Monday 29 September

Tuesday 30 September

Wednesday 1 October

Thursday 2 October

Friday 3 October

Saturday – Sunday, 4 – 5 October

Monday 29 September

• The Guardian
  
  
  • Why don't men want to teach?
    by John Crace
    
    "Primary schools have long been an almost entirely man-free zone, but research published last week suggests that secondary schools could soon be heading the same way. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency 23.8% of those qualifying to become teachers in 2006-07 were men - a fall of 1.5% on the previous year and the lowest figure over the past five. Despite repeated government drives to recruit more male teachers, men just aren't that interested.
    
    "John Bangs, assistant secretary of the National Union of Teachers, believes many men have been put off teaching in primary schools - often regarded as a woman's job anyway - by an increasing vigilance over child abuse. "People have become much more suspicious of men who want to work with young children," he says. "These perceptions are absurd, but men are reluctant to be stigmatised in this way."
    
    "The problem in secondary schools is less clear-cut. "We've got into a vicious cycle," says John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. "As more women started coming in to the profession, there were fewer male teachers to be role models."
    
    "Not everyone will be broken-hearted by this decline, though. While it has been a mantra in education circles that boys need more male role models, a report last year for the Department for Children, Schools and Families suggested that male teachers were often much nastier to boys than girls, while women treated both sexes equally.
    
    "Either way, it's possible these statistics are already out of date. What with the squeeze on private-sector jobs, it has been reported that record numbers of men have been making inquiries about teacher training. And the City boys have led the way. Let's just hope they don't teach maths."
    
    From The Guardian at link

• The Australian
  
  
  • Money alone 'will not improve literacy, numeracy skills'
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Schools should set performance targets for students and report them annually, with the head of Sydney's Catholic schools arguing this focuses efforts on improving literacy and numeracy skills.
    
    "The executive director of schools in the Sydney archdiocese, Kelvin Canavan, said that simply increasing funding would not improve basic skills, and a more strategic approach was required.
    
    "The Rudd Government's push for schools to report on student achievement is being resisted by the teachers' unions and some state governments.
    
    "Brother Canavan said that since 1999 the Catholic schools in Sydney had been setting literacy and numeracy targets, which are reported annually, with schools setting their own targets for students since 2000.
    
    "The system's literacy and numeracy results had improved every year and schools had set challenging targets for student achievement which, in most cases, were met. "Target setting helps teachers focus on the needs of individual students," Brother Canavan said. "It supports school organisation and allocation of resources. The targets are specific, measurable, realistic and time-related." ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Historians 'neglecting role as storytellers'
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "History has been "dulled down" by focusing exclusively on analysing evidence and argument, with historians neglecting their role as storytellers.
    
    "Award-winning historian Peter Cochrane is urging his colleagues to look to the narrative techniques of literature to recreate the past in a vivid and lively way.
    
    "Cochrane, an inaugural winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History, said historians should be able to cross freely into the territory of novelists and poets to use their techniques of plot, character, and imagination.
    
    "We spend a great deal of our time on the intricacies of analysis, evidence evaluation and argument while we tend to neglect the literary side of history writing," he says in a speech prepared for this week's Australian History Teachers Association annual conference in Brisbane.
    
    "This, I think, is an old, ingrained prejudice. Historians tend to see themselves as social scientists, as scholars whose job it is to 'write up' or report on their findings, rather than as writers whose job it is to create or imagine the past, to captivate anaudience.
    
    "We should be crossing boundaries and borrowing what we can from fiction, or at least from fiction writers ... in terms of structuring and vivifying a story." ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Thai lightning strike kills school tour leaders
    
    Two Australians have been killed by a lightning strike while leading a school group on a tour of Thailand. Perth teacher Greg Crombie, 41, died instantly, and youth worker, Tom McGuinness, 19, died later in hospital, after lightning on Saturday struck a tree they were sheltering under during a storm.
    
    
    
    
• Channel 7 News
  
  
  • PM announces boost in nursing education places
    
    Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced almost 1,100 new higher education places for nursing.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Social skills 'vital' at school
    by Bridie Smith
    
    "Learning social and emotional skills at school is just as important as literacy and numeracy and should be included in the upcoming national curriculum, a University of Melbourne education expert claims.
    
    "A study of more than 11,000 primary and secondary school students by Professor Michael Bernard revealed more than 40% of respondents had poor social and emotional skills, with two-thirds saying they were not doing their best school-work and 33% saying they're stressed.
    
    "Professor Bernard, from the university's Graduate School of Education, said this could have a significant impact on students' performance and engagement in the classroom.
    
    "He said it was vital that the national curriculum, being drafted for students in kindergarten to year 12, spell out the social and emotional skills to be taught in each year of schooling.
    
    "If these skills are delayed it puts children at a disadvantage and makes teaching and learning virtually impossible," he said yesterday.
    
    "He said symptoms of poor social and emotional skills included low self-esteem, stress, anxiety, feelings of loneliness, anger and underachievement at school.
    
    "Teaching students how to deal with stress, make friends and understand their emotions could also see bullying rates fall, with the survey revealing that almost half of students who bully had delayed social and emotional skills.
    
    "It's as important, if not more important, as literacy and numeracy because without social and emotional skills, students aren't going to be as literate and numerate as they could be," he said.
    
    "Results showed students who had high levels of social and emotional wellbeing were well-connected to their school, community and home life, which maximised their academic potential. However, Professor Bernard said: "The students who are not functioning well in the classroom — those who are getting into trouble or bullying or (are) stressed — about 70 or 80% of them don't have these skills."
    
    "The national study investigated the social and emotional wellbeing of prep to year 12 students from 80 schools between 2003 and 2007."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Busy children shown to do better
    
    New research into the lives of middle-class children bucks conventional wisdom they are an over-scheduled and stressed-out generation. It shows participation in organised activities is linked to positive outcomes in school, emotional development, family life and behaviour. The children most at risk had no activities at all.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Net gain is students' loss
      
      "While NSW argues over the costs of installing and maintaining Rudd's education revolution, the severe teacher shortage in Western Australia and South Australia, which will soon hit the other states, doesn't rate a mention. Rather than fund teacher training to a high level and pay respectable professional wages to attract quality teachers, it seems the answer is to plunk each child in front of Google - no actual teaching needed. There's the real "education revolution".
      
      

      Georgia Phillips, Stanwell Park
      
      
      

• Buffalo [NY] Business First
  
  
  • Money, education and school guides
    by Gary Burns
    
    "No part of our lives will escape undamaged by the catastrophic weather currently ripping through the financial system, and that includes the education of our children. There just won’t be enough money down the line to satisfy school systems that are already feeling the squeeze. This means that these systems – public and private – are going to have to learn to make do with less, once the taxpaying public has emptied its pockets to fill the hole dug by the wizards in the financial sector.
    
    "Yeah, even the cheeriest scenarios suggest that we’re going to be in a financial vise for years to come, thanks to the geniuses who BS’ed us into the current mess. Education is just one item on a long list of important things that are going to find themselves scaled back or gone altogether. You could also mention medical and scientific research, legislation providing health insurance for all and maintenance of the nation’s highways.
    
    "We don’t even want to think about the matter of the financial meltdown’s impact on your own retirement, the prospect of which was last seen disappearing over the distant horizon.
    
    "Today, though, we’re going to remain focused on education, a field where it’s tough enough to find success, even in the best of times. (And that’s assuming that your goal as an educator is to better the lives of the students and not to mark time between long summer vacations until you retire at age 55)..."
    
    Full story at Buffalo Business First at link [but ONLY for PAID print subscribers]
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • Tory teaching offer to ex-troops
    
    Ex-servicemen and women could get free teacher training under a Conservative government, the shadow schools secretary will announce.
    
    
    
  • Children's web watchdog launched
    
    A new internet watchdog has been launched to help protect children from "harmful" web content, such as cyber-bullying and violent video games.
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • For Kids' Sake, Power to Fire Teachers Crucial
    by Jay Mathews
    
    "Sarah Hayes, principal of the KIPP DC:KEY Academy, realized that two new teachers were not working out. Their résumés and recommendations had been good. They were nice people. But their classes were disorganized, their standards low. Efforts to help them improve had little effect.
    
    "If KEY were a traditional school, Hayes's only reasonable option would have been to mentor the teachers, note her dissatisfaction on their evaluations and recommend that they not be kept after a two-year probation. That is the way it goes in most school systems. Staffing rules, tenure agreements and low expectations tend to favor weak teachers unless they do something awful.
    
    "But KEY is a public charter school, one of many in the District that do not have such rules. Hayes was able to get the teachers out of her middle school by Christmas and replace them with proven talents, who were freed from other duties at KEY because of flexibility allowed such schools.
    
    "In a traditional school, the teachers' classes would have suffered for the rest of the school year. But because of the quick change in instructors, KEY maintained its record for the highest achievement in the city for impoverished children: Ninety-two percent proficient in math at the end of that school year, compared with 32 percent in traditional D.C. schools, and 57 percent proficient in reading, compared with 34 percent in traditional schools..."
    
    Full story in The Washington Post at link
    

Tuesday 30 September

• The West Australian
  

  • Cap private school fees or forfeit funding (page 9)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “Fees would be capped at private schools which received any government funding and schools which relinquished funding could charge whatever they wanted under a radical plan by Australia’s main principals’ group to redistribute taxpayers’ money to public schools.
    
    “Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Blair told a national conference in Perth the Federal Government needed to completely overhaul school funding when it reviewed the current model, which will stay in place until 2012.
    
    “Mr Blair proposed a new model in which there would be three types of schools: independent, government supported and government.
    
    “Under his model, independent schools would relinquish all government funding in return for freedom from government reporting requirements and the ability to levy unlimited fees.
    
    “Private schools that wanted to continue to receive government funding would remain accountable and should be forced to cap their fees, he told the conference last week.
    
    “Mr Blair said if some independent schools relinquished their government funding, it could put an extra $400 million back in the “education bucket”, which should be redistributed to public education.
    
    “He said private schools that enrolled students who had parents with the capacity to pay high fees should not also receive large amounts in government funding. It was unreasonable for well-resourced schools to receive millions of dollars a year, when some Northern Territory schools were without furniture.
    
    “Putting a cap on fees at government-supported schools would “iron out the almost abhorrent variation in resources being given to one student versus another on the basis of their birth”, he said.
    
    “If your don’t impose something like a fee cap, all you’re going to do is continue to have a social divide based on economic capacity and I just don’t think that’s the kind of Australia that we want to see happen.”
    
    “Private schools are now funded by the Federal Government using a socioeconomic status index which links students’ home addresses and census data to build a profile of their parents’ financial background.
    
    “Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard has pledged this model will continue for private schools until 2012 and has flagged extending that to public schools. Public schools are now mostly funded by State governments, based on the number of students.
    
    “But Mr Blair said it was not enough for the Federal Government to tinker with the current funding model. “We need to see a major overhaul of school resourcing in this country to bring it more in line within the way schools are funded internationally,” he said.
    
    “It (the proposal) is a deliberately provocative idea but all we are hearing about is a yet to be defined SES review around the current system and I’d like to see some dialogue around changing the funding system as a whole.”
    
    “Association of Independent Schools of WA executive director Valerie Gould said she could not comment on ASPA’s proposal without seeing it. But she noted that schools which now charge high fees already received very little government funding and those which charged low fees received more funding.”
    
    From The West Australian

    
    
  • Inside Cover: "What a difference a day makes..."
    
    
    • Yesterday
      
      Constable's degrees of separation
      
      "One person standing out from her Cabinet colleagues is new Education Minister Liz Constable, an Independent Liberal who put in her lot with Colin Barnett before the State election.
      
      "While most of the ministers simply have their university degrees listed along the lines of BA or BEc without any reference to the name of the granting institution, we are reminded that Constable is a genuine Ivy Leaguer after having collected her Master of Education from Boston's Harvard University.
      
      "Her qualifications are listed as including an MA(Sydney), MEd(Harvard) and PhD(UWA).
      
      "That should put the wind up those whinging chalkies."
      
      
      
    • IC editor Neale Prior then received a flurry of emails, including this one from PLATO:
      
      Dear Mr Prior
      
      Just for info, the vast majority of the many hundreds of teachers represented by PLATO were overjoyed at the appointment, FINALLY, of a COMPETENT education minister.
      
      Your piece also got a bit of an airing on the PLATO Forum.
      
      Regards
      
      PLATO Webmaster
      
      
      
    • Today, he sang a different song:
      
      “This column’s editor has not has such a violent response from teachers since he wrote the following  rhyming couplet of lamentation to a beautiful girl who was leaving his suburban primary school to live in semi-rural Maida Vale:
      
      Why don’t you stay in the city
      Cuz life on the farm is so shi%@#.

      “The latest outrage came when our item yesterday about new Education Minister Liz Constable’s list of remarkable qualifications ended by suggesting they “should put the wind up those whinging chalkies”. Several teachers pointed out that Constable’s credentials were most welcome. “All teachers I know are celebrating the fact that we finally have a Minister who not only has deep knowledge and extensive experience in education, but actually respects teachers and the job they do,” Albany teacher Barbara Jeremic said.

      “Ocean Reef teacher Patrick Whalen said Constable would not be hoodwinked by the bureaucratic ideologues at the Curriculum Council and the Department of Education and Training.”

      From The West Australian [29-30 September]
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • Barnett Government's first Cabinet meeting
    
    The Premier Colin Barnett has announced plans for a new Department to oversee WA's entire public service.
    
    "The reason for doing that, is to do all that is possible to restore the independence, and the professionalism and the integrity of WA's public service, so no longer under the Premier's department but a separate agency," he said.
    
    Related story in The Sunday Times online / Perthnow at link
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Researchers sniff a clue to kids' ADHD problem
    by Chris Fulton
    
    "Scratch-and-sniff technology has gone beyond perfumed magazine ads, and is being used to improve the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.
    
    "The smell test was used by Melbourne researchers in a study of 88 Australian children aged six to 16 years after they discovered a link between olfaction and ADHD. According to team member and neuropsychiatrist Warrick Brewer from Melbourne University, they found children with ADHD could detect certain common smells such as chocolate and pizza.
    
    "But they had problems in putting a name to the smell when using only their right nostril," Professor Brewer said.
    
    "Writing in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the team said the tendency for one nostril to be worse than the other in ADHD children was caused by under-development of the part of their brain used to identify and name smells.
    
    "Although a lot of the work previously done on olfaction suggested we would find this link, I was very surprised to find our results were so clear," Melbourne University child psychiatrist Alasdair Vance said.
    
    "He suggested that not only could their smell test help tease out ADHD in children, but it may also help pinpoint which children would respond to ADHD medications.
    
    "ADHD is a condition in which three to five of every 100 Australian children exhibit symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity, distraction, and aggression.
    
    "The smell test promises to streamline the time-consuming process of diagnosing the condition, which requires vast amounts of information about a child's behaviour from parents, teachers and doctors. ADHD diagnosis is made even harder by the fact that the condition is often confused with schizophrenia, severe depression and other emotional disorders.
    
    "Researcher Patrick McGorry -- who is not part of the research team -- said: "Finding such easily measurable abnormalities can really help us throw more light on why children have such behavioural conditions".
    
    "The research team will now try to determine whether the smell test can be used to distinguish between various emotional disorders and the genes that lead to their occurrence in children.
    
    "We've found that subjects with schizophrenia, for example, experienced greater difficulty with identifying a certain subset of odours," Professor Brewer said. "We'd like to see if this information can help us to determine the candidate genes that may be linked to each of the various emotional disorders."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • New uni nurse courses spread unevenly
    
    Kevin Rudd has made good on an election promise to create 1000 new university spots for nurse trainees each year, announcing 1094 positions to start next year...
    
    Under the plan, NSW will have 310 extra places, Victoria 280, Queensland 110, Western Australia 155, South Australia 135, the Northern Territory 50 and the ACT 54. Tasmania will receive no places. And Queensland's allocation of 110 -- the fifth-largest -- comes despite it being the nation's third-largest state.
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Not a one-way street
    
    Closing the indigenous gap will benefit wider economy

    In a nation as wealthy as this, essential human decency dictates that rectifying the Third World conditions in which many indigenous Australians live is our most pressing social priority. Nobody should underestimate the costs, as the Northern Territory intervention process demonstrates.
    
    

  • Op Ed
    The parent trap
    
    The release of the Productivity Commission's draft report on paid parental leave follows Fiona Stanley's comments that up to 20 per cent of Australians "don't have the capacity to be a parent".

    According to Stanley, bad parenting is caused by the fact that as a society we don't value parents enough. Her evidence for this claim is that Australia is one of the few developed countries without a taxpayer-funded paid maternity leave scheme. But Australian mums and dads aren't suffering under a miserly government; we already spend far more than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average on families.
    
    
    

  • The Wry Side
    Future's on the line
    
    If all parents' perceptions of their children's intelligence were plotted on the one chart, there would be a long flat line leading to a skyscraper at the 98th percentile. Rarely do you talk to a parent who concedes their child is anything other than the next generation's Stephen Hawking, Garry Kasparov or, er, struggling for egghead Australian reference, Barry Jones.
    
    But recently, and for the first time, Australian parents, at least those with a child in years 3, 5, 7 or 9, were provided with objective, unarguable data on exactly where their kid sits compared with all others their age across the country.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Stories bring the past to life
      
      "Peter Cochrane is on the right track ("Historians neglecting role as story-tellers”, 29/9). Story-telling is how many cultures have preserved vital knowledge.
      
      "I was impelled to pursue history and become a teacher through at least one good storyteller at school.
      
      "There is a history of everything; let’s share in the telling and in as interesting a way as is reasonable."
      
      Phil Pryor, Turramurra, NSW
  
  
  
  
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Principal rues loss of honour courses
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor
    
    "The principal of the top selective school in the state fears the Higher School Certificate will be dumbed down when distinction courses for elite students are phased out from next year.
    
    "Larissa Treskin, the principal of James Ruse Agricultural High School, said she was dismayed at the decision to cut distinction courses, which top students study through university and which count towards their HSC and university entry score.
    
    "This year 93 students are enrolled in one of the three distinction courses, comparative literature, cosmology and philosophy, at a cost to the NSW Board of Studies of up to $279,000.
    
    "The board confirmed it will no longer offer comparative literature next year or the remaining two courses by 2010.
    
    "It is proposing to offer elite students the opportunity to apply for early entry into university courses, which would not count towards a student's university admission's index. The cost to students and viability of the proposed alternative to universities is yet to be negotiated..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Plaintive parents
      
      "It's good to know that students busy with many activities do not suffer stress ("Children shown to thrive leading busy lives", September 29). But what about their parents?"
      
      Ron Hinde, East Lindfield
      
      
      
      
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Male teachers are crucial role models for boys, suggests research
    Staff and agencies
    
    Survey reports that boys find male primary school teachers more approachable and an inspiration to work harder
    
    "Male primary school teachers are vital role models for boys, new research suggests.
    
    "Almost half of men say that a male teacher has been a fundamental role model in their life, a survey commissioned by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) found.
    
    "The poll of more than 800 men looked at the impact of male primary teachers in boys' development.
    
    "It found that more than a third (35%) felt that having a male primary teacher challenged them to work harder at school.
    
    "Those questioned also said that male teachers were more approachable. Half (50%) were more likely to approach a male teacher about bullying, a similar proportion (49%) were more likely to approach them about problems with school work, 29% went to them with problems at home and 24% were more likely to ask them questions about puberty..."
    
    Full story in The Guardian at link
    
    Similar story in The Independent

 

Wednesday 1 October

• The Australian
  
  
  • Uni plan to teach basics of English
    by Luke Slattery
    
    "Concern over the dire state of English proficiency among first-year students has compelled Monash University to introduce a remedial writing course focused on "language mechanics", such as basic grammar and punctuation.
    
    "Baden Eunson, lecturer at the university's School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, and convenor of the new course, said roughly 90 per cent of his first-year students could not identify a noun.
    
    "If you ask them to identify adjectives and other parts of a sentence only about 1 per cent can manage," he said. "It is not really a surprise as only about 20 per cent of English teachers understand basic grammar."
    
    "Mr Eunson described his remedial program as a US-style "freshman composition course, mainly covering material that should have been covered in school but wasn't". [emphasis added]
    
    "He bought into the debate about the choice of Sydney University educator and critical literacy advocate Peter Freebody to write the framing document for the national English curriculum, predicting that there would be little improvement in the literacy of school leavers.
    
    "The critical literacy approach hammered out by Professor Freebody and his colleague Allan Luke promoted a socio-political view of the world at the expense of basic literacy," he said. "It also introduced a theoretical jargon that disenchants many students."
    
    "He pointed to a 2003 study by the Economic Society of Australia which found that school leavers "are functionally illiterate because standards in Australian high schools have collapsed". [emphasis added]
    
    "Mr Eunson said their inadequacies emerged clearly when they were asked to hand write answers to test questions, to perform without the aid of spell-checkers. "I think we'll see more and more of these university-level courses springing up to do the schools' work for them," he said.
    
    "His comments come after a Monash colleague, Caron Dann, told The Times Higher Education Supplement that the majority of her 500 students in communication were strangers to English grammar.
    
    "She said: "Marking essays, I discovered the majority had no idea how to use apostrophes, or any other punctuation for that matter; that random spelling was in and sentence construction out. About half thought plurals were formed by adding an apostrophe-s, as in 'apple's' and 'banana's'.
    
    "Marking the final exam, it emerged that few could write neatly: from bold childlike printing to spidery scribblings in upper case, it is obvious that handwriting is a dying art."
    
    "The synopsis for Mr Eunson's new academic writing program, to be introduced next year, explains that students "will study techniques of planning and idea generation. We will acquire a solid foundation in grammar, punctuation, spelling, usage and style."
    
    "Swinburne University has conceded it will test the literacy skills of domestic and international students in 2009, because of concern about standards."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed / Blog
    Generals of classroom warfare
    by Janet Albrechtsen
    
    "Hasn't the belief that private equals evil and public equals good long passed its use-by date? Apparently not for the troglodytes in the teachers unions who are still entrenched in a class war that no longer interests the rest of the community.
    
    "At the September 12 meeting of the TAFE Teachers Association council, some union warriors requested “as a matter of urgency” that an important issue be resolved.
    
    "Is it acceptable, they asked, for a union representative to send their children to a private school or to a private provider competing with TAFE? Is it acceptable for a union representative to have once taught in a private school or worked for a private provider that competes with TAFE? You get the gist. If you have come in contact with private education, you have been tainted with evil.
    
    "Fortunately, the general-secretary of the NSW Teachers Federation, John Irving, is not interested in these archaic union battles. The point man for policy in the NSW Teachers Federation told The Australian on Friday that he is “not interested in vetting people” on the basis of which school their children attend.
    
    "Instead of drafting a policy precluding people who send their children to private schools, Irving is thinking about asking those who seek positions within the NSW teachers union to sign a declaration that they have actively demonstrated a commitment to public education. If that comes to pass, many of those who sign such a declaration will be committing perjury if they sign. Why? Because many within the teachers unions have worked tirelessly to obstruct reform and improvement within public education. And the irony is that the obstinacy of these white-collar educational diehards against reform of public education will lead only to a greater exodus of students from public schools to private schools..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
• Poor schools don't spell poor results
  by Jessica Irvine, Economics Correspondent
  
  "A Treasury study has proved what many parents already know to be true: the quality of a school can have an important impact on students' academic performance.
  
  "But the findings, released today, counter fatalistic arguments that students in poor schools will always under-perform when measured against schools in wealthier areas.
  
  "These results provide some evidence in favour of the proposition that socioeconomic status does not determine a school's destiny," say the report's authors, Andrew Leigh, an economist from the Australian National University on secondment to the Treasury, and Hector Thompson.
  
  "There appears to be considerable variation between schools of a similar socioeconomic status."
  
  "The study compared school performance against socioeconomic status - the occupation, education and income of households within a 2.5-kilometre radius of the school - in primary schools in Western Australia, the only state where test-score performance is reported for all government schools.
  
  "It found that 70 per cent of the variation in schools' performances could be explained by family background. However, the remaining 30 per cent was driven by other factors such as facilities, the principal or teaching quality.
  
  "Because the socioeconomic status of a school did not entirely determine education outcomes, students at risk of falling behind the state average could be pulled up by a good school.
  
  "This highlights that for students who are at risk of not meeting the benchmark, being in a better-performing school can make a difference," the report says.
  
  "The results appear to support the Federal Government's push to have school results published. "This knowledge is important in assisting governments, principals, teachers, parents and the community to improve the performance of all schools."
  
  "The study also found a higher degree of persistence in high-performing schools. Schools that over-performed in one year were also found to be "extremely likely" to over-perform the next year. Schools that over-performed in one grade were also likely to do so in other grades too.
  
  "This suggests that it is likely that this residual component of school performance captures something important about a school," the report says."
  
  From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
  
  
  
• Astronomer announced as new chief scientist
  by Mark Davis, Political Correspondent
  
  "Penny Sackett has spent her professional career pondering galactic structures, searching for extrasolar planets and divining the presence of dark matter.
  
  "Now she is coming back to earth.
  
  "The Federal Government announced yesterday it had appointed the American-born astronomer as Australia's chief scientist and was upgrading the post to a full-time position..."
  
  "And how do we reach and engage the youngest Australians to ensure that we have the scientific and technical skills that we need in this global and changing marketplace?" [she asks]. [emphasis added]
  
  "Professor Sackett has a doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Pittsburgh and did post-doctoral research at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton..."
  
  Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
  
  Similar story in The Australian
  
  
  
• The Age
  
  
  • Tired children face health problems
    
    Australian children are regularly running short on sleep, which could lead to poor health, including obesity, new research suggests. A national study of sleeping habits has shown older teenagers in particular are missing out on sleep, with late Sunday nights a major factor.
    
    Very similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald; related story Lack of sleep linked to teenage obesity in The Australian

 

Thursday 2 October

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Study case for teacher pay lure to poor areas (page 7)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "A new study which shows schools with good teachers and facilities boost academic performance has sparked calls to pay teachers more to work in disadvantaged schools.
    
    "The Treasury study, released yesterday, compared school performance against socioeconomic status - the occupation, education and income of students' parents - using data from WA State primary schools in reading, writing, spelling and maths tests last year. WA is the only State which publishes test results for government schools on a central website.
    
    "It found some schools in disadvantaged areas that would be expected to under-perform did much better than expected measured against schools of a similar socioeconomic status.
    
    "Report authors Hector Thompson and Andrew Leigh, an economist from the Australian National University on secondment to the Treasury, said the results backed the proposition that socioeconomic status alone did not determine a school's destiny.
    
    "This highlights that for students who are at risk of not meeting the benchmark, being in a better performing school can make a difference," they wrote.
    
    "The report said permanent facilities, the principal or the teachers were factors which affected whether a school performed better or worse than its socioeconomic status would predict.
    
    "WA Primary Principals Association president Stephen Breen said other research showed that teachers' influence accounted for about 30 per cent of the variation in students' performance. He said teachers should be offered incentives to teach in disadvantaged areas.
    
    "Mr Breen said most people acknowledged that good teachers should be rewarded but the problem was finding a way to do that.
    
    "University of WA education dean Mill Louden said good schools were those with lots of good teachers.
    
    "We need to have more skilful teachers," he said.
    
    "You should pay teachers more if you feel you can securely demonstrate they are much better teachers. Now that's very hard to do."
    
    "Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said she was working with education ministers on a national partnership agreement that would improve rewards, incentives and career structures to ensure the attraction and retention of quality teachers."
    
    From the West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Jobs shunned as more turn to uni studies (page 14)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "The number of applications to study at WA universities has risen for the first time in five years as more people shun jobs in favour of qualifications in an apparent sign that the lure of WA's economic boom is losing its shine.
    
    "Preliminary figures from the Tertiary Institutions Service Centre, which processes all applications to the State's four public universities, show the number of people who have applied for a university place next year has risen almost 4 per cent on the same time last year, from 14,856 to 15,436.
    
    "The rise comes after a drop of 5 per cent last year and falls of 4 per cent, 8 per cent and 7 per cent in the tree preceding years.
    
    "University of WA student services director Wayne Betts said the drop-off in applications in previous years had been attributed to the lure of well-paid jobs created by the State's booming economy.
    
    "Perhaps the novelty of the boom might have gradually worn off, causing people not to make rash decisions to go chasing jobs but to keep a longer term view," he said.
    
    "TISC chief executive Steve Hoath said the number of school leavers applying this year to study in 2009 had dropped slightly, from 9763 last year to 9745 this year. But the number of mature age applicants had leapt almost 12 per cent, rising from 5093 to 5691.
    
    "He said the figures would change as late applications were received and a true picture would not be known until the end of the year. But the downward trend of the past four years had been reversed.
    
    "I think it's still fair to say there appears to be an increase in the number of non-school leavers for on-time applications," he said.
    
    "Murdoch University, which has a big intake of mature-age students, saw a 5 per cent drop in the number of prospective students who put Murdoch as their first choice for 2009.
    
    "But deputy vice-chancellor Gary Martin said this was expected to change as some mature age applicants lodged applications in the next few days.
    
    "The decrease was also offset by a record number of 1400 students entering the university in the 2008 mid-year round, 500 up on last year's mid-year intake.
    
    "Professor Martin said demand had dropped for courses such as chiropractic science, mass communication and media. But students had shown strong interest in nursing, conservation and wildlife biology and a new course that merged early childhood education with primary school teaching.
    
    "Mr Betts said application numbers were up almost 5 per cent at UWA. There was strong interest in a new primary school teaching course and applications were up slightly for secondary teaching. Computer science courses, in which numbers have dwindled in recent years, had also seen increased demand.
    
    "Separate figures were not available from Curtin or Edith Cowan universities."
    
    From the West Australian
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Unschooled in English
      
      "So universities have to run remedial English courses for first-year students ("Uni plan to teach basics of English”, 1/10). How did these students pass year 12 English and gain university entrance in the first place?"
      
      Robert Shack, Bull Creek, WA
      
      
      
    • "Blowed if I know how, Robert Shack, but I do know that the problem of illiterate Grade 12s has been around much longer than yesterday. In the late 70s, when enrolled as a rather mature student to study for an arts degree I was flabbergasted to hear the Dean of the faculty in his opening address give his opinion that by the end of the first semester at least half of the recent high school graduates enrolled would be up for remedial classes in English. A gross exaggeration, I thought, but tragically he was spot on."
      
      Points North
      
      
    • "In antsa to Robert Shack. Kids terday doan getta nedukayshun. They goader skool. The xzamz they passed wern worth a tinker’s cuss."
      
      George Goring
      
      
      
      
  • Less subjects, more learning: La Trobe
    by Andrew Trouson
    
    "La Trobe University is considering putting more emphasis on cornerstone subjects and sequencing in its curriculum.
    
    "Last year Curtin University of Technology moved to ensure greater attention to course narrative by introducing curriculum mapping to allow staff to better co-ordinate subjects and units.
    
    "La Trobe is seeking to differentiate itself with a new curriculum that deputy vice-chancellor (academic) Belinda Probert said would be an independent source of learning and student support beyond relying exclusively on the ability of teachers.
    
    "In the last 20 years, curriculum development in Australian universities has been all about proliferation: more and more subjects, less and less controls," Professor Probert told HES.
    
    "That trend, she said, had been encouraged by budgetary imperatives to attract more students and a "postmodern reaction to defined truths", but she said there was a "swing back" in thinking.
    
    "Curtin's director of teaching and learning Beverley Oliver agreed, saying the sector was rediscovering the importance of narrative in a student's learning experience.
    
    "We want to make sure there is a sense (across staff) of shared curriculum," rather than having subjects isolated as the personal territory of individual academics, Professor Oliver said..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  
  
  • Market focus of policy derided
    by Luke Slattery
    
    "Europe's leading research universities have raised fears for their autonomy in a global environment where governments seek to harness higher education as a source of "highly specific, marketable commodities".
    
    "What Are Universities For?, a paper by the League of European Research Universities, a group of 20 research-intensive institutions including Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht and Paris-Sud 11, is an argument against sham economic thinking among policymakers.
    
    "Public policy sees universities as vectors of the contemporary skilling of an increasing segment of the population and as providers of innovation that can be translated into advantage in a fast-changing global economic environment," it says.
    
    "This involves the use of regulation and incentives (especially financial) to obtain forms of behaviour in universities that provide outcomes defined as desirable within this short-term frame of reference."
    
    "The paper, written by Geoffrey Boulton, vice-principal of Edinburgh, and Colin Lucas, a former vice-chancellor of Oxford, warns against the blinkered view of universities as an input in the economic system..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  
  
  • Fairer chance for poorer students
    by Aban Contractor
    
    "Students from poorer neighbourhoods and underperforming schools in Britain may find it easier to get into university in the future after a Labour government plan to give them a fairer chance won the backing of some vice-chancellors.
    
    "Like many governments before it, the Brown administration wants more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to study in Britain's leading institutions. Tens of millions of pounds have been devoted to the task in the past decade, yet the number of students from lower socioeconomic groups remains low.
    
    "The pressure on universities to enrol more students has mounted amid evidence suggesting that tuition fees and growing levels of student debt have led to a drop in applications from poorer people..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • SA teachers want 7% interim pay rise
    AAP
    
    "South Australian teachers have lodged a claim for an interim pay rise of seven per cent as their long-running wage dispute with the state government continues.
    
    "The Australian Education Union has submitted an application with the state's Industrial Relations Commission for the interim rise.
    
    "Public school teachers want a 21 per cent pay rise over three years, along with extra funding for smaller class sizes and to attract and retain staff.
    
    "The government has offered 9.75 per cent over the same period.
    
    "The wage impasse prompted teachers to stage a series of strikes in August across public schools..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
  
  
  • School computer plan may hit taxpayers
    AAP
    
    "The ACT might have to stump up $4 for every $1 the federal government contributes to the territory for its computers in schools program, documents obtained by the ACT Liberal opposition reveal.
    
    "ACT opposition leader Zed Seselja said these documents, obtained under Freedom of Information, showed ACT taxpayers could face a substantial bill and a future Liberal government would not sign a blank cheque.
    
    "Mr Seselja said cost estimates varied, with one saying $30 million over four years.
    
    "The other says $4 for every $1 of Commonwealth investment," he told ABC radio.
    
    "Either of them means potentially a very hefty bill for the ACT taxpayer to implement this Rudd government promise."
    
    "We are trying to get to the bottom of exactly where negotiations are at and in fact what are the ACT government's latest estimates. They need to be up front."
    
    "The ACT goes to the polls on October 18, with Mr Seselja vying to unseat Labor chief minister Jon Stanhope.
    
    "During the election campaign last year, Labor promised to invest $1.2 billion in providing computers for schools.
    
    "That has been criticised as failing to meet the real costs of installing necessary infrastructure and providing long-term support.
    
    "That's now in its second round. NSW has demanded an extra $245 million to cover setup and ongoing maintenance costs.
    
    "Mr Seselja said he supported computers in schools but a future Liberal government would need to assess its involvement.
    
    "If the Rudd government were to come to us at the end of the day and say we will not provide another cent, then we will have to have a look at how much money is in the kitty in order to service these and that would determine how many we could possibly receive," he said.
    
    "ACT education minister Andrew Barr said round one had not cost the ACT any new money as it replaced existing computers with 2,847 new models.
    
    "He said the commonwealth provided $1,000 per unit for rollout of round one. With some computers costing less than $1,000, the ACT was able to direct extra funds to future support.
    
    "Mr Barr said all states and territories had raised concerns about round two and the ACT would continue negotiations.
    
    "He said the ACT had invested significantly in school IT infrastructure since 2006 and so was better placed than other states and territories to accept this new equipment.
    
    "This is him (Mr Seselja) setting the scene for a fight with the Rudd government were he to be elected," he said. "He is spoiling for a fight with federal Labor."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    

  • Brethren schools net $18m funding
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor
    
    "Schools run by the secretive Exclusive Brethren religious sect receive more than $18 million a year in government funding, including $2 million from NSW taxpayers, new figures show.
    
    "The figures obtained through freedom-of-information laws show that state governments injected $5.8 million into the schools managed by what the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has derided as an "extremist cult".
    
    "Last year the NSW Government provided $2 million to the Meadowbank Education Trust School in Meadowbank, up from 842,317 in 2002-03. The school also received $5.1 million from the Commonwealth, which gave all Brethren schools a total of $12 million last year, according to figures obtained by a NSW Greens MP, John Kaye.
    
    "Dr Kaye said the growth in public funding for the Brethren schools could not be justified as long as they operated behind closed doors and refused the enrolment of children who were not sect members. "Neither state nor Commonwealth money should be used to subsidise the sect's deeply divisive agenda of indoctrinating vulnerable children, he said..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • State school heads in funding push
    by Bridie Smith
    
    "Private schools would have to cap their tuition fees to qualify for federal funding and those that refused would have their subsidies cut, under a funding overhaul proposed by the nation's state school principals.
    
    "Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Blair also said there should be three types of schools — independent, government-supported and government — in the next funding agreement, due to start in 2013.
    
    "Independent schools, which would receive no government funds, would be free from government accountability requirements and could set their fees as they wished.
    
    "The government-supported schools would receive federal funding but have their fees capped and be accountable to government. The status quo would remain for state schools..."
    
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • Gillard under fire over curriculum board
    by Dan Harrison, Canberra
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard has been forced to defend the board charged with developing a national curriculum for Australian schools after the Coalition accused her of allowing the process to be captured by ideologues.
    
    "Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne, who took over the portfolio last week after Malcolm Turnbull assumed the Liberal leadership, said the appointment of Professor Peter Freebody to draft the "framing paper" for the English curriculum cast doubt on Ms Gillard's self-description as an "educational traditionalist" who favoured a back-to-basics approach to literacy.
    
    "The choice of Professor Freebody — a professorial research fellow in the faculty of education and social work at the University of Sydney and an advocate of the importance of "critical literacy" in English courses — has been criticised by some who argue for a return to more traditional teaching methods and by English professors who note his expertise is in education rather than English or literary studies.
    
    "Mr Pyne said Professor Freebody's appointment was "a red light flashing for parents and experts in the field". [emphasis added]
    
    "By appointing Professor Freebody as the person to do the English curriculum, they are signalling that far from being an advocate of traditional teaching values, they are continuing the fluffy, nebulous, some would say dangerous, teaching methods of the last few decades," he said.
    
    "This appointment of Peter Freebody is a classic case in which the Labor Party says one thing to allay the fears of parents and the sector and then, through their actions, is advancing a different ideological agenda."
    
    "Mr Pyne said Ms Gillard "either has too much on her plate to focus on the details or she is being hamstrung by ideologues in her own office".
    
    "The National Curriculum Board is developing a curriculum for prep to year 12 in maths, science, English and history. The board is independent of the Government, but Mr Pyne said it was "a Labor creation" that advanced the party's agenda.
    
    "They put people on it who they know will appoint people that will be in tune with the ideological position of the Labor Party, which, in education, is the ideological position of the Australian Education Union."
    
    "He said the Coalition supported a national curriculum only if it led to a return to traditional teaching methods in English, "not if it is a centralised form of a left-wing ideology".
    
    "A spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said Mr Pyne's comments were "disappointing and petty".
    
    "The National Curriculum Board made the decision based on the credentials and expertise of those four individuals. They are all recognised as experts in their respective fields of scholarship,"she said.
    
    "The Minister is confident in the judgement of the independent board and in the process for testing, consulting on and deciding curriculum content in these essential areas."
    
    "The chair of the National Curriculum Board, Barry McGaw, described Professor Freebody as "a fine academic" and stressed the document he would write would be a starting point for further consultation.
    
    "Instead of arguing against the person, they should wait and see what the position is," he told The Age.
    
    "The Australian Association for the Teaching of English has welcomed Professor Freebody's appointment."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
    
• The ABC News
  
  
  • Rudd faces WA opposition to education overhaul
    by Emma Rodgers
    
    "Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett says he does not support the Federal Government plan to tie teacher performance to school funding.
    
    "The Federal Government's education overhaul, which is on the agenda at today's COAG meeting in Perth, would see Commonwealth funds allocated on the condition that states and territories reveal details about their schools' performance.
    
    "Authorities will also be expected to take action on schools that are not performing as well as others by replacing principals and staff or merging a school with a better performing school.
    
    "Mr Barnett, who is the first Liberal Premier to attend a COAG meeting headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, says while he supports programs to improve standards the proposed changes are not in Western Australia's interests.
    
    "An approach of trying to penalise teachers or penalise schools or communities I don't support," he told Sky News.
    
    "Bear in mind, particularly in a state the size of WA, which is the size of Europe, it's not practical to say [a] school will close.
    
    "The next school might be 100 kilometres away."
    
    "The Commonwealth computers for schools programs, which has already lost support from New South Wales, will also be discussed at today's meeting.
    
    "Mr Barnett says the program will not work unless running costs are also funded and he will be raising the matter with the Prime Minister.
    
    "I think probably what would be a better approach is for the Federal Government to say 'here is an amount of money available to improve computers and technologies in schools'," he said.
    
    "Mr Rudd is also expected to unveil a package today which would see the Federal Government take control of credit regulation and non-bank lenders.
    
    "Mr Barnett says all premiers have agreed in principle to the plan.
    
    "The trend of the last 15 years through national securities regulation has been to see financial controls reside centrally through the Federal Government and that is logical," he said.
    
    "Financial markets are nationwide, in fact their international and very fluid."
    
    "State and territory leaders are meeting in Perth today for the fourth COAG meeting under Mr Rudd.
    
    "Mr Rudd has told Fairfax Radio the Labor Party needs to look closely at what people in Western Australia want, after Labor's recent state election loss.
    
    "I think people in WA and Perth have got basic asks in terms of education, health, hospitals, their transport and their long-term economic development," he said.
    
    "Mr Rudd spoke with Mr Barnett last night and discussed the infrastructure needs of the state.
    
    "I know for a fact that WA generates so much of the nation's export wealth and I've said repeatedly it therefore deserves to get more back," Mr Rudd said."
    
    From The ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
    
  • COAG urged to reboot computers-in-schools scheme
    AAP
    
    "The New South Wales Opposition wants the Federal Government to pick up a funding shortfall in the state associated with its computers-in-schools program.
    
    "NSW upset the Commonwealth's high-profile scheme when it pulled out of the second round of funding last month, saying the $1.2 billion program did not cover installation and support costs..."
    
    Full story in The ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
    
  • Bad behaviour prompts student suspension increase
    AAP
    
    "Queensland's Education Minister Rod Welford says disruptive behaviour in schools will not be tolerated.
    
    "State Government figures show more than 16,000 students were suspended in the Ipswich and Gold Coast regions last year, for reasons including physical misconduct, absence and using illicit substances.
    
    "The figures reveal 274 students were expelled..."
    
    Full story in The ABC News Online at link

 

Friday 3 October

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Basic flaws seen in OBE mess (page 14)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "Curriculum Council chief David Wood has unleashed a damning indictment of the previous State government's attempts to impose the controversial outcomes-based education system on Year 11 and 12 students, admitting fundamental problems with the proposed reforms.
    
    "Four fundamental factors contributed to the former government's failure to push OBE into Years 11 and 12, Mr Wood told a national leadership conference this week.
    
    "These included the attempt to impose OBE "levels of achievement" assessments on senior school courses, the failure to involve teachers in developing the courses and assessment procedures, the untried nature of the course design model and the generic nature of the new exams.
    
    "Mr Wood made the remarks in a paper on "leading curriculum reform through troubled times" to an Australian Council for Educational Leaders conference in Melbourne on Tuesday.
    
    "He said he was handed a report which said levelling was inadequate for ranking students for university entrance when he took the job of chief executive at the Curriculum Council in late 2006. The report, by international education assessment expert David Andrich, was commissioned a year earlier but not released publicly.
    
    "Mr Wood said the reform process began to fall apart when teachers first saw the new courses in 2005 because course development was left to "curriculum experts". It was not until teachers faced implementing them that they realised the magnitude of the challenge, he said.
    
    "He also blamed the media for being partly responsible for the derailment of OBE in Years 11 and 12, saying public and teacher confidence evaporated in 2006 as "daily news stories picked off aspects of the overall reform effort, highlighting issues with courses and examinations".
    
    "The council abandoned assessment in levels early in 2007 after a ministerial reshuffle saw education minister Ljijanna Ravlich replaced by Mark McGowan and University of WA education dean Bill Louden took over as chairman of the council.
    
    "Mr Wood said he won back teacher confidence by setting up randomly selected teacher juries last year to decide whether courses were ready to go ahead in 2008, resulting in many being postponed until next year."
    
    From the West Australian
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Union boss gets serve from Gillard over schools funding
    by Patricia Karvelas, political correspondent
    
    "Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has written an angry letter to the Australian Education Union's federal president, attacking him for being unconstructive and misrepresenting the Rudd Government's schools funding intentions.
    
    "AEU head Angelo Gavrielatos has written a letter to all Labor members and senators arguing public schools have been dudded by the Government's new funding bill. He also argues indigenous students have lost out.
    
    "The Schools Assistance Bill allows private schools to continue to be funded through the "socio-economic status" model -- devised by the Howard government -- which allocates money depending on the income and education of families in postcode district. But Ms Gillard writes that the bill delivers on an election commitment made by the Government last year, and the Government would provide more money through the Council of Australian Governments.
    
    "She says the Government is committed to closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous students. "And as you would appreciate, this Government is resolute on delivering our election commitments," she writes..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • New authority to drive 'education revolution'
    by Dan Harrison, Canberra
    
    "The Federal Government will create a national authority to drive its "education revolution", with responsibility for curriculum, assessment and reporting in schools across the country.
    
    "A meeting of federal, state and territory governments yesterday agreed to establish the body, which would be a statutory authority under Commonwealth law, accountable to all Australian governments.
    
    "Details of the new organisation are still to be hammered out between the governments but proposed legislation is expected to be introduced into Federal Parliament before the end of the year.
    
    "Labor set up an interim National Curriculum Board in April to determine core content and achievement standards from kindergarten to year 12 in maths, the sciences, English and history. Yesterday's decision paves the way for an expansion of the board's responsibilities, to include the transparency agenda announced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in August.
    
    "Under the changes flagged by Mr Rudd in a speech to the National Press Club, all schools will be required to provide data about their finances and student performance as a condition of federal funding.
    
    "We believe this is an important part of the nation's quality education agenda and I look forward to continuing partnership with the states and territories in this important area of reform," Mr Rudd said after yesterday's meeting.
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard said it was internationally recognised that curriculum, assessment and accountability systems had to be closely aligned to achieve world-class education standards."
    
    From in The Age at link
    

 

Saturday – Sunday, 4 – 5 October

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Home spelling too tough for words (page 46)
    
    "A British primary school has axed spelling homework because its students find it "distressing" to have to learn lists.
    
    "Children at the Whitminster Church of England primary school in Gloucestershire will no longer be given a short list of words to learn each week because staff believe it can leave them feeling like failures, the Mail Online reports.
    
    "Principal Debbie Marklove, whose school has just over 100 pupils aged four to 11, has invited parents to a meeting to explain her reasons.
    
    "Earlier, in a newsletter, she told parents: "You will notice that the children will not be given spelling lists to learn over the week.
    
    "We have taken the decision to stop spelling as homework as it is felt that children may learn them perfectly at home they are often unable to use them in their daily written work.
    
    "Also, many children find this activity unnecessarily distressing."
    
    "Ms. Marklove said spelling lists were sometimes simply tests of memory.
    
    "If children were able to get four out of five right at home with their parents, but only one out of five right in the classroom, it could lead to a sense of failure, she said.
    
    "The school would continue to teach spelling during class time.
    
    "A spokesman for the school said no parents had complained about the policy.
    
    "However, Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said the decision would come back to haunt the school's pupils.
    
    "This was because some spellings, particularly irregular words, needed to be learnt.
    
    "Youngsters will feel a sense of failure more strongly when they go into the real world of work and can't produce a letter or a report for their employees," he said." [emphasis added]
    
    From the West Australian
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Ideological divide in state leaders' choice of schools
    by Jonathon Porter
    
    "State leaders are divided along party and ideological lines on the question of whether to entrust their most valuable treasure -- their children -- to state or private education.
    
    "A survey by The Weekend Australian has found that all but one of the premiers and education ministers who responded to calls had children who had been educated by the state system, were still in public school or were about to begin government schooling.
    
    "The only exception was new Liberal West Australian Premier Colin Barnett, whose children attended private schools, as did those of his Education Minister, Liz Constable..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    When it comes to status, the teachers get less than top marks
    by Kenneth Wiltshire
    
    "Say thanks to a teacher who made a difference in your life or in your children's lives. This is the advice from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation for the occasion of World Teachers Day, which is set aside by the world community on October 5 each year to celebrate teachers and the central role they play in nurturing and guiding infants, children, youth and adults through lifelong learning.
    
    "According to teachers organisation Education International: "Every day in millions of classrooms around the world, the universal endeavour of teaching and learning takes place. The gift of literacy is passed on from one generation to the next, along with a love of learning and thirst for knowledge. When knowledge is shared, skills are gained and lives can be changed."
    
    "The world faces an acute shortage of teachers. UNESCO estimates that 18 million more teachers are needed worldwide if universal primary education is to be achieved by 2015, one of the UN Millennium Development Goals. So this year's emphasis is on professional training for quality education.
    
    "Of course the key factor in all of this is the status of teachers, which is culturally, not economically, determined. All the ancient civilisations revered teachers and in most communities today teachers command respect, particularly in Asia, Africa and Europe. These cultures respect all educators and the value and importance of learning.
    
    "In modern Australia it is a different story. Teachers are certainly not given this status; indeed mention the word status and Australians immediately equate this with salary and perks. Too often our schools are treated like repair shops as the community dumps more and more of its social problems on them. Nor are teachers the proper focus of government rhetoric in the so-called education revolution.
    
    "A true and lasting education revolution has to be a bottom-up phenomenon, not the top-down approach touted by the Rudd Government and the Howard government before it. Indeed, Kevin Rudd has morphed into John Howard as he too pursues some worthwhile goals, but through blunt imposed instruments of tied funding, legislation, coercion, performance measures and threats of takeover.
    
    "The starting place for any true education revolution would be that magical interface between the teacher and the student: the foundation of learning.
    
    "To ignite the spark of learning, teachers need unique personal and professional attributes. It begins by attracting the right people to the calling, but in Australia the tertiary entrance scores for teaching have been falling to very low levels for at least a decade.
    
    "The Rudd Government is tinkering with adjustments to HECS fees and scholarships for potential science and maths teachers, but the fundamental problem remains, and indeed these measures send the wrong signal to the other arms of the profession that they are not valued. There also has been no move to have potential teachers interviewed, although personal attributes and motivation are essential for a teaching vocation.
    
    "Once offered a place, teacher recruits are taught in universities, which has been another mistake. When nursing and teaching moved from colleges to universities, their training became theoretical and esoteric. Their degrees lack the essential practical component that used to be a key feature; a candidate who was unsuitable quickly dropped out.
    
    "Today it is possible for a student in an education faculty not to see a classroom until late in their degree, then discover that they do not like schools or children: too late by then as much has been invested.
    
    "Amazing though it seems, only in recent times have all teachers been accredited and registered in all Australian states. But the accreditation boards simply rubber-stamp university education degrees, performing only a perfunctory comparison of their content and pedagogy against loose templates of desired teacher knowledge and competencies.
    
    "The placement of teachers is something between a lottery and a mystery. In the government system it used to be handled centrally and was based on at least some matching of the needs of a school and the attributes of a candidate. However, largely to escape accountability, state education ministers have been progressively devolving various powers to regions and individual schools, and the fashion of the moment is to lumber principals with this task.
    
    "No doubt principals are more adept at determining the needs of their schools but it is not clear how they will be assured a pool of talented candidates, and it opens a range of equity issues as lower socioeconomic areas struggle to attract the best and brightest teachers who may have the skills to offset such social disadvantage.
    
    "And while we are on the subject of principals, one of the worst mistakes of our education system has been to try to turn school principals into managers when they should be educational leaders. It is impossible for them to provide professional leadership for their teachers when every day is loaded with administrative tasks and the need to address missives from state education departments whose generic senior executive services would be lucky to include 10 per cent of people who have taught in a school.
    
    "There has been some worthwhile discussion, though little action yet, about career paths for good teachers who want to remain teachers. They need an incentives ladder that would take them almost to the level of principal based on the quality of their teaching, recognising however that principals and deputy principals are grossly underpaid, given that each day they are responsible for hundreds or thousands of precious lives.
    
    "Industrial relations and classification schemes in this country seldom give appropriate weight to responsibility. (It is a significant fault of our human resource management for all our professions.) Also, like all professionals, teachers need sound professional development and, although the Howard government's Carrick Institute of Education initiative was welcome, it barely scratches the surface of what is required nationwide. A sabbatical scheme for teachers should also be considered.
    
    "In the real business of education, teachers need a sound and imaginative curriculum. Here there are serious concerns as Barry McGaw's National Curriculum Board has got off to a shaky start by appointing questionable consultants to prepare discussion papers for streams. These revelations in The Australian came as a surprise to the public. McGaw is a respected educator but seems to be running his task with minimum accountability and progressive reporting.
    
    "There are also significant doubts emerging as to whether he will have the strength to stand up to the loony members of the English and history teaching associations who have already done so much damage to Australian school education. At any event it is patently absurd for this urgent task to take more than a year, especially as we already have eight curriculums from which to draw, as well as the work of the Curriculum Corporation and a wealth of international experience. McGaw knows this only too well, having been head of education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
    
    "Perhaps this is all another result of Rudd's obsession with policy process to the neglect of engagement, as occurred in exactly the same manner with the reform of the Queensland school curriculum.
    
    "It also reflects the fact Julia Gillard's portfolio is far too large and she should hand over education and training to a minister dedicated to this arena. Already there are reports that staff in her department are becoming demoralised at having to compete for attention.
    
    "One of the most positive things the Government could do would be to launch an extensive media campaign on the value of teachers. Tony Blair did this brilliantly, with a campaign featuring the prime minister, Opposition leader and business and community leaders, recalling the immense contributions particular teachers made to their lives and advocating teaching as a noble career.
    
    "Naturally teachers must play their part in all of this as well. It would help if they accepted that comparison of their efforts (by parents as revealed by external assessment) is the norm in all professions.
    
    "They also should be prepared to take on supervision of teachers in training without extra payment as part of their normal duties, and be willing to accept transfers to rural and regional areas as part of their career development. Given that there are already too many school holidays, they should stop encroaching into students' time by the surreptitious device of so-called teacher preparation days, which used to go by the disgraceful name of pupil-free days. In all these matters teachers unions have been abetted by acquiescent state education ministers and their governments.
    
    "Perhaps the most significant symbol of the Australian malaise is that the Australian teachers unions, presumably with the connivance of the state governments, have decided to postpone the celebration of World Teachers Day in Australia until October 31. The reason: school holidays. Says it all, doesn't it?
    
    "Never mind; maybe the rest of the world will wait while Australia catches up.
    
    "Meanwhile, don't despair. Join the celebration of this year's motto -- "teachers matter" -- even if they don't seem to matter quite as much in our nation."
    
    Kenneth Wiltshire has recently completed six years as Australia's representative on the executive board of UNESCO. He was chairman of the review of the Queensland school curriculum and special adviser to the Australian National Training Authority. He is J.D. Story professor of public administration at the University of Queensland business school.
    
    From in The Australian at link
    
    
    

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This page last updated 17 April, 2009 11:03 PM