Monday 1 September

Tuesday 2 September

Wednesday 3 September

Thursday 4 September

Friday 5 September

Saturday – Sunday, 6 – 7 September [WA State Election]

Monday 1 September

• The West Australian
  
  
  • News Blog: Have Your Say !
    Should political parties scrap OBE?
    
    "The major political parties have refused to abolish all aspects of outcomes-based education from kindergarten to Year 10 if they win the election. (read the story here)
    
    "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.
    
    "Critics claim 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.

    Should the major political parties scrap OBE?
    
    Read / post comments at this link
    
    

  • Teachers to be shared to cope with shortages (Front Page)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “State school students will travel to other schools to study a range of Year 11 subjects for the first time next year, as principals struggle with the worsening teacher shortage.
    
    “Three schools in the Swan education district are planning to run linked timetables in 2009 to allow students in some subjects to share classes and teachers across schools.
    
    “Fewer State schools can offer a full range of traditional academic subjects because of lack of specialist teachers and dwindling student numbers.
    
    “The West Australian revealed in May that principals were being urged to adopt innovative programs used elsewhere, including clustering schools to offer a selection of subjects at different schools in the same area.
    
    “The Department of Education and Training last month ran workshops for about 200 principals and deputies in “collaborative curriculum provision”, hosted by two NSW educators who have tested the method in country schools in their State.
    
    “Swan View, Governor Stirling and Lockridge Senior high schools, which will implement the plan from the start of next year, aim to start and finish the school day and individual periods at the same time so that some subjects can be delivered jointly.
    
    “Swan View principal Peter Wilson said schools were suffering from the teacher shortage and the days of being able to run a TEE class with only three students were gone.  Some TEE classes were still running with as few as eight students.
    “Subjects being considered for the new scheme include accounting, economics and advanced maths.
    
    “Mr Wilson said a specialist teacher would be present once a week, with students working online the rest of the time.  “We’re actually aiming to improve the education of the kids rather than seeing this as a stop-gap measure”, he said. “What we aim to do is give kids greater flexibility in the subjects they’re able to do.”
    
    “No teachers would be forced to take part in the new scheme.  Those who did would be trained.  Mr Wilson said they had not decided how students would be transported but options included buses or taxis.  Too much travel for students and teachers would be a disincentive.
    
    “The workshops focused on how schools in the rural Orange region had used the scheme to offer a wider choice of subjects across five campuses.  DET regional and remote schools executive director Colin Pettit said the forums would help WA schools plan curriculums.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Rudd's 'reforms' just an update of Howard's (page 20)
    by Brian Toohey
    

    "Finland regularly tops international comparisons of how well students are doing at school. Kevin Rudd repeatedly tells us he is a great believer in evidence-based policies. So Finland is where he and his Education Minister Julia Gillard must have got their ideas for improving Australian schools. Wrong!
    
    "Most of the "reforms" Mr Rudd announced at the National Press Club last Wednesday simply extend what John Howard and his education minister Julie Bishop wanted to do. The main difference is that Mr Rudd insists he will be a lot tougher about making the States implement his changes. There's nothing wrong with copying Mr Howard, provided schools really improve.
    
    "Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard show no sign of drawing inspiration from the success of the Finnish school system. Contrary to what the want, Finland's National Boards of Education says its system has "no national tests of learning outcomes and no school league tables. Pupils and schools are not compared with each other." There is not even an external exam until age 16. Nor are there any fees or charges for teaching, learning materials, daily meals, health care, dental care and school transport.
    
    "Although funded nationally, Finnish schools are run at local level. There is no central government interference. Teachers are encouraged to develop their own interpretation of the core curriculum objectives in what officials describe as a system of "intense delegation".
    
    "Although the pay is relatively low, teachers are so highly regarded in Finland that the number of applicants far exceeds vacancies. Reports on the Finnish system stress how the government refrains from criticising teachers, focusing instead on giving more support where internal surveys show some schools are facing difficulties.
    
    "The schools reportedly are relaxed places with an emphasis on "student-centred democracy". There is no streaming. Students start school at age 7 and go through until 16, before beginning secondary school or vocational college.
    
    "All schools have to take all students who want to attend, regardless of their ability or behaviour. Finland has few private schools, even though they get a government grant equal to the payment to the state schools. Private fees are not allowed.
    
    "Despite the "touchy-feely" undertones, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development acknowledged last week that this approach has helped Finish schools deliver outstanding performances in international tests.
    
    "In contrast, US students do poorly in international tests. However, Ms Gillard says she was "inspired" by a recent meeting with New York school system head Joel Klein, who is renowned for closing schools that score badly in city-wide tests. Unlike New York, Ms Gillard says Labor plans to release test data without ranking all the schools from top to bottom.
    
    "Nevertheless, New York is a strange place to seek inspiration about a high-quality education. Despite Mr Klein's "tough love", not a single New York school rated in the top 200 schools in a nationwide survey released in May. Most Australian parents would welcome more information on educational performance, especially if the data is used, as Mr Rudd promised, to put more resources into schools that are falling behind.
    
    "Both Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard, however, have used the media to play up their threat to sack teachers and close schools which don't lift their game. Despite his earlier claims to be committed to "co-operative federalism", Mr Rudd seems to be spoiling for a fight with the States if they don't do what he wants on schools.
    
    "Few parents will object to giving the flick to teachers who are demonstrably not up to the job. However, some parents might have second thoughts about the wisdom of closing local schools instead of fixing the problems. Ms Gillard says she wants to release test data to make it easier for parents to choose a good school.
    
    "But many parents have  little practical option other than to send their children to nearby schools, particularly in regional Australia where the next public school might be three hours drive away, or further. Even in the cities, most parents don't want young children having to change buses or trains to travel long distances to a new school.
    
    "When the public school system was established, governments were expected to provide a good education within a reasonable distance of most households. The goal was not to shift the responsibility on to parents to seek out the best schools, let alone add several hours a week to the travel time for their children.
    
    "Yet Mr Rudd has focused on giving parents the necessary data to decide whether to move their children to different schools, or, as he clumsily put it, to "walk with their feet". Earlier in the speech, he came out with "each one ... are", before decrying falling literacy standards in schools.
    
    "More disturbingly, he promised to impose a national curriculum throughout Australia. While everyone needs to acquire some basic literacy and numeracy skills, a healthy society thrives on diversity.
     
    "Australia would be a much duller place if every student in every town in every State were made to read the same list of dreary novels and forced to learn the same narrow set of historical facts."

    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor (page 23)

    • Consider ‘bad parents’
      
      “Bad schools? Bad teachers?  What the heck are they talking about ?
      
      “D they mean schools taking their intake from socially deprived areas which include lots of “bad parents”, and including kids who have been expelled or refused entry from private schools?
      
      “Or do they mean the elite private schools which carefully filter their intake, especially in the secondary level, to ensure minimal discipline problems and good academic results? I call that bad.
      
      “Ok, so this is a free country and any establishment has the right to set its own standards.  However, if this includes refusing to shoulder its fair share of the inevitable problems which go with its area of expertise (such as wild, wacky kids from wild, wacky homes), then it should be honest about it and knock back government subsidies, so that the schools which are carrying the full load are better equipped to deal with the problems emerging from our sick society.
      
      “How simplistic, how foolish , to blame “bad” teachers for our educational ills and to close our eyes to the wretched ills of our little ones stumbling into our schools already scarred for life with the delinquencies of foolish, irresponsible parents.”
      
      Margaret Graham, Collie
      
      

    • In short
      
      “Mathematics exams should never have become an exercise in how to correctly program one’s calculator.  As a member of the second-year group permitted to use calculators in leaving exams, I can operate very well without one.  Limit calculator use in exams to simple, non-programmable models.  This will have the added benefit of saving students money.”
      
      Ruth Conway, Byford
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • Interview with Joel Klein, New York City Schools Chancellor [from 31 August]
    
    "Tonight - talking about a revolution with the New Yorker who inspired the Rudd government to upset the applecart on the question of educating Australia; Joel Klein, New York City's schools chancellor.
    
    "Well, the Education Union calls it a political sideshow and the Australian Principals Federation is worried, very worried, about a threat to remove principals who run schools that consistently under perform.
    
    "But that is precisely what the Education Minister Julia Gillard and her PM Kevin Rudd are proposing as part of Labor's self titled "education revolution"...
    
    Full story on ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Teachers union, govt trade barbs over pay negotiations
    
    In the lead up to tomorrow's planned industrial action over staffing arrangements and pay, harsh words between the New South Wales Teachers Federation and the State Government have intensified.
    
    
    
  • Teacher strike action 'pointless inconvenience'
    
    The acting Minister for Education, John Hatzistergos, says planned strike action by New South Wales teachers this week is pointless and irresponsible.
    
    Up to 70,000 public school and TAFE teachers plan to stop work tomorrow morning to protest over staffing arrangements and a 2.5 per cent pay rise offer, which they say falls short of inflation.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Schools required to report income
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "All schools will have to publish their income from fees, fundraising and investments as part of the federal Government's insistence on greater accountability and transparency in the schools system.
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard will tell a forum of independent schools today that the Government will require schools to report income streams as well as student performance and demographics. Ms Gillard says funding of non-government and government schools will be conditional on publicly reporting their performance to identify substandard schools and share best practice.
    
    "I want to make it absolutely clear that everything we require of public schools, we will require of non-government schools and everything we require of non-government schools we will require of public schools," a copy of Ms Gillard's speech says.
    
    "The framework we seek is a truly national one which will give parents, the public and government information about every school. It is only by covering every school can we truly satisfy ourselves that we understand the quality of schooling experienced by every child and can lift the quality of schooling across the board."
    
    "Ms Gillard says the Government's framework for reporting will include the income streams into schools "so we can properly analyse what difference extra resources make"...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Kick defeatist habits out of classroom
    
    Often it seems those who claim to love public schooling most are those least willing to open their minds towards ways of rescuing it. And the more stoutly essentially self-destructive postures are clung to, the more critical the situation becomes.  [Worth a look... Web]
    
    
    
  • Feature
    Hothouse kids wilt
    
    Parents are structuring their children's lives too much instead of letting them mess around at their own pace.
    
    
    
  • Parties clueless: business
    
    Western Australia's Labor and Liberal parties have been accused of failing to deliver a vision for the state's future or address key issues such as the labour shortage and securing energy supplies.
    
    
    
  • Medical school coaching debunked
    
    Hundreds of school leavers who enrol in expensive coaching courses in the hope of boosting their chances of getting a coveted place in medical school may be wasting their money. Researchers have found the increasingly popular courses - which can cost up to $1700 for a single weekend of face-to-face tuition - do not improve admission test scores.
    
    
    
  • Ex-student wins legal fight with uni over exams
    
    A 27-year-old former student has won the right to see secret examination papers after a David and Goliath struggle with the University of Melbourne, its top-flight barrister and specialist freedom of information lawyers.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Most Talked About
      The key to quality is parents’ right to vote with their feet
      
      5 Letters at that link
      
      
      
      
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Add It Up: Math Matters
    
    Parents who walk into an elementary classroom might not recognize a mathematics lesson. Children are likely out of their seats, clustered in boisterous groups, flipping coins or arranging colored tiles. The exercise could be part science experiment, part history lesson, part story time.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Children of the new universe need a real education revolution
    by Patricia Edgar
    
    "A dedicated minister should be coordinating government policy.
    
    "Almost every day the media report disastrous stories about kids who are out of control, too fat, too sexy, disrespectful, too full of themselves for their own good, with parents and teachers concerned about their children's future.
    
    "Who is this new child? And how do we raise children to be intelligent, optimistic and confident of their own abilities, without turning them into self-centred, arrogant little individuals who are not concerned with the wider common good.
    
    "Children are now a minority group. Most start life with two loving parents, but one in five ends up living in a one-parent family. The new child has older parents, generally both working, who want to be their friends rather than wise elders or authority figures. There are fewer siblings so family life involves more adult-talk, adult-see, adult-copy as the gap between generations recedes.
    
    "The declining birth rate means this new child has fewer peers. More time is spent alone or with "virtual friends", using technologies their parents do not always understand and entering virtual worlds their parents cannot always navigate.
    
    "It's not so much the amount of time they spend using media that is concerning as it is their bombardment with damaging messages about promiscuity, unhealthy food products, and out-of-control celebrity role models who set a salacious model for child behaviour.
    
    "The new child — divided into target groups of teens, tweens and babies — has become a consumer. The free market is ruthlessly exploiting children's new-found spending power and parents' anxieties about how to do the best they can for their "baby Einsteins".
    
    "In the world of education we still talk about 'children' but teachers and many parents are falling way behind in mastering the educational changes in teaching and learning that new media herald. Instead the mass media are permitted to operate counter to the best interests of children, in effect undermining values, healthy lifestyles and the authority of parents.
    
    "The positive contribution new media can make to learning is ignored as we worry about time wasting on games, porn and stranger danger lurking on the Web.
    
    "Today's children will be financially dependent on their parents for much longer than ever before but they will expect an independence in decision-making most offspring have never had, taking risks with alcohol, drugs, money and sexuality, without the emotional maturity to always handle the consequences.
    
    "Close to a third of them will never marry but they'll have plenty of experience of serial short-term relationships. One third of children will fall at the bottom of the heap with parents unable to afford to educate, feed and house them properly, or to guide their behaviour positively. These are the children we should most worry about.
    
    "There is a growing sense of powerlessness on the part of adults which leaves children vulnerable to hedonism, indulgence and neglect, with adults unable to put pressure on governments to act on behalf of the well-being of all children.
    
    "Governments don't fully understand that the new child is growing up in a new world of unstable family life, new media influences, new workplace demands on parents, so policies affecting children need to be integrated. Child policy is all over the place and often falls between the cracks of a messy political system.
    
    "Child care, education, health and workplace policy is part Federal, part State, part local government, part privatised. Media policy for children is dealt with separately from education reform.
    
    "Decisions are not made to ensure all these areas work together to help children develop and thrive.
    
    "We need a new approach underscored by a more positive view of children and their capacity to cope with the challenges of modern life.

    "We need grown-ups who are smarter activists on behalf of children and smarter in the ways they interact with and manage the lives of the new child.
    
    "We need a Federal Minister for Children to coordinate policy-making across various government departments, and to control the quality of early childhood care and preschool education across the nation.
    
    "We need a systematic program of parent education and support, a renewal of parent confidence; better information about child development, including the need for limit-setting, effort, mastery; their right to demand better support from government on every front.
    
    "All primary schools should be redesigned and funded as Family Learning Centres, linking child care, pre-schooling, family support services, such as maternal and child health and parent education across local and regional areas.
    
    "Urban planning should take into account the physical and social needs of children and families aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle and respect for others.
    
    "A complete re-training and reorientation of teachers is needed so they understand the changed family circumstances of the new child; their vital role as models, mentors and guides for children in a complex world; understand the new research on brain development, effort and mastery; and the potential of new media for children's learning and social development.
    
    "In short the new child deserves smarter adults at every level, who are thinking more carefully about how current policies and programs could be improved and better linked.
    
    "Kids today are exhuberant, perceptive and inventive. They know their way around and it's our job to give them the resilience and resources they need so they have the best chance in life to deal with the problems we bequeath them."
    
    Patricia Edgar is co-author with Don Edgar of The New Child: In Search of Smarter Grown-ups to be published next month.
    
    From The Age at link

 

Tuesday 2 September

• The West Australian
  

  • McGowan won’t agree to sacking principals (page 10)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “Kevin Rudd’s plan to make schools more accountable has hit another hurdle after State Education Minister Mark McGowan refused to commit to sacking principals and senior teachers from schools that did not achieve standards proposed by the Federal Government.
    
    “The Prime Minister has said principals should be sacked and schools closed or merged if they fail to achieve standards reached by other schools with a similar mix of students.
    
    “Mr Rudd wants to tie the Federal Government’s new four year funding agreement with State and private schools to the conditions, which will require schools to publicly report their students’ performance in national and international testing in a bid to improve the transparency and accountability of school systems.
    
    “Even though the Federal Government has no power to sack principals or teachers, Mr Rudd has called on State education authorities to take “serious action” such as replacing principals or senior staff or closing down schools which fail to reach new performance benchmarks.
    
    “But Mr McGowan refused to say yesterday whether he would sack underperforming principals and teachers, raising doubts about whether Mr Rudd’s plan can be implemented.
    
    “He said he would have to discuss the details with the Commonwealth before committing to such a deal. “We have to be respectful to the rights of the individuals involved,” he said. “There are many variables influencing student performance and it’s unfair to hold schools entirely responsible.”
    
    “He said the State Government did not oppose school accountability as long as it applied equally to government and non-government schools.
    
    “We already have a public accountability system in place (in WA),” he said.
    
    “Annual reports and information on attendance and staff at every West Australian public school can be found on the department’s website. We also make graduation rates and academic results in State and national testing public.”
    
    “Opposition Leader Colin Barnett said last week that if he was premier he would not allow Mr Rudd to close schools in WA.
    
    “WA principals’ associations say State industrial laws would have to be reviewed if the Government wanted to sack principals or teachers from underperforming schools.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Rudd’s low-key rhetoric delivers (page 21)
    by Gerard Henderson
    
    “The saying that you cannot judge a book by its cover is a cliché of long standing. It serves as a reminder than an unacknowledged fact about truisms is that they are invariable true. Another certitude turns on the proposition that a speech should not be merely judged by its delivery.
    
    “Kevin Rudd’s address to the National Press Club last Wednesday has been widely bagged in the media as boring and uninspiring. The Prime Minister can be witty in off-the-cuff asides. However, he does tend to go flat when delivering the content part of his major talks – as distinct from introductory comments and responses during a question or discussion period.
    
    “For the most part, this does not matter much. Mr Rudd’s audience in Canberra last week was not big and the National Press Club addresses do not rate highly when broadcast direct on ABC. Consequently, what matters on such occasions is content which translates into news reports and comment pieces in the print and electronic media.
    
    “Certainly, Mr Rudd achieved this last week with commitment to ensure that “all our children emerge from school able to read and write with basic maths and science skills”. To achieve this, Mr Rudd proposed that there should be “greater transparency for the outcomes achieved by Australian schools”.
    
    "Clearly Mr Rudd does not speak with the rhetoric-fuelled style of a Barack Obama or a Hillary Clinton. He does not need to do so. After all, this is not the Australian tradition.
    
    “Australia’s most successful post World War II prime ministers – Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, John Howard – delivered fairly matter-of-fact speeches. The only leaders in this time to reach rhetorical heights were Labor’s Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. Mr Whitlam and Mr Keating won only one election each as prime minister against ineffective Liberal leaders Billy Snedden and John Hewson respectively.
    
    “Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard had flagged Labor’s intentions in school education when interviewed on Insiders on August 10. There she revealed that, on a recent visit to the US, she had been influenced by the Teach for America program which operates in New York. The Education Minister stated that she wanted to achieve a similar transparency with public and private education in Australia to ensure that “people know everything that there is to know about schools” and “can compare like schools”. At the moment, State and Territory governments, supported by teachers’ unions, refuse to provide such material. So it is all but impossible to determine which schools are achieving the best possible results along with which are the best managed.
    
    “Mr Rudd said last Wednesday he believed parents were entitled to such information. What’s more, he will be making agreement on individual school performance reporting a condition of the new national education agreement which will come into effect early next year. Meaning that if the State and Territory governments do not co-operate they may receive less Commonwealth funding than would otherwise be the case. The Rudd Government also expects that action will be taken against poorly performing schools by replacing the school principal and/or senior staff and reorganising the school.
    
    “Competent principals and good teachers have nothing to fear, and much to gain, from such a scenario. Yet the teachers’ unions were quick to condemn the proposal. Australian Education Union Federal president Angelo Gavrielatos depicted the Rudd/Gillard policy as a “political sideshow”. And Queensland teachers’ union official John Battams declared that “it really should be Kevin Howard and Julia Bishop because the sorts of things the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are saying are very similar to what the previous prime minster (Howard) and education minister (Julie Bishop) were saying”.
    
    “The London-based leftist journalist John Pilger made a similar point on the ANC discussion program Q&A last Thursday. In a debate which he came to dominate, Pilger complained that in Australia and other Western democracies “both parties are virtually the same”. He proceeded to laugh at one of his own (attempted) jokes about one side of politics complaining that the other side had stolen its policies.
    
    “The reason why conservatives and social democrats have a similar attitude to education reform in Australia results from attempts to resolve a continuing problem. Namely, that the public education system is dominated by public sector unions which have no genuine desire for real education reform. There are many excellent principals and teachers in the government system along with some duds.
    
    “The former do not need union protection. The latter use the clout protection. The latter use the clout that potentially results from collective action to avoid the consequences which flow as a result of incompetence or laziness in most other industries.
    
    “The Howard government failed to achieve school education reform because it could not override the State and Territory Labor governments which protect the interests of the education unions. Mr Rudd has indicated his intention to succeed at this task.
    
    “He told The Australian last week that some teachers’ unions are “locked into a view of equity which doesn’t work”. In other words, Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard believe that education unions are preventing young Australians from low-income backgrounds from achieving their full potential in society.
    
    “Already the leftist sneerers are out in force. On the 7.30 Report last Thursday, comedians John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, who invariably mock Labor or the coalition from the Left, attempted to ridicule Mr Rudd’s critique of the teachers’ unions. But if Mr Rudd can succeed in this area he can claim some significant success in his attempted education revolution. Irrespective of what the sneerers say – and despite some of his speeches being less than riveting in delivery mode.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • It’s blackmail
      
      “Kevin Rudd, with his “revolution” on education, has come up with the worst possible solution to what can only be perceived as the big stick and, frankly, outright blackmail. He has attacked this so-called problem with all the delicacy of an AFL footballer trying to do ballet.
      
      “Mr Rudd, I promised myself, following your election, to give you 12 months to start showing what you and your team are doing. I am tired of you telling us the “bleeding obvious” and expressing concern.
      
      “Your solution to the so-called school problem would be acceptable if the same standard was applied to you and all politicians, with the same result you wish to hand out to the schools and teachers.
      
      “Do not tell me that the voters can make up their minds at the next election. I would bet you won’t give the so-called underperforming schools, principals and teachers four years to fix up your perceived problems with the education system.
      
      “Get the States, which I believe are responsible for education, to get off their backsides and do the job properly. I couldn’t care less if the politicians are Labor, Liberal or Greens, spend less time pontificating and more time doing.
      
      “Surely the State governments don’t have you running scared just because they are all Labor.”
      
      Clem Baker, Kalgoorlie
      
      

    • Please explain
      
      “Hold on, Kev, you can’t move to stage two of the education revolution – my kids haven’t got their free computers from stage one yet.”
      
      Rod Bates, Ardross
      
      

    • Join us in the 21st century
      
      “As a “top physicist” Curtin University’s Igor Bray must understand the rigorous scrutiny of evidence required before arriving at a theory.
      
      “It is a pity Professor Bray did not examine evidence before making his pronouncement that calculators “did considerable damage to young minds” and announce that they should be banned from the TEE (Calculators ‘damaging young’, 26/8).
      
      “It is also ironic coming from a director at an institute of technology. However, all is not lost.
      
      “I invite Professor Bray to analyse the results of countries such as South Africa, where students have little or no access to calculators, to those of countries such as Japan, Korea and Australia where calculators are an essential learning tool.
      
      “I invite Professor Bray to examine the First Steps in Mathematics program used in WA schools to develop exactly the skills for which he calls and which use calculators to develop students’ understandings. He will clearly be surprised to learn that there is a greater focus on mental arithmetic than there was 30 years ago.
      
      “I invite Professor Bray to study TAE exam papers from the days BC (before calculators) to TEE papers today which ask more in-depth questions which require deeper understanding and application than the earlier papers.
      
      “I invite Professor Bray to research the wealth of data available from an abundance of research on how the mind learns mathematics and what strategies are highly effective.
      
      “What the heck, I even invite Professor Bray into my classroom where he can observe how my students use their calculators and their own understandings and strategies.

      “Finally, I invite Professor Bray to join the 21st century.”
      
      Noemi Reynolds, Kwinana
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • WA students lagging behind: report
    
    "The State Government says more needs to be done to lift the academic performance of West Australian students, especially in writing.
    
    "Education Minister, Mark McGowan has released a national report comparing the literacy and numeracy test results for years 3, 5 and 7 for last year.
    
    "It shows only 84 per cent of Year 5 students in WA met the national writing benchmark, compared to 94 per cent across the country.
    
    "Writing standards in Years 3 and 7 also lagged behind the other states.
    
    "Mr McGowan says the results are worrying but should be interpreted cautiously as WA students are younger than students in the same year in other states.
    
    "WA is above the national average for reading in Years 3 and 5, and in numeracy in Year 7."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • NSW teachers vote to continue industrial action
    
    "New South Wales teachers have voted for continued industrial action after once again rejecting a state government pay offer during stop-work meetings this morning.
    
    "Up to 70,000 public school and TAFE teachers walked off the job for two hours to discuss the next step in their industrial campaign.
    
    "The Government is offering a 2.5 per cent pay rise but the New South Wales Teachers Federation is demanding an increase of 5 per cent.
    
    "The Federation says more than 99 per cent of teachers voted this morning to support more industrial action later this year and early next year.
    
    "The president of the Teachers Federation, Maree O'Halloran, says further stop-works are likely in the final term of this year.
    
    "She says if a deal cannot be reached, the disruptions will continue into next year.
    
    "If we haven't settled with the Government, then we are saying that you can expect that the schools and TAFE colleges won't open in the normal way in 2009," she said.
    
    "Premier Morris Iemma has condemned the stop-work action, saying it is out of touch and irresponsible.
    
    "All they're doing is penalising students and parents and there's no case for this," he said.
    
    "They got a pay rise of just over 4 per cent in January and the EBA doesn't expire until the end of the year, so it's grossly irresponsible action on their part."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Labor's polling predicts election loss
    
    The WA Labor party has released internal polling which shows it is in danger of losing the election.
    
    The polling shows Labor has suffered a 7 per cent swing against it in the past 4 days despite the momentum surrounding the party's official campaign launch on Sunday. On a two party preferred vote Labor was trailing the Liberal party last night 45 per cent to 55.
    
    More detailed AAP story at The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
    
    
    
  • NT teachers mull pay deal
    
    Northern Territory teachers will decide this week whether to accept a new pay deal that could end a year of bitter negotiations and strikes.
    
    
    
  • Govt announces new role for business in schools
    
    The Victorian Government will encourage private sector involvement in state schools under a new education blueprint.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • One system to cover all school funding
    by Nicola Berkovic
    
    "The nation's top education bureaucrat yesterday signalled the end of separate funding agreements for public and private schools.
    
    "Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations secretary Lisa Paul told an independent schools forum that the Government's aspiration was to move to a single, needs-based system of funding for government and non-government schools.
    
    "If we can actually achieve that, I think we will have achieved something which is of benefit to all young people in this country," Ms Paul told the Independent Schools Council of Australia parliamentary forum in Canberra.
    
    "A comprehensive review of schools funding is to be finalised by 2011. But Ms Paul said while Education Minister Julia Gillard was "enamoured" with the socio-economic status funding system, this would not necessarily form the basis of schools funding following the review.
    
    "The SES index -- which is the basis for federal funding of private schools -- links students' residential addresses to census data to obtain a profile of the school community and its ability to financially support the private school. Public schools are funded through state governments on a per-student basis with little reference to levels of socio-economic disadvantage.
    
    "Ms Gillard has said an extension of the SES model to public schools would help overcome inequity and disadvantage in Australian schools.
    
    "Ms Paul told the forum a new Council of Australian Governments funding framework, under which funding agreements between the commonwealth and the states would be less prescriptive, meant a dramatic shift in focus from processes to outcomes. For example, rather than the commonwealth tying funding to teaching hours, it might tie it to literacy improvements.
    
    "Ms Paul's comments followed the announcement of Kevin Rudd's plans last week to demand states agree to publish comparative performance data for schools.
    
    "Brendan Nelson said he stood "shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister" in seeing his objectives of school performance and transparency were achieved.
    
    "Mr Rudd's moves to require greater transparency in schools performance has been sharply criticised by the Australian Education Union, which said the plan would introduce league tables.
    
    "The AEU said league tables were simplistic and based on failed approaches already tried in the US and Britain -- both of which fall behind Australia in education benchmarks."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Reforms based on British, US models
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The Rudd Government's plan for accountability and reporting performance by schools shares many features of the education reforms that were introduced by centre-left governments in Britain and the US.
    
    "The Blair government in the late 1990s unleashed a wave of widespread rapid change building on measures inherited from the Conservatives, including a national curriculum and testing system and league tables ranking schools from best to worst.
    
    "The crude league tables based on raw test scores now include the improvement students have made, or value the school has added, and the devolution of resources has increased so principals now control about 90per cent of their school budgets.
    
    "The Clinton administration in the US emphasised accountability and standards, requiring school districts to address five issues as a condition of receiving federal money. These included ending "social promotions" of students not ready academically to advance to the next grade, to turn around the lowest-performing schools or close them, and to require teachers to be certified, pass performance exams and have a college major or minor in the subjects they teach.
    
    "In what commentators described as a "substantial shift", Bill Clinton changed the focus of education to the outcomes, and what students should achieve, rather rather than directing how schools implement programs.
    
    "One of the architects of the Blair reforms, Michael Barber, describes the three slices of the schools policy as standards and accountability, collaboration and building capacity related to teachers and resources, and quasi-market reform.
    
    "In an interview with the US think tank Education Sector a couple of years ago, Sir Michael described the first wave of school reforms as mission-driven.
    
    "Large-scale reform driven from the top down, designing all the materials at the national level and training everybody in a cascade out, using the accountability system to publish results and school inspection to check people were adopting better practices," he said.
    
    "The basic premise of our first phase of education reforms was that in order to achieve a certain minimum floor, you have to first set those standards top down and drive them centrally.
    
    "We had a very tough agenda for dealing with under-performing schools: closing some, starting some fresh and turning around others."
    
    "In a salutary lesson to the Rudd Government staring down teaching unions over league tables, Sir Michael said governments had to be very clear about what was non-negotiable "and be absolutely unapologetic".
    
    "Macquarie University vice-chancellor Steven Schwartz agreed that the Rudd Government's plans for accountability and standards resembled the Blair reforms. Professor Schwartz, who led a taskforce on higher education for the Blair government, said the British reforms were built on the belief that education was the path to social mobility and an egalitarian society.
    
    "Labor is the party of social justice and upward mobility," he said. "Giving everyone, not just those who can afford private schools, a choice and a voice in their children's education is the essence of social justice."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Learn the hard way
    
    Co-operative federalism is the key to education reform
    
    "The stopwork meeting called by the NSW Teachers Federation today is but a taste of the bloody-minded resistance Kevin Rudd and Education Minister Julia Gillard will encounter if they seriously intend to revolutionise public education. Teachers in NSW are angry the state Government has capped their pay increases at 2.5 per cent when inflation is running at 4 per cent. Pay rises make sense if they are merit-based and give teachers the incentive to work harder and lift student standards. Unfortunately, performance-based pay is anathema to the teachers' union, which puts its own interests ahead of those of the students. The union is also opposed to the Government's plans to make the statewide staffing system more open and flexible by giving school principals the power to hire staff, something private schools take for granted. While the plan is popular with teachers, it is opposed by the union bosses who would lose their jealously guarded position on all selection panels.
    
    "What the Prime Minister has proposed as part of his long-overdue education revolution outlined last week goes far beyond the matters at the heart of the dispute between the NSW Teachers Federation and the state Government. To achieve the goals of transparency in school performance, higher quality teaching, greater school autonomy and more discretion for principals, overcoming the entrenched interests of the teachers' unions is only the first round of the battle. As is the case in areas such as health, water, environment and infrastructure, the success or failure of Mr Rudd's education reform plan will be largely determined by the co-operation of the states, which have traditionally set their own agendas. For the new brand of co-operative federalism to work, Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard must work hard to get the states to come on board. Having Labor in power federally and in the states is no guarantee of a united front, even when it comes to issues that are in the national interest such as education. The opposition of the NSW Government to ceding control of its antiquated state industrial relations system in favour of a streamlined national IR system is a case in point. When it comes to implementing education reform, NSW has dragged the chain. Successive Labor administrations have shown a lack of resolve in standing up to education unions, who complain about staff shortages and low pay on the one hand, while refusing to address issues such as dealing with under-performing teachers, and attracting and rewarding successful teachers, on the other.
    
    "For now, Ms Gillard has shown she is determined to stare down the objections and obstructions of state bureaucracies and teacher unions. Her insistence that the framework will be a national one covering public and private schools, and that no exceptions will be made for schools that are reluctant to have their problems highlighted, is welcome. After a long period of too much talk and no action, such resolve is sorely needed."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • School settles with Sikh boy's family over hair
    
    An exclusive private school that refused to enrol a Sikh student unless he cut his hair and removed his turban has apologised and is reviewing its uniform rules as part of an out-of-court settlement.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Sadly, not all schools, nor students, are created equal
      
      "David Burchell’s article ("Kick defeatist habits out of the classroom”, 1/9) is right on the mark; good education is not about more dollars and ever smaller classes. It is about what is taught and who teaches it.
      
      "What is taught has been mismanaged by the education academics, the bureaucracy and their mate, the Australian Education Union. Who teaches it has been similarly mismanaged by the same people.

      "David Burchell wants them to kick the habit; I want to kick them out.

      "However, no ruling class departs the stage of world history willingly, so why don’t we just go around them? A national curriculum (with space for local input) and community-based schools would be a good starting point.

      "The Finnish model is appealing. After all, it is known to be the best system in the world. We are number 23."
      
      Jim Wilson, Beaumont, SA
      
      

    • "David Burchell rightly points out it is a “misconception ... that the schooling debate is about money”, but it is way out of touch to suggest unions have some “shimmering ideal’ of education—historically they have wanted only more money and less work for their members.

      "Principals need to lose the burden of administration and see what is happening in class, and parents, as well as teachers, should be asked what needs to be done."
      
      Beth Johnson, Auchenflower, Qld
      
      

    • "Performance pay for teachers sounds fine in theory, but the reality is different.

      "The Government’s standardised literacy/numeracy tests aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. I’ve had students who were barely literate score well above the benchmarks and vice versa. The numeracy tests distort the results by picking seemingly random, small sections of the curriculum to test, while ignoring other critical sections.

      "And not all schools are created equal. I taught for two years in an inner-suburban middle-class school and ran a good reading program that got results. Then I arrived in an outer-suburban low socio-economic school. I walked into the library and I wanted to cry.

      "It is no wonder students don’t want to read when they have so few books and even fewer that are worth reading. The books are old and dilapidated.

      "The reference section contains books so old that they still teach that “Aborigines are the most primitive race of man”. [emphasis added] How am I supposed to run the same quality reading program if I don’t have the books to do it with?"
      
      Dylan Rogers, Kenmore Hills, Qld
      
      

    • "Kevin Rudd has performed a modern miracle: he has united every disparate element in our education system.

      "Mr Rudd makes an easy target for even a moribund opposition and a teaching service burning with resentment. Closure and dismissal might be the worst thing to do when a school “fails”.

      "Such a school could be performing brilliantly to do as well as it does.

      "Where schools perform poorly, their weaknesses should be targeted by special teachers who can provide reinforcement programs so that slow learners can catch up.

      "Failing is caused by our poor world parity in spending, with which all governments seem content.

      "As the New York principal said: “When we find kids who can’t read and count, we teach ‘em”.
      
      Graeme Lee, (Retired principal), Fitzroy, Vic
      
      
      

• SSTUWA
  
  

  • 15 Hours PD Guidelines
    by Anne Gisborne

    GUIDELINES FOR 15 HOURS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR TEACHERS
    
    Without Prejudice
    
    Background
    
    Consistent with professional education and development requirements for renewal of teacher registration, ongoing professional learning and development provides an avenue for teachers to continually grow their professional skills, knowledge and understandings.  Targeted professional development programs support teachers’ competence and capacity to:

    • bring about improvement in student outcomes.
    • enhance professional performance and career objectives.
    • implement school initiatives.
    • implement systemic polices, programs and initiatives.
      
      

    Commitment
    
    As prescribed in clause 10.2 of the School Education Act Employees’ (Teachers and Administrators) General Agreement 2008 (the Agreement), teachers employed on a full-time basis are required to undertake 15 hours of professional development each school year outside of the normal school day or normal operating hours.  
    
    For part-time teachers, participation will be on a pro rata basis.  For example, a teacher working 0.5 FTE for the full year will be required to undertake 7.5 hours (0.5 x15 hours) professional development.
    
    Teachers on periods of leave, such as long service or leave-without-pay are also required to undertake the professional development commitment on a pro rata basis.
    
    Consultation
    
    Professional development is to be managed at the local level.  The content and timing of the professional development is to be determined after full and proper consultation between the Principal and teacher.  Teachers’ family responsibilities, professional and personal development aspirations are to be considered when determining the content and timing of professional development.
    
    Professional development activities
    
    The agreed additional professional development activities undertaken must be appropriate and have regard for:

    • system initiatives.
    • school-based priorities identified in the school plan.
    • individual professional development and training priorities that relate to system, school initiatives or those itemised in the individual Performance Management Plan.
      
      

    The professional development activity should:

    • demonstrate evidence of educational planning and organisation;
    • be linked to enhancing professional knowledge or skills that will lead to improved students learning;
    • arise from systemic or school initiatives;
    • be supportive of teachers’ career planning; or
    • support the implementation of Departmental policy, programs and initiatives.
      
      

    The professional development activities must be at least one hour duration and may include:

    • Department-initiated programs;
    • district-initiated programs;
    • professional conferences;
    • education related work shops and seminars by Department or external providers;
    • professional development programs delivered by the Professional Learning Institute;
    • Internal professional development programs registered by the Professional Learning Institute;
    • professional development programs delivered by Curriculum Council;
    • professional learning activities linked to the AGQTP project;
    • structured professional learning programs such as the Graduate Teacher Professional Learning Program,  the Senior Teacher Professional Learning Program or courses offered by the Leadership Centre;
    • professional learning opportunities offered by subject and professional associations linked with education;
    • school-based action research;
    • participating with colleagues in formal and informal study groups for the purpose of developing teaching skills, leadership skills or the ability to communicate with students, parents and the wider community;
    • professional learning programs which are linked to classroom management, pedagogy or other teacher related topics;
    • undertaking postgraduate studies or further education in a relevant subject;
    • programs delivered by the State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia in their role as a professional development provider and which are linked to enhancing classroom practice or developing leadership skills;
    • engagement in moderation activities, inter and intra school;
    • activities centred on the development of curriculum support materials and resources;
    • activities engaging employees in reviewing, developing, implementing and evaluating strategies for instruction and assessment;
    • activities engaging employees in the development of education policy;
    • agreed arrangements to act as a mentor to an individual or group of  student teachers, new teachers, re-entry teachers or colleagues requiring additional support;
    • participation by  student teachers, new teachers, re-entry teachers or colleagues requiring additional support in agreed mentoring arrangements;
    • presentation of research findings at seminars, workshops or conferences;
    • the delivery of professional development programs that meet the above criteria to other staff; or
    • other activities as agreed to in negotiation with the principal.

     
    Recording professional development undertaken
    
    Under the Agreement, teachers need to maintain a record of attendance at professional development.  
    It is the responsibility of each Principal to ensure that teachers meet their commitment to professional development.  
    
    Ensuring that teachers fulfil their professional development requirement will be subject to the School Review process.
    
    An example template to assist Principals to record professional development in concert with Performance Management and Western Australian College of Teaching registration is at Attachment 1.
    
    Professional Development Costs
    
    Costs associated with professional development for school and system initiatives attended by the whole school and relevant subgroups are to be incurred by the school.  It is likely that most of the additional professional development completed by teachers will be through these initiatives.
    
    Teachers will need to negotiate accessing funds for individual professional development activities with their principals within school priorities and available resources.  The school grant contains a component which contributes to meeting the cost of staff professional development.
    
    For regional teachers, the Department will cover costs of professional development provided away from the employee’s home base to the extent of the provisions of Clause 59 – Travelling Allowance of the Teachers (Public Sector Primary and Secondary Education) Award 1993.
    
    From SSUWA at link
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Private schools wary of cuts
    
    Independent schools would oppose any reduction in funding as a result of a new Federal Government directive for all schools to publish their income from student fees, investments and fund-raising from next year.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Struggling primary pupils to receive one-to-one tuition
    
    • Government announces £169m scheme
    • 100,000 pupils expected to benefit
    • Schools to get extra materials to raise standards
    
    Ministers are to introduce intensive catch-up programmes to raise standards among the one in five 11-year-olds who fail to reach the expected levels in literacy and numeracy at key stage 2.
    
    Similar story at BBC News

 

Wednesday 3 September

• The West Australian
  

  • WA kids among the worst educated
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “WA primary school children are still among the worst in the nation at reading, writing and maths, ranking near the bottom of all States and Territories in five out of nine key tested categories, new Australia-wide comparisons have found.
      
    “Tests of students in Years 3, 5 and 7 conducted last year found that while WA children were closing the gap on their counterparts in other States, many were still failing to reach minimum national benchmarks.
      
    “Nearly 16 per cent of WA’s Year 7 students failed to reach the minimum standard in reading, 15.2 per cent of Year 5 students did not achieve the writing benchmark and 12.6 per cent of Year 3 students did not reach the Year 3 writing benchmark in the latest National Report on Schooling in Australia.
      
    “But the results had improved slightly since the 2006 report, in which WA students ranked either 6th or 7th in six categories.
      
    “And even though 16.2 per cent of WA students failed to achieve the numeracy benchmark in Year 7 last year, they still did better than the national average, with nearly 20 per cent of all Australian students failing to achieve the minimum standard.
      
    “WA also beat NSW, where a staggering 26.6 per cent of students did not reach the minimum standard.
      
    “Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard this week announced financial incentives to encourage maths and science students to become primary school teachers in a bid to lift numeracy skills across the nation.
      
    “WA Education Minister Mark McGowan said the interstate comparisons showed there was more to be done to lift the performance of WA students, especially in writing.
      
    “The 2007 interstate comparisons show that WA is above the national average for reading in Year 3 and Year 5, and in numeracy in Year 7,” he said. “The results show we have to concentrate our efforts on writing in all years, and in numeracy in lower primary.”
      
    “He said the Government’s reintroduction of a school syllabus late last year, after it was abolished by the Liberals in 1998, would help to improve standards.
      
    “Mr McGowan said it was important to note the data was collected from public and private schools and it should be interpreted cautiously because WA students were generally younger than those in other States in all year groups. Other performance indicators showed WA students were among the world’s best. “Our 15-yearolds are ranked well above the OECD average in maths, science and reading, outperforming students in the UK, Germany and Switzerland,” he said.
     
    “The Government had introduced the Getting it Right literacy and numeracy strategy for students falling below benchmarks and said 50 per cent of class time should be spent on reading and maths.
      
    “Shadow education minister Peter Collier said that if the Liberals won government they would conduct a comprehensive audit of the curriculum framework to determine whether WA’s educational standards were adequate.
    
    “Last year was the final time that children in different States sat different tests. Their results were statistically adjusted to allow comparison. In May, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 across Australia sat the same tests in reading, writing, numeracy and language conventions.”
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Gillard sells schools plan
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    Rudd Government to unveil details of its push to overhaul the education system
    
    "State education ministers will get their first detailed look at the Rudd Government's "education revolution" when they meet in Melbourne on Friday week.
    
    "Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard will present her State colleagues with the details of the Government's plan to lift standards and improve accountability for how taxpayers' money is spent in the next three years.
    
    "The Government's proposal, which has upset teachers' unions calls for the collection and publication of data to build a detailed report card of each school, allowing for easy comparison between similar schools for education bureaucrats and parents.
    
    "The published data will focus on the socioeconomic background of students, the number of indigenous students, students with a disability, students with English as a second language, school retention rates, class sizes and the qualifications of teachers, including their experience.
    
    "Ms Gillard also revealed this week that schools would have to disclose their sources of funding, including the amount of money received from student fees, donations and fundraising, to analyse the difference extra resources can make to learning.
    
    "Classroom performance would be assessed using national literacy and numeracy tests sat by all Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students.
    
    "The Government is spending $17 million to set up the National Schools Assessment and Data Centre to collate and examine this information, which will be used to decide how funding is allocated to struggling schools.
    
    "The States and private schools need to agree to individual reporting as a condition for receiving Federal money under the next education funding deal to start on January 1.
    
    "Ms Gillard said the rules would be the same for State and independent schools."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    

    • Ratings is a nonsense
      
      "Your editorial and report on Kevin Rudd's school renewal and accountability plan (30/8) requires comment.
      
      "No one doubts that schools, like any other institutions, could and should be doing better. The question is how.
      
      "Unfortunately, education has become a political football and is no longer valued by the whole community. Many parents and community members, while saying they support teachers, do little to lobby political parties to ensure support and money is directed to where it is needed.
      
      "While one should be careful about generalisations, this is no doubt that teachers in schools in a low socio-economic area, and in communities where education is a low priority face difficulties. This includes, but is not limited to, reduced parent participation in schools, increased numbers of low-achieving students and students with behavioural difficulties, reduced educational aspirations for many of the students and greatly reduced ability or willingness of parents to contribute to school finances.
      
      "There is no doubt that there are teachers in schools who, for a variety of reasons, should not be teaching. This situation will not improve unless the community works with teachers to raise the status of teaching, including appropriate conditions and salary, to make teaching a highly desirable career.
      
      "Teachers and schools have no difficulty accepting responsibility for those factors over which they have control but cannot and should not be judged on factors beyond their control. To suggest that by rating and comparing schools and teachers by parents and students will improve educational outcomes is nonsense.
      
      Brian Lindberg, chairman of the board, WA College of Teaching
      
      
      
    • In short
      
      "Kevin Rudd's plan to sack principals and teachers of under-performing schools misses the mark. How about aiming at bureaucratic ideologues, like those in WA's Curriculum Council and Department of Education, who condemned a whole State to a third-rate education with OBE?"
      
      Patrick F. Whalen, Yokine
      
      
      
    • It's a diversion
      
      "Brian Toohey yet again hits more than a few nails on the head (Rudd's 'reforms' just an update of Howard's, 1/9).
      
      "But the Gillard/Rudd education plan is more than Howard's way and a diversion from current economic woes, it is a diversion from Mr Rudd's biggest education dilemma.
      
      "How does he unwind the billions of dollars of middle-class welfare provided to families and private schools (publicly funded private schools) without losing key votes in critical electorates?
      
      "How does he explain no action on the known overpayment of millions of dollars to schools above agreed levels of support, such as the $14 million to one ACT college while local schools lack funds?
      
      "How can he justify accepting minimal accountability by schools accepting minimal accountability by schools accepting taxpayers' funds, no disclosure of assets, investment funds and commercial holdings to Government yet still providing massive funding, like the college that couldn't spend its $3.1 million Federal grant last year and had a $4 million surplus last year?
      
      "Easy solution: divert attention. Pull out an old chestnut, on the punters and media will react to - beating up the States and local schools and claim this will support improvement. Give out some funds and leave the real funding issues alone.
      
      "I thought we had a Labor Government, now I know we don't."
      
      
      E. Black, Thornlie
      
      
      
      
  • Neal put on notice by Rudd
    
    Federal Labor MP Belinda Neal has been put on notice that her future in politics depends on her capacity to behave. NSW Police said state and commonwealth prosecutors had recommended that no charges be laid against Ms Neal or her husband, suspended NSW minister John Della Bosca, over events stemming from an altercation at a NSW Central Coast restaurant on June 6.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • John Brumby to pay $10m for jaded teachers to leave profession
    by Rick Wallace, Victorian political reporter
    
    "The Brumby Government admitted yesterday it would spend $10 million paying jaded teachers to quit the profession under its new education policy.
    
    "The policy -- condemned by the Opposition as "a plan for more plans" -- also opens the door for fast-food chains or any other business to pursue partnerships and programs within Victorian schools.
    
    "The so-called education "blueprint" -- which Premier John Brumby said yesterday "completes the revolution in human capital" -- is vague on detail and uncosted.
    
    "Amid questions over the credibility of an uncosted five-year "blueprint", Mr Brumby and his Education Minister, Bronwyn Pike, posed as principals for a day at the school where the launch was held in Melbourne's outer east.
    
    "In an interview at the policy launch, Ms Pike initially said no figure had been set for the payouts to jaded teachers. "There's not a set amount of money, it is some resources that are available so that the regions and principals have some flexibility," she said.
    
    "Minutes later, under further questions, she admitted the previous state budget had set aside money for it.
    
    "We have in fact provided the sum of that money within the budget papers -- it's clearly identified there," she said. "I haven't got the details, I think it's in the order of $10 million across the whole system."
    
    "The Government said the funds would be used "flexibly" and could be spent on retraining or job placement. But it appears no criteria are in place to prevent talented teachers opting for a taxpayer-funded career change other than eligibility being looked at "on a case-by-case basis".
    
    "On plans to allow corporate involvement in state schools, Mr Brumby said school councils and principals would have the final say on proposed joint ventures. Although firms such as KFC or McDonald's would not be excluded by the Government, he said the scheme was not intended as a way for companies to boost sales.
    
    "The core issue is: is it in the interests of the child? Is it in the interests of the school? Will it add education value? It has got to satisfy those tests," he said.
    
    "The blueprint also includes a program to lure top university graduates from other disciplines into teaching, and plans to allow teachers to leave the profession temporarily to work in other areas before returning to schools "enriched by those experiences".
    
    "Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett welcomed greater business involvement in education as long as schools and students were not offered up as a market place.
    
    "Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals president Brian Burgess also backed more private- sector involvement as long as corporate funds were not used as an excuse by government to reduce public funds, and that there was no interference with operations or curriculums.
    
    "Both Ms Bluett and Mr Burgess support the payments to jaded teachers to exit the system.
    
    "Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said he supported private-sector involvement and support for underperforming schools, but not the payouts to jaded teachers."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    See related article in The Age
    
    
    
  • Teachers vow further strike action over pay dispute [late 2 Sept online update]
    AAP
    
    NSW public school teachers have promised more industrial action if the state Government does not meet their pay demands.
    
    Almost 90 per cent of NSW public schools were operating with at least minimal supervision after thousands of teachers walked off the job for a two-hour stop work meeting today.
    
    
    
  • Labor reveals fall in polls to shock public out of protest vote
    by Amanda O'Brien, WA political reporter
    
    

    "Labor has released confidential internal polling just days before the election in a calculated attempt to shock the public into not lodging a protest vote against the Government....
    
    "Mr Carpenter tracked well in the polling on a promised new rail line, cheaper bus fares and his stand against uranium mining. But three in four voters were concerned that a re-elected Labor government would not do enough for them nor keep its promises.

    "They also believed Labor would not fix the education and health systems." [emphasis added]
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Reforms could hit target, miss point
    
    If there is one law of economics, it is that if you reward people to do more of something, they will. Assuming that is what you want, so far, so good. But there is a less pleasant corollary, which is this: if they do more of what you are rewarding them for, they will do less of those activities for which they are not rewarded or are rewarded less, with results that can eliminate the benefits you were seeking.
    
    These effects are at the centre of the debate raging about performance indicators and performance pay in many areas of public-service provision, including education and health.
    
    
    
    
  • Where school failed, the workplace takes over
    by Caroline Overington and Patricia Karvelas
    
    "Like so many indigenous Australians, Luke Hearn left school before the end of Year 9.
    
    "Some people thought, 'That's it for me'," he said. "But I wanted to make something of myself."
    
    "Now 17, and having proved he is reliable and hard-working, Luke was taken on as an apprentice carpenter and joiner last month. He was on the job in Wollongong yesterday, rebuilding dilapidated NSW public housing. He also studies at Granville TAFE.
    
    "If Kevin Rudd adopts plans put forward by his business adviser Rod Eddington, there will soon be an army of Luke Hearns -- 50,000 or more young Aborigines -- employed in construction.
    
    "The Prime Minister has agreed in principle to having an indigenous workforce building ports, roads, schools and hospitals as part of a $76 billion plan to relieve bottlenecks and address transport problems across the nation..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    • Editorial: Indigenous people as nation builders
      
      
      
      
  • University of Melbourne exam 'secrets' come out in court
    
    Universities hoping to keep past exam materials secret by invoking the public interest have been warned they will usually lose in court.
    
    
    
  • Victoria's radical student drivers are good indicators
    
    The federal Government's support for Victoria's radical TAFE reforms have strengthened expectations that a similar student-driven demand model may be destined for higher education post-Bradley.
    
    
    
  • Tougher immigration rules for Indian students
    
    An immigration crackdown will make it harder to recruit students from India, the fast-growing big market in Australia's $12.5 billion education export industry.
    
    
    
  • Concerns over detention spells for visa cancellations
    
    Universities, TAFE institutes, colleges and their agents are failing to adequately inform overseas students about the draconian implications of student visa cancellations, according to human rights and detainee advocates.
    
    
    
    
• The Brisbane Courier Mail
  
  
  • Rankings rankle like nails on the blackboard [from 1 September]
    by Kevin Donnelly
    
    "While it's been a barbecue stopper, there's nothing original about Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's plan to make schools release information about performance.The previous John Howard led federal government introduced national numeracy and literacy benchmark testing at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to measure learning outcomes and A to E school reports to make schools more accountable to parents.
    
    "US schools have been making test results public for years under President George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" legislation. The same as Rudd plans to do, under-performing schools in the US are given additional resources and support and then closed down or given new staff if they fail to improve.
    
    "Introduced by the then-prime minister Tony Blair, all English schools face national testing and regular inspection where they are evaluated in terms of how effective they are in raising standards. The results, where schools are ranked, are then put on the internet.
    
    "Where Rudd is breaking new ground is by making last week's education revolution central to how his Government will be judged, by forcing state governments to comply, if they don't there's no money, and by taking on the teacher unions, normally ALP allies, head on.
    
    "As noted by Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford, while making school performance details public is good in theory; the devil is in the detail and the real test will involve what is measured and how it is reported.
    
    "Most would agree that it is unfair to compare the Year 12 results of a selective, academic secondary school, where students are from privileged backgrounds, to the results achieved by students in less well-off, disadvantaged areas.
    
    "The solution? As noted by Rudd, instead of ranking all schools in terms of results, the performance of so-called like schools are compared, that is, schools with a similar socio-economic profile and student mix.
    
    "In the UK, schools are also compared in terms of how well they improve student performance above what might normally be expected – a value add approach.
    
    "Students are tested against the general standard, a year or two later, they are tested again to see whether particular schools are more successful in raising standards, when compared with other schools.
    
    "While standardised tests in literacy and numeracy are generally used to measure success, especially during the early years of primary school, it is important not to have a one-size-fits-all approach to accountability.
    
    "Schools should be allowed to report in a variety of ways, including staff morale, student absenteeism, community involvement and the extent students get involved in activities outside the normal curriculum.
    
    "Overseas practice, with charter schools in the US and city academies in England, also illustrates the need, if schools are going to be forced to release performance details, that they are given the autonomy and flexibility to get on with the job.
    
    "It makes little sense to hold schools publicly accountable if they are managed from head office, drowned in red-tape and controlled by bureaucrats far removed for the realities of the classroom."

    Dr Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies and author of Dumbing Down.

    From The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Fast-food giants may be welcomed in schools
    
    Premier John Brumby has not ruled out fast-food companies getting involved in school canteens or classroom programs in a revamp of the public education system.
    
    
    
  • Bogus teacher forces shake-up
    
    A woman who stole the identity of a South Australian teacher managed to teach undetected at a Melbourne primary school for several months, despite not being a qualified teacher.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Business involvement with schools: four Letters, all negative
      
      
      
      
• The Guardian
  
  
  • New teachers 'ill-prepared' to teach disabled pupils
    by Anthea Lipsett
    
    "Training for new teachers is failing to equip them to teach pupils with learning difficulties and disabilities, school inspectors warned today.
    
    "Teacher training providers rely too heavily on schools to train teachers, Ofsted found. But less than half of the schools the inspectorate surveyed provide new trainees with a good induction into teaching pupils with learning difficulties and disabilities (LDD).
    
    "Instead, inductions often focus on the priorities of an individual school so that teachers gain experience in the areas of specific concern to their workplace, but not wide enough coverage of learning difficulties to win qualified teacher status, the report warned.
    
    "This left [teachers] ill-prepared for meeting the needs of pupils with a wide spectrum of learning difficulties and/or disabilities," said Ofsted.
    
    "In two thirds of the lessons taught by new and recently qualified teachers, provision for pupils with learning difficulties and/or disabilities was satisfactory or worse." ...
    
    Full story in The Guardian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Unis 'are inflating scores'
    by Anna Patty Education Editor
    
    "Universities are artificially inflating their entrance scores as a marketing ploy to lift the status of their courses and are then accepting lower-scoring applicants, says the architect of the university entry score system in NSW.
    
    "The technique allows students with lower results to get into prestigious courses without achieving the required university admissions index cut-off.
    
    "In a surprisingly candid entry on a Macquarie University blog site, George Cooney, the chairman of the NSW committee responsible for calculating the UAI, said some universities were admitting a high proportion of students well below the advertised entry cut-off marks for some courses.
    
    "It concerns me that … the quality of the university program is in the public's view judged by the published UAI cut-off. If universities are allowing students in below that cut-off, it is not an adequate measure," he said.
    
    "A few were advertising the terms of their alternative entry schemes on their websites but others were not as transparent.
    
    "Last week Macquarie University joined the University of NSW, University of Technology, Sydney, and University of Western Sydney in offering up to five bonus entry score marks for students who performed well in HSC subjects that were directly relevant to their intended course of study.
    
    "Professor Cooney said while schemes such as HSC Plus at the UNSW had become more transparent, many others were less open. Almost half the students admitted to the UNSW commerce degree this year scored up to five points below the UAI cut-off of 95.2.
    
    "I am cynical enough to see this scheme (and other similar schemes) as a way for universities to artificially boost their cut-offs for marketing purposes, as a course's quality/prestige is judged by its cut-off," he said.
    
    "This is an ethical issue and needs to be brought to the attention of the NSW [vice-chancellors' committee] but I would not anticipate any change in practice."
    
    "Professor Alec Cameron, dean of the Australian School of Business at UNSW, said his institution had been increasingly open about the terms of HSC Plus.
    
    "We have been scrupulously honest. … Other universities use other mechanisms and are far less public about how they are doing that."
    
    "Professor Cameron said the Victorian system, which published two entry scores, was more transparent. "In Victoria, the universities publish their UAI cut-off and then a lower figure, which is the range in which you may receive a place," he said. "We would argue that we have done that with the HSC Plus scheme."
    
    "The managing director of the Universities Admissions Centre, Andrew Stanton, said NSW universities had increased the transparency of their alternative entry requirements. "Nobody pretends the UAI is the only criteria that should be used," he said.
    
    "He said when students were just below the cut-off, it was appropriate to consider other factors.
    
    "A spokesman for the University of Sydney said its flexible entry scheme allowed students entry to some courses with a UAI of up to five points below the cut-off, if places were available.
    
    "Macquarie University's vice-chanecllor, Steven Schwartz, has criticised the use of a single entry mark to determine student entry.
    
    "Last week he launched the university's Academic Advantage bonus marks program and is seeking the approval of the university's governing body to introduce a university aptitude test for next year's intake."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link

 

Thursday 4 September

• The West Australian
  

  • OBE linked to poor WA test results in three Rs (page 16)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “The introduction of outcomes-based education is partly to blame for the poor performance of WA primary school students compared with those in other States in reading, writing and maths tests, a prominent teachers’ lobby group has claimed.
    
    “The latest National Report on Schooling in Australia showed that many WA students failed to reach minimum national benchmarks in Years 3, 5 and 7 tests conducted last year and were ranked near the bottom of all States and Territories.
    
    “Their performance was below the national average in six out of nine categories, including writing and numeracy in Years 3 and 5 and Year 7 reading and writing. But WA students were above the national average in three categories, Year 3 and Year 5 reading and Year 7 numeracy.
    
    “Education watchdog Plato chairman Marko Vojkovic said the implementation of OBE in the primary school years in the 1990 meant that many teachers did not know what specific content to teach.
    
    “If our relative position in the order of States’ performance is going down or remaining stagnant, you could legitimately conclude that the changes to the curriculum, particularly in primary school, that came with OBE have not made any significant improvement,” he said.
    
    “The head of an organisation which helps children with learning difficulties said many were missing out on foundational literacy skills because of a combination of the vague OBE system and teachers not being trained adequately in phonics instruction.
    
    “I think OBE certainly left a lot of kids floundering in terms of having learnt basic, clear skills to then build on,” Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation executive officer Mandy Nayton said.
    
    “Literacy rates were unlikely to improve until Federal and State governments acted on two major literacy inquiries, which had both concluded that children needed more direct phonics instruction. “We are going to see poor literacy results continue until that is taken up,” she said.
    
    “Ms Nayton said though her group had been set up to help children with learning disabilities, it was now in demand to help increasing numbers of children with literacy problems. [emphasis added]
    
    “University of WA education dean Bill Louden, who headed a State-wide literacy and numeracy review last year, said WA had invested heavily in improving reading teaching for young children but now had to do that for writing, particularly upper primary.
    
    “Education Minister Mark McGowan said Labor recognised the importance of literacy and numeracy and teachers spent 50 per cent of their teaching time on both. “Labor also introduced the K-10 syllabus which gave advice to teachers about what students should know - backed up by learning materials,” he said. “(Opposition Leader) Colin Barnett was the person who abolished the syllabus and introduced OBE in 1998.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • WA Government fails children: Lib senator [late update: online only]
    AAP
    
    "The State Labor Government’s incompetence has left Western Australia children ranked “among the worst” at reading, writing and mathematics, the Senate has been told.
    
    “This shows the Carpenter government has failed West Australian children, Liberal senator Michaelia Cash said.
    
    “This makes a mockery of the (federal) Labor party’s much-vaunted education revolution.
    
    “The Rudd Labor government is immersed in a conspiracy of silence with the state Labor government.
    
    "The two governments had agreed not to criticise each other, Senator Cash said.
    
    “The Rudd government’s no-blame game is destroying the future of Western Australia’s greatest asset, the prospects of its children.
    
    “Labor’s so-called education revolution is no more than a stunt being perpetrated on the Australian people.”
    
    "Labor Senator Helen Polley viewed the criticism in context: “We all know that the West Australian election is coming up.”
    
    From The West Australian online at link
    
    
    
  • Energy drinks blamed for kids’ caffeine addiction (page 18)
    London
    
    “Schoolchildren are becoming increasingly addicted to caffeine because of the growth of high-energy drinks, according to British experts.
    
    “The consumption of too many caffeine-packed drinks, such as Red Bull, may leave some pupils suffering chest pains and headaches, it was claimed.
    
    “They may also be fuelling bad behaviour in the classroom as teachers struggle to control hyperactive children. Drugs campaigners have warned school nurses to be on the look-out for the symptoms of caffeine addiction among young people.
    
    “Speaking at a Royal College of Nursing conference, experts said pupils were consuming increasing numbers of high energy drinks and caffeine tablets.
    
    “Bob Tit, from Drugs Education UK, said they were cheap and too easily available – leading to caffeine addictions and knock-on health problems.
    
    “Children will drink them on the walk to school, at break and lunch time,” he said. “If you have got a child who is worked up on an energy drink, they are going to be agitated during lesson time.”
    
    “Mr Tait said nurses should be alert for children complaining of systems such as chest pains, headaches, restlessness or sleeplessness.
    
    “If they come to you with these complaints, be aware that there may be a caffeine problem at the bottom of it,” he said.
    
    “Under new healthy eating guidelines in Britain, the sale of high-fat and sugary drinks in tuck shops and canteens is banned. But there are no blanket bans on the consumption of such food on school premises.
    
    “Sales of high energy drinks have soared in recent years.
    
    “Red Bull sells £271 million ($580 million) worth of the drink in Britain alone.
    
    “Each can of Red Bull contains 80mg of caffeine, about the same amount as a cup of coffee.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Tafe [sic] lecturers call for pay rise
    
    "The State School Teachers' Union says the Education Department is trying to drive Tafe lecturers out of the industry.
    
    "The President of the Union, Mike Keely [sic] says the lecturers have not had a pay rise since January last year and pay negotiations have stalled in the Industrial Relations Commission.
    
    "He says the Department must give Tafe lecturers an interim payrise until the dispute is settled.
    
    "They are going to attempt to deny us an interim payrise in the commission," he said.
    
    "It's almost like for us the Department is desperate to alienate Tafe lecturers.
    
    "Here we are in the middle off the biggest skills crisis we've ever had, and who solves the skills crisis, the Tafe System," he said.
    
    "The Education Department says it cannot offer an interim payrise while the arbitration process runs its course.
    
    "In a statement, the Department said the matter cannot be considered until the Government is sworn in.
    
    "The Department said TAFE lecturers are a valuable resource and it is 'ludicrous' to suggest that the Department wants to get rid of them.

    "It said the Industrial Relations Commission will hear the matter next month."
    
    From ABC News at link

    
    
  • Labor's polling hasn't improved: Premier
    
    The Premier Alan Carpenter says he has been told Labor's internal polling has not improved since the party strategically leaked figures two days ago.
    
    
    • Labor released polling to head off 'protest vote'
      
      
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Refocusing on schools in need
    
    Money for education must be shifted to the schools that serve poorer communities.
    
    A long Op Ed that's worth a read...  Web
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Computers don't make an education revolution
    
    Disadvantaged schools have desperate needs that aren't being met.
    
    Another long Op Ed that's certainly worth a read...  Web
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Read the fine print: this is good news
      
      "If the Victorian Government's new blueprint on education could really be summed up as more business involvement in schools, I would join the critics (Letters, 3/9), but it has a much deeper meaning. It is one of the three most significant reports on education in the past 30 years, the others being the Blackburn report, which brought us the low-standard VCE, and the IPA's Schooling Victoria, which set the damaging agenda for the previous government.
      
      "The true significance of the new blueprint is that it signals the long-awaited reversal of the market-based approach to education that has failed so badly since 1992. The Government is once again accepting responsibility for the education of all children and not leaving some to languish in failing schools while the market slowly closes them.
      
      "It is a pity that the Federal Government seems to be jumping on the creaky market-based bandwagon just as Victoria accepts that it has led us to a dead end."
      
      Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge
      
      
      
    • Corporate altruism? You've got to be kidding
      
      "If he or she fails to do this, investors will take their money elsewhere and the CEO will be browsing MyCareer. This is not corruption or greed at work — just the reality of modern capitalism.
      
      "It is the government's role to fund public schools. If there isn't enough money to go around, it needs to collect more taxes and distribute them where needed. Waiting for companies to fill such gaps by altruistically competing for a slice of the working bee market is naive at best."
      
      David Brewster, Brunswick
      
      
      
    • Frankly, we need the help
      
      "In our area, we have no secondary school and are struggling to re-engage our local community. Families who cannot afford exclusive private schools or prime real estate in the right school zone have very little choice.
      
      "I welcome the Victorian and Federal Government education initiatives to raise standards and invest in schools. In areas with failing schools we need all the help we can get."
      
      Fiona Hehir, South Melbourne
      
      
      
    • Like some fries with that?

      Will Schmidt, Surrey Hills
      
      
      

• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Respect teachers’ judgment
      
      "Blaming teacher unions for the state of education ("Learn the hard way”, Editorial, 2/9) is the equivalent of blaming Poland for the World War II. Teacher unionists have fought long and hard for resources and policies that help children’s education, and despite the repeated claim that they have some power over Labor governments, they have seen decades of decline in pay and conditions.
      
      "Victoria long ago went down the road of increasing the power of local principals in staffing matters, and the result has been no improvement in student learning. This road is a dead end, and the current Victorian Government is slowly rebuilding the education system, as outlined in Blueprint 2, just as the Commonwealth Government seems to be jumping on the creaky market-based bandwagon that has failed so badly in this state.
      
      "Education will improve when the politicians and the expert-on-everything commentators listen to classroom teachers—and the unions which represent them. They might suggest giving the average Victorian secondary school the extra five teachers it would have if it were as well staffed today as it was in 1979. Imagine the improvement in learning that would result if society returned to a time when it not only paid its teachers well but also provided schools with enough of them and treated their professional judgment as something to be respected."
      
      Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge, Vic
      
      
      
    • "Your editorial sensibly stated that “co-operative federalism is the key to education reform”. That’s very probably true, but can someone explain how the Prime Minister making a unilateral public statement about a non-negotiable plan before agreement had been reached with the states and territories constitutes a co-operative approach?
      
      "Threatening to withhold funds in the bullying manner of Julie Bishop doesn’t sound very co-operative either. “Do it our way or else” is not what most people understand by co-operation. Is co-operative yet another perfectly good English word that is going to have its original meaning eroded under the assault of political spin?"
      
      Garry Collins, Stafford Heights, Qld
      
      
      
      
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Computer Off, Pencil Up: Course Helps Kids Get a Grip on Writing [2 September]
    
    In an era in which kids are more likely to use a computer to write a book report and a cell phone to send a note to a friend, there are still parents who believe that knowing how to write - on paper, with a pen or a pencil - is still important. What's more, they shelled out $160 for the unusual summer camp to help their children conquer their penmanship fears.

 

Friday 5 September

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Comment
    Dire teacher shortage will dominate policy for next four years (Election Supplement: page 4)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “An increasingly dire shortage of teachers will continue to dominate education policy for the next four years, regardless of which party wins government.
    
    “And outcomes-based education has become the elephant in the room for Liberal and Labor.
    
    “After being forced to make embarrassing admissions about the extent of teacher shortfalls at the start of 2007, Education Minister Mark McGowan has spent much of the past two years announcing initiatives to find, train and keep more teachers, including ordering bureaucrats back to classrooms, recruiting overseas and interstate and offering scholarships.
    
    “But the next State government will struggle to put enough teachers in classrooms for at least the next four years as a big chunk of the workforce reaches retirement age and fewer graduates come through the system.
    
    “Teachers claim the only way to attract and keep teachers is to pay them more.  But the Government has so far failed to resolve a long-running pay dispute which resulted in a half-day strike and a ban on unpaid overtime this year, despite reaching an agreement “in principle” on a new pay deal with union leaders.
    
    “Labor has neatly sidestepped the prospect of an embarrassing rejection of the latest pay offer by union members by calling the State election a week before their postal ballot closes.
    
    “In a blatant bid for votes from disaffected teachers, the centrepiece of the Liberals’ education policy is a pledge to top up the Government’s offer by another $120 million, regardless of whether the current offer is accepted.
    
    “The contentious OBE system has also re-emerged as an election issue, though both parties have tried to downplay its importance.
    
    “The Government’s intransigence over OBE proved one of its most embarrassing episodes.  After ignoring the outcry from teachers, principals and parents for months, it finally backed down last year and eliminated key aspects of it from Years 11 and 12.
    
    “This effectively took the sting out of the issue, but critics argue OBE should be ripped out of primary and lower secondary schools. [emphasis added]
    
    “But the issue in almost as uncomfortable for the Liberals because OBE was first introduced when Liberal leader Colin Barnett was education minister.
    
    “Shadow education minister Peter Collier has pledged to remove the “levels” which still at the heart of OBE assessment from kindergarten to Year 10 but won’t commit to dismantling the outcomes-based curriculum framework which is enshrined in legislation.
    
    “Mr McGowan will not ditch levels but argues he has watered down significantly the purist model of OBE introduced by Mr  Barnett.  He has reintroduced syllabuses for kindergarten to Year 10 and set up teacher juries to assess new senior school courses.
    
    “In eight years, Labor has raised the school leaving age to 17, imposed stricter rules governing school uniform, implemented compulsory community service for students and insisted that school canteens sell only healthy food and drinks.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
  • PM facing revolt by teachers (page 5)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “More cracks have appeared in Kevin Rudd’s proposal to sack principals of underperforming schools, with the teachers union claiming he lacks the industrial muscle to dismiss them.
    
    “The Prime Minister revealed last week he would make schools’ funding conditional on an agreement to publicly report a raft of information, including their students’ achievements in State and national testing.
    
    “He also said principals or senior staff should be replaced and schools closed or merged if they failed to achieve performance benchmarks reached by other schools with a similar mix of students.
    
    “WA Education Minister Mark McGowan this week refused to commit to sacking principals and senior teachers, raising doubts about whether Mr Rudd’s plan could be implemented.  Mr McGowan said many variables influenced student performance and it is unfair to hold schools entirely responsible.
    
    “State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne applauded Mr McGowan’s stance, saying teachers would fight any proposal to erode their rights and conditions.
    
    “Ms Gisborne said the Federal Government had no power to sack principals. “I think it is questionable as to whether (Mr Rudd) has the capacity to even progress this proposal”, she said.
    
    “But if State ministers followed Mr Rudd’s direction and tried to interfere with contracts of employment and enterprise bargaining agreement conditions, Ms Gisborne said there would be a nationwide battle.
    
    “If political pressure failed, the union would appeal to the WA Industrial Relations Commission. Industrial action would be used as a last resort. [emphasis added]
    
    “Ms Gisborne said the States already had a range of accountability measures in place, such as performance assessment and school reviews, which Canberra should not override.
    
    “To cut across the top of these arrangements, including industrial conditions that have been set in place for administrators, principals and teachers would be absolutely out of their capacity,” she said.
    
    “But if the plan went ahead, there was a danger that new performance measures being proposed to allow comparison between schools could also be used as an industrial tool to hold school staff accountable for the achievements of their students.
    
    “It’s an absolute nonsense to say that you’re going to have a direct connection between the outcomes of students and whether a principal can continue to be a principal,” Ms Gisborne said.
    
    “Australian Education Union president Angelo Gavrielatos said he had urged Mr Rudd to work with the union to develop an accountability program based on evaluation and improvement of schools through appropriate resourcing.
    
    “A spokeswoman for Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said a national system was required to identify and help struggling schools.”
    
    From The West Australian

• The Australian
  
  
  • TAFE nursing degrees spark protest
    
    Victorian nurses are set to ramp up their campaign to stop TAFEs from offering nursing degrees with a rally of 2,000 or more nurses planned next week in Melbourne.
    
    While the nursing profession says it is seeking to defend standards and its status, the TAFE in question says it is just a case of “academic snobbery”.
    
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Voters caught in state of indecision
    
    Labor battles a turning tide in Western Australia
    
    "If West Australians could tick a box that said "None of the above" on the ballot paper tomorrow, it is not inconceivable that it would outscore both the Labor Government and the Liberal Opposition in the state election. As it is, voters have the unedifying choice of gritting their teeth and persevering with another term of the Carpenter Government, from which five cabinet ministers have been sacked or demoted in recent years, or punting on an Opposition that has had four leadership changes since 2005.
    
    "While far from being Australia's most incompetent Labor leader, Alan Carpenter made a fundamental mistake shortly after being sworn in as Premier when Geoff Gallop resigned because of ill-health. He lifted his predecessor's ban that prevented ministers dealing with lobbyists Brian Burke, the former premier, and his business partner Julian Grill. Mr Carpenter has paid a high price for the imprudent move.
    
    "The original WA Inc, in the late 1980s, was a scandal in which improper connections between government and private business figures resulted in the public losing $1.5 billion. More recently, it has resurfaced in a different guise, claiming not only ministerial and backbench scalps but also that of Australia's highest-paid public servant, the former director-general of WA Health, Neale Fong. He resigned from his $565,000-a-year job after WA's Corruption and Crime Commission found that he had lied about the extent of his relationship with Burke.
    
    "In a cynical move, Mr Carpenter called an early poll on the eve of the Olympics and the day after the Liberal Party reinstalled Colin Barnett as leader. Mr Carpenter had no reason to move almost six months early other than boosting his party's chances by denying Mr Barnett media space to rebuild a public profile and sell his policies.
    
    "To win government on new boundaries that have been redrawn on one-vote one-value principles that will favour Labor, the Opposition needs a uniform swing of at least 4 per cent. Many voters want change, with some polls showing that just 35 per cent of the electorate believes Labor deserves to be returned. The fact that it is favoured to win, however, reflects the tawdry incompetence of the Liberals, which at times have looked unelectable this term.
    
    "After losing narrowly to Labor at the 2005 poll, Mr Barnett stood down from the Liberal leadership, a retreat that suggested lack of backbone and ambition. It was a major mistake, plunging the Liberals into a string of failures. Mr Barnett was succeeded by Matt Birney, Paul Omodei and then chair sniffer Troy Buswell, who quit the leadership last month. If elected to government, Mr Buswell would most likely be Treasurer. This reflects his perceived competence on economic matters and the shortage of Opposition talent.
    
    "Mr Barnett was education minister in the late 1990s, and one of his unfortunate legacies was the initiation of the discredited outcomes-based education approach, that harbinger of underachievement and dumbing down. Incredibly, he continued to defend OBE for providing "consistency and choice and flexibility" into the current parliament.
    
    "Mr Barnett won more respect for his contribution as resources minister. During the campaign, he has made a credible assault on Labor's illogical opposition to uranium mining in WA. He has also made headway attacking the Government for delays in granting approvals and getting projects off the ground. This is best demonstrated by suggestions that Inpex could pipe liquefied natural gas 850km from the WA coast to Darwin, despite the risks and costs.
    
    "At a time of unprecendented prosperity for the state, the Carpenter Government's re-election should not be in doubt. The fact that it is reflects not just Burke's overhanging spectre, but also dissatisfaction with how Labor has managed the proceeds of the mining boom. For most of its two terms, Labor has seemed unable to provide a sense of direction for how best to cement the state's future.
    
    "Aside from a major, much-needed new railway to help with the massive growth south of Perth, voters complain that too little has been done to improve infrastructure, transport, health, education and other services. In June, the Australian Medical Association revealed that 55 per cent of emergency patients at some major hospitals were waiting longer than eight hours for a bed. Several hundred people a year are dying as a result. As a former journalist, Mr Carpenter should hang his head for his Government's hamfisted, bully-boy attempts to stifle free speech, especially the misuse of police resources to raid The Sunday Times in Perth after the paper broke stories showing his Government in a poor light. Such behaviour reflected rampant complacency.
    
    "Incredibly, 18-year-olds voting tomorrow would have been toddlers when a Liberal Opposition last won a state election. That was in South Australia in 1993, although a Coalition government came to power in Queensland in 1995 in a by-election immediately following the state poll. There are strong signs that Labor's coast to coast hegemony is cracking as voters line up to punish hubris, laziness, incompetence and, in some cases, corruption. The Australian believes the political cycle is turning at state level and Labor administrations have every reason to be nervous, particularly in NSW where the case for change is strongest. If the Carpenter Government is the first to fall, it will be because the Liberals have at last been able to present themselves as a credible alternative. We await the electorate's verdict with interest."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Alan Carpenter admits ALP could lose WA poll
    
    Alan Carpenter has admitted for the first time his Government has not performed well, as internal party polling continues to show Labor at risk of losing tomorrow's state election.
    
    Labor insiders have told The Australian that while the move to portray Labor as the underdog was initially little more than a tactic, considering the ill-prepared state of the Opposition, it was now a reality.
    
    
    
  • Grassroots make safe seats unsteady
    
    While Alan Carpenter may think uranium mining and genetically modified crops are big issues, it's a different story in the seats that will decide tomorrow's knife-edge election.
    
    In the marginal Labor seat of Riverton in Perth's inner south, local issues -- education, noisy trucks and support for the football club -- are at the forefront of voters' minds.
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Missing in action on truants
    by Tony Abbott, Federal Opposition spokesman for families, community services, indigenous affairs and the voluntary sector
    
    Suspending welfare payments for parents whose children don't attend school generated good headlines for Kevin Rudd last week but it was just the re-announcement of a budget measure.
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Latest WA polling predicts election cliffhanger
    
    "The latest polling ahead of tomorrow's election in Western Australia literally has both major parties neck-and-neck.
    
    "The Australian newspaper's latest Newspoll shows 50/50 support for Labor and Liberal on a two-party preferred basis.
    
    "Labor has dropped 1 per cent, while the Liberals have picked up one point in the past three weeks.
    
    "Premier Alan Carpenter gets a vote of approval with 48 per cent of those surveyed saying he makes the better leader.
    
    "Thirty-five per cent preferred Liberal Leader Colin Barnett. That is up 4 per cent from three weeks ago."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed / Blog [view / add reader comments]
    Education reform: An ex-teacher's view
    by Phil Dye
    
    "As NSW teachers push for further industrial action in their pay claims, and as their colleagues from other states prepare to fight the Federal Government's education reforms, it's perhaps time to take a closer look at the difficult and often cloistered life of a teacher.
    
    "I taught in public primary and secondary schools for 15 years before diving into the muddy pond of business. In recent times, I've occasionally chosen to front a primary or secondary class just to kick the bank balance along (casual teaching is good for that) or lighten up from pressures of business (children are great for that).
    
    "Yet while I've long supported the public education system and the undervalued teachers who work in it, my visits to schools lately have left me championing Rudd's education reforms in a way I never thought possible.
    
    "Most schools contain vibrant teachers who are passionate about the development of their students. I've seen them and am in awe of them. Yet I've also witnessed teachers who are long past their use-by date. It seems our schools contain many teachers who have never left school. Coming directly from university or the old college system straight into the classroom, their experience and knowledge of the world outside their teaching cube is limited to the odd overseas vacation. Some, sadly, spend 40 years in the classroom planning for their retirement payout. [emphasis added]
    
    "While a narrow world view was unquestioned in the 50s when the world was indeed a smaller place, our time of 'global everything' requires, indeed demands a wide and innovative educational perspective from our teachers. Attitudes defined by antiquated methods, narrow world views and a non-competitive 'tenure' system produce a malaise that I've witnessed time and time again.
    
    "On chatting to teachers in staff rooms, I'm stunned as to how many ask about 'getting out of teaching'. They want to know how I did it, how I survive and if there's a demand for their skills. It's as if these individuals feel frightened of the outside world and are amazed at those who manage to break out.
    
    "Children don't just need teachers, they need great teachers. While they need people who can help them understand mathematical concepts and the meaning of Shakespeare, it's teachers who embrace a world outside the curriculum that's important. Perhaps it should be mandatory for all teachers to job-swap every three years to give them a peek at the bigger (realer!) world.
    
    "For too long state teacher's unions have applied narrow, old-world views to education. The rest of the world gets paid according to performance. In my small business, like most others, I don't get paid unless I work damn hard and constantly innovate. Treading water by simply covering the bases and waiting for retirement would see my business collapse within months. Performance-based pay is a fact of broader life that teacher's unions have avoided for years, yet without financial incentive to be the very best they can be, teachers can slip into the long slow 'death-by-superannuation' cycle that holds many teachers to their jobs and makes a student's life hell. There's no incentive to improve, and there's no incentive to get out.
    
    "Transparency in school performance, while more problematic than performance-based pay, is essential in giving both parents and teachers the choice they deserve. Rudd acknowledges that some parents will stay clear of schools that aren't achieving, yet so will some teachers. Others however, will relish the challenge of helping transform an underachieving school. Principals, under pressure to improve their school's performance, will need to employ (on higher salaries) teachers who can engage, innovate and inspire. The 'death by superannuation' teachers, fronted with new ideas and fresh ways will either copy their colleagues, or opt out... possibly to a job they're more suited to... possibly to early retirement.
    
    "I know it scares most teachers to think their 'tenure' in a school or indeed their job is limited, yet the concept of a 'job for life' went west 20 years ago. Without radical change incorporating not only transparency and performance based pay, but key performance indicators outside of curriculum expertise, the teaching malaise I've witnessed all too often will worsen. From what I've seen, death by superannuation is a death that both teachers and students can do without." [emphasis added]
    
    Phil Dye is a lecturer in business and media for the THINK Education Group, the managing director of Comtext and author of The Father Lode.
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • [NSW Premier Morris] Iemma rolled amid Labor turmoil
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Payment cut ahead for pensioners and students
    
    Up to 17,000 pensioners and students will have their welfare payments reduced or abolished next year because of changes to definitions of income by the Federal Government... Treasury has admitted that people on such payments as the disability pension, carers' allowance, youth allowance and ABSTUDY would be affected by the changes.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    

    • IT infrastructure only half the story
      
      "Kenneth Davidson writes (Comment & Debate, 4/9) of the Federal Government's "computer scam". He points out that the schools that get computers are the ones able to fund IT infrastructure and staff to get and keep the computers up and running. That is only half the story.
      
      "What about the computer content? Contrary to popular opinion, everything is not free on the internet. The resources that best meet students' needs, from primary school to postgraduate research level, are packages and software put together by both commercial and not-for-profit entities that have to be paid for, and they're not cheap.
      
      "Then you need dedicated staff to liaise with the IT department, teachers and content vendors on the one hand, and on the other to teach students (and teachers) how to get the most from these resources. In the school setting, this goes beyond the remit of the classroom teacher, who has more than enough to contend with.
      
      "The person most likely to be doing this liaising is your IT-savvy librarian. Thus, the computer pledge remains a scam until not only the back-end is financed by government, but also the content and front-end as well."

      Margaret Callinan, Balwyn
      
      [Unfortunately, Kenneth Davidson's original Comment and Debate article of 4 September doesn't appear to be available online.  Web]
      
      

    • Band-Aid solution
      
      "Kenneth Davidson is correct (Comment & Debate, 4/9). Rudd's policy promising computers for every two pupils is "a cruel joke". It will not solve the problems of literacy and numeracy. In fact this is a Band-Aid solution and was a way for Rudd to gain political brownie points before the election.
      
      "Education is about giving future generations the best possible instruction that will not only propel them into careers but also prepare them for life. I am reminded of the saying "Give a hungry man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and he will feed himself for life."
      
      Gemma Di Bari, Fairfield
      
      
      

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • For continuity, and the grasp of issues, we need Della Bosca back
      
      "Now that John Della Bosca has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, hopefully the Premier, Morris Iemma, will consider reinstating him as minister for education. It would be a mistake to use the surprise resignation of the Deputy Premier, John Watkins, to oust Mr Della Bosca from this critical portfolio.
      
      "In making his decision, the Premier must keep in mind that in the face of a rapidly emerging federal agenda, we need an education minister who understands the issues, recognises the complexity of contemporary schooling, listens to all stakeholders and delivers policy that will effect positive change for all schools, today and in the future.
      
      "NSW schools deserve continuity. Six education ministers in the past seven years has created uncertainty when we need strong leadership, vision and stability.
      
      "There's no doubt that schooling is complex and it's made even more so by competing political agendas, greater accountabilities and of course, the digital revolution.
      
      "The real challenge for policymakers today is how they will support the learning and teaching in each school. How they will support a schooling experience that is relevant and meaningful for students who live and work in the knowledge age.
      
      "Life and work in the 21st century requires a different skill-set. Along with the basics, students will need to know how to work collaboratively, think creatively and problem solve effectively in a constantly changing world.
      
      "My dealings with Mr Della Bosca indicate that he has a good understanding of the changing nature of learning in an online world, and the importance of utilising new technologies to enable this learning.
      
      "As we move towards a national education agenda, NSW will require a minister who is committed to this challenge and is willing to work collaboratively with others.
      
      "Mr Della Bosca shows a willingness to work in partnership for the benefit of all students in order to get the best outcome. He appears to understand the impact of the national agenda and the implications - positive and negative - in taking this agenda forward.
      
      "Education is too important to our state's future for it to remain a political football. If we are to kick real goals for all schools, then it's time to let Mr Della Bosca back on the field."

      Greg Whitby, executive director of schools, Catholic Diocese of Parramatta
      
      
      

• The New York Post
  
  
  • Right on reading: NYC schools finally get smart [from 1 September]
    by Diane Ravitch
    
    "Last week, Schools Chancel lor Joel Klein announced the start of a pilot program that will introduce a new way to teach reading to children in kindergarten, first grade and second grade in 10 low-performing schools. Good for him!
    
    "The program, developed by the Core Knowledge Foundation, stresses the importance of content knowledge, along with phonics and vocabulary. Most of us learned to read with some form of phonics - that is, by learning the sounds of letters and then "sounding out" new words..."
    
    "E.D. Hirsch Jr., the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation, has long maintained that children in the United States suffer from a "knowledge deficit." Children need to know lots about science, history, geography, the arts, the world and their society so that they can understand new words and new ideas. [emphasis added] The content knowledge that children acquire in the Core Knowledge reading program will enable students to learn more in science, social studies and other subjects. As children learn more about science and history, they also improve their vocabulary and comprehension.
    
    "The other aspect of the Core Knowledge reading program that is a significant difference from Balanced Literacy is its emphasis on phonics.
    
    "Forty years ago, the eminent reading expert Jeanne Chall demonstrated in her book "Learning to Read: The Great Debate" that beginning readers need to learn the connection between letters and their sounds, as well as the alphabet. A generation of research into reading has proven her right. "Decoding skills" - understanding how to sound out letters and words - should be learned early, as a foundation for lifelong reading.
    
    "Congratulations to Joel Klein for recognizing that New York City's children suffer from a "knowledge deficit." Ten of the city's elementary schools will benefit. Meanwhile, though, most of the city's children will continue to use the failed Balanced Literacy method.
    
    "We can only hope that Chancellor Klein will insist that all schools begin to teach history, geography, science, civics and the arts and do it soon."

    Diane Ravitch is a research professor at the New York University School of Education, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a trustee of the Core Knowledge Foundation (for which she receives no compensation).
    
    Full story in The New York Post at link
    
    
    
    

• The New York Times
  
  
  • Many Principals Remain at Schools Graded ‘F’
    
    When New York City’s public schools received their first report cards last fall, given a blunt A through F letter grade, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg warned of consequences for those with low marks, saying with a flourish: “Is this a wake-up call for the people who work there? You betcha.”
    
    But nearly a year after the report cards were issued, the majority of the principals who ran the 52 schools labeled as failing remain in place. And while Education Department officials said there had been an “intensive process” to review leadership in each “F” school in the months since the grades were made public, they were unable to specify how many principals had been pushed out.
    
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • White students 'avoid maths and science'
    
    Thousands of high-flying white youngsters are giving up maths and science at 16 because they think they are not clever enough to succeed at A-Level, according to a report published today.
    
    
    
    
• The Dallas Star-Telegram
  
  
  • Dallas study shows benefits of early childhood education
    by Jessamy Brown
    
    "High-quality preschool programs can help children from low-income communities be more successful in elementary school, initial results from a study show.
    
    "Researchers found that students in the Dallas school district who had received services from certain early childhood education programs outperformed their classmates from similar backgrounds, officials said.
    
    "What it told us was that first- and second-graders were not only on task but exceeded the average in math and reading. That was critical to us because we know that just because they’re poor doesn’t mean they can’t learn," said Merriott Terry, president and chief executive officer of Educational First Steps, a Dallas nonprofit organization that sponsored the study.
    
    "The study was conducted by the University of Texas at Dallas, and more complete results are expected next month..."
    
    Full story in The Dallas Star-Telegram at link
    

 

Saturday – Sunday, 6 – 7 September

Election News

• WA Electoral Commission: Official Results to date
  
  
• Current ABC Election Computer + seat-by-seat results [updated regularly]
  
  
• Seat-by-seat guide to WA election [The Sunday Times: 9:02 am Sunday]
  
  
• WA Labor, Nationals hold coalition talks [plus links to a series of articles, video and audio] [ABC News: early evening Sunday]
  
  
• Labor loses power in nail-biting WA vote [ABC News: 9:50 pm Saturday]
  
  
• Libs ready to form government [The Australian: 12:44 am (EST) Sunday]
  
  
• Hung parliament 'seems certain' [The Australian: 12:20 am (EST) Sunday]
  
  
• Door open for Liberal victory: Barnett [The West Australian: 10:35 pm Saturday]
  
  
• Hung parliament most likely outcome: Carpenter [The West Australian: 10:05 pm Saturday]
  
  
• Nats to hold balance of power [The West Australian: 9:45 pm Saturday]
  
  
• Labor shock: WA faces hung parliament as vote split [AAP / The Sunday Times: 8:30 pm Saturday]
  
  
• Grylls raises Nats-Labor coalition [The Sunday Times: 8:30 pm Saturday]
  
  
  
  Other News [still mostly on the election]
  
  
• The Sunday Times
  

  • Return to the three Rs (page 3)
    by Laurie Nowell and Anthony Deceglie
    
    “Traditional “three Rs” learning and sport will be put back at the centre of Australia’s school systems in a major declaration this week by the nation’s education ministers.
    
    “English, maths, science and physical education will regain bigger profiles in schools under the National Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians.
    
    “The communiqué will mark a return to traditional academic disciplines and way from trendy “outcomes-based” learning. The ministers will also promise a world-class curriculum that could become uniform across the nation, tougher assessment or marking regimes and access to school performance data.
    
    “The declaration sets out a return to traditional core subject areas topped by English and maths. Science subjects will include physics, chemistry and biology and humanities, and social sciences will be made up of history, geography and economics.
    
    “WA Council of State School Organisations president Rob Fry said his organisation strongly supported a push back to traditional learning.
    
    “He criticised a recent drift away from the three Rs and sport in WA schools, and said it was imperative that children in the classroom master basics such as spelling.
    
    “The new education declaration emphasises the need for Australians to become “Asia-literate” with the rise of China and India.
    
    “It will also contain commitments to improve learning for poorer children whose academic performance lags behind the poor in other Western countries, and lift the numbers of students who complete Year 12.
    
    “The nation’s education ministers hope to develop stronger partner ships between schools, business, parents and communities, and have promised to attract more skilled professionals into teaching with higher pay and better career opportunities. 
    
    “Business groups and some education experts have long called for a return to core subjects.
    
    “Business Council of Australia director of policy for education and skills Patrick Coleman said national school standards should be a priority.
    
    “There are currently 300,000 young Australians who have been left behind by the education system and 50,000 more each year leave school early,” he said.
    
    “They have been failed by the school system and government needs to take responsibility to deal with this.
    
    “We are particularly concerned about the lack of interest and take-up of advanced maths and science through the system generally.”
    
    From The Sunday Times
    
    Similar story in The Melbourne Herald Sun, plus:

    • Twenty questions: What year 12s should know [worth a look]
      
      
      
      
• The Independent
  
  
  • Teachers prepare for autumn of discontent
    by Richard Garner
    

    "Britain's biggest teachers' union is gearing for an autumn of discontent in schools by planning a further national strike over pay later this term.
    
    "Leaders of the National Union of Teachers last night unanimously backed a motion calling for a further ballot of its membership in England and Wales on the stoppage.
    
    "The move, which could spark more widespread public service action over pay, follows a one-day strike in April which resulted in two million state school pupils being sent home for the day. The union is angry that a three-year pay deal worth 7 per cent (2.45 per cent in the first year and 2.3 per cent in the following two) is being eroded by inflation – and represents a real-terms pay cut for its members..."
    
    Full story in The Independent at link
    
    Similar story on BBC News
    
    
    

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
• It's 50-50 with poll putting Alan Carpenter on the edge
  by Tony Barrass
  
  "The West Australian Government is in danger of becoming the first Labor administration to fall in more than a decade, with the latest Newspoll revealing a collapse in its primary vote and a significant anti-Labor swing in key marginal seats.
  
  "The Newspoll shows Premier Alan Carpenter's tactic of turning uranium mining into a political issue has failed to engage voters, and that a growing number of West Australians are becoming increasingly unhappy with the way he is doing his job.
  
  "The poll indicates Labor could lose at least nine seats - and office - if a 4 per cent swing detected in a number of marginal Labor seats becomes uniform across the state.
  
  "The Newspoll, the most comprehensive undertaken during the 31-day campaign, surveyed 1802 voters from Tuesday to Thursday night. It also polled an extra 383 voters in 10 marginal Labor seats across the state.
  
  "The results are seriously bad news for Labor, which earlier this week released internal polling showing it would have lost an election held last weekend.
  
  "While Labor's one-vote, one-value legislation has sparked a redrawing of the state's electoral boundaries, the Nationals and Greens continue to poll strongly.
  
  "Greens preferences may be pivotal for Labor to cling to power, while the revitalised Nationals, led by Brendon Grylls, believe they have a strong chance of securing the balance of power in the Legislative Assembly, the state's lower house.
  
  "The Newspoll, exclusive to The Weekend Australian, shows primary support for Labor has dropped during the campaign by seven points to 35 per cent.
  
  "This is seven points lower than the 41.9 per cent Geoff Gallop secured at the February 2005 election when he beat Colin Barnett, who has re-emerged as the Opposition Leader.
  
  "By comparison, support for the Liberals remains unchanged, at 37per cent, over the same period.
  
  "Support for the Nationals, on 6per cent, and the Greens, up two points to 12 per cent, has changed little, but primary support for independents has risen by four points to 10 per cent.
  
  "In Perth, the major parties are neck-and-neck on 38 per cent each, but in the bush - where Labor is desperate to hold seats such as Albany and Geraldton - the ALP's primary support at 26 per cent is only marginally ahead of the Nationals on 23 per cent, and well behind the Liberals on 37 per cent.
  
  "On a two-party-preferred basis, Labor and the combined Liberal-Nationals are both on 50 per cent of the vote. In last month's Newspoll, that figure was 51-49 in favour of Labor. Most worryingly for Mr Carpenter, Newspoll's additional analysis in the 10 most marginal Labor seats reveals an average two-party Labor vote of 48 per cent. Newspoll analysts believe if that 4 per cent swing were uniform across all marginal seats, Labor would lose up to nine seats - and government.
  
  "Voters are turning off Mr Carpenter, with more people unhappy with the way he is doing his job. His satisfaction levels are down seven points to 42 per cent, while the proportion of dissatisfied voters has risen markedly by eight points to 48 per cent. This is a big drop from the 63 per cent approval registered by Mr Carpenter this time last year. Support for Mr Barnett - considering he has been in the job for a month - is strong. Some 40 per cent of voters are satisfied with the way he is tackling his job, with 43 per cent unhappy. Seventeen per cent are uncommitted. Mr Barnett, an education and resources minister in the Court government, had a 36 per cent satisfaction rating in 2005.
  
  "On who would make a better premier, Mr Carpenter is still the preferred candidate, 48 per cent to Mr Barnett's 35 per cent. The gap between the pair is closing. Again, a considerable minority of 17 per cent is undecided.
  
  "The Greens may be pivotal in helping the Government cling to power. Newspoll predicts the Greens will get 12 per cent of the primary vote, up from 7.6 per cent at the February 2005 election.
  
  "One intriguing aspect of the poll surrounds Labor's decision to use uranium mining as an election issue. While the tactic was a push by Labor to secure Green preferences, the public refused to buy Labor's scare campaign, which painted ridiculous scenarios of the state opening up nuclear waste dumps. Forty-eight per cent back Mr Carpenter's ban, but 38 per cent do not, and 14 per cent are undecided.
  
  "Fifty-seven per cent of respondents said Labor would win the election, down four points from the start of the campaign, while only 27 per cent of voters said Mr Barnett would win."
  
  From The Weekend Australian at link
  
  
• WA Newspoll
  
  
  
• Comment
  From the start to finish, a disaster
  by Tony Barrass
  
  "It is sweet irony that the one person who has been responsible for inflicting so much damage on the Carpenter Government may well end up being the person who could have saved it.
  
  "Brian Burke, the master strategist, the manipulator, the magician who can make things happen because he "might know someone", has been banished at the behest of a Premier who last year threatened to resign if Labor did not kick the disgraced former premier out of the party. He is to be congratulated for that. But boy, doesn't it show.
  
  "Labor's campaign has lacked any great strategic oomph. In short, it has been a disaster. It started off badly when Carpenter called an early election and went downhill from there. It has been cynical, negative and tactically stupid. Instead of trying to engage voters, Labor has managed to alienate them. Newspoll shows that if Labor hangs on, it will be only just. And what effect headlines of the crisis in Labor ranks in NSW will have on today's vote is anyone's guess..."
  
  "We could be in for a long wait. The electoral commission does not count on Sunday, so when things get interesting on Saturday night and it comes down to the wire, we'll all have to wait until Monday to see who's premier.

  "Only in WA."
  
  Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
  
  

• Rivals urge voters to see the contrast
  
  
  
• Campaign to forget for Labor Party
  by Peter Van Onselen
  
  "The political bastardry of the NSW Labor Right knows no bounds. Rather than wait until after the West Australian election to knock off Premier Morris Iemma, it did it the day before polling day.
  
  "Granted chaos in the Labor ranks in Sydney is a long way from Perth, but it is hardly helpful for Alan Carpenter, who was already struggling to win enough support to retain power. A poor final week of campaigning has capped off a poor second term in government, and a surging Liberal Party has made this election too close to call. The betting markets continue to strongly favour a Labor victory, but Newspoll has the contest on a knife's edge..."
  
  Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
  
  
  
• East, west, it's a mess
  by Jennifer Hewett, National affairs correspondent
  
  "So much for the shiny new Labor brand in Canberra. In the states, Kevin Rudd's comrades are managing to cover the ALP image with ever larger dollops of viscous black mud. The abruptly ex-premier Morris Iemma didn't plan on ending up as the most prominent casualty of his own planned ministerial purge yesterday. But the spectacular implosion of the once feared, once famed NSW Right party faction is a reflection of the incredible debacle that now passes for elected government in the state...
  
  "It's a remarkable indictment that the Carpenter Government should be in such difficulties given the state economy and the money pouring into the budget. By comparison, NSW Labor's woes have been like watching a bad play that just won't end, even though the audience begs for release..."
  
  "But the unlikely resurrection of Colin Barnett as Liberal leader the day before the election was called demonstrated how vulnerable the Government was to even modestly competent opposition.
  
  "Iemma said he thought Carpenter would win today. The WA Premier will be hoping he's a better judge of that than he was of his own survival prospects."
  
  Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
  
  
  
• Editorial
  Our largest state reeling in circles
  
  Changes promise little to reverse rust-bucket status
  
  "As a former garbage collector and green keeper, NSW's new Premier, Nathan Rees, should understand recycling. So does the long-suffering public of Australia's largest state, who will recognise yesterday's leadership change for what it was: the recycling of an old card trick. It worked once before, in August 2005, when the backroom boys of the NSW Labor machine installed Morris Iemma as premier after the resignation of Bob Carr. It was a job Mr Iemma had never sought, he admitted yesterday. Nineteen months later, Labor took its "new" team to an election, relying on the strategic expertise of Mark Arbib and Mike Kaiser. At every turn, the campaign distanced Mr Iemma from the Carr years. Light on policy substance but heavy on political spin, its slogan was "more to do but heading in the right direction". While voters were desperate for a change, the fact that Labor won a historic fourth term reflected the fact that a well-funded, slick campaign made Mr Iemma look marginally less incompetent than the hapless former Opposition leader Peter Debnam..."
  
  
  
  
• The Age
  
  
  • School shake-up, with fries
    by Farrah Tomazin and Bridie Smith
    
    The State Government thinks cash-strapped public schools should look to business for extra money, but others fear this could widen the gap between rich and poor.
    
    "Once, school was about bringing in an apple for the teacher. Now, at St Albans Meadows Primary School at least, the goal is to bring in an Apple for each student — preferably from a generous patron in the business world.
    
    "But when principal Stephen Crockford took this proposal to a local computer company just over 18 months ago, hoping to secure a deal to supply the school's grade 5 and 6 students with their own laptops, he came away with little more than a discount.
    
    "St Albans Meadows now subsidises the scheme itself — charging parents just $1 a school day, or $200, for their child's laptop while the school pays $400. And although Crockford won't reveal exactly how much it is costing, he does admit that had he been able to save that money, he could have ploughed it into other areas, such as smaller class sizes, classroom aides or learning programs for students.
    
    "It's a familiar tale in the world of public education, where a lack of funding forces schools to rely on fund-raising or creative rebalancing of their budgets to make ends meet.
    
    "But under sweeping changes announced by Premier John Brumby this week, much of this could change. As part of a statewide shake-up, private companies will be asked to play a greater role in public education — partnering schools through financial contributions, "in kind" donations, student mentoring or classroom programs. Others will be asked to help resource schools in disadvantaged suburbs or provide vocational programs in areas where there are skills shortages.
    
    "The way schools are managed is also set to be re-evaluated, with the Government considering the US experience of "charter schools" that are publicly funded but governed by municipalities, companies or individuals.
    
    "It is all part of a broader push to get private companies, and indeed the rest of the community, to stake a bigger claim in the school system. Gone are the days when schools were stand-alone entities: for student performance to improve, Brumby says, businesses, community groups and philanthropic organisations need to help them pursue academic excellence.
    
    "But is this just the thin edge of the wedge: a move towards the increased privatisation of yet another public system? Or even a sign of the Government abdicating some of its own funding responsibility for its schools?" ...
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Criminal link to WA Labor donation
    
    As Western Australians head to the polls today, the WA Labor Party is under fresh scrutiny over its links to lobbyists and the acceptance of a donation from a businessman convicted of conspiring to supply over $100,000 worth of drugs... WA shadow attorney-general Christian Porter said Premier Alan Carpenter must reveal why the donation was accepted and whether it bought influence.
    

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This page last updated 7 September, 2008 11:05 PM