Monday 13 October

Tuesday 14 October

Wednesday 15 October

Thursday 16 October

Friday 17 October

Saturday – Sunday, 18 – 19 October

Monday 13 October

• The West Australian
  

  • Constable vows to help boost school programs (page 19)
    by David Darragh
    
    “Education Minister Liz Constable has promised to tackle key issues in WA State schools such as building maintenance and class sizes after a national survey found more than 60 per cent of public schools did fundraising to pay for basic classroom equipment.
    
    “The Australian Education Union survey of 1396 public school principals, including 141 in WA, showed almost 80 per cent of schools had undertaken fundraising, including more than 61 per cent of schools raising funds for basic classroom equipment.  Fifty per cent raised funds for library resources and text books and 47 per cent for sporting teams and play equipment.
    
    “The union said the survey confirmed the need to invest more in public schools to reduce class sizes, increase support for individual student needs and upgrade buildings and facilities.
    
    “A spokesman for Dr Constable said yesterday the minister’s first priority was to implement Premier Colin Barnett’s promises ‘for the first 100 days of the new Government, with teachers’ pay at the top of that list.
    
    “Dr Constable would then go through several of the biggest challenges facing the education system, including school maintenance, the teacher shortage, class sizes and behaviour management.
    
    “The survey found every secondary school and 68.3 per cent of primary schools had teacher shortages.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • National plan to teach history from kindy (page 11)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “All Australian children would study history as a compulsory stand-alone subject from kindergarten to Year 10, covering world events from the earliest human civilizations until the Iraq war, under proposed national history curriculum to be released today.
    
    “The discussion paper by Melbourne University Professor Stuart Macintyre, which will be thrown open to public comment at a national forum in Melbourne this week, also says history should occupy 10 per cent of teaching time in primary school.
    
    “Students in Years 7 to 10 should study an average 100 classes of history, or about two hours a week.
    
    “The difficulty at the moment is we don’t know with any precision how many lessons are being devoted to history in Years 7 to 10,” he said. “Probably (only) about half of kids in secondary school are being taught history in any systematic way.”
    
    “Professor Macintyre said many schools did not spend enough time on history because it had been lumped into geography and economics in most States.
    “It means that the history content is fragmented and often very repetitive,” he said.
    
    “Professor Macintyre said the push to introduce history as a distinctive branch of learning in primary school meant more teachers would need specialised training in that subject.
    
    “Because history has been let go in our schools over the last 30 years, we’ve got a real challenge about strengthening the history teachers’ profession,” he said.  Professor Macintyre said young children should be taught to compare their own experiences with those people had in the past by using historical objects such as old photographs or toys.
    
    “He proposes covering four units in the high school years, using Year 7 as a starting point, even though Year 7s are still at primary school in some States.
    
    “The four units would cover early civilizations (60,000 to 500 AD), and the transitions from ancient history to the start of the modern period (500 – 1750), modern history (1750 – now) and Australian history (1901 – now).
    
    “The paper does not provide details on Year 11 and 12 studies because history will not be compulsory at that level.
    
    “But is says there should be options for advanced studies of the units covered in Years 7 to 10.
    
    “Professor Macintyre said the curriculum would be broad enough to allow different States to focus on aspects of history that particularly affected them.
    
    “It doesn’t make much sense in WA to say that Captain Cook discovered Australia in 1770”,  he said.
    
    “WA History Teachers Association president Louise Secker, one of the three schoolteachers on the nine-member panel advising Professor Macintyre, said one of the biggest challenges would be to find enough space in school timetables to balance history studies with other subjects.
    
    “More than 800 people will attend forums this week on a national curriculum in English, maths, history and science.  Discussion papers will be open for comment until February.”
    
    From the West Australian
    
    Related stories in The Australian and The Age
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor (page 22)
    
    

    • In short
      
      “I’m beginning to think we should all join the State School Teachers Union.  It seems to have a reliable record of always exceeding the annual rate of CPI for their wages growth.  I’d be seriously overjoyed to receive a 30 – 40 per cent increase in my pension from Centrelink.”
      
      Doug Cherryman, Parkerville
      
      
      

• The Australian
  
  
  • Curriculum to scale back Aussie history
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The emphasis on teaching Australian history in recent years will be scaled down in the national curriculum, as its initial draft, to be released today, outlines a course that places the national story in the context of broader global events.
    
    "The draft says restricting the study of history to Australian history is inappropriate, and while it retains an important place in the national curriculum, knowledge of world events is necessary to understand the nation's history.
    
    "The national curriculum stems the push to privilege Australian history, which culminated in the call by the Howard government to make the study of Australian history compulsory in Years 9 and 10.
    
    "If only to equip students to operate in the world in which they will live, they need to understand world history," the draft says.
    
    "History should have a broad and comprehensive foundation from which its implications for Australia can be grasped."
    
    "The lead author of the draft, Melbourne University history professor Stuart Macintyre, said yesterday the push to cement Australian history in schools had left the position of world history unclear in curriculums.
    
    "To think one can study Australian history in isolation is a bit short-sighted," Professor Macintyre said.
    
    "There was a concern ... that it was solipsistic and not conducive to understanding Australia and its place in the world.
    
    "I think there is very broad agreement that, while all Australian students should learn Australian history, we don't really do our duty to them unless they study other history as well."
    
    "The draft curriculum proposes history be compulsory for all school students until the end of Year 10, and introduced as a distinct subject in primary school.
    
    "Professor Macintyre said having trained history teachers was crucial to implementing the curriculum, and attention should be given to the history education given to student teachers. [emphasis added]
    
    "The draft curriculum outlines a sequential study of world and Australian events based on factual knowledge and the skills to "think historically" or analyse events in a course that spans from the earliest human communities to the Industrial Revolution to the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the Iraq war.
    
    "The draft, described as initial advice to the National Curriculum Board, was developed by a group of historians and history teachers led by the Left-aligned Professor Macintyre, whose appointment was criticised as being provocative by the conservative side in the history wars.
    
    "The broad aim of the curriculum is to introduce students to world history from the time of the earliest human communities, and to have an appreciation of the major civilisations that have existed in Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Australia.
    
    "In primary school, history should occupy at least 10 per cent of the teaching time, covering student family histories in the early years to allow students to make connections between their past and that of others.
    
    "In middle and upper primary school, students would study the history of their local community and key national events such as the significance of Anzac Day, migration, "contact to 1788", and the early years of the colony.
    
    "In Years 11 and 12, history would be optional and offer more in-depth study in ancient, modern and Australian history. [emphasis added]
    
    "The draft proposes extension studies, such as those offered in NSW, that allow students to explore traditions of historical research and writing, including debates between historians through the ages.
    
    "The draft curriculum emphasises the importance of factual knowledge in history, but says historical thinking and the skills of historical inquiry are just as important."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Age
    
    
    
  • Cash-poor schools 'running raffles to pay for textbooks'
    by Matthew Knott
    
    "Chronic underfunding of the public school system is compromising education quality and forcing schools to run raffles and walkathons to pay for basic needs such as textbooks and furniture.
    
    "A national survey of 1396 public school principals, conducted by the Australian Education Union, has found that 64 per cent of schools undertook fundraising in the past year to pay for basic classroom equipment. Fifty per cent raised funds for library resources and textbooks.
    
    "Although Kevin Rudd has made school computers the centrepiece of his education revolution, 79.5 per cent of principals named funding for school buildings and maintenance as their top concern.
    
    "Almost half said their school's toilets were in need of repair.
    
    "Funding to provide individual support for struggling students or those with special needs was another major concern, with every secondary schools surveyed reporting a shortage of teachers.
    
    "Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos called on the Rudd Government to use a national education agreement being negotiated by the Council of Australian Governments to boost investment in public schools.
    
    "Kevin Rudd says he believes in evidence-based policy, but the evidence is in," Mr Gavrielatos said.
    
    "Australia ranks second last in the OECD for direct investment in education. Our public schools are underfunded by $2.9 billion per year, and that's according to research from the Australian Council of Education Ministers. We need more funding and we need it urgently."
    
    "NSW Primary Principals Association president Terry Fisher said: "Schools are raising money for the cake, not the icing. They're doing walkathons for things like library books and maths equipment."
    
    "Helen McMahon, principal at Leumeah High School in Sydney's southwest, said her school had no hot running water, no assembly hall and only three air-conditioning units to serve 930 students.
    
    "Ms McMahon said students had to raise funds to pay for a small wet weather shelter.
    
    "The carpet hasn't been replaced since our school was built in the 1970s and is patched together with masking tape," Ms McMahon said.
    
    "I believe our public school system is chronically underfunded and has been for a decade." [emphasis added]
    
    "The AEU has booked three weeks' worth of television advertisements -- to run on all commercial stations from today -- asking parents to lobby the federal Government for more money for public schools.
    
    "Australian students perform very well internationally but we have a long trail of underperformance," Mr Gavrielatos said."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Age
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    New class warfare
    by Glenn Milne
    
    "... If [Federal shadow education minister Chrisropher] Pyne gets his way, Gillard is about to be the first to have to come to grips with his ascension by way of her introduction this week into the parliament of the Schools Assistance Bill 2008, the new quadrennial funding legislation for the private and state school systems.
    
    "It is section 24 that Pyne has his eye on here. While Gillard has walked the walk on burying the Latham (her initially preferred leader over Rudd) agenda on the envy of state v private schools, Pyne will be making the case that it is this section in the new bill that belies Gillard's talk as distinct from her walk. On Pyne's reading, section 24 marks the reintroduction of an ALP pursuit of class warfare, the return of Labor's old divide of rich private against poor state systems. [emphasis added]
    
    "Under section 24, for the first time, private schools will have to publicly declare every source of funding, from a James Packer bequest to a scone sale. Previously when applying for money private schools only had to provide this information to the minister and the department on a confidential basis.
    
    "Pyne believes the public declaration of funding required by Gillard will give the teachers unions exactly the leverage they need to begin prosecuting the case against the independent school sector in favour of the public sector. Information as ammunition..."
    
    "Have a go at this then: Gillard in parliament in a second reading speech on September 4, 2000, on the introduction of the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill: "The last objection to the SES model," she said, "is more philosophical, that the model makes no allowance for the amassed resources of any particular school. As we are all aware, over the years many prestige schools have amassed wealth, wealth in terms of buildings and facilities, wealth in terms of the equipment available, wealth in terms of alumni funding raising, trust funds, endowment funds and the like.
    
    "It must follow as a matter of logic that the economic capacity of a school is affected by both its income generation potential - from the current class of parents whose kids are enrolled in the school - and the assets of the school. The SES funding system makes some attempt to measure the income-generation potential of the parents of the kids in the school but absolutely no attempt to measure the latter, the assets of the school. This is a gaping flaw."
    
    "In case you thought the old class divide in education was dead, Gillard mentioned the word wealth four times in fewer minutes.
    
    "Labor has announced that in 2010 it will be conducting a review of school funding. Wealth declared under section 24 will no doubt be a handy ideological tool.
    
    "Gillard, for her part, denies any sinister motives. She points out she is pushing for greater transparency across the education sector, including in curriculum standards and teacher performance, a push that is being fiercely resisted by the teacher unions..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Scrymgour removes education boss
    by Paul Toohey
    
    "Northern Territory Education Minister Marion Scrymgour has forced her department's chief executive to resign amid accusations that the department had failed to improve school attendance and results in indigenous communities.
    
    "Relations between Ms Scrymgour and Margaret Banks had been deteriorating for weeks. The minister told The Australian a fortnight ago she was headed for a "big stoush" with Ms Banks over what she perceived as a lack of ability in her department to deal with pressing issues involving remote-area education for Aboriginal children. [Sound familiar? Web]
    
    "The matter came to a head on Friday, when Ms Banks was asked to resign from her $200,000-plus job, with a year still to run on her four-year contract.
    
    "Ms Scrymgour issued a statement complimenting Ms Banks' work, but said she wanted a fresh approach.
    
    "Ms Banks could not be contacted yesterday.
    
    "In April, Ms Scrymgour had announced an overhaul of indigenous education, while lamenting that "some indigenous parents and communities put a high value on education; others don't, and we need to change those attitudes".
    
    "Ms Scrymgour wanted her department to investigate early learning centres and remote residential hostels for students, to build the Territory's indigenous education workforce and, most of all, to improve attendance.
    
    "Ms Scrymgour told The Australian she couldn't get the message through to her department that direct action was needed to get kids to school. [Yes, it does sound familiar! Web]
    
    "The Northern Territory Government has been struggling to deal with high levels of non-attendance by children in bush communities. The law states that parents can be fined for failing to send children to school, and the non-payment of such fines can lead to jail terms.
    
    "Ms Scrymgour, herself an Aboriginal woman, has been desperate to avoid enforcing such measures, fearing it will be counterproductive and result in parents ending up in jail.
    
    "Her view is that the Government employs people on high wages to enact policy and find answers to such problems, and they had not done so.
    
    "Ms Scrymgour was dealt a blow in mid-September when the National Assessment Program for literacy and numeracy revealed the Territory had the highest number of students performing below an acceptable level.
    
    "Schools in bigger towns such as Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Tennant Creek performed about average, but were dragged down by the shocking results from the bush.
    
    "Opposition Leader Terry Mills said Ms Banks had been made a scapegoat and that Ms Scrymgour should be the one to go. "Education in the Territory is a shambles and successive education ministers are responsible," Mr Mills said.
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Hopes for wave of new indigenous leaders
    
    Indigenous students are graduating from universities at a record rate, prompting hope that a new generation of Aboriginal leaders will bring fresh ideas and broader experience to efforts to close the economic and life expectancy gaps between black and white Australia.

    Figures from the Bureau of Statistics and the federal education department show a record 9370 indigenous students were enrolled in universities last year, with 1495 students graduating.
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • The Monday Education Section is available on-time, again, and contains 16 articles, including:
    
    
    • Muddle in the middle, review finds

      Do year 7-10 programs live up to the hype? Caroline Milburn reports.
    • Caught in the middle

      What reviews of middle schooling in Australia have found.
      

    • A New York state of mind

      Julia Gillard tells Dan Harrison of her plan to introduce report cards on schools.
      

    • League tables of our own?

      US administrator Joel Klein, whose system of publishing A-to-F grades for schools is being considered by Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, says the Australian public system needs even more competition to succeed.
      

    • Great books outlast fashions, fads and politics

      Writing, according to my first high school English teacher, is a serious business that only those with the honesty and courage of Joyce, Eliot, Hemingway, Greene and Orwell can manage. I can remember him telling our class that robust, erudite and lucid prose constitutes real writing; anything less is pap for the feeble-minded.
      
      
      

  • The past springs to life in city classroom
    
    Primary school teacher Mary Talbot reckons there's a trick to keeping children interested in history.
    
    

     

• AEU
  
  
  • State of Our Schools Survey 2008
    
    1396 Public School Principals responded to the national survey conducted in September 2008.This survey confirms the need to invest more in public schools to reduce class sizes, increase support to address individual student needs and upgrade buildings and facilities.
    
    Key Findings
    
    
    • The majority (79.8%) of schools have undertaken fundraising in the past year, (64.1%) for basic classroom equipment, (50.2%) for Library resources and textbooks and (47.1%) for sporting teams and play equipment.
    • 100% of Secondary schools and 89.1% of Primary schools are experiencing teacher shortages.
    • The top concern for principals is funding for school buildings and maintenance (79.5%)
    • According to principals surveyed the Rudd Government’s top priorities should be:
      • Investing more in our public schools to lower class sizes and deliver more individual attention to students (49.1%)
      • Ensuring all public schools are able to offer a rich and rigorous curriculum (26%)
    
    Top Priorities for additional funding to support teaching and learning
    
    
    • More help for individual students (77.4%)
    • Building maintenance or improvements (70.8%)
    • Information and communication technology (62.3%)
    • More welfare support (56.2%)
    • More Administrative and staff support (55.9%)
      
      
    Facilities and equipment
    
    
    • 69.8% indicated their school need a major upgrade in its facilities and equipment
    
    Spending priorities for facilities and equipment were:
    
    
    • Improve classroom appearance (59.5%)
    • New specialist rooms or areas (eg. For science, art and music) (54.2%)
    • Equipment for specialist areas (49.9%)
    • New general classrooms (45.1%)
    • Toilets (44.1%)
    
    A recent report by education economist Adam Rorris revealed that investment for buildings and facilities in Australian public schools falls short by around $2 billion annually when compared with the level of investment in private schools.
    
    The study found that between 2002-2005 public schools missed out on average by around $1.2 million each in terms of capital works. Principals were asked what impact missing out on that funding had, the major impacts were:
    
    
    • Unable to do basic maintenance on buildings and facilities (76.1%)
    • Unable to compete with local private schools with better capital works (65.9%)
      
      
    For further information, please contact:
    
    Erin Farley 0409 510 879
    Australian Education Union
    
    
    
    
• The New York Times
  
  
  • Under ‘No Child’ Law, Even Solid Schools Falter [12 October]
    by Sam Dillon
    
    Sacramento [Calif] — "Prairie Elementary School had not missed a testing target since the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002. Until now.
    
    "The school, perched on a tidy, oak-shaded campus in a working-class neighborhood here, has moved each of its student groups — Hispanics, blacks, Asians, whites, American Indians, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, English learners, the disabled — toward higher proficiency in recent years.
    
    "Over all, the number of its students passing tough statewide tests had increased by more than three percentage points annually, a solid record.
    
    "But this year, California schools were required to make what experts call a gigantic leap, increasing the students proficient in every group by 11 percentage points. For the first time, Prairie, and hundreds of other California schools, fell short, a failure that results in probation and, unless reversed, federal sanctions within a year.
    
    “And they’re asking for another 11 percent increase next year and the next, and that’s where I’m saying I just don’t know how,” Fawzia Keval, the school’s principal, said. “I’m spending sleepless nights.”
    
    "Across the nation, far more schools failed to meet the federal law’s testing targets than in any previous year, according to new state-by-state data. And in California and some other states, the problem traces in part to the fact that officials chose to require only minimal gains in the first years after the law passed and then very rapid annual gains later. One researcher likens it to the balloon payments that can sink homebuyers.
    
    "Part of the reason for the troubles was that the states gambled the law would have been softened when it came up for reauthorization in 2007, but efforts to change it stalled. This year Congress made no organized attempt to reconsider the law. With the nation facing urgent challenges, including two wars and economic turmoil, it could be a year or more before the new president can work with Congress to rewrite the law.
    
    "The law requires every American school to bring all students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014. When it was first implemented six years ago, it required states to outline the statistical path they would follow on their way to 100 percent proficiency, and about half set low rates of achievement growth for the first few years and steeper rates thereafter. [emphasis added]
    
    "Here in California, which in 2002 had only 13.6 percent of students proficient in reading, officials promised to raise that percentage on average by 2.2 points annually from 2002 to 2007, but starting this year greatly accelerate the progress, raising the percentage of proficient students by 11 points per year through 2014.
    
    "Now that the time has come for that accelerated improvement, California schools are not keeping up. This year, about half the state’s 9,800 schools fell short.
    
    “We’re hitting a balloon payment scenario, to use a housing analogy, where the expectations set forth in the federal law are far higher than recent performance levels,” said Richard Cardullo, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who led an analysis of the performance of state elementary schools.
    
    "His study, published Sept. 26 in the journal Science, found that the proportion of students scoring at or above proficiency increased, on average, less than four percentage points annually from 2003 to 2007, far short of the 11 percentage points of annual growth required starting this year. [emphasis added]
    
    “Lots of schools are no longer going to be able to meet the law’s requirements,” Dr. Cardullo said. His study predicted that virtually every elementary school in California would fall short of the federal law’s expectations before 2014..."
    
    Full story in The New York Times at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    The forgetting of wisdom
    by Bryce Courtenay
    
    Wisdom is one of those words most people agree is a good thing to have in theory, although they can't actually recall ever needing to use it much in their lives. Wisdom is a mental aberration only acquired after you no longer need it. It usually has a hoary, wrinkled face and walks on decrepit and unsteady legs and is to be avoided at all costs by the young.
    
    Worth a look... Web
    
    
    
  • Boys' schools break barriers: single-sex success story [12 October]
    
    

    Boys will be boys and single-sex schools can help break down sexism. This will be the message delivered by visiting US education expert Dr Leonard Sax in his keynote address when the National Boys' Education Conference starts at The King's School in Parramatta today.
    
    
    

• IOL Online News [South Africa]
  
  
  • A class in curriculum cogs
    by Noelene Barbeau
    
    "The matric class of 2008 will sit down to write their final examinations at the end of this month.
    
    "What makes this experience more nerve-racking than normal is that these pupils are the first to write the matric exam under the national curriculum statement ("new matric" or Curriculum 2005) implemented in 2006, when they were in Grade 10.
    
    "For most parents - even some teachers - the changes are baffling.
    
    "Six subjects were written in the past, with a choice of tackling them on higher or standard grades.
    
    "Maths, English and Afrikaans were compulsory and the other three subjects were chosen from a list of 124, which included history, geography, biology, physics, computer studies and accounting.
    
    "All had subject groupings and combinations, such as science, commerce and general courses. For example, the S17 entailed the study of physics, biology and computer studies plus the three compulsory subjects.
    
    "The C1 comprised business economics, economics and accounting, plus the three compulsory subjects.
    
    "Today, the higher and standard grades have been done away with, and all matric pupils write on the same level. [emphasis added]
    
    "They also have to study seven subjects instead of six, and many of the subjects have expanded from the old system. Subjects are divided into four groups.
    
    "Group A is languages (first and home languages), and includes English, Afrikaans and isiZulu.
    
    "Group B is arts and culture and includes dance studies, design, dramatic arts, music and visual arts.
    
    "Group C is business, commerce and management studies and services, and includes accounting, business studies, consumer studies, economics, hospitality studies and tourism.
    
    "Group D is manufacturing, engineering and technology consisting of electrical technology, engineering graphics and design and mechanical technology.
    
    "Group E is human and social studies and languages, and is made up of geography, history, life orientation (compulsory) and languages (those not listed under first and home languages).
    
    "Group F is physical, mathematical, computer, life and agricultural sciences, and includes agricultural sciences, computer applications technology, information technology, life sciences, mathematical literacy (compulsory), maths and physics.
    
    "The fundamental or compulsory component is two languages from Group A, maths or maths literacy and life orientation.
    
    "The core learning component is at least two subjects from groups B-F, and the elective learning component is at least one subject from groups A-F, provided it is not offered as a fundamental or core subject.
    
    "All these subjects, except for life orientation, make up 20 credits each. Life orientation makes up 10 credits. The minimum credits required are 130.
    
    "According to the national education department's policy documents, life orientation is the study of the self in relation to others and to society.
    
    "It guides and prepares pupils for life and equips them to solve problems, make informed decisions and choices, to take appropriate actions to enable them to live meaningfully and successfully in a rapidly changing society.
    
    "Previously, a higher grade failure was converted to a standard grade pass of 33,3 percent. If one wrote on standard grade, 33,3 percent was required to pass.
    
    "In the "new matric", a pupil must have at least 30 percent in four subjects and 40 percent in three subjects to pass.
    
    "Outcomes-based education (OBE), introduced in South Africa 13 years ago, is used as part of Curriculum 2005 and has replaced rote-learning.
    
    "The teacher is now the guide and the pupil is involved in the learning and teaching process.
    
    "The pupils are assessed in each subject throughout the year and a percentage of this continuous assessment is added to their final-year mark, which will determine a pass or failure.
    
    "According to Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd, the authors of Elusive Equity: Education Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa, official documents do not clearly distinguish between OBE and Curriculum 2005 and many South African teachers often use the terms interchangeably.
    
    "Fiske and Ladd said the adoption of OBE in the mid 90s was due to the fact that this system was enjoying considerable popularity at the time in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and America.
    
    "The Department of Education was particularly influenced by William Spady, an American proponent of the method, who visited South Africa as a consultant," they said.
    
    "Spady apparently distanced himself from the South African version of OBE, describing it as "a professional embarrassment".
    
    "In May 2000, the Review Committee on Curriculum 2005 described it as "probably the most significant curriculum reform in South African education of the last century". [emphasis added]
    
    From IOL Online News at link

Tuesday 14 October

• The West Australian
  

  • Science plan revises OBE fear (page 3)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    Proposed national curriculum warns against 'knowledge-heavy' approach and too much use of traditional testing
    
    “The release of the proposed national science curriculum yesterday has sparked warnings that supporters the controversial outcomes-based education system are winning control over the course's structure.
    
    “Anti-OBE teachers' lobby group Plato said the paper outlining the broad structure of the science course from kindergarten to Year 12 was alarming because it called for a science curriculum that was not "knowledge heavy" of too dependent on "pencil and paper" testing.
    
    “The paper by University of Canberra education professor Denis Goodrum suggests that science teaching should be made more relevant to students.
    
    “Teachers should put less emphasis on requiring students to memorise scientific terms and more focus on learning broad concepts.
    
    "There is a consistent criticism that many of the problems and issues in science education arise from the structure of science curricula which tend to be knowledge-heavy and alienating to a significant number of students," it said.
    
    “The paper also warned against relying too heavily on written tests to assess students. "It should be noted that the important science learning aspects concerning attitudes and skills as outlined in the paper cannot be readily assessed by pencil and paper tests," it said.
    
    "Plato chairman Marko Vojkovic, a science teacher, said the document had confirmed his worst fears that a new curriculum cold result in the dumbing down of science studies.
    
    "We have heard it all before," he said. "This is exactly the rationale that people used to introduce OBE - and it's the same people - they're even referring to the same documents and research."
    
    “He said it was insulting science teachers to assert that traditional methods of teaching relied heavily on rote-learning rather than understanding concepts.
    
    “Melbourne-based education consultant Kevin Donnelly said Professor Goodrum's criticisms of "knowledge-laden" curriculums and over-reliance on testing were the same sort of criticisms that OBE advocates had levelled at traditional curriculums.
    
    "Even though he doesn't talk about OBE, the characteristics he wants are very much OBE-based, such as a relevance," he said. "A lot of teachers, particularly in WA, have spent the last five years arguing against OBE, and the last thing they need is for it to be writ large across Australia."
    
    “Dr Donnelly warned that if the final documents retained too much of the student-centred OBE philosophy then Australia's national science curriculum would not be as academically rigorous as those of other countries. [emphasis added]
    
    “But Professor Goodrum said he was proposing a curriculum that would inspire more students to develop a passion for the subject.
    
    "There is more than sufficient evidence that indicates that many of our secondary students are losing interest in science and we have to make science relevant and interesting to them," he said.
    
    "Memorising science facts is not the way to make science interesting or relevant."
    
    “He said that while content was important, just being able to recite facts did not mean that students understood them and could apply them to new situations.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Editorial
    Compulsory history should be welcomed (page 20)
    
    “Teaching children history in a national and global context is a vital part of their education, not least so they can understand the background to major crises such as the present financial meltdown.
    
    “So a proposal that all Australian children would study history as a compulsory stand-alone subject from kindergarten to Year 10, covering would events from the earliest human civilisations until the Iraq war, as part of a national history curriculum is commendable.
    
    “The national curriculum board has also released some questionable recommendations on the teaching of science, with a decidedly OBE flavour, which are not so welcome.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • Core subjects give way to science for life
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The traditional school science subjects of biology, physics and chemistry will disappear until the senior years of school under a draft national science curriculum that proposes teaching "science for life".
    
    "The curriculum, released yesterday, proposes one science course through to Year 10 in which students will explore the big ideas of science, drawing on knowledge from the three traditional disciplines.
    
    "In the senior years of 11 and 12, the draft proposes three common courses in physics, chemistry and biology, and suggests a fourth more general science course with an emphasis on the applications of science.
    
    "The draft is a fundamental shift in the approach to teaching science, away from a focus on facts to fostering students' own inquiries and experiments.
    
    "It argues that a science curriculum should develop science competencies, give students an understanding of the big ideas, expose them to a range of science experiences relevant to everyday life, and give them an understanding of the major concepts from the sciences.
    
    "It is also acknowledged that there is a core body of knowledge and understanding that is fundamental to the understanding of major ideas," it says.
    
    "The author of the draft, science education professor Denis Goodrum of Canberra University, said the major challenge of a national science curriculum was to engage and interest students by linking science to their everyday lives.
    
    "What we have to do within our curriculum is marry contemporary issues with underlying basic science," he said.
    
    "Professor Goodrum said the curriculum was not simply to train future scientists but had to provide all students with the scientific skills and knowledge to understand the voltage in their homes or complex issues such as climate change.
    
    "Surely a lawyer should have a better understanding of scientific principles in a rich way, just as a medical doctor or a businessman or social worker," he said.
    
    "All these areas have a social scientific dimension which is important."
    
    "The proposal to drop the traditional disciplines was supported by science education professor at Flinders University, Martin Westwell, who said the advances in science happened at the boundaries where the disciplines intersected.
    
    "Professor Westwell said the only place where people studied or practised biology, physics and chemistry was in universities.
    
    "If you ask a professional scientist what their speciality is, they don't identify as a physicist, biologist or chemist but as a neuroscientist or other," he said.
    
    "If you push them, they'll tell you the name that was over the door of the faculty where they did their degree."
    
    "Professor Westwell said learning scientific facts and knowledge was fundamental, but had to be balanced with teaching scientific concepts and inquiries.
    
    "Perhaps there's been an overemphasis on the stuff taught in science rather than learning about science, about some of the big ideas," he said.
    
    "Professor Goodrum said contemporary issues should be included in the curriculum as a way of providing a meaningful context to students, such as cloning, stem cell research, global warming, water conservation and recycling, and hybrid cars.
    
    "The draft curriculum blames science curriculums of the past for being too full of content, which students memorise rather than understand, for turning students off the subject.
    
    "The draft proposes science education start in early childhood, with children's play used to develop an awareness of their world through observation and using their senses.
    
    "In primary school, the curriculum focus is recognising questions that can be investigated scientifically and investigating them.
    
    "The big ideas cover order, change, patterns and system, with suggested topics including weather and how clouds form, sound and how it travels, plants and their reproduction, and the night sky covering the stars andplanets.
    
    "In Years 7 to 10, the curriculum focuses on explaining phenomena involving science and its applications, covering topics from earth and space science, life science and physical science.
    
    "The big ideas to be studied cover energy, sustainability, equilibrium and interdependence, form and function, evidence, models and theories."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Age
    
    
    
  • History curriculum author defies his critics to find bias
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Historian Stuart Macintyre, the author of the draft national history curriculum and a controversial figure of the history wars, has challenged his critics to find any political bias in the new curriculum.
    
    "Responding to criticism that his political leanings and advocacy of the "black armband" view of history would colour the school history course he has drafted, Professor Macintyre said yesterday it would be difficult to find any bias in the draft.
    
    "For me, history is not something that reinforces dogma but opens it to careful scrutiny," Professor Macintyre said.
    
    "I think it's very important that the curriculum we develop is accessible to all people, and not axe-grinding."
    
    "Greg Melleuish, an associate professor in history and politics at the University of Wollongong, has criticised the draft curriculum for its emphasis on ethical and moral judgments, rather than the facts of history.
    
    "The moral judgment and empathy element demands a level of sophistication that is in excess of what might be expected of teenagers," Dr Melleuish said.
    
    "That is something the professional historian may engage in, but you are talking about kids aged 12 to 16.
    
    "That's always been the issue: whether kids of that age can do much more than get the facts right."
    
    "Sydney Institute director Gerard Henderson also criticised the direction of the draft curriculum.
    
    "This idea that facts should be downplayed and concepts of historical enquiry and historical thinking should be stressed, in my view, is not the correct way to go," he told ABC radio yesterday.
    
    "The draft national history curriculum was released yesterday by the National Curriculum Board before a public consultation forum tomorrow.
    
    "It advocates history being compulsory until the end of Year 10, and says it should be introduced as a distinct subject in primary school and given 10 per cent of teaching hours.
    
    "As revealed in The Australian yesterday, the draft schools curriculum scales down the recent emphasis on Australian history to outline a chronological study of world history, with the national story studied in the context of global events.
    
    "The structure is a more traditional one than recent curriculums promoting the study of history through themes, and reflects the way Professor Macintyre learned history at school.
    
    "Professor Macintyre said his school history studies started with ancient times and then moved to modern history. He did not study Australian history until Year 10.
    
    "I think it worked particularly well," he said.
    
    "Professor Macintyre said studying Australia as part of broader world history increased students' understanding. Studying the first people of Australia was more effectively taught if students looked at the populating of other continents.
    
    "Similarly, studying the decision to form a settlement in Australia in the 18th century was better understood in the context of European expansion and the different ways colonies were formed."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Factual narrative is basis of history
    
    The draft curriculum is wide open to interpretation
    
    "After decades of woeful, inconsistent teaching that has left too many young Australians ignorant of important historical events, the advent of a compulsory curriculum from early primary to Year 10 is welcome. As a passionate advocate of understanding how the past shapes the present and the future, The Australian applauds the fact that Australian history will be taught in its broader global context. No nation, historically, is an island, and Australia has been shaped as much by world events and historical movements as by the actions of our forefathers.
    
    "The draft released by the National Curriculum Board has some positives, but its broad approach raises concerns. Its author, left-wing historian Stuart Macintyre, clearly loves the discipline of history and is keen to impart his enthusiasm to students. Yesterday, he challenged his critics to find any political bias in the document.
    
    "Unfortunately, its potential for bias in the classroom is significant. The draft curriculum, subtly promotes a values-laden rather than factual-based approach. For example, it endorses the definitions of "historical thinking" set out by the University of British Columbia. These include "historical empathy and moral judgment: the capacity to enter into the world of the past with an informed imagination and ethical responsibility".
    
    "While acknowledging that "the discipline of history constrains the practitioner from imposing personal preferences on the evidence", the draft concedes that "all meaningful historical accounts involve explicit or implicit moral judgment". In the hands of politically biased teachers, or subject heads, of whom there are too many, such an approach provides extensive opportunities for imposing hair-shirted, one-sided views of Australian and world history.
    
    "As Sydney Institute director Gerard Henderson pointed out on ABC radio yesterday: "This idea that facts should be downplayed and concepts of historical enquiry and historical thinking should be stressed, in my view, is not the correct way to go." After years of attempts to bombard students with overly negative perceptions of Australian history, and anti-Western bias that lauded Ho Chi Minh and Greenpeace, among others, many parents hoped the new curriculum would adopt a factual, narrative approach to the subject.
    
    "The draft advocates that assessment "should be appropriate to the goal of developing historical thinking". In practice, assessment should emphasise knowledge and, for senior students, in-depth understandings of historical movements and events. Too often, students being asked to interpret history know they are likely to do best when regurgitating their teachers' opinions. This needs to change, and the draft offers little hope that it will. [emphasis added]
    
    "Parents who believe their children need a good understanding of why the British came to Australia, how the land was explored and agriculture and industries established, the details of Federation and the nation's role in World Wars I and II might be dismayed by the document's claim that "less detail allows greater depth". Such topics - and others equally important including indigenous history, the Great Depression and post-war immigration - have been provided as examples of topics to be covered. Much will depend on how the curriculum is implemented and how extensive a core of basic knowledge students will be required to learn.
    
    "But a more thematic approach, based on perceived moral judgements, could leave students short on important knowledge. It was not encouraging to read the draft's criticism of the Australian history syllabus introduced in NSW for Years 9 and 10 in 1999 as "too laden with content, too prescriptive, too much of a forced route-march for many students." It was later modified.
    
    "On the positive side, the possible topics for primary history are an improvement on the mish-mash of material currently used in many schools. Under the curriculum, young children, from preschool to Year 2, could enjoy a good introduction to history, looking at celebrations such as Australia Day, parts of their own families' histories and historical toys.
    
    "Local history, life 100 years ago and Anzac Day are listed as possible topics for Years 3 and 4. From Year 7, the curriculum proposes a broad sweep of ancient and modern history, including such significant events as the industrial revolution, the Enlightenment and the French and American revolutions, before focusing intently on Australia from 1901 to the present. The amount of classroom time to be devoted to the subject - about 10 per cent of primary school hours and 100 hours per year in Years 7 to 10, is good.
    
    "Correctly, Professor Macintyre has highlighted the importance of well-qualified teachers, with university backgrounds in history, teaching the subject. Too often, the subject is being taught by teachers not trained for the task. At a time when many university history faculties have been allowed to run down and even close, a compulsory history curriculum to Year 10 and a revitalised senior curriculum will pose major challenges.
    
    "Defending the draft, Professor Macintyre said it was "very important that the curriculum we develop is accessible to all people and not axe-grinding". At this stage, the lack of emphasis on factual narratives and the potential for thematic cherry-picking and biased interpretations of race, gender and environmental issues leave much room for improvement. It's a start, but we are well aware of its potential to be "axe-grinding".
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    The Editorial in today's Sydney Morning Herald takes a more generous view
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Students have funnel vision of events
    by Greg Melleuish
    
    "The junior secondary recommendations of the National History Curriculum are clearly the work of a committee, because they appear to be a jumble of components rather than a coherent whole.
    
    "These components are world history, modern European history and Australian history. From the basic outline provided, it is not clear whether these elements will fit together.
    
    "Certainly, the emphasis on world history is to be welcomed. The first two units in the sequence up to 1750 indicate that students will be taught a genuinely rich appreciation of the history of humanity, including world religions.
    
    "But after 1750, the wider world recedes into the background, giving way to a primary focus on Europe, while the final unit will be exclusively Australian.
    
    "This funnel vision of history is worrying, because it tends to view the study of humanity as just providing the context for the study of Australia.
    
    "There is no indication that a global perspective will be pursued after 1750. The sudden shift to Europe perhaps indicates this section was provided by a different committee member.
    
    "Finally, we reach Australia at the narrowest end of the funnel, apparently existing in its own little universe. Only a small list of general topics is provided, but there can be no doubt the devil will be in the detail of this unit.
    
    "There are some positive aspects of this report. It is good to see world religions given their due. But there is no indication the role of religion in Australia will be recognised.
    
    "Equally, while the importance of economics is recognised in the first three sections of the curriculum - ancient, pre-modern and modern history - it does not receive a mention in the Australian section.
    
    "Overall, it remains to be seen if the various sections of this national curriculum can be effectively integrated."

    Greg Melleuish teaches in the School of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Also see Stuart Macintyre's Op Ed in The Age
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Dearth of teachers threatens to leave curriculum stillborn
      
      "The new national curriculum to boost the teaching of history in schools throughout Australia is long overdue. The curriculum will need to include the origins of Western civilisation and a balanced teaching of Captain Cook’s voyages, the early European explorers, Aboriginal history and Asian events relevant to Australian history ("Curriculum to scale back Aussie history”, 13/10).
      
      "A balanced curriculum, however, is the easy part. A greater difficulty is providing the staffing resources within the various state and territory education systems to teach the curriculum. An alarming dearth of history teachers threatens to leave the curriculum stillborn. And as big a problem as teacher shortages may be, by far the biggest problem will be to ensure that a uniformity of emphasis is placed on historical events within the curriculum.
      
      "The largest body of complaint about the teaching of history in Australian schools concerns the teaching bias of individual teachers who impose their own political and moral views on the subject. The biased presentation of views in the classroom does not assist a student to understand history. It simply acts as a brainwashing technique to convert impressionable students who do not have the capacity to objectively evaluate historical facts. By the time students do attain this capacity, if at all, and most often long after their schooldays are over, the damage has been done.
      
      "Let’s hope that the mastermind behind this new-age curriculum, Stuart Macintyre, puts aside his natural political leanings when he pulls this complex package together.
      
      John Bell, Lyneham, ACT [his Letter is also in today's Age]
      
      
      
    • "The move to enhance the overall history curriculum in Australian schools is encouraging, but we must ensure that history is taught as it happened rather than how we wish to remember it.
      
      "Just as we must recall the contributions of Greece and Rome along with ancient Egypt, we must then recall the comparative intellectual abyss of Europe under the Catholic Church for centuries after the fall of Rome while true enlightenment resided elsewhere, in particular with Islam and in China.
      
      "Just as we must recall the empires of Spain, Portugal and England, we should also recognise the cultural contributions of the great civilisations of Africa and Asia.
      
      "We must balance the “bringing of civilisation” to colonial societies in the Americas and the Pacific with the damage done by missionary zeal and the treatment of indigenous populations.
      
      "Most of all, we must recognise and teach that cultural, economic and military supremacy is fleeting throughout history, and certainly not representative of any moral or intellectual ascendancy in any one group."
      
      Stephen Morgan, Runcorn, Qld
      
      
      
    • Monolingual Australians
      
      "Your report that “Most envoys can’t speak Asian” (13/10) is not the real story. The real story is that our politicians and policy makers dealing with education are incapable of doing what most of the rest of the developed world does—ensuring the compulsory learning by school students of a second language.
      
      "In Europe, almost all students learn a second (and often a third) language from an early age, with many starting at pre-school. Until Australian educators and policy makers grasp the importance of this, headlines such as those reporting the inability of Australians to speak a second language can be wheeled out every year."
      
      David Goldstein, Coogee, NSW
      
      
      
      
  • PM's Christmas tax bonus as surplus unlocked to lift confidence
    by David Uren and Matthew Franklin
    

    "A multi-billion-dollar cash handout to consumers to lift spending ahead of Christmas is under consideration in an attempt to boost the economy and stave off the expected effects of the global economic crisis.
    
    "The package is likely to include a one-off tax rebate, some direct infrastructure spending and a payment to pensioners and other welfare recipients, and was discussed at the strategic budget policy committee meeting held over the weekend.
    
    "The Government has not yet settled on the size of the package. Sources suggest it will be less than $10 billion, but possibly as much as $5 billion...."

    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Pressure on Government to soften the Northern Territory intervention
    
    The Rudd Government is under intense pressure to wind back the hardline intervention into Northern Territory communities after its own hand-picked review called for a softer approach, describing the Howard government's dramatic move last year as racially discriminatory.
    
    
    
    • Op Ed
      Two-way bet on NT response
      
      It is something of a two-way bet. On the one hand the review commissioned by the Rudd Government into the Northern Territory Emergency Response states: "The situation in remote communities and town camps was - and remains - sufficiently acute to be described as a national emergency. The NTER should continue."

      On the other, it recommends that income management be voluntary, rather than mandatory; and it calls for Aboriginal townships to remain closed to the outside world. These are two of the key tenets of the intervention.
      
      
      
      

• The Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Studying the past informs our lives now
    by Stuart Macintyre
    
    [Professor Stuart Macintyre led the group of teachers, teacher educators, university historians and a museum director advising the National Curriculum Board on what should be included in the history curriculum.]
    
    "History is as foundational and challenging as the disciplines of science, mathematics and English. Awareness of history is an essential characteristic of any civilised society, and historical knowledge is fundamental to the way we think about ourselves and others. This is the starting point of the advisory group's report to the National Curriculum Board.
    
    "The history we should teach must assist understanding of contemporary events as well as the enduring significance of earlier ones. It should introduce students to the variety of human experience, enable them to see the world through the eyes of others, enrich their appreciation of the causes and consequences of change.
    
    "Think of the changes that affect us today. A quarter of all Australians were born elsewhere, and they have come from all over the world, bringing with them their own experiences, traditions and aspirations.
    
    "Australia has a particular awareness of its first people and an enlarged appreciation of the Aboriginal dimension of Australian history coincides with a commitment to improving educational and other outcomes for Aboriginal Australians.
    
    "Australia is deeply engaged with its immediate region and the attainment of greater knowledge of the Asia-Pacific is a national priority. The global economy and the dramatic transformation of newly industrialised countries have placed severe strains on the environment, and the opening up of Australia to global competition has placed greater emphasis on educational attainment.
    
    "For all these reasons the advisory committee believes that the history we need to teach must be broad in scope — to operate in the world they live, young Australians must understand world history..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Editorial
    Australian history, wide world
    
    "Australian students will be the winners if the National Curriculum Board's ideas on better ways to teach history are implemented. Teaching history as a distinct subject in primary schools and making it a compulsory subject up to year 10 are wise moves if future generations are to have a solid grounding in the Australian story. At present, teachers report a worrying lack of enthusiasm among pupils for the history of this land and its people.
    
    "The draft report made public yesterday by Professor Stuart Macintyre's advisory group argues persuasively that teaching Australian history in the context of events elsewhere will address the problem. The experience of the First Australians, the early settlers and today's migrants cannot be fully understood except against the wider background of humanity's struggles. History cannot properly be taught in isolation from it. Our classrooms today are diverse places, and broadening the focus will almost certainly stimulate interest among children who come from a range of ethnic, national and religious backgrounds.
    
    "The draft curriculum represents a serious effort to find a new balance amid the polarising debates of the "history wars". The challenge facing educators is to convey Australia's complex reality as a successful nation of immigrants in which conflict over resources and policies is the normal order of things. But history is not just a story, disputed or otherwise: it is a set of skills that helps us to analyse how we became who we are. Some critics will never be satisfied, but we will be pleased if Australia's new history curriculum balances fact and interpretation, first Australian and settler viewpoints, and global and national context.
    
    "The opening episode of SBS Television's The First Australians shows how engrossing a fully rounded account of our past can be. We want our children to become passionate Australians steeped in their nation's story. Facts are important, but any approach based only on the rote learning of an officially approved, Australia-specific set of facts will fail because it will not engage the intended beneficiaries. The draft curriculum's innovative proposals will undergo further refinement after consultations with educators, but they are on the right track. The Australian story does not belong to any individual group or party. It belongs to all of us, and a middle path blending the many different strands of our national experience will serve us well in the future."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Making a mark on our education standards
      
      "It's Higher School Certificate time again and one of the most valuable weapons teachers have at their disposal is the marking pen; it can either motivate and guide or discourage and confuse. The marking of written student assignments, especially English, the only compulsory HSC subject, is far from easy; their volume alone adds to teacher overload. The work submitted may be illegible, messy, unclear, weak in spelling, poor in vocabulary and lacking punctuation - all the more reason for the marking pen. A subject such as English should be explorative and interpretive, while the competitive world of today calls for analysis, prescription and outcomes. Trying to combine these two can confuse not only students, but also teachers. Thus marking can sometimes lack consistency, clarity and objectivity.
      
      "The ability to write a good essay is an indispensable skill for HSC success. For students who grapple with the art of essay writing, there is nothing more discouraging than receiving back an assignment with barely a pencil mark on it, only a dismissive comment at the end, which may be hard to comprehend. Students need to feel that their essays have been thoroughly analysed, indications of this being either ticks or comments alongside the paragraphs of every page. When this is followed by a constructive, clear critique of the positive and the negative as well as a comparison with previous work to note improvement or otherwise, then students feel listened to and significant. For a student to be made feel "pegged" or tied to a presumed level of competence is to immediately deaden initiative, motivation and the determination to achieve HSC success.
      
      "If students are not receiving proper encouragement, why bother giving them the assignment. To provide the right type of encouragement and to meet the detailed and demanding standard of marking required for year 12 students, it may be time to bring in an independent, professional body of markers to provide the appropriate feedback. It would also relieve our over-worked teachers."
      
      Ros Winterton, Bondi
      
      
      
      
• SSTUWA
  
  
  • Interim increase and news on negotiations [EBA Update 78]
    
    1. INTERIM PAYMENT 
    
    The Premier and Minister advised Executive on 25 September 2008 that they wished to progress an immediate salary increase for teachers. At a Cabinet meeting on 6 October a decision to increase teachers’ and administrators’ salary by 6%, backdated to 5 September,  was made. Executive endorsed acceptance of the increase. Salaries will be adjusted for a 6% increase in the upcoming pay period and back payments will be made in the following pay period.
    
    2. SSTU ENTERPRISE ORDER & NEGOTIATIONS
    
    At the same meeting, both parties indicated an interest in entering into negotiations. A letter seeking to recommence negotiations was received from the Minister on the 7 September 2008. 
    To enable full attention to be directed to negotiations the SSTU is seeking to suspend the arbitration timeline [hearings are set from 2- 19 December 2008]. This matter will be considered by the WAIRC today.
    
    Regardless of whether the parties recommence negotiations the Union will continue to work with the lawyers in preparation for arbitration.
    
    3. MEMBER ACTION – DIRECTIVE 1
    
    Members are reminded that DIRECTIVE 1 remains in place.
    
    For the purpose of applications for TOIL or payments as per EBA 2006 Clause 18.4, please see the union website for information.
    
    4. MEMBER ACTION – MP LOBBYING
    
    MP lobbying will continue. Early next week a schedule of visits arranged by the Union office will be forwarded to schools. Schools / worksites are urged to make independent arrangements to visit their local MP. 
    
    5. MEMBER ACTION – T4 P&C COMMUNICATION
    
    The Term 4 Union mail out to Union Reps will be in schools soon. Included is the Term 4 P&C Communication Kit to support a visit from your branch to your P&C and/or School Council. This kit is focussing on (a) the log of Claims and (b) the recently launched national campaign Public Education For Our Future
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Henderson backs down on school history stance
    
    "The Territory Government has softened its stance about wanting to control the entire Indigenous component of a national history curriculum.
    
    "In October 2007, the then Territory education minister, now Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, called for the Indigenous section of any national history plan to be left to the NT Education Department.
    
    "The former prime minister John Howard had wanted Australian history to be made compulsory for all year nine and 10 students from 2009.
    
    "Now the federal Labor Government is adopting a similar policy, but Mr Henderson's demands have diminished.
    
    "We're prepared to contribute in terms of the Territory's Indigenous history and the part that that should play in the Australian history curriculum."
    
    "The Chief Minister says significant Territory events such as Cyclone Tracy and the bombing of Darwin should be included in any national curriculum."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • [Tasmania's] Premier stands by school reforms
    
    The Premier David Bartlett has vowed to press on with his Tasmania Tomorrow reforms despite concerns the implementation is too rushed.

 

Wednesday 15 October

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Nobel laureate urges science tests in school (page 14)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "West Australian Nobel prize-winning scientist Barry Marshall has criticised the draft national science curriculum for proposing teachers put less emphasis on testing students’ scientific knowledge.
    
    "Professor Marshall, who won science’s top prize in 2005 with colleague Robin Warren for research into stomach ulcers, said yesterday science education in Australia had become “a bit soft”.
    
    "A paper outlining the broad structure of the course for students from kindergarten to Year 12, released on Monday, called for a science curriculum that was not “knowledge-heavy” or too dependent on “pencil and paper testing”.
    
    "Professor Marshall said the curriculum appeared to be moving in the right direction. “But the testing of science skills needs to be part of it and not downgraded just to keep everybody with this false level of confidence that they know it when in fact they don’t,” he said.
    
    “If you have it set up so that everybody thinks they know it, can do it and they think that it’s very easy and it doesn’t really matter if they don’t learn it, then it just doesn’t get done. You have to have some measurement process.”
    
    "He agreed it was unnecessary for students to memorise reams of scientific terms to show understanding, but that did not mean less emphasis should be put on tests. Tests were also needed to show schools taught science adequately compared with other schools or States.
    
    “I’m not one of these people who think it’s a strain on kids to be testing them,” he said. “I think there has to be some testing otherwise there’s no objective way of measuring whether some kids are good at science or not.”
    
    "Professor Marshall said he was pleased the document called for a curriculum that would encourage students to be sceptical, because he was concerned that fewer Australians were looking for the evidence to support opinions.
    
    “There needs to be a general understanding of science and in my opinion at the moment it’s flagged a bit in Australia,” he said. He also welcomed moves to make science education more relevant to students’ everyday lives. “I think every kid in primary school should know approximately how all the things in his house work,” he said.
    
    "Professor Marshall said he experimented with magnets, batteries and bits of wire as a seven-year-old. “A lot of kids just don’t get that exposure in the home, so it has to be done at school,” he said.
    
    "The Science Teachers Association of WA said any shift away from more traditional forms of assessment would require resources and training.
    
    “It would also be important to maintain academic rigour in these assessment tasks,” STAWA curriculum chairman Geoff Quinton said. “However, tasks that require students to use high-order thinking and real problem-solving skills can often be assessed more rigorously by using a variety of assessment techniques, not just pen and paper tests.”
    
    "Mr Quinton agreed that current curriculums were too “knowledge-heavy”. Forcing teachers and students to cover too much content reduced the possibility of gaining deep understanding of important science topics, he said.
    
    "Curtin University institute of theoretical physics director Igor Bray said the advice paper was too generic to be useful. “Science is about precision, detail and depth — these documents don’t lead to effective action,” he said." [emphasis added]
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Maths curriculum guru queries use of calculators (page 14)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “The academic charged with shaping the national maths curriculum has recommended drawing the line on where calculator and other technology can be used when teaching the subject.
    
    “Monash University science, mathematics and technology education professor Peter  Sullivan said digital technologies were not “optional extras” in an increasingly complex society.
    
    “But he acknowledged many people were suspicious that any increase in the use of technology would lead to declining standards of student achievement.
    
    “In a discussion paper on the broad structure of the new national maths course released for public comment yesterday, he said mathematicians had changed since the days of logarithm tables and slide rules and the curriculum must continue to adapt.
    
    “A curriculum that appropriately incorporates mathematical technologies can anticipate such concerns by specifying standards for technology-free aspects of mathematics and standards for those aspects where technologies enhance the quality of mathematics being learnt,” he said.
    
    “This could include setting exams that include a section in which the use of calculators is not allowed, as the Curriculum Council has decided to do for WA exams from 2010.
    
    “WA university academics reignited debate on the use of calculators in schools recently, saying students were becoming too reliant on them.
    
    “Professor Sullivan said Australian students had to receive a good enough mathematical education to make them internationally competitive.
    
    “But he warned against setting unrealistically high expectations, saying that could lead to teachers focussing too heavily on rote learning methods as they pushed their students onto topics for which they were not ready.  “The goal is not to have an advanced curriculum, but well-educated students, “the paper said.
    
    “Professor Sullivan also recommended streamlining the curriculum to focus on the most important topics in the early years of school.  When all aspects were presented as though they were of equal importance, he said, this did not help teachers identify key ideas.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Teachers to stop work over resourcing [online only]
    AAP
    
    "Thousands of teachers in southeast Queensland will stop work next week in a bid to secure better resourcing for schools.
    
    "About 3,000 teachers from 54 schools in the Logan-Albert and Beaudesert region, south of Brisbane, will stop work for one hour on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
    
    "Queensland Teachers' Union (QTU) president Steve Ryan said the Queensland government was not funding schools according to students' needs.
    
    "He said $40 million was needed to fund more than 50 schools in the Logan-Albert and Beaudesert region, including $10 million in resources to meet students' needs and $15 million to maintain and upgrade buildings.
    
    "It's about time the Queensland premier, treasurer and education minister realised that not all state schools are the same - teachers face particular challenges in some of our most difficult schools," Mr Ryan said.
    
    "These teachers report extreme time and workload pressures, higher than average staff turnover and low morale."
    
    "The action may be extended to other regions, he said.
    
    "Union members will hold one-hour stop-work meetings at Beenleigh and Beaudesert on Tuesday and at Browns Plains, Logan East, Logan West and Woodridge on Wednesday."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Hiking Y-12 completion rates 'tough ask' [online only]
    AAP
    
    "A new report questions the Rudd government's ability to ensure nine out of 10 students are completing high school by 2020.
    
    "The Rudd government wants nine out of 10 students completing Year 12 by 2020, but in 2006, just 71 per cent of 19-year-olds did so, the How Young People are Faring report reveals.
    
    "The report, commissioned by the Foundation for Young Australians, found only 58 per cent of students from poorer backgrounds managed to finish school.
    
    "Foundation chief executive Adam Smith said meeting the government's "commendable" target of 90 per cent would be extremely tough.
    
    "Things are not changing fast enough," he said.
    
    "The report found failing to finish high school reduced a person's chances of further study or entering the workforce - six out of 10 of those who complete Year 12 do further study compared with just one-third of early leavers.
    
    "Eighty per cent of those who finish high school go on to full or part-time work compared to just 50 per cent of early leavers.
    
    "Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said the report supported the government's emphasis on lifting Year 12 completion rates.
    
    "For the last decade, retention rates to Year 12 in Australia have not improved and Australia's Year 12 or equivalent retention rate is low by OECD standards," Ms Gillard said.
    
    "Lifting retention rates to 90 per cent would establish Australia in the top third of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
    
    "This report clearly shows that targeted, enduring and well-resourced programs are needed if we are to reach this ambitious goal."
    
    "Ms Gillard said performance pay for teachers was an important factor in lifting school standards.
    
    "I am struck by the apparent lesson from the United States ... that an intense, rigorous assessment which includes a strong element of performance-based practice is a vital part of the overall process (of lifting standards)," she told a Teaching Australia and Business Council of Australia symposium in Canberra on Wednesday.
    
    "US National Board for Professional Teaching Standards president Joseph Aguerrebere told the symposium paying the best teachers higher wages lead to better outcomes for students." [emphasis added]
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • 'Compel students to study maths'
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Maths should join English in being made compulsory for all students through to Year 12, with the author of the draft national maths curriculum proposing four levels of courses to ensure an appropriate one for every student.
    
    "Monash University professor of mathematics education Peter Sullivan, author of the draft, advocates compulsory maths for all, with students in Year 11 choosing the type of course that best suits their aspirations.
    
    "The draft curriculum, released yesterday by the National Curriculum Board, proposes a single maths course until the end of Year 10 with senior students able to choose from four courses: vocational, elementary, intermediate or advanced.
    
    "It argues for a streamlining of the maths curriculum to focus on the most core topics, specifying the key learning goals sequentially.
    
    "When all aspects are presented as though of equal importance, this does not help teachers to appreciate short- and long-term goals, and to identify key ideas," it says.
    
    "The detail of the content to be taught will be developed in further consultation, but the draft outlines key domains of number, measurement, space, chance and data, and algebra.
    
    "It says the idea of working mathematically, or applying the maths learned, should also be covered and proposes strands of conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic thinking, adaptive reasoning and productive disposition.
    
    "A consultation forum on the maths curriculum in Melbourne yesterday, hosted by the NCB, was also told that maths curriculums had become unteachable.
    
    "Foundation professor in maths education at Melbourne University, Kaye Stacey, said maths curriculums were dominated by learning outcomes of what students should be able to do and had lost sight of what maths should be taught.

    "We have been writing curriculum in recent years that isn't really teachable," she said. [emphasis added]
    
    "Professor Sullivan said society condoned the idea of giving up on maths, but it was a fundamental skill and should be required of all students. "People will struggle to learn languages but it's OK to give up on maths; it's seen as dispensable," he said.
    
    "If you talk to singing teachers, they say they can teach anyone to sing; art teachers say they can teach anyone to draw. I can teach anyone to do maths."
    
    "Professor Sullivan said the national maths curriculum had to meet the needs of all students, and give all the opportunity to choose maths later on.
    
    "There are Year 8 and 9 kids who are being taught maths today which effectively means they can't do maths in Year 11," he said.
    
    "He said 80 per cent of students already did maths in Year 12, so by offering a range of courses, it would ensure there was one for all.
    
    "Not all at the national curriculum forum in Melbourne yesterday supported making maths compulsory, but Perth maths teacher Chris Fraser said the idea had merit.
    
    "Mr Fraser, deputy principal at Padbury Senior High School, in Perth's northern suburbs, said schools were responsible for giving students a general education and under that model of education, there was a good argument for making maths compulsory.
    
    "For kids heading off to tertiary study, maths tends to be compulsory because it's easier to get a good tertiary entrance ranking," he said.
    
    "For kids doing vocational training, programs tend to do maths, too."
    
    "At the national maths forum yesterday, Professor Stacey said the student outcomes in curriculums were often trite, confusing a low level of understanding with introducing students to a topic.
    
    "Professor Stacey gave the example of the Victorian primary school curriculum in chance, which had students at every year playing with dice to understand the chance of games, and of getting various results.
    
    "The outcome required of students by the end of Year 4 is that they can compare the likelihood of everyday events, such as the chance of rain or snow.
    
    "That's a huge amount of curriculum clutter to get to such little things," she said.
    
    "Professor Stacey said students were given repetitious problems of low complexity rather than exploring topics in depth.
    
    "We're confusing levels of understanding and levels of performance with the curriculum topics we need to teach," she said.
    
    "The key to catering for the advanced students is to increase the complexity of problems in the current topic." [emphasis added]
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Age
    
    

  • Free literary criticism of old theories
    by Luke Slattery
    
    "The culture wars may have lost much of their steam but the literacy wars, so called, are set to intensify ahead of the national English curriculum. Animating the conflict are calls from a group of distinguished scholars for the direct involvement in the new curriculum of specialists trained in the discipline of literature.
    
    "They fear, with some justification, that the new national English curriculum framework to be hammered out by committee chairman Peter Freebody is fated to become a branch of communications and cultural studies heavily inflected with critical literacy, a sociological model championed in the 1990s by, among others, Freebody and Allan Luke.
    
    "Gillian Whitlock (University of Queensland), Deirdre Coleman (University of Melbourne) and Robert Dixon (University of Sydney) have recently called for the appointment to the national curriculum committee of specialists trained in the discipline of English, generally, and of English and Australian literature in particular. In a prepared statement sent last week to the HES, Sydney University's Will Christie lent his support.
    
    "The statement, which is in many ways a plea for society to engage with the universities on an issue of universal importance - literacy - is worth quoting at length.
    
    "While I accept that the teaching of English at primary and secondary schools has its characteristic work to do, and has over time developed its own critical priorities and teaching methodologies, there remains a very real continuity in the discipline through to tertiary level, one that gives up-to-date theoretical and scholarly work done at the universities a vital bearing on curriculum design," Christie writes.
    
    "The real danger in omitting the representation of university teachers and scholars, however, is not the offence that it offers to a large contingent of academic teachers but the gulf it threatens to create between the schools and universities. It is the young Australian students themselves who are likely to suffer if we fail effectively to equip them to proceed to the study of English at a higher level.
    
    "Like my colleagues, I have specific concerns about the development of English as a school subject - I am anxious that literature, the literary text and historical literary culture remain central to the discipline, and with it the rhetorical, grammatical, aesthetic and ethical training encouraged by detailed and responsive literary analysis - but my appeal for the inclusion of university scholars and teachers in the national curriculum debate is more general ... In designing the education of young Australians, we cannot afford to ignore what information and insight the universities have to offer."
    
    "Scholars such as Christie want to see more sensitive attention given to grammar and literature in the English classroom and less to a prescriptive, political deconstruction of the media (one state curriculum document recommends the study of sports telecasts). Where a canonical literary text is on the curriculum, they want to see it opened up in ways that invite attention to its rhetorical and aesthetic qualities and register its place in the literary tradition..." [emphasis added]
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    

  • Northern territory kids get four hours a day in English
    
    In an effort to address failings in indigenous bilingual education, the Northern Territory Government will require the first four hours of every school day to be conducted in English.
    
    Announcing the decision yesterday, Territory Education Minister Marion Scrymgour said she supported indigenous language and culture, but her priority was to get Aboriginal children grounded in the English language before they studied their own.
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Response report card
    
    NT intervention review points the way forward
    
    
    
  • Extra $187m for jobs training for unemployed
    
    The Government is spending $187 million on training an additional 56,000 unemployed people for new jobs as part of its fiscal stimulus package.
    
    
    
  • Curing a sick health system [14 October]
    
    We're turning out medical school graduates without being able to give them on-the-job training.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Education revolution looks more like revisionism
      
      "Under the camouflage of the global crisis, we are presented with news of Professor Stuart Macintyre’s potted version of history to be taught to our school students, with every indication it is likely to be a black armband assessment, rather than a celebration of nation-building. It seems that our children are to be taught opinions and dogma in lieu of facts, a view reinforced by the strident criticism of the proposal.
      
      "Now, hot on the heels of that troubling news, we are told that core science studies are to be abandoned before Year 10 ("Core subjects give way to science for life”, 14/10). It has all the hallmarks of the SOSE studies which have blighted Queensland education for a decade. Unfortunately, funding to private schools is likely to be linked to adherence to these syllabuses so the net effect may well be to degrade our standard of education even further. Kevin Rudd’s “Education Revolution” is looking more like education revisionism with each passing day."
      
      John McLeod, Sunshine Coast, Qld
      
      
      
    • "The lack of trained history teachers, to which John Bell (Letters, 14/10) draws attention, is not the only problem the proposed national history curriculum faces. Three years ago, the Victorian Government returned history to the curriculum in place of the Studies of Society and Environment concoction in which it had been buried by the previous government, but there are still schools advertising for SOSE teachers and there are still schools that use history or SOSE to fill up the teaching loads of teachers with no relevant qualifications.
      
      "Worse than this, there are still schools recycling the failed open classroom of the 1970s, in which subject expertise and actual teaching do not matter. It’s all “facilitation”, “flexible learning spaces”, “inquiry-based learning” and projects, with up to 200 students corralled in the one room, despite the fact that innumerable studies show students learn more when they are actually taught.
      
      "It seems the draft national science curriculum, with its opposition to content and its emphasis on issues, may also have ignored these studies. However, Justine Ferrari really ought to know that biology, physics and chemistry cannot disappear from the junior high school years as they have never been taught there as separate subjects in the first place. I already fear that the proposed national curriculum will be buried by the fads that it was supposed to guard against."
      
      Chris Curtis, Hurstbridge, Vic
      
      
      
    • "I fully support the desire of Stephen Morgan (Letters, 14/10) to have history taught as it happened rather than how we wish to remember it. Unfortunately, his letter demonstrates that he has little knowledge of how it happened and has instead substituted his preferred left-wing narrative for the facts.
      
      "He repeats the age-old anti-clerical canard of a dark age under the Catholic Church, when in fact the opposite is true. For all its glories, the Roman Empire in 1000 years never evolved beyond being a slave-based agrarian society. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire led to a surge in prosperity and intellectual inquiry in many parts of Western Europe, led by the Church through its monasteries and universities. While it is true that Islamic civilisation went through a relative golden age, it was mainly on the back of classical Hellenic texts which it had acquired through conquest. The knowledge gained from these texts was never developed (due to Islam’s theological constraints) and Islamic civilisation went through a long, steep decline from which it has yet to recover.
      
      "Finally, with the exception of North Africa, I am at a loss to think of the great civilisations of Africa to which Morgan refers and I question the relevance of Australian students learning about the region anyway. Australia is a member of the community of nations that make up Western civilisation.
      
      "A thorough grounding in the history of the West, to which most Australians have deep cultural and ancestral links, should be our first priority."
      
      Christopher Down, Dulwich Hill, NSW
      
      
      
    • "While the reintroduction of history to the school curriculum may seem like a good idea, I would bet almost anything that it will be some watered-down, politically correct version which will do more harm that good."
      
      Lindon Litchfield, Southport, Qld
      
      
      
    • "Is it only 60 years since the Chifley government lost office on a policy of nationalising the banks? Maybe we should be teaching more Australia history in our schools after all."
      
      Peter Hallahan, Coorparoo, Qld
      
      
      
    • "I’m just wondering who removed geology from the list of traditional science subjects taught in Years 7 to 10 and when this was done ("Big three science subjects face merger”, 14/10. A quick check of the NSW science syllabus indicates that the “other” natural science currently comprises approximately 20 per cent of the Years 7 to 10 science content list; and that NSW still offers a stand-alone Earth and Environmental Science course for the HSC that has a respectable enrolment of around 1200 students.
      
      "Given this country’s reliance on its mineral wealth and the importance of geology for understanding and contextualising environmental problems and global climate change, it seems to me that the National Curriculum Committee has let the nation down very badly by apparently ignoring the fourth natural science during its deliberations."
      
      Dr Tom Hubble, Pro-Dean, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney
      
      
      
      
• SSTUWA
  
  
  • Enterprise Order & Negotiations [EBA Update # 79]
    
    At the WAIRC hearing on 14 October 2008 regarding “suspension” of the scheduled arbitration timelines to enable the Union and Employer to enter into meaningful negotiations, the Commissioner has given some relief to the Union position.
    
    This means the Union and the Employer have been given a small window of opportunity to attempt to reach a negotiated outcome for a replacement schools’ salary and conditions agreement.
    
    The parties are required to report back on progress of negotiations to the WAIRC on Monday 20 October 2008. Based on this report the Commissioner will give further consideration to allow time for the parties to continue negotiations or bring on arbitration.
    
    Regardless of negotiations the Union will continue to work with the lawyers in preparation for arbitration. To keep informed check the union website on a regular basis.
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
    
  • Work on Schools EBA & EO
    
    Work is continuing behind the scenes on the all important EBA and EO documents.
    
    All staff at the SSTUWA are now on a roster providing support to the senior officers, executive members and the legal team preparing for possible arbitration.
    
    The union’s negotiating team continue working in good faith in a bid to obtain an EBA – but are ensuring that we’re well prepared in the event that we have to win our battle in the WA Industrial Relations Commission.
    
    The process is long and pedantic as all interpretations and legal ramifications need to be explored on each clause to ensure members gain the fairest and most satisfactory result if arbitration becomes the only option.
    
    Our hired industrial legal practitioners as well as SSTUWA executive and industrial officers are working on developing the best possible Enterprise Order in case we need to take our case to the West Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
    
    SSTUWA Members have been supportive with witness statements, survey responses and other help in framing these important documents that will impact all teachers in WA.
    
    Please visit [the union] website for regular updates and encourage other members to join and become active.
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
    
  • What About TAFE [Negotiating News 33]
    
    School teachers get 6% interim increase but what about TAFE lecturers?
    654 days since last pay increase
    
    
    Recent talks between the SSTUWA  and  Education Minister, Liz Constable, have resulted in a 6% interim pay increase for State School Teachers and Administrators.
    
    However, Ms Constable’s counterpart in Training, Peter Collier has only just   responded to requests to meet with the SSTUWA’s Senior Officers to progress similar arrangements for TAFE members.
    
    The meeting will take place on the 23rd of October.  We will reiterate with the new minister our   preference  for  negotiating a speedy  and sensible resolution  to this protracted dispute.  It  remains to be seen whether   this   government like its predecessors, is  hell bent on leaving the decision about TAFE lecturers pay and conditions to be dragged on through the long and arduous process of arbitration in the WAIRC. 
    
    A report back on the meeting will be given to TAFE Committee later that day.
    
    The new government can't address the skills crisis without TAFE lecturers.
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • English lessons plan a diversion: union
    
    The Education Union says the Northern Territory Government's plan for half of classroom lessons to be taught in English at all remote schools is an attempt to divert attention away from troubles within the Education Department.
    
    
    
  • Territory schools 'too poor to pay for toilets'
    
    A survey by the Education Union has found that 94 per cent of schools in the Northern Territory have a shortage of teachers.
    
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • National tests for 14-year-olds are scrapped after marking chaos
    
    But 11-year-old children at schools in England still face Sats next summer
    
    National curriculum tests due to be taken by 600,000 14-year-olds at schools in England next summer have been scrapped in the wake of this year's marking fiasco.
    
    
  • BBC News
    
    
    • What does scrapping tests mean?
      
      
      
  • The Guardian
    
    
    • Now scrap Sats for 11-year-olds, Balls told as tests at 14 are axed
      
      The government's surprise abolition of national tests for 14-year-olds yesterday drew deep dividing lines between primary and secondary schools as unions welcomed the scrapping of tests for older pupils while lamenting ministers' resolve to preserve the more controversial tests for 11-year-olds.
      
      
      
      
• EdNews.org
  
  
  • Machinations of What Works Clearinghouse [13 October]
    
    Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann is not impressed !
    
    The conclusion of this critique is that What Works Clearinghouse is so irreparably biased that it would have to be thoroughly reoriented and reorganized under different management rules to perform the function of providing reliable, accurate information about what works.
    
    Worth a look !  Web
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • 'Breakfast clubs' feed homeless at school, says Pike
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Thousands of school students are homeless, and many are so impoverished the State Government has started advising principals on how to provide "breakfast clubs" to feed them.
    
    "Education Minister Bronwyn Pike yesterday described student homelessness as an "unacceptable reality" for schools, acknowledging that many students were without a home, or hot-bedding between friends or relatives' houses.
    
    "The latest census figures show there are about 9340 homeless school students in Australia..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Doubts on Labor school target
    
    The Rudd Government will have to intensify its efforts if it expects to achieve its goal for 2020 of having 90% of students completing year 12, research shows.
    
    
    
  • State may open high school in Vietnam
    
    Victoria is considering "exporting" a secondary school to Vietnam, where local and expatriate students would study the Victorian curriculum, taught by Victorian teachers.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Seeing both sides
      
      "Since when has history ever been entirely objective? As the saying goes, "History is written by the victors." Historical events are often interpreted to develop an approximation of past events that cannot help but be coloured by current and past cultural noise stemming from perceived wrongs and various grievances against others.
      
      "Perhaps there should be two teachers in every classroom to present both left and right interpretations of history.
      
      "Except for dry statistics concerning dates and places, objective interpretations of how and why things happened is difficult at best."
      
      Tibor Majlath, Greensborough

 

Thursday 16 October

• The Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Maths push adds up
    
    Australia must solve its teacher shortage
    
    "In proposing that maths, like English, should be compulsory for all students to Year 12, Monash professor Peter Sullivan, author of the draft national maths curriculum, has opened up an important debate. Professor Sullivan advocates Year 11 students choosing the type of course that best suits their aspirations from four different levels. These would be vocational, elementary, intermediate or advanced maths.
    
    "The broad range of options, catering for different abilities and interests, would maximise opportunity and choice. One of the most important challenges for Professor Sullivan and the National Curriculum Board is to ensure that the advanced course, to be pursued by the most able students, is as rigorous as any in the world. Australia needs more scientists, engineers, mathematicians and teachers of the discipline. In a global and competitive world, school courses, which will be uniform under the national curriculum, must prepare the best students for university maths, not only in Australia but overseas.
    
    "At present, 80 per cent of Year 12 students study maths. If the remaining 20 per cent embraced the subject, more maths teachers, of which Australia already has a shortage, would be required. Despite the best efforts of special scholarships and HECS incentives, which are an important step in the right direction, it would be difficult to find enough teachers in the short to medium term. University entrance scores for teaching degrees are already too low, and dropping the bar further to encourage more applicants of a poorer calibre would be counter-productive. Maths teachers with university degrees in the discipline are in strong demand with business. An effective system of merit pay, to which the Rudd Government, to its credit, is committed will be important in retaining them in classrooms. Nations such as Singapore and Finland, which traditionally perform strongly in maths, offer extensive school tutoring systems. These would also be important in Australia if the subject became compulsory here.
    
    "Maths is important in many jobs. Perth maths teacher Chris Fraser, who believes the subject should be compulsory, is correct to point out it is an essential part of a general education. Others, on the other hand, would argue that for students pursing careers in the humanities, 10 years of maths grounding is sufficient. At senior level, instead of an elementary maths subject, such students might be better off being challenged with an advanced literature or history subject or a foreign language. These would carry more weight for tertiary entrance than elementary maths, and be more relevant to students' aspirations.
    
    "Under the new curriculum, authorities will need to better match university course requirements to the appropriate maths courses. As they enter university, too many students find they need bridging programs in maths to gain access to their preferred courses in engineering, business and other disciplines." [emphasis added]
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • British history is not the whole story
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Calls for British history to be the focus of school courses overlooked the importance of the values and traditions Australia inherited from Western Europe, historian John Hirst has said.
    
    "Dr Hirst's comments to a forum on the national history curriculum in Melbourne yesterday were in response to Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott's comment that the focus of the curriculum should be British history.
    
    "The draft curriculum, released by the National Curriculum Board on Monday, proposes history be compulsory from primary school through to Year 10, and that Australian history be taught in the context of the broader world history.
    
    "Earlier this week Mr Abbott said he supported the study of world history but said the focus should be on Britain as the nation that had shaped the modern world. He said the curriculum had to "pay credit where it's due".
    
    "Dr Hirst said Britain was influenced by Europe and many of the institutions and values imported into Australia originated in Europe.
    
    "When parliamentary institutions and common law are being discussed in Australia, the focus would be on English history but Britain is part of Europe and Britain, and then Australia, was often influenced by European development," he said.
    
    "Copernicus and Galileo were not English. England became a Protestant country but it didn't originate in England and the Enlightenment is first of all French.
    
    "The Catholic Church, which has some influence in Australia, is Europe-wide with its headquarters in Rome.
    
    "When Tony Abbott said focus on English history, he was remembering he is a monarchist but forgot he is a Catholic."
    
    "Dr Hirst said the draft curriculum emphasised the study of Western European history, which included British history.
    
    "But if there's some misgiving about a lesser emphasis on England, we have to set that to rest straight away and (put) British and Western European history at the appropriate place in the curriculum," he said.
    
    "The forum, held by the NCB as part of its public consultation on the national curriculum, was attended by academic historians, history teachers and curriculum experts who broadly supported the proposed framework.
    
    "Historian and Melbourne University professor Stuart Macintyre was the author of the draft, in consultation with an advisory group that included Dr Hirst.
    
    "Dr Hirst disputed the idea that history could be taught as an objective narrative, as promoted by right-wing commentators and former prime minister John Howard.

    "Moral judgments run right through history," Dr Hirst said."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Age
    
    
    

  • HECS to inspire loan-fed revival
    
    A survey of community attitudes has signalled strong public support for extending income-contingent loans, providing ammunition for the Bradley review to seriously consider expanding the HECS system into funding student living expenses.
    
    
    
  • Northern Territory intervention at crucial junction
    
    Arnhem Land leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu has warned that the Northern Territory Emergency Response is at a "crossroads" and called on the Prime Minister and NT Chief Minister to "show leadership" to build on the emergency measures.
    
    
    • Op Ed
      Optional intervention gives choice
      
      The rancorous debate about the Northern Territory emergency response emanates from two broad camps: those who claim that several measures, particularly compulsory welfare quarantining and five-year leases to the commonwealth over Aboriginal township areas are ineffective and racially discriminatory, and those who are not persuaded by this critique and are concerned that drastic measures are necessary to close the gap in the differential life expectancy of indigenous Australians as against the national average.
      
      Related Op Ed in The Sydney Morning Herald
      
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Editorial
    National system to take students to the top
    
    A new, more relevant national curriculum for schools makes sense.
    
    "There are few matters that evoke as much passion or ideological division as the education of our children. After a slow start, the Federal Government's much-vaunted education revolution has gathered momentum through its plans to develop a national curriculum that would see all students being taught the same syllabus, irrespective of which state or territory they live in.
    
    "Over the past week, the National Curriculum Board has been unveiling draft curriculums for the core subjects of history, maths and science. The draft English curriculum will be released today, completing the first stage in what could amount to the most significant reform of Australian schools for many years.
    
    "It is a change that is long overdue, not only regarding the structure of the current disparate system, but the content and relevance of the subjects being taught. With a population of only 21 million, it makes little sense for the nature of syllabus and assessment to change with the crossing of every border. A standardised curriculum in these four subjects (the board will tackle geography and languages after 2010) has the potential to liberate schools and students from the the confusing curricular clutter, and enable schools to use resources more efficiently.
    
    "From what has been revealed about the focus and flavour of the core subjects, they will better reflect the realities of a globalised world and make them more relevant — and crucially, more interesting and exciting — to students. At a time of declining retention rates, the importance of this sort of rejuvenation cannot be overestimated. This has certainly been stressed by those charged with drafting the new subjects. In science, for example, many students have lost interest because they have found the lessons to be dense and alienating. Consequently, the draft paper for teaching science from prep to year 10 has called for a dramatic shift in the way the subject is taught by focusing more on contemporary issues that better relate to students' lives, issues such as climate change and stem cell research. [emphasis added]
    
    "Similar degrees of renewal have been outlined for mathematics, where there will be greater emphasis on numeracy, a sensible move given the acknowledged problems in this area. With history, it has been proposed to make it compulsory before VCE and that there be more focus on world events. While Australian history must retain a central place in the national curriculum, there should be no objection to expanding its coverage to better equip students to operate and excel in the world, and not just the in country they live in. Current developments in the international economy provide no better illustration of the connections between nations and the challenges faced by students to understand them.
    
    "The draft curriculum for English will also have considerable scope for innovation, but any changes must also promote the fundamental aim of improving literacy skills. There is overwhelming international and local evidence of a decline in the literacy standards of Australian students. A national curriculum that did not ensure that all students leave school with reading and writing skills comparable with the best in the world would be a failure. At a time when some universities find it necessary to teach remedial English and employer groups complain about receiving job applications pockmarked with poor grammar, punctuation and spelling, Australia cannot afford to fall further behind.
    
    "The Government's proposals for the development of a nationally consistent curriculum make sense and offer a more inclusive road ahead than some of the plans offered by the previous government. But the key to success lies in implementation. As this newspaper has argued many times, the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. Teacher shortages need, therefore, to be addressed quickly, and in these core subjects it is critical that only well-qualified teachers are deployed in the classroom. Untrained substitutes would only undermine the ambitions of the new curriculum. Further, teachers must be given regular opportunities for professional development, opportunities that have been too often denied them in the past.
    
    "The Government is to be applauded for beginning to create a more relevant, national education system freed of outdated borders. It is to be hoped it has done enough homework to ensure the new system passes the test."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
  • La Trobe to shed up to 230 staff
    
    La Trobe University will shed up to 230 academic and general staff and has not ruled out sackings after yesterday announcing voluntary redundancies designed to save $13 million next year.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • On the front line
      
      "It is distressing to be confronted with a figure that states that there are nearly 10,000 homeless school students in Australia (The Age, 15/10) However, it is also reassuring to know that something is being done in many schools to combat this problem.
      
      "I have been teaching for 20 years and in that time I have witnessed the compassion and good work carried out by principals, deputy principals and teachers who actively nourish students in body, mind and soul. I am privileged to work in an environment where students' needs are met because positive action is taken and not merely talked about.
      
      "Schools provide so much more than education. The breakfast club has existed for many years. So too the early-morning canteen selling healthy, cheap breakfast options. But the one resource that has perhaps been overlooked is the teacher with the watchful eye who is often alerted to the plight of troubled students — always ready to contribute to the solution and not the problem."
      
      Gemma Di Bari, Fairfield
      
      
      
    • A question of facts
      
      "John Bell (Letters, 14/10) displays a serious misunderstanding of what history is. He implies that a balanced history curriculum should consist of a known set of facts taught with an approved interpretation so that individual teachers cannot "impose political and moral views on the subject".
      
      "Questions about which events are worthy of deep regard and which can be can be verified as "facts" are central to the study of history. Different answers to such questions give rise to different interpretations. Bell calls instead for "uniformity of emphasis" and implies the focus should be on Australian history. His call is not for the study of history, it is for the promotion of patriotic, nationalistic or perhaps jingoistic story-telling."
      
      Peter Bright, Maribyrnong
      
      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • Qld teacher aides strike over pay dispute
    
    Hundreds of Queensland teacher aides are taking industrial action today to campaign for better wages and conditions.
    
    
    
  • Remote school changes 'will traumatise students'
    
    The head of an Arnhem land Aboriginal organisation says a plan to teach remote classes in English is flawed and shows a lack of research.
    
    
    
  • Conference discusses Indigenous education plan
    
    The Education Department says it plans to have personalised learning programs in place for each of the Aboriginal students in state schools by the end of next year. [State not mentioned: conference is in Tamworth, so I assume NSW. Web]
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Monitoring of creation studies left to schools
    by Gerard Noonan, Social Issues Editor
    
    "Christian schools in NSW are teaching creationism or "intelligent design" with little or no monitoring of whether it is being improperly included in science classes in high schools.
    
    "The head of the NSW Board of Studies, John Bennett, told a NSW parliamentary committee yesterday that the education watchdog relied on the Christian schools network to assess whether schools kept to the NSW curriculum, which forbids the teaching of creationism in science classes.
    
    "Dr Bennett said teaching creationism was not outlawed in schools, but those that taught creationism were obliged to make clear to students that it was not part of the curriculum and could not be part of an examination assessment..."
    
    "Creationism has been a big political issue in the US in recent years with the Christian conservative movement - closely associated with the conservative wing of the Republican Party - pushing to have it taught in schools, and treated as a defacto science.
    
    "Some US surveys show more than half of all college-educated Americans believe that the world was created less than 5000 years ago and that evolution is a fraudulent scientific theory..." [emphasis added]
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link

 

Friday 17 October

• The Australian
  
  
  • Grammar to make a classroom comeback in national English curriculum
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Grammar will return to the classroom under the national English curriculum, along with punctuation, spelling, pronunciation and phonics, for all students from the first years of school.
    
    "The draft curriculum, to be released today by the National Curriculum Board, is unequivocal in including the explicit teaching of the basic structures of the English language.
    
    "But the draft retains the teaching of critical literacy, a sociological model analysing gender, race and class in literature to expose inherent prejudices and agendas.
    
    "The draft places literature as one of the three fundamental elements of an English course, along with language and literacy, and defines literary texts so as to include "multimodal texts".
    
    "The draft English curriculum was written by Sydney University education professor Peter Freebody, a literacy expert whose appointment was initially criticised for his lack of academic background in literature and championing of controversial views on literacy.
    
    "Professor Freebody said the curriculum stiffened the intellectual underpinning of the English curriculum by putting at its centre the three elements of learning about language, literature and literacy, or how to use language.
    
    "School English courses have been hotly debated in recent years, including the teaching of reading, the study of print literature, the use of critical literacy in analysing literature, and teaching the basic structures of the language such as grammar.
    
    "The draft addresses the debates, saying the "explicit teaching of decoding, spelling and other aspects of the basic codes of written English will be an important and routine aspect" of the curriculum. The draft says critical literacy is the analysis of texts in terms of "their potential philosophical, political or ideological assumptions and content".
    
    "The (curriculum) will need to consider, at different stages of schooling, what emphasis is required to support young people to increase their sophisticated understandings of how to interpret texts, how they can be constructed and evaluated, and how their effects on us result from the features of the texts themselves and from the personal, social and cultural conditions in which they are used," it says.
    
    "Professor Freebody said critical literacy should not occupy a big part of the curriculum, but it had a role in enabling students to protect themselves against propaganda and being manipulated.
    
    "Language isn't always innocent," he said.
    
    "For the most part, what kids will learn when they encounter literary text is its aesthetic value and that it is cherished."
    
    "Professor Freebody said asking students to write Marxist, racist and feminist readings of a work such as Othello was "nonsensical". "It's a gratuitous notion that kids know enough about Marxism to do it, even if it was useful, which it isn't," he said.
    
    "It's an example of bad practice by people trying to pursue this agenda of having kids analyse texts' underlying philosophical, moral, ideological and political issues, and this curriculum wouldn't endorse it." [emphasis added]
    
    "The first key element of the curriculum is knowledge of English, covering strategies in learning to read and write.
    
    "The explicit and systematic teaching of sound-script correspondences is important," it says. The draft says a quarter of school students learn English as an additional language, so the curriculum had to focus on the teaching of the basics.
    
    "A focus on grammar, spelling strategies and conventions of punctuation will be necessary across all stages of schooling," it says. "This commitment includes traditional word- and sentence-level grammar, text-level grammar that teaches text types and patterns, and the functional relations between these levels."
    
    "Teaching grammar was deemed unnecessary, and was removed from curriculums in the 1970s, and while it has been creeping back in some schools and states, its teaching remains patchy. Some universities now offer first-year courses in writing, teaching the basics of grammar and sentence construction, to give students the skills they lack. [emphasis added]
    
    "Perth teacher John Hancock has yearned for grammar to be a subject in its own right for the eight years he has been teaching high school. "We're dealing with grammar problems as they arise," Mr Hancock, from Helena College, said yesterday.
    
    "It's assumed that because people converse in English, they have mastered the rudiments of communication. These rudiments can be easily forgotten."
    
    "An informed appreciation of literature is the second element of the draft curriculum, which is teaching students the aesthetic value of literary texts and that they are cherished.
    
    "The draft says Australian literary works should be a core element, with literature a fundamental part of the curriculum at every stage.
    
    "The third element focuses on learning to use language, from speaking English to writing it or using it in multimodal texts."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar stories in The West Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    Also see The National Curriculum Board Media Release
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    English goes back to basics
    by Kevin Donnelly
    
    "The release of the national English curriculum initial advice paper will lead to Australia's education progressives suffering apoplexy.
    
    "For years, groups such as the Australian Association for the Teaching of English have turned their backs on teaching formal grammar and literature.
    
    "While The Australian has led the campaign for a back-to-basics approach to English, as a result of falling standards and a dumbed-down curriculum, the AATE and the Australian Curriculum Studies Association have argued that talk of a crisis is a media beat-up.
    
    "Fast-forward to the new English curriculum and it appears that those in charge of developing the nation's curriculum have sided with the critics. Teaching grammar, punctuation and spelling is back on the agenda.
    
    "Even better, literature (as opposed to the nebulous term "text") is back in its own right as schools are told that all students need to be given a grounding in those works of Australian and world literature that have survived the test of time.
    
    "Since the mid-1970s, teaching reading in primary schools has been based on a new-age, whole-language approach. The assumption is that learning to read is as natural as learning to talk and that children should be told to look and guess when reading.
    
    "Research, both here and overseas, has proven that the whole-language approach is a disaster, especially for boys. To be able to read, children need to know the relationship between letters, groups of letters and sounds.
    
    "Phonics and phonemic awareness are based on the assumption that reading is decidedly unnatural and that it has to be taught in a structured and systematic way.
    
    "Thankfully, the reading wars may now be over as the recommendation in the paper is that children need to be taught with "systematic attention to phonological awareness and sound-letter correspondences".
    
    "Notwithstanding the positives, there are a couple of red lights. The definition of literature includes "multi-modal texts" and teachers are told to include "graphic and other visual formats" in their English lessons.
    
    "Nothing should take away the primacy of the printed word. From the early years of primary school until the final senior school years, every student must learn to read with sensitivity and discrimination and how to use language to shape thoughts, emotions and ideas.
    
    "As the national curriculum paper suggests, while literature is important in exciting and shaping one's imagination, of equal value is its moral and aesthetic importance.
    
    "Unfortunately, the national curriculum paper undervalues such a view and by defining literary criticism more broadly, there is the danger that students will still have to interpret literary texts in terms of feminist, post-modern, queer, post-colonial and neo-Marxist theory."

    Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies and author of Dumbing Down, published by Hardie Grant Books
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    

  • Editorial
    The love of English
    
    Draft curriculum needs work, but it's a solid start
    
    "The draft national English curriculum has its shortcomings. But it is clearly an attempt to build consensus out of the ashes of the literacy wars, and as such is a positive step forward.
    
    "Sydney University education theorist Peter Freebody has managed to embrace the views of academics calling for training in the nuances of literature, and to combine them with concerns about the inequity of English acquisition among indigenous children. His document acknowledges the educational needs of gifted children as well as those of the most educationally disadvantaged. Importantly, it acknowledges the need for grammar, and for an aesthetic appreciation of literature.
    
    "Erring on the side of understatement, the 46-page document concedes that English education has experienced "continuous debate, renovation and reform". Freebody sees value in the cut and thrust of continuous dispute, just as he is anxious to lower the temperature and forge agreement among the disputants. These debates, he says, "have positioned the profession well for the collective work to achieve a level of consensus, in the long-term interests of its present and future students, that the preparation of a national English curriculum demands".
    
    "The last decade has been anything but collaborative. Advocates for phonics in early language learning have locked horns with champions of the freewheeling "whole language" approach. The senior curriculum is a mess. Critical literacy, an avowed radical approach to textual analysis fixed on the unveiling of ideology, is widely opposed for its lack of intellectual or empirical authority. Still others blanch at the damage done by prescriptive critical literacy to children whose sole purpose in reading King Lear is to arraign Shakespeare on charges of sexism, racism or class bias. [emphasis added]
    
    "Freebody's document is mercifully free of such cant. But troublingly, it does give voice to those who see literature as a social construct, even calling for negotiation in the classroom "around the processes of valuing, and around the significance of those processes - why literature in some form, and with whatever levels of controversy, has persisted in mattering to individuals and cultures". Negotiating the processes of valuing literature, of course, is not the same as learning how to love it.
    
    "The document brackets "media including cinema, television and digital and multi-media products" within the ambit of literary studies. We trust the final document will recognise that the written, and to some extent the spoken, word is the true provenance and chief focus of English. Because when it comes to digital and multi-media products, it's the kids who teach us."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • The past is many places
    by Greg Melleuish
    
    "In the wake of World War I, American historians and educationalists took a bold step and created courses on Western civilisation for US college students.
    
    "They decided that the students needed to know about their heritage, stretching back to the ancient Middle East and Greece.
    
    "In the 1980s and '90s, with extensive advances in the historical knowledge of countries and civilisations outside of the West, many American academics and schoolteachers came to the conclusion that a focus exclusively on Western civilisation was too narrow. They fought for a world history curriculum that would introduce American students to the breadth of the story of humanity. World history is now taught in US colleges and schools.
    
    "In contrast, in Australia, there was no move to teach anything resembling Western civilisation. From the '20s to the '80s the focus was very much on the British origins of Australia. In particular there was an emphasis on the 17th-century English Revolution and the growth of empire. Slowly, through time, Australian history was substituted for British and imperial history, particularly as Australians became more nationalistic.
    
    "There were occasional exceptions to this rule. For example, Garnet Portus, a Hunter Valley intellectual, taught world history at the University of Adelaide during the '40s, and European history enjoyed considerable growth, especially under the influence of Stephen Roberts in NSW.
    
    "But there has been no tradition of teaching Western civilisation in Australia and little world history until the '90s, when figures such as David Christian began to teach it at Macquarie University.
    
    "The recent release of the draft national history curriculum has provoked a debate that indicates Australia is at a crossroads in terms of the approach to be taken in teaching Australian history as well as that of the wider world.
    
    "There are several options. For some nationalists, we should go primarily with Australian history. For others, such as Tony Abbott, the focus should remain on Australia and its British heritage, much as it was for the first part of the 20th century. Some, such as John Hirst and Robert Manne, want to drag Australia into the 1920s by combining Australian history with a modified version of Western civilisation for Australian consumption.
    
    "Finally there is a group, in which I would count myself, that would argue that the teaching of Australian history needs to be placed in a world history framework. This does not mean a devaluation of the story of Australia or of its British heritage, or of the crucial role our Western inheritance has played in moulding Australian culture. [emphasis added]
    
    "What it does mean is recognition of several things. The first is that with advances in historical scholarship, our knowledge of the history of many areas of the world has increased enormously. For example, in 1915, when the Anzacs landed at Gallipoli, there were hardly any books in English on the Ottoman Empire. Today this is a flourishing area of historical inquiry.
    
    "The second is that students need to be able to understand and appreciate societies and cultures that do not form part of their cultural inheritance, as well as those that do. They need to get some sort of awareness of the variety of the human condition.
    
    "The third is that Australian students will not receive a good understanding of their own history if that is the only history they know.
    
    "It is not good enough to study world history until 1750, then drop it. Australian history has to be presented in the larger global context, and this means China and India as well as Britain and the US.
    
    "The reality is that we live today in an interconnected world, as recent events have indicated all too clearly.
    
    "Australia no longer suffers from the tyranny of distance, nor is it an outpost of British civilisation clinging to its European inheritance.
    
    "It has long been argued that civilisations and cultures thrive to the extent that they make themselves open to outside influences. It appears to me that the American willingness to embrace first Western civilisation and then world history is an indication of the openness of American civilisation. By clinging to only those aspects of history that have influenced Australia, we are adopting a much less open attitude.
    
    "We are standing at a crossroads. What sort of history curriculum Australia adopts will say much about where we stand as a civilisation or culture and where we want to go in the future."

    Greg Melleuish is an associate professor in the school of history and politics at the University of Wollongong.
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Gillard raps Libs for criticising schools bill
    by Matthew Clayfield
    

    "Education Minister Julia Gillard has accused the Liberal Party of withdrawing its support for a compulsory national curriculum, following Opposition criticism of the Government's new schools bill.
    
    "Ms Gillard yesterday attacked the Opposition for "playing politics with our education system", claiming that non-government schools sector funding could be jeopardised if the Liberals failed to get behind the bill.
    
    "Ms Gillard's comments follow those of Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne, who yesterday introduced a raft of amendments to the $28 billion Schools Assistance Bill, claiming they would help to "maintain fairness and choice in the system".
    
    "Mr Pyne said the proposed legislation would mark a return "to the bad old days of the private school hit list", forcing schools to publicly disclose sources of funding that were irrelevant to the allocation of fundingunder the socioeconomic status model, and giving unprecedented powers to the minister to withhold or withdraw funding.
    
    "He said the bill would also link funding to a school's adherence to the national curriculum -- despite the fact it is unwritten -- a requirement that could seriously disadvantage many specialist non-government schools.
    
    "They are asking us to take them and the academics drafting the curriculum entirely on trust," Mr Pyne said.
    
    "Ms Gillard attacked Mr Pyne's comments as cynical and claimed they proved the Opposition was not committed to the introduction of a compulsory national curriculum. "Mr Pyne is playing politics with our education system," she said. "He has deliberately misrepresented the minister's powers, falsely suggesting the minister can cut funding on a whim. The claim is a cynical attempt to cause alarm amongst non-government schools."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Doctors' alliance seeks trebling of GP training places by 2015
    
    An alliance of doctors' groups has demanded a near-trebling of GP training places by 2015, warning that many more patients will be forced into overcrowded emergency departments unless drastic steps are taken to ease workforce pressures.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • John Hirst v Tony Abbott
      
      "John Hirst wants the new “Australia and the world” approach to history to emphasise European rather than British influence on Australia’s development ("British history is not the whole story”, 16/10). But the examples he cites of important European people and events—Copernicus, Galileo, the Reformation—are tendentious as they had miniscule significance for the course of Australian history.
      
      "Tony Abbott is correct: not only our political and judicial structures but our social systems and cultural mores were overwhelmingly shaped by our British heritage.
      
      "Hirst grants “some influence” to Catholicism but wants to reference the “Europe-wide” nature of the church rather than the pivotal British experience where hostility between Irish Catholics and the British establishment had a profound impact on shaping a distinctive Australian national character.
      
      "Hirst seems to reflect a postmodern tendency to devalue the importance of Irish Catholicism that Australian historians once regarded as pivotal to the emergence of a strong, pioneering trade union movement and an ethos of egalitarian mateship.
      
      "But these seminal strands of our past have been shamefully downplayed in a post-Marxist historiographical setting where feminist and politically correct historians deprecate the male-dominant mateship tradition as obscuring the role of women and minority groups."
      
      Tom Drake-Brockman, Berrilee, NSW
      
      
      
    • "I congratulate The Australian on its keen interest in the development of the national curriculum. I particularly acknowledge the thorough and comprehensive treatment of the consultation of the national mathematics curriculum.
      
      "However, I wish to clarify my reported view that mathematics should be compulsory to Year 12 ("Compel students to study maths”, 15/10). Of course, the study of mathematics at senior secondary levels is desirable for all students. Mathematics not only contributes to the ability of students to use the subject in their future studies but also creates opportunities and pathways for their future lives.
      
      "Even so, my view is that it should not be compulsory. The challenge for the National Curriculum Board and the mathematics curriculum writers is to design mathematics study options that are so attractive that students will want to choose them."
      
      Professor Peter Sullivan, Monash University, Melbourne
      
      
      
      
• National Curriculum Board
  
  
  • Media Release: Proposed National English Curriculum – Initial Advice
    
    The teaching of English as a language, including its grammar, punctuation and spelling, will be a focus of the proposed national English curriculum, the National Curriculum Board announced today.
    
    The Board today released for public comment initial advice it has received on the content and structure of a national English curriculum for Australia’s 3.5 million students from Kindergarten to Year 12 at all government, Catholic and independent schools across the country.
    
    In relation to literature and the study of texts, the initial advice states that exposure to literature and the study of literature should begin in the earliest years of schooling and that in the senior secondary years “there should be a strong focus on analysing the historical genres and literary traditions of Australian literature and world literature”.
    
    “By the final years of secondary schooling, students’ written and oral accounts of their engagement with literary texts should show that they can apply a coherent body of knowledge about the English language to literary criticism, history and appreciation,” the advice states.
    
    The advice also points to opportunities to address ‘new digital settings of English use’ and hence the new world in which young people are growing and learning today and the distinct challenges they face. This includes broadening the category of ‘literary texts’ to include digital and multi-media formats.
    
    The advice was prepared by the advisory group, led by Professor Peter Freebody, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. (The members of the English advisory group are listed at the end of this statement.)
    
    The National Curriculum Board was established earlier this year by the Federal Government to develop and implement a national curriculum in English, maths, science and history for all students from Kindergarten to Year 12. Australia currently has 34 separate organisations contributing to the development of curricula and more than 18 different senior English and history courses.
    
    The Proposed National English Curriculum – Initial Advice will be discussed at the Board’s National Consultation Forum in Melbourne today. More than 250 representatives from schools (government, Catholic and independent) universities, industry, federal, state and territory agencies and the wider community are participating in the forum. National consultation forums for history, maths and science were held in Melbourne during the week.
    
    The consultation period continues until the end of February, 2009. The national curriculum will then be developed and trialled in 2009/10 for implementation from 2011.
    
    Professor Barry McGaw AO, Chair of the Board, said a renewed focus on teaching English as a language, including its grammar, punctuation and spelling, will help raise literacy standards for all students of all ages.
    
    “We have to do better,” Professor McGaw said. “Establishing a national English curriculum is an opportunity to raise standards for all young people and ensure no one slips through the cracks.”
    
    The advice states that the teaching of English be broken into three areas:
    
    English as a Language, including grammar, punctuation and spelling.
    
    “This area draws attention to the need for students to develop a coherent body of knowledge about how the English language works in its significant oral, written and other forms. The development of this body of knowledge should be regarded as a fundamental responsibility of the English curriculum. A focus on grammar, spelling and conventions of punctuation will be necessary across all stages of schooling. Students need to know how to correctly construct a sentence.
    
    “Many students in their early experiences of books may need systematic attention to phonological awareness and sound-letter correspondences (more technically referred to as grapheme-phoneme correspondence or GPC).
    
    “The explicit teaching of GPC and of other aspects of written and spoken English should be regarded as an important aspect of an English curriculum and therefore as routine. It should be conceptualised, put into practice and consolidated as part of a program in English education and it should be available to students throughout the school years,” the advice states.
    
    Literature
    
    “Engaging with literary texts is an educational experience that is worthwhile in its own right. Literature and other arts-related learning experiences can also enhance imaginative approaches to learning more generally as well as flexibility of thought and motivation to learn.
    
    “The term literary texts is taken to cover a broad range of forms, including picture books, multimodal texts, novels, short stories, poetry and drama, and a variety of non-fiction forms. This is where the body of knowledge of English as a language is put to work, consolidated and deepened as the school years progress. It involves the study of past and present English works that aim to exploit the imaginative potential of the English language and the study of how that potential is exploited in literature.”
    
    The advice refers to a role for works that “have become regarded as worth special attention”. “... why literature in some form, and with whatever levels of controversy, has persisted in mattering to individuals and cultures.” The advice states that exposure to literature “should begin in the early school years and be systematically broadened and deepened as the school years progress”.
    
    “A significant component of this involves attention to texts that are judged to have particular potential for enriching young learners’ lives and expanding the scope of their experience.
    
    “This process should begin with accessible and appropriate texts related to young children’s daily lives.
    
    “It should gradually incorporate, over the primary school years, literature written for children and young adults. In the culminating years there should be a strong focus on analysing the historical genres and literary traditions of Australian literature and world literature.”
    
    Usage
    
    “This area aims to encourage educators to help students expand and consolidate their repertoires of English in use. The aim is to provide learners with accuracy, confidence, fluency and efficacy in their use of English across a growing range of settings.
    
    “Schools have a responsibility to develop in students broadly-based capabilities in oral and written uses of English as well as understandings about how English language combines with graphic and other visual formats.
    
    “This includes familiarity with and gradual mastery of a range of texts that are important to everyday life and to learning in schools, in print and digital contexts.”
    
    The advice states that the national English curriculum should sequence the learning of English in four stages:
    • Early Years (Kindergarten to Year 2)
    • Primary (Years 3 to 6)
    • Junior Secondary (Years 7 to 10)
    • Senior Secondary (Years 11 and 12).

    The advisory group members are:
    
    Professor Peter Freebody, University of Sydney
    Professor Robert Dixon, Australian Literature, University of Sydney
    Lisa McNeice, Head of English, St Michael’s Grammar School (K-12)
    Professor Roslyn Arnold, Teacher Education, University of Sydney
    Professor Barbara Comber, University of South Australia
    Christine Topfer, state director of Australian Literacy Educators’ Association, Tasmania
    Emeritus Professor Bruce Bennett, University of NSW
    Dr Scott Bulfin, Monash University
    Dr Ruth Fielding-Barnsley, Queensland University of Technology
    Jodie Waters, NT Open Education Centre, Northern Territory
    Jade Spencer, East Murray Area School (R-12), South Australia
    Associate Professor Catherine Beavis, Deakin University
    Associate Professor Bev Derewianka, University of Wollongong
    Ray Land, Indigenous Education Leadership Institute, Qld
    Associate Professor Robyn Ewing, University of Sydney
    Professor Brian Gray, Northern Territory
    Associate Professor Pat Buckridge, Griffith University
    Professor Marie Emmitt, Australian Catholic University
    Fiona Walker, Western Australian College of Teaching
    Dr Brian Gray (retired), Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory
    
    
    

• The West Australian
  

  • Spelling, grammar key to English curriculum (page 9)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “Spelling, punctuation and grammar will receive renewed focus in a bid to raise students' literacy standards, the National Curriculum Board revealed yesterday.
    
    “Explicit teaching of phonics - the relationship between letters and sounds - would also be given systematic attention in new national English curriculum, according to an advice paper to be presented at a national forum in Melbourne today.
    
    “National Curriculum Board chairman Barry McGaw said placing more emphasis on teaching English as a language, including its grammar, punctuation and spelling would help raise the literacy standards of all students.
    
    "We have to do better," he said. "Establishing a national English curriculum is an opportunity to raise standards for all young people and ensure no one slips through the cracks."
    
    “University of Sydney education and social work professor Peter Freebody, who wrote that advice paper, said the English curriculum should be broken into three main areas - language, literature and usage.
    
    “Under language, students would focus on grammar, spelling and the conventions of punctuation across all stages of schooling.
    
    "Students need to know how to correctly construct a sentence," he said. "I think the teaching of grammar has been patchy for the last 30 years and in some cases it hasn't been co-ordinated very well."
    
    “Professor Freebody said phonics should be available to all students, but it should also be combined with the whole language approach to learning to read, which immerses children in book so they are encouraged to guess at words using picture and context clues.
    
    "We're not going back to a fragmented curriculum," he said. "We're dismissing these dichotomies, they're not useful and they left a lot of kids at the bus stop."
    
    “Professor Freebody said the new curriculum would be more sequential than most students had now, building up knowledge of grammar and literature from the earliest years of school.
    
    “As well as pushing the study of literature into the earlier primary years, he wanted to bring more literacy support into the secondary years to help students who struggled academically.
    
    “Students would also be encouraged to study the classics to work out why they have "persisted in mattering to individuals and cultures".
    
    “However, the category of "literacy texts" would not be restricted to books but widened to include digital and multi-media formats such as internet websites.
    
    "That is not to say that they will do picture books in Year 12 instead of Shakespeare," he said. "But it is to say that if you're going to participate across the curriculum in school and when you get out of school to uni or training or a job, you better know how to use this stuff."
    
    “In the senior secondary years, Professor Freebody said there should be a strong focus on analysing the historical genres and literary traditions of Australian and world literature.
    
    “The third component, usage involved students taking the knowledge gained from the study of language and literature and applying it to their writing.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor (page 22)
    
    
    • Degrees of membership
      
      “Doug Cherriman says (Letters, 13/10) "we should all join the State School Teachers Union". It is no secret that there is a shortage of teachers in this State and elsewhere, so more members would be more than welcome. Of course, there is the small matter of a four-year degree before one can attain membership.”
      
      D. Hill, Mandurah
      
      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • Slipping grammar standards linked to school completion rates
    
    "Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) president Steve Ryan says rising levels of school completion over the past two decades may be to blame for what he calls a "perceived" slide in the level of grammar in high school graduates.
    
    "His comments are in response to a proposal from the National Curriculum Board to reintroduce formal grammar and English classes.
    
    "This came after businesses and universities complained about grammar standards, with one university lecturer today accusing high schools of "letting the team down" on the teaching of fundamental English.
    
    "But Mr Ryan says people's expectations of student performance has not kept pace with the rise in high school completion rates.
    
    "In the mid 1990s national high school completion rates were estimated to be below 50 per cent and in 2006 the rate was estimated at 71 per cent.
    
    "He has pointed to the increasing number of students that are now finishing high school and planning to go to universities as a possible reason for the rising proportion of students that are failing to meet literacy standards.
    
    "Those students are having difficulty in a number of respects in trying to achieve the outcomes of the courses," he said.
    
    "You don't have to go back too far to realise that a very small percentage of students went past year 10 for example, so that cohort going through to senior has delivered us a lot of other problems..."
    
    Full story at ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Education, not indoctrination
    by Noel McCoy
    
    "Some years ago, former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner issued a call to arms.
    
    "Education has to be reshaped so that it is part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system," said the former Labor minister.
    
    "And academics around the country have responded.
    
    "A major task for Leftist activist academics is ... to connect education with community struggles for social justice," says Dr Gregory Martin, who was a lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus. He also happened to be a member of the militant National Teachers Education Union and the Gold Coast branch of the radical Marxist group, Socialist Alliance.
    
    "For Dr Martin, education is a channel for conducting a Marxist revolution. He praises radical Marxist educators such as Peter McLaren (a proponent of so-called critical pedagogy) for their work in what he describes as "laying the practical groundwork for the possibility of a revolutionary situation by 'stretching out' a Marxist line into various social movements."
    
    "Down in South Australia, the research of Grant Banfield, a lecturer in education at Flinders University in South Australia, is "informed by commitments to social justice and human emancipation."
    
    "In particular," as his biographical note goes on to say, "his work is directed towards the application of Bhaskarian Critical Realism and Marxist social theory to an emancipatory sociology of education." Banfield has also helped develop curriculum material for anti-nuclear activism by school children.
    
    "In fact, there is a long list of education academics in Australian universities who hold similar radical views. The evidence-based list with supporting references and documentation was tabled at the Senate Inquiry into Academic Freedom. (A copy is available on the Make Education Fair campaign website.)
    
    "As a result, teaching courses in education faculties at Australian universities reflect the same sort of radical thinking.
    
    "The University of New South Wales subject, Power and Resistance in the Classroom, "examines the dynamics of power and knowledge in the classroom, teachers' work, youth resistance and state ideology". Another subject, Culture, Identity and Education encourages students to "become critically aware of the debates on multiculturalism, gender, race and ethnicity and the interpretation of policies in practical application in pedagogical contexts." Similar subjects are offered in teaching faculties at universities in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.
    
    "As would be expected, where ideological activism is entrenched in the academia of education faculties it flows on directly into school curricula and teaching. After all, universities provide the theoretical underpinning for school curricula not to mention the training of future school teachers.
    
    "As just one example of curricula, John Gore, who was chief education officer of Human Society and Its Environment, a subject which is taught at all levels of the NSW school curriculum, reported in 2001 that the curriculum would reflect the desire to engage "critical pedagogy" which would enable teachers to "engage these students in a pedagogy that will change their understanding of their world and free them to change their lives."
    
    "Pat Byrne, the head of the radical-left Australian Education Union summed up the effect of radicalism on school curricula when she declared in 2005: "we have succeeded in influencing curriculum development in schools, education departments and universities. The conservatives have a lot of work to do to undo the progressive curriculum."
    
    "Apart from the foolish gloating, Byrne also goes wrong in thinking that "conservatives" are seeking to impose an agenda replacing the radical-left agenda..."
    
    Full story at ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Journalism lecturer welcomes grammar proposal
    
    A university lecturer says more teaching of basic grammar at high school is essential if the communication standards of university students and graduates are to improve.
    
    
    
  • Bring grammar lessons back to classroom, board urges
    
    The National Curriculum Board has proposed traditional English and grammar lessons be reinstated in school classrooms to address a deterioration in writing skills.
    
    
    
  • Teachers lodge unprecedented pay claim
    
    The New South Wales Teachers Federation is calling for an interim 5 per cent pay rise, saying the State Government is dragging the chain on negotiations.
    
    The federation says it has taken the unprecedented move of lodging the claim with the Industrial Relations Commission because of rising inflation and economic uncertainty. The Government has offered teachers 4.8 per cent in the first year, as part of an 11.4 per cent offer over three years, with trade-offs to cut entitlements.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Parents angry at loss of centre for blind pupils
    
    The state's only dedicated school for blind students will close at the end of next year, with shocked parents and staff told that educating school-age children was no longer a "key service" of the school's parent body.

 

Saturday – Sunday, 18 – 19 October

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • Curriculum must clarify how to teach reading [Lead National story]
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The national curriculum should spell out the best way to teach children to read and continue teaching the basics of language into high school, the author of the English draft said yesterday.
    
    "At a forum on the draft curriculum hosted by the National Curriculum Board in Melbourne yesterday, Peter Freebody said there was a need to clarify the best strategies to use in teaching children how to read.
    
    "That repertoire of strategies has a number of common elements and phonological awareness is number one," the Sydney University education professor said. "What doesn't work are vague ideas about using language and (the idea that) you'll pick it up; if you work with it enough and use it in life settings you will pick it up. That doesn't work." [emphasis added]
    
    "The forum of teachers and academics was also addressed by Australian literature professor Robert Dixon, who called for a closer working relationship between schools and university English departments.
    
    "The draft curriculum released yesterday identified three key elements of an English curriculum: learning about language, literature and literacy, and learning to use language.
    
    "The outline commits the curriculum to explicit teaching of grammar, letter-sound relationships and phonological awareness, spelling and punctuation, giving students an appreciation of literature and Australian literature in particular, and giving them the skills to use language as required in their everyday lives.
    
    "The draft defines literary text as including multimodal works combining words and images, and retains the use of critical literacy, a sociological tool for uncovering political and ideological bias in language.
    
    "The English profession - comprising teachers, English educators and literature academics - has argued over the appropriateness of teaching critical literacy in schools.
    
    "Professor Freebody said the use of critical literacy in school English classes had gone too far, with students asked to perform "nonsensical" exercises of conducting Marxist, feminist and racist readings of works.
    
    "But he said there was still a place for the technique to allow students to identify how language can manipulate.
    
    "Australian Academy of Humanities chief executive John Byron urged curriculum writers to consider the education trajectory and when tools such as critical literacy were appropriate to teach to students.
    
    "Maybe sometimes in the past we've been trying to teach more complex things a little early and not equipping students with the working knowledge of how to use all the tools in the toolbox," Dr Byron said.
    
    "While the details are still to be worked out, including whether to prescribe reading lists, Professor Freebody and Professor Dixon saw a role for recommending some types of works.
    
    "Professor Dixon advocates prescribing some Australian literature in the senior years of school as long as it provides a framework in which the works could be studied, explaining the reasons for the choice, the connections between them and how they relate to modern times.
    
    "Professor Freebody said he wanted students to leave school with an experience of an author such as Shakespeare, and an understanding of why the works were valued and cherished.
    
    "Sydney University English education lecturer Jackie Manuel said the outline took English teaching back 40 years.
    
    "The banal and turgid prose of this document does nothing to inspire us as English educators that English is dynamic, creative and inspiring," she said."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Return of grammar brings hope
    by Judith Wheeldon
    
    "The thinking that underpins the new national English curriculum cuts through years of nonsense and puts the teaching of English back on a rational and compassionate basis.
    
    "For 40 years we have cruelly turned aside from the needs of children wanting to master our complex, subtle and wonderful language and refused to teach them the skills to understand how English works. Without this understanding, their use of English is condemned to remain far below their potential.
    
    "It is as if we taught mathematics without the tools of addition and subtraction, without times tables and an explanation of fractions, but still expected to get good mathematical thinking, analysis and problem-solving from our young people. [emphasis added]
    
    "The tool of phonics allows the child to understand that a squiggle on a page stands for a sound that relates to the way he or she has learned to hear and speak words.
    
    "With this tool the child can decipher most new words, say them aloud and have the "A-ha!" moment of self-congratulation for learning them.
    
    "While phonics allows flexibility for the child's own dialect or accent of English to be expressed, the universality of communication in English is preserved in its spelling.
    
    "The power of spelling in English depends on all of us spending a bit of disciplined effort as children to develop good spelling habits and an understanding of why words are spelled as they are. There are many benefits to repay the effort. Good teaching of spelling teaches vocabulary development and vice versa. Richness of vocabulary is one of the best markers of those destined for university entrance and success.
    
    "Most children actually enjoy spelling. If taught well and encouraged, children will feel rewarded by their growing skill.
    
    "Real self-esteem is based on efforts in which clear, tangible good results are demonstrated, such as on spelling tests and in accurate written work.
    
    "An example of Year 9 grammatical analysis demonstrates how much can come from learning the smallest amount of word and sentence grammar.
    
    "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - most readers of The Weekend Australian will recognise the opening of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
    
    "Why is this so powerful? Largely, it is because of our recognition of the human conundrum being described, but we feel it so strongly because of the expression created by parallel construction of the clauses. The repetition of the same grammatical elements with only the adjective replaced by its opposite is registered very rapidly by the brain, giving emphasis to the tension of opposite meanings that coexist. It efficiently expresses a real human quandary.
    
    "Having learned this, the student can then overnight strengthen their writing by judiciously using parallel construction to convey a series of pieces of information without deadly repetition.
    
    "This brings us to the deeper importance of this new curriculum: it will teach better thinking. Most human thought is embodied in language and is fundamental to success in everyday life and in our biggest achievements.
    
    "Babies figure out most of the rules of language for themselves. Listen to three-year-olds who have memorised past-tense verb forms and can use them effectively. Having done this, they begin to analyse the patterns and discover for themselves that we usually form the past tense by adding "-ed" to the verb stem. Of course, they do not use the word "verb", but clearly they have categorised the function of the words that need a past tense and it makes life easier to know the rule.
    
    "But the child who used to say, "he ran" might now say, "he runned". This childish error is evidence of an amazing intellectual feat - the grammatical constructions that are the basis of the higher thinking skills on which our civilisation is based.
    
    "One of the most important and effective means of teaching these thinking skills is through writing, so we come full circle back to spelling, punctuation and grammar, which must be taught in regular, disciplined and interesting lessons. In what has been reported of the new curriculum so far, teaching writing may be implied but it has not been given the emphasis that is essential for every child to develop full mastery of our English language.
    
    "Having discussed in only the briefest possible way how important and good the new English curriculum surely is, unfortunately the curriculum is doomed to failure unless amazing action is taken by government to resurrect it before it dies a grisly death.
    
    "There is no one to teach this curriculum.
    
    "Very few adults in Australia today know even the basics of English grammar or where our words come from, including almost all English teachers and primary school teachers. Even university teachers of English either don't have these skills or they throw up their hands in defeat at the density of the problem they face in making up for decades of poor teaching.
    
    "Government will have to provide very quickly a remedial curriculum for all teachers, not just English teachers, and a practical method of assisting them in retraining to meet the demands of the new English curriculum.
    
    "At least this challenge will take our minds off the financial crisis." [emphasis added]

    Judith Wheeldon is a member of the board of directors of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council and a former headmistress.
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    

  • National curriculum debate forgetting the children
    by Andrew Trounson
    
    "The debate over a national curriculum lacks "soul" and is too focused on the technicalities of content, when teachers are looking for a cultural and values framework on which to connect students, the principal of one of Victoria's top private schools has insisted.
    
    "We are looking at a whole range of technical things and it doesn't have soul," Anne Feehan, principal of Melbourne's Camberwell Girls' Grammar, told The Weekend Australian yesterday.
    
    "Relationships are at the heart of good teaching and it is at the heart of excellent schools, and until they get the relationships right a technical solution isn't going to be engaging for the teaching staff who have to deliver it. Teachers need to see how the child is at the centre of the curriculum, not the content."
    
    "While Ms Feehan believes teachers are supportive of efforts to unify the various state curricula, she said the debate was ignoring key challenges over how to motivate students, recognise their achievements and drive participation.
    
    "She said students and teachers needed to be engaged by exploring the "big questions", such as perhaps what it means to be a fair and egalitarian society. But first there needed to be a debate on what these big questions were.
    
    "The key question is what sort of people do we want in the workforce? What sort of Australians do we want?
    
    "Most of us would understand the notion of egalitarianism and most us would be very supportive of that, but is that enough?
    
    "They (teachers) need more framework and that is why ... the values and the norms that underpin any curriculum change need to be debated and discussed."
    
    "In her own speciality of history, Ms Feehan said one of the big questions was about exploring the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians without getting involved in "unproductive" history wars.
    
    "The point is that Australian children should know and understand something of the relationship between indigenous people and white settlers in this country and be put in a position where they can come to an opinion about it themselves."
    
    "She suggested other big questions are understanding where our democracy came from while also understanding that Australia is a multicultural society.
    
    "We aren't a western European country, we are from many places," Ms Feehan said."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Why has it taken so long to rectify an obvious mistake?
      
      "The draft national English curriculum as summarised in The Australian ("Grammar to make a classroom comeback”, 17/10) offers some reassurance to older teachers by approving the teaching of grammar, phonics and the basic structures of English. Equally gratifying is that the emphasis on critical literacy, while not eliminated, has been down-played in favour of the appreciation of literature in terms of its aesthetic values.
      
      "However, questions must be asked. Why has it taken so long to rectify what has been so patently obvious to teachers and others for the 30 years since the solid teaching of the mechanics of English was abandoned? How do we suddenly remedy a lack of knowledge of the formal terminology and function of grammar in younger teachers who have never been taught them, without intensive instruction by educators who have had a thorough grounding in the mechanics of English? How are teachers, indoctrinated to approach literature only in critical literacy terms, suddenly going to adjust to a broader perspective?
      
      "It will take strong direction from education departments, and from heads of school English departments, to ensure that these changes are not subverted, and teachers don’t take the easy way out by conducting business as usual.
      
      Enid Duncan, The Gap, Qld
      
      
      
    • "Bringing back the study of formal grammar into schools is a splendid idea, but it will take 30 years to implement because so few teachers have a sufficient mastery of the subject. In addition, because English is a mongrel language, incorporating elements from Romance and Germanic traditions, its grammar is messy. The best way of helping our students to gain control of their own language is to encourage the study of one of the major European languages, ie, Latin or one of its Romance derivatives, or a Germanic language, where the formal elements are more regular.
      
      "In my schooldays in the UK, although some schools taught languages well, most Britons were monolingual and, if they crossed the Channel, they relied on English, shouting more loudly if the stupid foreigners didn’t understand. But times have changed. The knowledge of a foreign language is more highly regarded, and is often specifically mentioned as advantageous in UK job advertisements. I hope that in less than 30 years the same might be true of Australia."
      
      John Melville-Jones, Claremont, WA
      
      Plus four more Letters on the topic at that link
      
      
      
      
  • Family hat-trick as triplets tie for dux of school
    
    Identical triplets have achieved the near-impossible by finishing in a three-way tie for school dux.
    
    
    
    
• The West Australian
  

  • Curriculum unity too rushed: heads (page 2)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “The heads of some of WA’s leading schools have warned against rushing into a national curriculum for kindergarten to Year 12, saying the current timeline was unrealistic.
    
    “The West Australian understands concerns raised at a meeting of WA private school principals were sent to the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia to be relayed to the National Curriculum Board.
    
    “The Federal Government set up the board this year to develop and implement a national curriculum in English, maths, science and history.
    
    “Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said in January a common curriculum would lift achievement standards so Australian students and schools could compete internationally. It would also reduce disruption for the 80,000 students who moved to a new state each year.
    
    “Educators had their first glimpse of the new curriculum last week when advice papers on the broad direction of courses were released.
    
    “Consultation will continue until February with the curriculum due to be implemented by 2011.
    
    “Penhros College principal Glenda Parkin, who has a PhD in curriculum design, is yet to be convinced a national curriculum will improve education and lift standards.
    
    “There’s no guarantee that a national curriculum is going to make anything better, in fact, arguably it could make things worse,” she said.
    
    “Dr Parkin said many educators were concerned the troubled implementation of Year 11 and 12 curriculum reforms in WA would be repeated nationally because the two-year time frame was “not realistic”.
    
    “If you actually want to develop good curriculum, it’s like any change, it takes time to implement,” she said.
    
    “Joy Shepherd, principal of St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls, which topped last year’s TEE results, said it was ‘totally unrealistic’ that the vague documents released last week would be converted to curriculum writing instructions by February.
    
    “She said it was impossible to judge the merits of the proposals on the “bits and pieces” so far.
    
    “There are some basic things that they haven’t worked out and the thought of doing all this and having it up and running in 2011, I think would be very difficult,” she said.
    
    “It doesn’t give time for consultations, classroom trials, feedback – all the things that went wrong with rushing through the changes in WA.”
    
    “But National Curriculum Board chairman Barry McGaw denied the changes would be rushed. “There’s going to be a sensible time line,” he said. “We’re to be finished by the end of 2010 and the speed at which it’s implemented beyond that and the levels at which it’s implemented first, will be sensibly determined.”
    
    “Professor McGaw said a national curriculum would help raise achievement standards because it would encourage common assessments across States and Territories.
    
    “Also, if we’re using our efforts and resources in a shared way, we’ve got more capacity to bring more skills together,” he said.
    
    “WA Education Minister Liz Constable supported a national curriculum because it would give parents certainty their children would get a sequential education if they moved between states. She said it also made sense for States and Territories to share resources.
    
    “But she said the time frame might be too ambitious. “It should be a considered process,” Dr Constable said.
    
    “WA Primary Principals Association president Stephen Breen said it was important to have uniform core content between schools. “It (the national curriculum) is deliverable and I think it is badly needed,” he said.
    
    “WA Curriculum Council chief David Wood said it was inefficient for states to replicate curriculums.” [“About Face of the Year"?  Web]
    
    From The West Australian

    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • Education: Recipe for unrest
      
      "It’s no wonder our educations system, like our financial system, needs Federal intervention to enhance student outcomes. We have stagnated. Yet we still notice Plato proponents (Science plan revives OBE fear, 14/10) turning the clock back to give us more of the same.
      
      "Perhaps they need to step out of their small world and perceive the world around them. It might help them to realise that their traditional approach will not help their students adapt to the unfamiliar or foster the wonder of inquiring into scientific reality. “More of the same” has not only produced thousands to students who have difficulty in reading and writing, but also reluctance in participating in schooling.
      
      "All education is about outcomes; the teacher can be so knowledgeable but if the students are not learning, the teacher is only “shooting the breeze”. That form of schooling is not liberating or empowering students, merely domesticating them.
      
      "Force-feeding our students like battery hens has not worked; nor has herding thousands of young people into holding pens called high schools at a time in their lives when they are going through the troubling, seething, questioning period of adolescence. Masses of young people with all kinds of talent, motivation, background and interest are all pitchforked together, whether they like it or not. They are deprived of outside responsibility and meaningful participation in the broader society.
      
      "At a time when their natural enthusiasm and activism abound, they are shut off from the real world, their attention focused on themselves – a recipe for unrest. Even blind Freddy can see a reason for change. Without a strong intervention we will continue to limit the horizon of the students’ world by the classroom, ably described by Dickens ad “Too decent a setting for joy and suffering”.
      
      Michael Detiuk, Perth
      
      
      

• The Sunday Times
  

  • Teacher backflip (page 33)
    by Paul Lampathakis
    
    “The Barnett Government has broken an election promise that the Liberals would stop fighting the teachers over pay in the Industrial Relations Commission.
    
    “Former Liberal education spokesman Peter Collier, who is now Training Minister, said in late August that a Liberal government would pull the pay dispute - which has dragged on for more than a year - from arbitration in the commission.
    
    “But yesterday Education Minster Liz Constable said of Mr Collier's commitment: "That was Peter Collier and I'm the minister."
    
    “Dr Constable said the Education Department recently rejected the State School Teachers' Union proposal to have a December arbitration date suspended so negotiations could continue without a lengthy commission hearing looming.
    
    “The minister said she did not believe that keeping a date scheduled for arbitration to continue would hinder further negotiations between the department and the union.
    
    "I think there's a will to negotiate and the fact that there's a date set down many, many weeks away has no real bearing on that," Dr Constable said.
    
    "It is my hope and wish that there will be a negotiated outcome. [emphasis added]
    
    "And I think the union is reading from the same page on that from my discussion with them."
    
    “Dr Constable also said she was not involved in the negotiations, which were between the union and the department.
    
    “But union president Anne Gisborne said that tomorrow the union would ask the commission again to "vacate" the December date so negotiations could continue without the "unnecessary pressure" of also preparing for a commission case.
    
    “Ms Gisborne said there were still positive signs for negotiations with the Government, such as the recent 6 per cent interim pay increase.”
    
    From The Sunday Times
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • Crisis for mentally ill youngsters
    
    A summit of the country's leading mental health experts yesterday declared a "state of emergency" in youth mental health.
    
    
    
  • More job losses strike tertiary sector
    
    Up to 270 staff will lose their jobs after Victoria University announced it would slash costs by $27 million next year.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor [Saturday]
    
    
    • Searching for the shades of grey
      
      "Much of the angst and the argy-bargy in the literacy, history and culture "wars" (The Age, 17/10) stems from what logicians call false dichotomy, wherein matters are always a Manichean either-or, rather than shades of grey.
      
      "It's not either phonics or whole language, British history or European history, Australian literature or world literature. It's both. There are situations when phonics works, and when whole language works, and teachers of reading should know enough about both to use both.
      
      "Some of our Greco-Roman, Judaeo-Christian heritage came via the Continent, some direct from the British Isles, and teachers of history should have a depth and breadth of knowledge to appreciate this, and then to teach it.
      
      "But if the nation's classrooms keep being theatres of proxy wars waged by herd-thinking ideologues and indoctrinators with closed minds, then each student might truly be better off with the internet and a team of private tutors."
      
      Leonard Colquhoun, Invermay, Tasmania
      
      
      
    • Speaking Manglish
      
      "Mandatory in any review of how English is taught should take into account the following. We live in Straya and we are Strayans. We do not speak to any one any more, we "go" to them as in "she goes", "I go", "we go". The phrase "I said" can now be deleted "moving forward". "Oh my God" is acceptable for all forms of surprise or outrage and even Catholics can utter this vital phrase without sin.
      
      "One is no longer interested or apathetic to an idea, we are now "kinda like". Listen toschoolchildren on public transport. All conversations must be said so as all within 20 metres can hear what they think and have to say because they are just so "like" cool, and when they speak everyone wants to "like" hear them because what they have to say is so "like" interesting.
      
      "Thank you, America for your contribution to the English language."
      
      James Malone, Narre Warren
      
      
      
  • Letters to the Editor [Sunday]
    
    
    • Three Letters on studying LOTE
      
      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • Chaplains 'indispensable' to schools: study
    
    "A new study has confirmed the important role of chaplains in Queensland schools.
    
    "The federally-funded National School Chaplaincy Program was introduced last year and 500 chaplains operate in 600 schools around the state.
    
    "Scripture Union Queensland spokesperson Tim Mander says chaplains are a vital school resource.
    
    "They've found that school principals are now viewing school chaplains as a indispensable part of the caring service in a school community," he said.
    
    "They're filling a gap that has been there in the past and some of the things they're saying is that they can't imagine their school without a chaplain."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Grammar lessons aren't confusing, but all these directives are
      
      "The recurrent discussions about English in our schools are a bit confusing ("It's back: push for grammar in all schools", October 17). At the Canberra school where I have taught for nearly 30 years, we have always taught spelling, punctuation and the "classics", and I suspect that this is the case in most Australian schools. One should never confuse departmental documents and bureaucratic directives with what teachers actually do every day.
      
      "Implementing "old-school grammar lessons" has been a catch-cry of ultra-conservatives and shock jocks for many years, though I wonder if they really know what they mean by that term. If they mean the reintroduction of the tedious, repetitious, mind-numbing technical exercises with which I was tortured at school, then there is little chance of success.
      
      "If they mean teaching children clear, concise and correct standard English expression, then it will be what any English teacher worth two bob has always done without the heavy hand of authority being placed on his or her shoulders."
      
      Steve Ellis, Hackett (ACT)
      
      
      
    • "NSW public school kindergarten to year six teachers teach both phonics and grammar. Teaching a child to read will always include a number of strategies - the whole word plus phonics. Have you ever tried to encourage a child to phonetically sound out "their"?
      
      "The outcome has and always will be to read - to not simply sound out the words on a page, but to comprehend the message contained in the text."
      
      Sharon McGuinness, Thirroul
      
      
      
    • "I welcome the recommendations of the National Curriculum Board. I tutor children in spelling, reading, writing and comprehension on the North Shore. I have more students requiring my services than I have time to see. Most of them are not learning disabled. They just require the information on how to decode text, form a sentence and work out what an author is trying to convey to them in a piece of writing."
      
      Susan Byrne, Chatswood
      
      
      
    • "As a teacher of English, I look forward to the prescription of grammar as a stand-alone element within the various syllabi that govern what I do within my classroom. I also await with breathless anticipation the reintroduction of the cane, so as to make that teaching all the more effective."
      
      Wayne Eade, Inverell
      
      
      
    • "An English syllabus emphasising grammar and the study of long-dead British writers may or may not improve some students' literacy but it would certainly contribute to an exodus of less academic teenagers who remain at school only because they receive an education they see as relevant to their experiences and aspirations."
      
      Norm Neill, Darlinghurst
      
      
      
    • "Hooray for grammar, syntax and phonics. The only puzzle is how it took those thesis-hunting educational buffoons so long to work out that, despite the horror words such as the "through, bough, tough" series, kids can figure out that c-a-t spells cat quite easily from the letters' sounds, if you let them."
      
      Bruce Graham, Oatlands
      
      
      
    • "As a former teacher, who trained in the late 1970s/early 1980s when the "whole language approach" was in the ascendant, I welcome the debate on developing a national English curriculum. Educational theories regarding teaching strategies and learning styles determine much of the content taught and "outcomes" for pupils. Many other influences (such as socio-economics, language background, location, parental and community input, resources, staffing and class numbers) also contribute to educational performance. The debate between "back to basics' versus "whole language" in schools is relevant, however a balancing of these approaches is necessary for educational successes."
      
      Glenn Jacobus, Tanglewood
      
      
      
    • "Grammar not taught at school for 30 years? My child might not be able to parse a complex sentence, but at primary school he has been taught to identify nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Maybe the teachers at his school, who appear to be mild-mannered and middle-aged, are in fact wild and rule-breaking rogues teaching outside the curriculum. Or maybe your writers are over-egging the curriculum-is-bonkers pudding."
      
      Carmen Jarrett, Leichhardt

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This page last updated 19 October, 2008 11:43 PM