: our teachers aren’t as smart as they once were, and aren’t getting as well paid. Yet the demands on those brave souls willing to be teachers are increasing at an astonishing rate, from the curriculum to monitoring for signs of abuse. [emphasis added]
      
    "As Mr Rudd pointed out, even the best teachers face salary caps of $75,000 — a second-year engineering graduate can earn more than that even with average grades.
      
    "If the education revolution will involve getting the best and brightest to enter the teaching profession — as it so obviously does — then bonus payments based on KPIs and other performance measures will be just a small step in the long march."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Solar cooling for schools
    by Yasmine Phillips
    
    "Labor has promised to invest $27 million installing air cooling in more than 200 existing schools if it wins government again.
    
    "These air collers will be supported by big solar panels installed in those schools.
    
    "Campaigning Lansdale Primary School yesterday, Mr Carpenter said his government would air cool 50 schools per year over four years.

    The solar panel systems would also supply the state power grids when school systems are not in use.
    
    "Mr Carpenter said many WA schools in the hottest parts of regional WA and metropolitan Perth had already been air cooled over the last decade, but there were still more than 200 schools that needed it."
    
    From The West Australian at link

    
    
  • Letters to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • Calculators
      
      “Why has it taken so long for someone of worth to come out and express this obvious problem in the education of our children? I’m referring to your report (Calculators ‘damaging young’, 26/8) featuring comments by Professor Igor Bray of Curtin University slamming the growing use of calculators by our young children in our schools.
      
      “Lack of mental gymnastics is creating intellectually weak children. Isn’t progress dependant of creating a smarter generation than the one that preceded it?
      
      “I’m often exasperated when making a purchase when the teenager behind the cash register has no ideas how to juggle simple arithmetic. I’m sure many people have witnessed this scenario; you purchase an item and give the teenager a $20 note. As he rings it up you find a $2 coin in your pocket and hand it over so that you can receive a better arrangement of change. Teenager is stumped because he can’t add $2 to the total on his screen!
      
      “It isn’t hard for those of us educated in the “old school” way because we grew up training our minds to solve simple arithmetic without the aid of electrons. The best example has to have been when I went through the drive-through of a well-known fast-food store and asked for half a dozen nuggets. The teenager piped back: “We don’t sell half a dozen.” I asked him if I could order six then. “Of course, no problem,” he said."
      
      Mark Fahey, Ballajura   
      
      

    • “As a year 12 student currently studying the maximum TEE subjects, I’m angry at Igor Bray’s suggestion to return to “slide rules and table books”.
      
      “TEE is stressful enough already, but the use of calculators gives the students the breathing space to show their understanding of maths. It would have made more sense not to introduce the CAS calculators in the first place.
      
      “The Curriculum Council and Igor Bray should be concentrating more on supporting and helping Year 12 students through their TEE rather than making it more difficult for us!”
      
      Erin Doyle, Trigg     

      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • School report cards counterproductive: OECD
    by Europe correspondent Emma Alberici
    
    "Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his much-vaunted education revolution this week, but an international report has warned against the kind of public reporting of school performance levels that he is proposing.
    
    "The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says comparing the performances of schools, their principals and teachers does not work as a way of producing better academic results.
    
    "The report, called Improving School Leadership, has been two years in the making and looks at the quality of education in 19 of the 30 countries in the OECD.
    
    "Finland, which scores highest on the international league tables, has no official school assessments but instead owes its success to a strong investment and respect for its teaching profession.
    
    "In Australia researchers visited Victoria and praised the State Government there for focusing on providing autonomy for teachers and principals.
    
    "But Beatriz Pont, who is one of the authors of the report, says there is no evidence that external performance reviews work to improve results.
    
    "She says they can actually be counterproductive.
    
    "The best way to achieve academic results is to invest in teachers and in school leadership," she said.
    
    "The OECD report says Australia has some way to go to catch up to countries like Finland, which consistently tops international academic performance tables.
    
    "Finland does not test its pupils or its teaching staff. Instead they pride themselves on having the highest quality teachers in the world.
    
    "They [Finland] only accept into teacher training one out of 10 candidates who want to study to become a teacher. It is a very reputable career," Ms Pont said.
    
    "Finnish Ministry of Education counsellor Aki Tornberg says school funding is tied not to performance but to the number of pupils, and the Government promotes self-assessment in schools.
    
    "Absolutely every teacher must have at least Master level graduate," he said.
    
    "They have to have a university-based study, and it takes five years."
    
    "The OECD report says that the challenge for governments struggling to raise school performance is to make school teaching an attractive profession by ensuring appropriate wages and career prospects."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Greens expect to poll well
    
    The WA Greens expect to benefit significantly from the large number of disaffected voters when West Australians go to the polls on September 6.
    
    
    
    
• WA Today
  
  
  • PM aims to teach unions a lesson
    by Phillip Coorey, Chief Political Correspondent
    
    "Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard turned up the heat on the education unions yesterday with the Prime Minister telling them it was time to move into the 21st century.
    
    "But as Mr Rudd and his deputy began the hard sell of tough new measures to improve school standards, the trade unions continued to flex their muscles behind the scenes over a number of policy measures.
    
    "The Australian Education Union organised a briefing for about 40 members of caucus and staff over the school announcement in which future commonwealth funding for the states would depend on them adopting greater transparency and accountability measures for the schools system.
    
    "There is, however, more concern among the backbench over the earlier announcement this week of a trial program in which parents of truant children would have their welfare docked for up to three months..."
    
    "The AEU has been hostile to Mr Rudd's new funding conditions for schools. From next year, public and private schools would have to publicly disclose performance information.
    
    "Schools which continued to underperform after receiving additional funding of up to $500,000 a year would be expected to sack the principal or teachers, and even close or merge with another school.
    
    "Mr Rudd urged the unions and states to embrace the measures. There would be a significant boost to funding in return for agreement but the Government no longer intended to write "blank cheques"...

    Full story in WA Today at link
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • Old school union standing in way of equity, says PM
    by Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent
    
    "Kevin Rudd has accused education union officials of promoting inequity, vowing he will crash through their opposition to his plans to crack down on underperforming schools.
    
    "A day after announcing plans to give states extra funding if they demand greater transparency and accountability from schools, including publishing details of their relative performances, the Prime Minister urged his critics to back his reforms as delivering on a core aim of the labour movement: equality of access to education.
    
    "As the Australian Education Union began lobbying Labor backbenchers to resist changes that also include sacking underperforming teachers and principals, Mr Rudd said the reform was aimed at rescuing large numbers of children at risk of being let down by poorly performing schools.
    
    "I think the reason for it (the union criticism) is that those individuals ... from one or two unions are locked into a view of equity which doesn't work," Mr Rudd told The Australian last night.
    
    "But I think we've got to put ancient debates behind us, which are purely about throwing resources at one end of the system without measuring the results at the other end of the system." ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    It's not rocket science
    
    Government reforms will lift the teaching profession
    
    "In most workplaces beyond the parallel universe of Australia's education establishment, Kevin Rudd's blueprint for improving schools would be welcomed. The Government is determined to enhance the status of teaching by recruiting the most able graduates into classrooms and rewarding the best teachers and principals financially. It is also set to inject $500,000 into average-sized schools, and give principals greater autonomy in hiring staff and tailoring programs to suit their clients. It will also hold them accountable.
    
    "None of this is rocket science. But so skewed is the outlook of many educators that the reforms - decades overdue - are being decried as a "betrayal" on talkback radio and in internet blogs and the media. In Melbourne, one principal said it was a "sad day" and that the federal Government - despite its responsibility to taxpayers - should not interfere in state school operations. Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said the measures were "beyond insulting ... the lowest form of bullying tactics and more outrageous than anything heard under the previous government".
    
    "The Prime Minister was dead right yesterday when he accused union officials of promoting inequity. He has vowed to crash through their opposition to crack down on underperforming schools. For the sake of disadvantaged Australians, he must prevail.
    
    "To put the issue in perspective, there are few Australian workplaces, beyond schools, where employees who have served for a set number of years are all paid the same. The concept, to which unions are clinging like a life-raft, is ridiculous. That said, the best teachers, doing one of Australia's most important jobs, are relatively poorly paid on maximum salaries of $75,000. This is one reason why the profession's attrition rate is so high and why cut-off scores for teaching courses have fallen to embrace the bottom third of school leavers.
    
    "Long accustomed to a system that pays no heed to results, many teachers and bureaucrats feel an intense attachment to the status quo. For too long, they have been able to dismiss the concerns of parents about why their children are not doing better. Both teachers and parents recognise that improving results will take sustained, concentrated effort, with less reliance on gimmicks and fads and more old-fashioned instruction and testing.
    
    "The federal Opposition, too, is missing the point of what the substantive and most challenging phase of the education revolution is about. Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith accused the Government of copying the previous government's policies. He blamed unions and state bureaucracies for blocking initiatives to improve teacher quality, pay and transparency. But that was only part of the story. Driven as it was by the commendable principle of choice, the Howard government's main focus was enhancing opportunities for parents, including low- to middle-income earners, to opt for private schools.
    
    "It failed to effect change in the state system over 12 years, but already the Rudd Government is showing greater courage in tying state school funding to results. It has no other option. Pragmatist that he is, Mr Rudd recognises that changing the culture of teaching will be a long haul. Prudently, he is looking to principals to lead the charge. Central to the process will be the release of data showing how schools are performing. Erroneously maligned by critics as "league tables", such transparency will give parents essential information about whether schools are improving, declining or stable from year to year. Parents deserve no less. As does every child."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Star pupil shows attendance magic
    
    Amanda Nelson is the pride of Wingellina Remote Community School near the Western Australia-Northern Territory border.

    The seven-year-old Year 2 student has an attendance record of 99 per cent, and her principal, Kevin Riordan, says she is the only pupil at the desert school whose literacy and numeracy skills are on a par with national benchmarks. None of the school's 20 pupils, aged up to 14, can read fluently and only five can add double-digit figures.

    
    
    
  • Hard questions are 'long overdue': Dr Chris Sarra
    
    Leading indigenous education expert Chris Sarra called on teachers to embrace federal government plans to hold schools accountable for their students' performance, describing it as long overdue.

    Dr Sarra, executive director of the Indigenous Education Leadership Institute, said it was only right that tough questions were being asked of teachers and schools. "It's right that we're being asked some hard questions about performance, and it's right we're being made to feel uncomfortable," he said.
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Most Talked About
      PM’s school reforms will require steadfast courage
      
      Seven Letters at that link
      
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Editorial
    Revolutionary Rudd gets tough, for the sake of education [late 28 August pickup]
    
    "... Particularly likely to cause friction are two factors. The first is the speed with which the Government wants to activate its plans, to be debated at forthcoming Council of Australian Governments meetings and, if successful, implemented by January 1, when the national educational agreement takes effect. The second, even more inflammatory factor is the Government's new, tougher threat to penalise underperforming schools — the more extreme measures, which Mr Rudd says he "expects" state education authorities to implement, include sacking principals or teachers or merging institutions. To the states, which have, sometimes for good reason, long resisted the "league table" approach of classifying schools, Mr Rudd remained as unmoved as a crusty headmaster.
    
    "If various governments choose not to receive these additional payments, then I think the country will say 'be it on their heads'," he said, discreetly holding the cane behind his back. While there are shades here of the Howard government's reporting-for-funding proposals, there is also proof of Mr Rudd's demands for rigour and willingness to take on the unions to achieve them. But this should be weighed against the sensible requirements of his proposal: the need to know that schools are keeping up and not falling behind and, if they are, how this could be handled..."
    
    Full editorial in The Age at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Struggling families owe so much to teachers who made a difference
      
      "As a former "recalcitrant" ("Rudd's school revolution", August 28) member of what Peter Hartcher has called a "huddling collectivist mediocrity" ("Pugilistic PM has picked a classy fight") I wish to make a few things clear to the Prime Minister, whose election I, and many other similar recalcitrants, worked hard to bring about.
      
      "Years ago, the State Government introduced the principle that parents could elect to send their children to any public school they wished if space was available after the enrolment of local students. There was some relatively insignificant movement at the primary level. At the secondary level the most common reasons for parents not to choose the local high school were the availability of a specific subject in another high school or a decision to enrol in a private school.
      
      "Schools began a vigorous campaign to publicise their offerings, campaigns in which the media showed little interest despite some impressive performances, particularly during the participation and equity program of the federal Labor government in the 1980s.
      
      "The print media, and particularly the broadsheet media, continued to contrast the "elite" private schools with the public schools supposedly being run on Soviet lines by the above mentioned collective. The main story was the continuing drift to private schools because the public schools were "values free". What nonsense.
      
      "Research by the Greens MP John Kaye showed that the greatest factor behind the drift was the allocation of public funding to private schools.
      
      "I would love the space to document all the flaws in Kevin Rudd's proposal but two points will suffice. On the demand that schools provide more information, the fact is that schools have information on hand and communicate it to parents in various ways, including newsletters, parent-teacher nights and open days. Those parents who are interested can always seek an appointment with the principal or a specific teacher. In most cases this request would be welcomed.
      
      "Secondly, having taught in schools that were difficult to staff because of socio-economic disadvantage, I am very proud of their record in raising the aspirations of many students. I can cite dozens of students who were the first in their family to gain a qualification such as the School Certificate, HSC or a university degree.
      
      "These teachers are paid no more than teachers in privileged areas and frequently must travel great distances from their homes. Students owe a great debt to those teachers whose dedication and concern for their welfare made such a difference."
      
      Don Brown, Narrabeen
      
      
      
    • Learning the hard lessons of education reform
      
      "Never in 32 years as a professional educator have I felt so abandoned. If there is a problem in a school, Kevin Rudd says sack the principal and the teachers. He does not say give them adequate resources and smaller class sizes. He does not say provide support to deal with a broad range of challenging students. He does not say that if teachers need more skills, he will provide the funds.
      
      "Why won't he and the rest of the politicians forget the populist claptrap and provide appropriate funding? Why won't he work with us and not against us? If he and the others don't, the standard of education must, as a result of their policies, decline."
      
      Patrick FitzGerald Deputy principal, Young High School
      
      
      
    • "I know, as a recently retired principal of NSW state schools, that measures are in place to assess student progress accurately, to report to parents on student achievement compared to their cohort and to initiate intervention where students are not reaching basic skills.
      
      "Accountability of teachers and transparency is one thing, essential as it undoubtedly is. But when will the penny drop for our politicians that comparing performance of schools with students from differing backgrounds, even within a relatively small geographic extent, does not necessarily indicate differing qualities of education?
      
      Malcolm Cato, Westleigh
      
      
      
    • "Teachers to become accountable to parents? Excellent, because parents will then have to become accountable to teachers for their children's behaviour. Then the standard of education will rise.
      
      Ross Jeffery, Avoca Beach
      
      
      
    • "So the Liberals think Labor is just copying their education policies? Hardly. When Brendan Nelson was education minister he made school funding dependent on a jingoistic flag-flying exercise. Julie Bishop was more concerned with punishing teachers than turning their trade into a profession with proper pay and proper standards.
      
      "By combining full disclosure with decent funding, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have their priorities right."
      
      Joanna Mendelssohn, Enmore
      
      
      
    • "Kevin Rudd's proposal to link teacher pay to performance is long overdue, opposed only by those who would argue that what teachers do is in some way incapable of description, unlike the work of dentists, doctors, lawyers, plumbers and the rest of the workforce.
      
      "He is on more contestable grounds, however, when he proposes to link funding to results as though disadvantaged and advantaged schools operate on similar planets. Dire consequences are implied for those who don't measure up.Some school environments have a clientele who will do well regardless of the dunces that teach them. Others will struggle despite the Messianic proclivities of staff."
      
      Allan Young Retired principal, Strathfield

 

Saturday – Sunday, 30 – 31 August

• The West Australian
  

  • Kids to be quizzed under school plan (page 2)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “Parents and children could be quizzed about playground bullying, how their teachers are and if classrooms are unsafe or dirty, as part of the Rudd Government’s push to make schools more accountable.
    
    “And the introduction of a national curriculum in English, maths, science and history for all schools will form the basis of benchmarks used to decide whether schools will be merged and teachers and principals sacked because of poorly performing students.
    
    “The Government’s plan has been inspired by New York City’s schools system, which collects data on all public and private schools’ socio-economic status, including the wealth of parents and ethnicity of students, to allow easy comparison of performance across similar schools.
    
    “The results of national literacy and numeracy testing will be used initially to rate student performance but the Government wants to expand it across a wider range of subjects when the curriculum in introduced in January 2011. The first round of testing was done this year but the Government’s plan includes implementing a national curriculum setting “high standards of achievement” that will contain benchmarks each student is expected to meet.
    
    “But the New York model also goes much deeper than test scores, establishing benchmarks for the learning environment schools offer, including their extracurricular activities, respect their students show to others, attendance rates and communication with parents. The opinion of parents and students is sought through surveys asking them if there is a problem with bullies, if they think the classrooms are clean and safe and how they rate their teacher.
    
    “Other questions include whether students are encouraged to succeed, if teachers know the names of students and if there is a problem with drugs.
    
    “Education Minister Julia Gillard has said the finer details of how schools data will be collected and published  was still being negotiated with the States but yesterday stressed rich private schools would not be compared with poorer public schools.
    
    “However, WA Council of State Schools Organisation president Robert Fry questioned the effectiveness of surveying parents, waring results could be distorted. “Schools are doing surveys now and what is interesting about this is the most positive responses we get are from the kids and the teachers,” he said.
    
    “Mr. Fry dismissed the argument that making school achievements more transparent would empower parents, saying most did not take up the opportunities to be involved.
    
    “St. Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls principal Joy Shepherd said she was disappointed by the simplistic approach of comparing schools.
    
    “Presbyterian Ladies College principal Beth Blackwood said she hoped the Government would have come up with more creative solutions than “the naming and shaming” attitude.
    
    “Christ Church Grammar School principal Garth Wynne said; “You shouldn’t be making that information available publicly because it it’s insidious and negative.”
    
    From The West Australian

     

  • Editorial
    Rudd plan for school renewal, accountability merits support (page 20)
    
    “Both coalition and now Labor Federal governments have discovered a need to shake up school systems with proposals for radical change. The message from Canberra, on both sides of politics, clearly is that there are fundamental deficiencies in schooling that need to be remedied by Federal intervention.
    
    “Messages from Canberra are not necessarily right or always based on worthy motives. But when both sides of politics come up with similar policies for pressing change on the States, it is clear they are picking up strong signals from their constituencies that school systems are seen to be failing to meet the demands of contemporary society. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence that many parents, employers and universities believe schools could and should be doing better.
    
    “In essence, there is a problem of lack of accountability in education. In an era of continuing demand by communities for increasing accountability by public and other institutions, schools have fallen behind and continue to be sheltered from close public scrutiny of the effectiveness or otherwise of their work.
    
    “The changes Kevin Rudd proposes would make schools more accountable and open to judgment on their performances. The Prime Minister can expect strenuous opposition to this from teacher unions and probably some hindrance from comfortable State education bureaucracies.
    
    “However, what he proposes is simply to introduce accountability measures for schools of a standard that is common and widely accepted in workplaces. That the allegedly union-friendly Labor PM is prepared to take on the teacher unions and State administrations on this suggests that he knows he will have powerful public support for his campaign to lift public schooling, in particular, out of its decline.
    
    “He says he wants parents not only to be given standardised reports on their children’s academic progress but also to get assessments of how comparable schools perform in their area. If such a simple and self-evidently worthwhile proposition is seen as somehow controversial, that serves merely to show the extent to which school systems have escaped proper public accountability.
    
    “Teacher unions appear to be intent on perpetuating the myth that all public schools and the teachers in them are equally excellent. Of course, teachers range in competence from the excellent to the ineffectual and indifferent, just as people do in other professions.
    
    “However, the best teachers are inadequately rewarded and the worst tolerated in a public system that traditionally has resisted direct comparisons. Similarly, schools range from the excellent to the mediocre, but a lack of detailed public information about them makes it hard for parents to know which is which.
    
    “Mr. Rudd’s plan would increase competition among schools, which would be welcome development that could be expected to encourage their staff to do better. And if persistent failure by a school despite extra help resulted in its closure, surely that would be better than continuing to jeopardise the life prospects of students by giving them substandard education services.
    
    “Mr. Rudd’s proposals to drag school accountability and administration into the 21st century deserve support.”
    
    From The West Australian

     

  • Carpenter tells pupils their schools will be cool (page 6)
    by Yasmine Phillips     
         
    “The campaign trail set returned to Perth’s northern suburbs yesterday, where Alan Carpenter took a quick lesson on climate change with a Year 6 class after unveiling a $27 million plan to cool 200 WA schools.
    
    “The Premier promised that Labor would introduce an innovative air-cooling system, which would be offset by large solar panels, to about 50 schools next year over its term of Government if it was re-elected next weekend.
    
    “At the moment, there are 200 schools in WA which don’t have cooling,” Mr. Carpenter said. “We’re going to change that. We’re going to use the power of the sun through solar panels to cool those 200 schools and all new schools.”
    
    “Mr. Carpenter said the solar powered systems would also supply the State’s power grid when they were not being utilised by the schools. “Parents and teachers have increasingly come to see air cooling as necessary to create the best learning and working environment and Labor is responding with this programme to install new units using the sun as a power source,” he said.
    
    “But we also have an obligation to use our abundant solar energy resources to offset the power use and to ensure as many schools as possible act as solar energy banks.”
    
    “Mr. Carpenter made the announcement at Landsdale Primary School, where he interrupted a Year 6 class to sit on the floor with children and discuss the bigger global issues of climate change, greenhouse gases and the future of the planet.
    
    “Most students were well informed on ways to conserve energy as the Premier fired off questions and each child nodded diligently in recognition at the mere mention of Varanus Island and the implications for the State’s gas supplies.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 23)
    
    
    • Simple reason
      
      "With 40 years of teaching in the classroom behind me and two of my kids still there as students, all I can say to every teacher and parent for the coming election is: think of the State school before you vote.
      
      "For that simple, all-important reason, even an old socialist like me will be voting Liberal for the first time ever. My patience has been abused by an arrogant Government which refuses to admit it is propagating a dysfunctional system of education. Mind you, I'd be voting informal but for the return of Colin Barnett."
      
      Rede Moulton, Bassendean
      
      
      
      
• The Sunday Times
  
  
  • Poll shows election vote 'down to wire'
    by Joe Spagnolo, political reporter
    
    "Voters are poised to punish Labor on Saturday with a major poll delivering a damning assessment of the Carpenter Government's performance.
    
    "In the exclusive The Sunday Times-Galaxy poll, voters gave Labor the thumbs down across a range of benchmarks, including health, education and law and order.
    
    "The consensus was that the state's performance on these issues and others had got worse under Labor, with many respondents believing a Liberal government would do better.
    
    "The poll of 800 voters -- double the size of polls by other media -- was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday.
    
    "It shows the conservative parties (Liberals and Nationals) and Labor are running neck and neck.
    
    "It suggests the fight could go to the wire.
    
    "According to the poll, 39 per cent will vote Labor, almost 3 per cent below what it achieved at the last state election in 2005. Our poll has support for the Liberals-Nationals at 46 per cent.
    
    "Little separates Labor and the conservatives on a two-party preferred basis, with the Liberals-Nationals just ahead at 51 per cent to Labor's 49.
    
    "This represents a swing of 3.3 per cent against Labor since 2005 and, if repeated on Saturday, will deliver several seats to the conservatives.
    
    "More significantly, if repeated it will result in a hung parliament, in which neither Colin Barnett or Premier Alan Carpenter has enough seats for an absolute majority.
    
    "The Sunday Times-Galaxy poll also reveals 48 per cent of voters believe there has been deterioration in health services under Labor.
    
    "Labor is also accused by 48 per cent of respondents of not adequately sharing the benefits of the boom era, and 40 per cent believe law and order has deteriorated under the Carpenter administration.
    
    "Also, 38 per cent of voters believed education has suffered under Labor..." [emphasis added]
    
    Full story in The Sunday Times at link
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    We deserve better than that
    
    "When Alan Carpenter called his early election on the eve of the Olympic Games he would have been quietly confident of maintaining or increasing Labor's strong margin on September 6.
    
    "Instead, the past month has exposed the growing dissatisfaction and mistrust many West Australians feel for Mr Carpenter and the Labor Party.
    
    "The accidental premier now faces the wake-up call of his short leadership life when he fronts the electorate for the first time on Saturday.
    
    "They are ready to punish what they regard as arrogance bordering on contempt from a Government that has taken a free rein provided by an impotent Opposition.
    
    "Today's exclusive Sunday Times-Galaxy poll displays this fact starkly.
    
    "Despite the ubiquitous TV ads and glossy brochures, West Australians believe things have got worse under Labor.
    
    "Top of the list is health and public hospitals. Labor is also accused of not adequately sharing the benefits of the boom with all West Australians.
    
    "The balance of voters is also on the negative in the areas of law and order and education and there is a widely held view that under Mr Carpenter government has become less open and accountable.
    
    "In another shot across the Labor bow, voters believe there is more likely to be improvement in these critical areas under a newly elected Liberal government..."
    
    "There is a deep cynicism among the electorate with only 35 per cent of voters believing Labor deserves another term in office.
    
    "The question then is – does the WA Liberal Party deserve your vote?
    
    "Based on the past four years, it is difficult to mount a credible case for the affirmative.
    
    "The Liberals have lurched through five leadership changes in four years, endured the ignominy of Troy Buswell's scandals and is led again by a resurrected Colin Barnett, who was about to step into political retirement on his farm.
    
    "Much can still change in a week of politics. The impact of the Greens and collective of independent candidates should also not be discounted.
    
    "However, while many clearly believe the Labor Government deserves to be beaten, the Liberal government has not yet earned the right to lead WA..."
    
    Full editorial in The Sunday Times at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Does anybody really care?
    by Joe Spagnolo
    
    "Bugger the lot of you. That's been the overriding sentiment of WA voters to the major political parties during this quick and uninspiring state election campaign.
    
    "Whether it's been the girl scanning my groceries at the supermarket, counter staff at my local petrol station, the taxi driver taking me to Parliament House, the guy who cuts my hair in Subiaco, or the dozens of other people I've quizzed so far, voters are generally nonplussed.
    
    "The Galaxy poll published in The Sunday Times paints a similar picture. Asked whether Alan Carpenter and Co deserved to win the election based on their recent performance, 59 per cent of respondents answered no. Asked whether the Liberals deserved to win power based on their own recent performance, the unsurprising verdict – from 69 per cent – was also no..."
    
    Full story in The Sunday Times at link
    
    
    
    
  • Fees cut to boost learning (page 16)
    by Glenn Milne
    
    “Maths and science graduates who go into primary teaching will have their HECS repayments halved under new Federal Government initiatives to raise the numeracy standards in schools.
    
    “The graduates will be eligible for a 50 per cent refund on their HECS-HELP repayments for up to five years, Education Minister Julia Gillard announced yesterday.
    
    “This would amount to an individual benefit of up to $1500 a year for five years. The HECS exemption marks an extension of the Government’s existing $625.8 million package of incentives to increase maths and science expertise at primary school level.
    
    “It comes in response to alarming figures revealed in the preliminary National Report on Schooling in Australia for 2007, which indicated that while 93.2 per cent of Year 3 students achieved numeracy benchmarks, this declined in primary school years.
    
    “By Year 5, the percentage of students meeting numeracy benchmarks falls to 89 per cent and by Year 7 it falls to 80.2 per cent.
    
    “The National Numeracy Review commissioned by the Council of Australian Governments and released in July 2008, concluded that systematic teaching of numeracy in the early years of schooling, in maths lessons and across the wider curriculum, was essential if these trends were to be reversed.
    
    “The measure also builds on the Government’s investment of $40.2 million in 29 literacy and numeracy pilot projects across Australia.
    
    “We must act urgently to improve our children’s performance in maths and encourage those with aptitude to on to study it,” Ms. Gillard said.
    
    “Literacy and numeracy in the primary years are crucially important to ensuring all students participate in education and make a positive transition to work and learning in adult life.
    
    “Students who do not achieve the minimum standards in literacy and numeracy are least likely to stay on through secondary school or to end up in further study and employment.”
    
    “HECS exemptions are expected to cost about $562 million over four years.”
    
    From The Sunday Times
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Insiders
    The week in politics
    
    BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: "Let's get some background and analysis now from our regular analyst, political commentator with the "The Australian" Paul Kelly.
    
    "Paul, good morning. How big a call do you think this was on Kevin Rudd's part on education?"
    
    PAUL KELLY, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: "It's a big call Barrie. It's a test for Kevin Rudd. He's put his own authority on the line. There is no question about that at all. What he's saying here is that he can carry and persuade the Labor States and this won't be easy.
    
    "It does go to Rudd's authority and I think there is a risk for Rudd that his authority is being eroded even though his standing in the country is very strong. The Budget is being undermined in the Senate. The business community is very critical of the ETS (emissions trading scheme) and he is running into problems with his agenda with the States. So he needs to be careful of his authority and he needs some wins.
    
    "What Rudd and Julia Gillard are on about here is improving the lot of the bottom 20 per cent of school leavers. And what they want to try and do here is offer the States a grand bargain. They're saying to the States, listen, we'll give you extra funds provided you come clean on school accountability and individual school performance.
    
    "And there's tremendous ideological opposition to this from the teacher unions. Now Gillard's response to this is very clear. She just says failure concealed means that failure is never addressed. The problem for Rudd here is that he doesn't run the schools; he doesn't employ the teachers. The Commonwealth Government is at arms removed from this.
    
    "John Howard tried this. He couldn't succeed. Rudd has got a lot more at stake here than John Howard. Rudd is in the early stage of his Prime Ministership; he's dealing with Labor Governments. Frankly, he's got to prevail here. If he doesn't, his authority will be undermined further."
    
    BARRIE CASSIDY: "Okay Paul, it's hard to focus entirely on domestic politics when it's all happening in the United States but Kevin Rudd too I think would be keeping a close eye on events over there."
    
    PAUL KELLY: "He certainly is Barrie. He's watching this US election very carefully. He's got great hopes for this American election. He believes this is one of the more important elections in terms of the impact on Australia and Rudd's ambition is to establish a close personal and political relationship with the new President, whether it's Obama or McCain. He has had contact with the both of them. He is confident that he can do this.
    
    "And as far as Australia is concerned the big issue of course will be the attitude that a new President brings to East Asia. Rudd as an American ally, as an Asianist, as a China expert will be trying to establish himself as a trusted confidante and advisor to the new President on Asian policy and China policy in particular.
    
    "Beyond that what he wants the see from the new President is a greater commitment and more effective commitment to global leadership, particularly global economic and trade leadership and also multilateralism. Rudd of course is very committed to nuclear non-proliferation action and he would like to do that with the new President."
    
    BARRIE CASSIDY: "And given the different attitudes that certainly Obama but McCain as well has with George Bush, whoever wins could help him out on some other fairly big domestic issues that he's grappling with as well?"
    
    PAUL KELLY: "Absolutely Barrie. Look, the bottom line here and the politicians can't say this, what they want to see out of this new President is a restoration of American standing and authority and popularity in the world. And as an American ally that is what Kevin Rudd wants to see. He's been able to finesse Bush so far but he wants is he wants to see a new President with a fresh mandate, Obama or McCain, really restore American authority. That's very much in his interests and it's very much in Australia's interests.
    
    "And one issue in particular is critical for Rudd - that's climate change. He's introducing an ETS in 2010. What he wants the see from the new President is a commitment to action on climate change. If that happens, and I'm not convinced it will, but if that does happen that will change the global politics on climate change. That is what Australia needs; it's what Kevin Rudd in particular needs."
    
    BARRIE CASSIDY: "Paul thank you very much."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • WA living costs soar
    
    Western Australia's peak welfare body says the cost of basic living expenses for families on average incomes soared by more than $61 a week over the past 12 months. That takes the total increase in the cost of living over the past two years to $132 a week.
    
    
    
  • Commonwealth's education proposals 'won't help students or teachers'
    
    The Northern Territory Education Union says a proposed federal scheme to link performance with pay rates for teachers will not work.
    
    
    
  • NY schools boss backs move to sack under-performing teachers
    
    The man who inspired the education performance plan being considered by the Federal Government says the success of the program is undeniable.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Depressed, stressed: teachers in crisis
    
    Increased pay, reduced workloads and long holidays - our schools are excellent places to work, insists the government. So why, amid reports of depression, breakdown and suicide, is teaching now rated one of the most stressful occupations in the country? And with 40 per cent of staff set to leave their jobs within five years, what can be done to ease the strain in Britain's education system?
    
    
    
    
• The Sunday Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Talking about a revolution? Get the boxed set, PM
    
    There's nothing new about the Kevin and Julia education show. It's just another repeat [of the United States president played by Martin Sheen in The West Wing].
    
    
    
    
• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • Shake-up could lift funding for private schools
    by Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent
    
    "Private schools could receive extra federal funding under Kevin Rudd's plan to identify struggling schools by demanding states agree to publish comparative data about their performance.
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard said yesterday the data would allow parents of private school children to determine whether they were receiving value for money.
    
    "Her comments, in an interview with The Weekend Australian yesterday, came two days after the Prime Minister announced a major shift on education, under which he will offer states extra funding for schools if they agree to accept greater accountability.
    
    "The states would have to agree to publish comparative data about the relative performance of schools, which trade unions and states have traditionally opposed because they fear it will lead to the creation of league tables that will undermine public confidence in government schooling.
    
    "Mr Rudd wants to use the data to isolate poorly performing schools so they can receive extra resources. This would include about $500,000 a year for an average-sized school struggling to meet the education needs of students, particularly those from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.
    
    "He also wants to make the funding dependent on schools agreeing to sack under-performing teachers and principals. Although there was a mixed reaction to the Rudd plan from the states this week, the Australian Education Union savaged the plans, prompting the Prime Minister to accuse them of promoting inequity.
    
    "Ms Gillard yesterday said the Government did not plan to use the information to stigmatise poor government schools. Instead, it would be used to compare like schools and identify best-practice teaching methods for application in struggling schools, which would also receive more resources.
    
    "She also said some private schools, particularly Catholic schools, could benefit.
    
    "I am well aware that there are Catholic schools that make it their mission to do that -- to look after those (disadvantaged) kids," Ms Gillard said. "When we analyse how those schools are going, we obviously are going to find that they confront a range of challenges, given the student populations that they are teaching.
    
    "They've made it their vocation to make a difference to those kids and we obviously want to help them make a difference.
    
    "That is why we are talking about additional resources for those schools."
    
    "Ms Gillard said parents of private school students would be able to use the data. "Parents certainly have a right to know that their child is getting a quality education, no matter which school they go to," she said.
    
    "Ms Gillard said there was no evidence that coming from a poorer background or an indigenous family meant students would automatically produce poor school results, provided they had access to good teaching.
    
    "Given there was evidence of "a long tail of disadvantage" correlated with low socio-economic status, it was clear the education system was failing to provide equal access to education."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Labor's future in the balance
    
    "... That the Carpenter Government is vulnerable to a Barnett-led Opposition says a lot about its failings in short-term political tactics and in long-term economic strategy..."
    
    "It's true that West Australian parents have been increasingly angry about the state Government's failures in education, particularly its determination to push on with a deeply flawed outcomes-based education system for senior high school students just as other states, particularly NSW, were realising the problems. But, again, WA is hardly alone in complaints about the decline in modern educational standards and the move away from public schools. Just ask Kevin Rudd..."
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • New pressure over faith schools
    
    Ministers are being urged to stop faith schools in England selecting pupils and staff on the basis of their religion

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This page last updated 2 September, 2008 9:39 PM