Monday 20 October

Tuesday 21 October

Wednesday 22 October

Thursday 23 October

Friday 24 October

Saturday – Sunday, 25 – 26 October

Monday 20 October

• The West Australian
  

  • WA’s English teacher back grammar focus (page 12)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “The main group representing WA’s English teachers has welcomed an increased focus on spelling, punctuation and grammar in the proposed national curriculum.
    
    “English Teachers Association of WA president Wendy Cody said yesterday that 1970’s fad of immersing children in writing and expecting them to absorb spelling and grammar skills had done a lot of damage.
    
    “Plans to renew emphasis on learning grammar, spelling and punctuation across all stages of schooling and the systematic teaching of phonics in the early years were outlined in an advice paper debated at a national forum in Melbourne on Friday.
    
    “The paper’s author, University of Sydney education and social work professor Peter Freebody, recommended breaking the English curriculum into three main areas – language, literature and usage.
    
    “He said the teaching of grammar over the past 30 years had been patchy and badly coordinated.
    
    “Ms Cody, who attended the forum, said Professor Freebody made “eminently good sense” but she believed the new curriculum would not be markedly different from what was now taught in WA.
    
    “Mistakes have been made in the past in many different ways, but I wouldn’t want people to say, ‘we’re going back to the basics and we’re reading books again’, because we never stopped doing it,” she said.
    
    “Ms Cody said the explicit teaching of grammar had resurfaced in WA classrooms over the past 10 years, but she welcomed the systematic approach suggested in the new curriculum. Teachers were wary after the botched implementation of curriculum reforms to Year 11 and 12 courses in the past three years, she said.
    
    “English teachers need direction, we don’t need ambiguity and above all we need support and consistency,” Ms Cody said.
    
    “Armadale Primary School literacy specialist teacher Fiona Walker, WA’s only representative on the panel of 19 experts advising Professor Freebody, said a generation of teachers had not been taught grammar at school so they would need extra training.
    
    “Ms Walker, who is also on the WA College of Teachers board and a member of teachers’ lobby group PLATO, said she believed the proposed curriculum would provide more direction to teachers.
    
    “I think there’s a better chance of teachers understanding it,” she said. “The fault with the current outcomes and standards framework is that it’s so fuzzy.” [emphasis added]
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor (page 22) 
    

    • Back chaplains
      
      “It is good that someone at last has recognized the efforts of the school chaplains (Suffer the chaplains in schools, 9/10). These dedicated people put in effort often beyond the call of duty to bridge the gap between authority and parent in government high schools.
      
      “Children often need a caring adult to speak to without the fear of breaching the Australian concept “dobbing” to the authorities. Teachers are seen by the students as being in an authoritative role, as are their parents.
      
      “The chaplain is seen as a neutral and caring person who is safe for students to approach. Not all students have a positive relationship with their families. Where do they turn when they need to talk to an adult?
      
      “The work of the chaplain is much appreciated by staff at government high schools. They should also be valued by the community.”
      
      Chris Booth, Kardinya
      
      
      

• SSTUWA
  
  
  • Enterprise Order & Negotiations [EBA Update # 80]
    
    The Union and DET met to negotiate on Wednesday 15 October, Thursday 16 October and Friday 17 October. The parties are due to return to the WAIRC today at 3.30pm to report back on the negotiations.
    
    Executive is scheduled to meet at 9.00am today, Monday 20 October 2008, to receive a progress report on negotiations and provide advice to the negotiators and lawyers for the report back in the WAIRC today.
    
    SSTU Enterprise Order [At Long Last !]
    
    The Enterprise Order being proposed by the SSTU for the purpose of arbitration was lodged in the WAIRC on Thursday 16 October 2008. It will be on the SSTU website on Tuesday 21 October 2008.
    
    Regardless of negotiations the Union will continue to work with the lawyers in preparation for arbitration.
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • The Monday Education Section is now online, and has 16 articles, including:
    
    
    • Australian schools to lose under the Blair test project
      
      The thousands of Australian teachers who have spent time working in schools in England in the past decade are to be excused for feeling a distinct, and uncomfortable, sense of deja vu. National curriculum, standardised testing and the publishing of their results, bidding for targeted grants - all have become central features of the British education system over the past decade. Now the federal and state education ministers, Julia Gillard and Bronwyn Pike, seem intent on following the same script.
      
      
      
    • A boy's own view of success
      
      
      Boys often fail to thrive at school because they have a narrow view of success and fewer close personal relationships than girls do, according to a leading educational psychologist.
      
      
      
    • Politicians should leave history to the teachers
      
      Tony Abbott's recent doorstop comment that there were not enough facts about English history in the current National Curriculum Board framing paper on school history has a familiar ring.
      
      
      
    • Stereotypes alive and well in classrooms
      
      Teachers still make assumptions about students based on race.
      
      
      
      
  • Parents 'in denial' over fat kids
    
    Parents are in denial about their obese children, with research revealing almost half of those who have overweight kids are unaware they are fat.
    
    
    
    
  • Trade college closed for breach of rules
    
    A trades college for international students has been forced to close by the state regulator, another has been suspended and 40 have been ordered to improve the way they operate.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Private school funds at risk, union warns
    
    A battle over education legislation between the Federal Government and the Opposition is about to heat up, writes Gerard Noonan.
    
    The union representing teachers in private schools says the Federal Opposition is putting at risk funding for the entire non-government schooling sector by opposing the Government's schools legislation in Federal Parliament.
    
    Chris Watt, the federal secretary of the Independent Education Union of Australia, says the union has long supported changes to the controversial socio-economic status method used to fund private schools, "but in the present economic climate, now is the time for certainty, not for political point-scoring".
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    I am guilty as charged of bias and prejudice - shall I be put to death?
    by Dr Peter Slezak (senior lecturer, University of NSW)
    
    "I should probably be writing under a pseudonym. If submissions to the Senate inquiry into bias and academic freedom are taken seriously, I'm in trouble.
    
    "As a university lecturer, I confess my teaching and publications are thoroughly biased, riddled with prejudice and entirely lacking in even-handedness.
    
    "I am undeniably guilty of the sins the submissions warn against. My reading lists are not representative of all points of view. My lectures not only criticise but sometimes ridicule views I regard as misguided and pernicious nonsense - often the views of other colleagues. I vigorously assert my prejudices without any pretence of neutrality. I confront my students and provoke them to defend their views, especially when I disagree with them, which is most of the time.
    
    "In short, I am precisely the kind of academic who some submissions propose to deal with by means that include disciplinary procedures and even sacking.
    
    "Despite my efforts at brainwashing, my students have curiously failed to utter any protest even in their regular anonymous evaluations. I must, however, acknowledge a single official complaint that was lodged with the dean. One student was outraged when I had criticised certain theories as disreputable nonsense. The student was an astrologer who was upset by my openly biased, dismissive views of her discipline. Although she was evidently immune, she feared that I might unduly influence the other students..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Following the national curriculum to the letter
      
      "Is there room in the national curriculum for the study of platitudes and how to avoid them? There may then be a slight hope that future generations of journalists will spare readers trite phraseology such as "back to basics" ("It's back: push for grammar in all schools", October 17), and that the National Curriculum Board will have done something useful to justify its existence.
      
      "Anyone who visits a NSW public school will discover an emphasis on literacy skills. Starting in kindergarten, phonics-based instruction is used to develop the phonemic awareness necessary for reading, spelling, speaking and writing, combined with explicit teaching of grammatical conventions. In my 10 years in schools as a parent and a teacher, this has always been the case. I will have no program changes to make when the "new" curriculum is implemented."
      
      Katrina Kemp, Bundeena
      
      
      
    • "What is it about phonics that seems to bring its wilder supporters out so regularly (Letters, October 18-19)? Of course it is one of the useful methods of teaching reading, but it is not the only one, or even, perhaps, the first one to try. Some languages, such as Italian, Indonesian and Welsh, use spelling that closely corresponds to pronunciation; others, such as Chinese, don't use spelling at all. English sits somewhere in between. Pronunciation may depend on meaning as well as the letters, as for example in the word "read", neither of whose pronunciations could be inferred from the letters. If phonics is the universal answer to literacy, how do Chinese children learn to read?"
      
      Michael Bailey, Uki
      
      
      
    • "Bravo to Carmen Jarrett (Letters, October 18-19) for blowing the whistle on the fantasy that grammar is not taught in schools. A few weeks ago I was explaining to my kindergarten-aged daughter how every sentence has a "doing word". After a pause and a question to work out what I meant, she rolled her eyes and said, "Dad, I know what verbs are!"
      
      John Kramer, Thora
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Most Talked About: Literacy Skills
      The job should not be left to English teachers alone
      [Note: Five of the seven Letters are from WA.]
      
      "Judith Wheeldon ("Return of grammar brings hope”, 18-19/10) is spot on in pointing out that the emergency deployment of a restorative English curriculum in our schools will not on its own fix the chronic wasting disease afflicting the language, and thereby the entire culture. Awareness of, and ability with, English usage must be alive and well in all teachers in all disciplines if any progress is to be made.Grace and elegance aside, precision, clarity and lack of ambiguity are essential requirements for oral and written communication in science. Over the 35 years of my career in university-level biomedical science, in both Australia and the US, I shared the view of many that there was a significant decline in standards of English usage.
      
      "However, teachers and tutors were often apparently unaware of, or unconcerned by, the problem. They did not see it as their role to attend to standards of English - that was a job for English teachers. Students thus were abetted in seeing English as something left in English class. Add to this the impact of home environment, popular culture and the digital world. We have a complex problem indeed."
      
      Clive Huxtable, Beaconsfield, WA
      
      
      
    • "I have just read the excellent article by Judith Wheeldon and I couldn’t agree more with her arguments about why we should be going back to teaching grammar to school children. When I was teaching, I supervised a long-term “prac” student in my class. In his last practical session before graduating, I suggested that he teach a lesson on parts of speech using a “diamond poem” which used contrasts, eg, man and woman (nouns) an adjective to describe each, an adverb, etc. I could see the look of consternation on his face so I gently asked him if he knew the different parts of speech. He rather shamefacedly announced that he didn’t. If the teacher can’t teach, what hope is there for the pupils? Bring back the basics, I cry."
      
      Patricia Spaull, Broadwater, WA
      
      
      
    • "It will take at least three years before any new English curriculum can be implemented because teachers don’t know how to teach it. Add to that the time it will take for the changes to be reflected in (hopefully) better-educated students and you’re looking at another five, maybe 10, years of illiteracy. Still, better late than never."
      
      Greg Smith, Balcatta, WA
      
      
      
    • "Give me strength. Sydney University English education lecturer Jackie Manuel ("Spelling out what’s best”, 18-19/10) is a prime example of the generation of so-called educators who preferred to exercise their fancies than teach children, with the result that year after year children fell out of schools into a life of under-achievement. Going back 40 years seems like a good idea after that."
      
      Grant Roberts, Brisbane, Qld
      
      
      
    • "Sydney university English education lecturer Jackie Manuel said the draft of the English national curriculum took English teaching back 40 years. God, I hope so."
      
      Ian Green, Winthrop, WA
      
      
      
    • "In considering how to teach reading, we have to recognise that English spelling has not been phonetic for hundreds of years: put more technically, the graphemes of writing do not consistently match the phonemes of pronunciation. Secondly, we should recognise that people, children as well as adults, sometimes remember by hearing, while others remember by seeing. Put the two principles together and it seems that classroom teaching of English should provide for both phonics and the “look-say” method.
      
      "The limits of phonics can be easily understood by considering the varying pronunciation of the letter “a” in each of the following words: pal, pall, pale, palm, peat, parade. Even more variety is introduced if we consider the local pronunciation ("pell mell") of Pall Mall in London’s West End. Then there are those words that are spelt the same but have different pronunciations and meanings, “tear” being the best known.
      
      "To complicate matters even further, English-speaking countries are experiencing major shifts in the pronunciation of some vowels. “Golf ball” is now commonly pronounced with vowels that in my youth would have sounded like “gulf boll”. So teachers need to listen closely to the pronunciation of their students rather than trying to impose some theory of the right pronunciation."
      
      Ken Goodwin, Honorary Professor of English, University of Queensland
      
      
      
    • "As a retired language teacher and mother of three children educated in the dumbed-down English curriculum, I can only cheer that at last some intelligence is to be applied and grammar, punctuation and spelling reinstated. These basics are the linchpins of our language.
      
      "How disheartening it has been to try to teach a foreign language to children with either extremely limited or no knowledge of the basic grammar of their own language. What a pity that those responsible for the English curriculum have been such slow learners, taking more than three decades to come to the conclusion that such basics have to be incorporated into the English curriculum. I am sure most English or foreign language teachers could have informed them years ago."
      
      Diana Nisbet, Trigg, WA
      
      
      
    • First Byte
      
      "I’m pleased to learn that our children are to be taught how to write a sentence correctly. Perhaps they should also be taught how to hold a pen comfortably, so that it can be used fluently and efficiently."
      
      Denis Kerr, Weetangera, ACT
      
      
      
      
  • 'Activist' academics black list under fire
    
    Academics named as militant left-wing ideologues in a black list tabled in federal parliament claim they are victims of a Young Liberals "witch-hunt".
    
    
    
  • Dads give kids a minute a weekday
    
    Australian fathers spend just six minutes alone with their children from Monday through Friday, averaging slightly over a minute a day.
    
    
    
    
  • Teenagers jailed over Merrylands High School revenge attacks
    
    Two of the five boys who stormed Merrylands High School in April armed with baseball bats, a samurai sword and a machete will face at least eight months behind bars.
    
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • AP or IB Curriculum? It's a Vigorous Debate
    
    The D.C. area has the country's highest concentration of Advanced Placement courses, which lead to three-hour exams that can earn students college credit. A growing number of schools also have the rigorous but lesser-known International Baccalaureate program.
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • School strike 'abuse of rights'
    
    Children's Commissioner Patricia Lewsley has said the strike by 25 teachers at Movilla High School is an "abuse of children's rights". The dispute arose over their pay being docked when they refused to teach a pupil they claim assaulted one of them.
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Hotels Association calls for school gambling lessons
    
    [The Australian Hotels Association chief executive Bill] Healy says it is not about teaching students how to gamble but educating them on the risks involved and the probability of winning.

    "We're starting to see a growth of gaming on the internet and people have to be able to regulate their own behaviour," he said.

Tuesday 21 October

• SSTUWA
  
  
  • SSTUWA Enterprise Order [EBA Update # 81]
    
    Highlights
    
    

    1. WAIRC AND ARBITRATION TIMELINE
    
    The Union and DET reported back to the WAIRC on Monday 20 October 2008. Matters dealt with were progress of negotiations and the SSTU application to extend the programmed dates for arbitration.
    
    The Commissioner has agreed with the Union’s submission. The December dates have been vacated and reset. The Commissioner has set dates for December 2008 and March 2009 for the hearing of the case. 
    
    2. NEGOTIATIONS
    
    The parties continued negotiations today and are meeting again tomorrow in an effort to reach a negotiated outcome. Executive will receive a progress report on Friday 25 October 2008.
    
    Until a negotiated settlement is finalised the Union will continue to make preparations for arbitration.
    
    3. SSTU ENTERPRISE ORDER [SSTUWA proposal for arbitration]
    
    The SSTU proposed Enterprise Order for the purpose of arbitration was lodged in the WAIRC on Thursday 21 October 2008. It is now available on the Union website at www.sstuwa.org
    
    Key features include:
    
    SALARY: 8% + 8% + 8%
    
    ALLOWANCES: same quantums as in the AIP proposal + a new Band D allowance [$ 5 000 pa]. Band D consists of  an additional 12 schools. NB: the list will be amended to include John Willcock College. 
    
    WORKLOAD [Clause 99]: allocation of clerical time for principals; establishment of a Work-Overload Resource pool providing additional resources to schools
    
    VET [Clause 98]: establishment of VET HOLA positions for 2009
    
    CLASS SIZES [Clause 27]: timeline for guidelines re inclusion as per Clause 27.7 para 2
    
    15 HOURS PD: removed
    
    TEACHER DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES [Clause 24]: retaining current conditions
    
    DOTT [Clause 26]: remains as per the AIP proposal
    
    STUDENT MANAGEMENT [Clause 97]: incorporation of additional resources of $ 18m; proposed extension of the trial behaviour centres
    
    SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGISTS [Clause 33]: resourcing of $7m for an additional 50 school psychologists
    
    The Union notes and thanks the members who have been able to assist with the gathering of evidence and preparation of witness statements. At this time we are expecting to have between 25 and 30 witnesses to support our case.
    

    
    

• The West Australian
  

  • Op Ed
    Sorry Day for English teaching long overdue (page 20)
    by Paul Murray
    
    “It’s very popular these days to seek apologies for all sorts of social ills and mistakes. I’m waiting for someone to come forward and apologise for buggering up the English language education of two generations of Australian children, now it’s been officially established that the social experiment has failed.
    
    “Just who are the faceless bureaucrats who consigned many of our children to semi-literacy by refusing to teach them the basics of English?
    
    “And what has been the cost – both personal and to the national fabric – of so gross and error?
    
    “The new National Curriculum Board has determined that 30 years of post-modernist claptrap will be brushed aside and teachers will now be required to pass on the fundamentals of the language at the start of a child’s education.
    
    “It has proposed a return to phonics, whereby children are taught English based on the sound of words.
    
    “The NCB says between 20 and 40 per cent of children struggle to read using the visual “whole language” system which was part of the changes from the 1970s onwards that also shunned the study of grammar.
    
    “Fundamental to this new approach is to teach English as a language, rather than a tool for cultural studies. It was this intrusion of ideology onto what should have been a simple educational task that started the rot.
    
    “Those who objected to what was happening – as this newspaper did in the 1990s and subsequently – were told that they were out of touch and old-fashioned.
    
    “What bothers me is that the NCB’s new consultation paper blithely dismissed the strong opposition to the move away from the fundamentals as part of some worthy academic debate.
    
    “Over some decades the teaching of grammar as part of English in Australia has been a topic of contention for teachers, universities, schools and the general community,” the NCB paper says.

    “Whether grammar should be taught at all, when, how much and what particular form(s) of grammar should be taught have all been strongly contested.
    
    “…in Australia the related fields of English language, literature and literacy education owe much to their richness and sophistication to the conduct of debates such as these.”
    
    “Frankly, it wasn’t a debate, but a stuff-up. I don’t see how damaging the education of so many children can be seen as having any value.
    
    "Unfortunately, the new curriculum doesn’t fully go back to basics, leaving open the issue of what texts are studied to specious interpretations, even though there is thankfully a direction for a return to using Australian literature as a “core element”.
    
    “And the post-modernist analysis of texts, a favourite of so-called media teachers which has often been a thinly-disguised cover for them to inflict their prejudices on their students, is also set to continue.
    
    “For some years now there have been differences of opinion about the use of ‘critical literacy’ which covers a range of positions and practices top do with the analysis of texts in terms of their potential philosophical, political or ideological assumptions and context,” the paper says.
    
    “The national English curriculum will need to consider, at different stages of schooling, what emphasis is required to support young people as they move from learning to read to reading to learn and as they increase their understandings of how to interpret texts, especially when they are more complex and extended.
    
    “This includes how they are 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.”
    
    “That appears to me to be an open invitation to continue the ludicrous deconstruction of texts allegedly to reveal the writer’s intent, which apart from being a perfectly imperfect science, is so often abused for ideological ends.
    
    “A major problem with the back-to-basics approach, in particular as it affects the renewed teaching of grammar, is that many young teachers are products of the system that ignored the fundamentals and lack the necessary skills.
    
    “A little while ago I wrote a column about the future of teaching which drew a big response from many younger members of the profession. The errors in spelling and grammar in the emails were quite alarming.
    
    “Researching some 1990’s editorials in the newspaper library, I stumbled across a poignant letter from a Fremantle reader who was wrestling with a 13-year-old son’s school problems.
    
    “Essays which should have taken two hours to write were taking eight or more,” the reader wrote.
    
    ‘”For example, he did not know how to construct a simple sentence with a subject and a verb or how to expand on the main idea using a clause or phrase or how to develop paragraphs.
    
    “Why? Because he had never been taught how – nor, from what I could gather from his school, was there any plan to do so.”
    
    “Now, for half an hour, three times a week, my son, after completing his regular homework, does extra English. The text he uses was given to us by a friend. It is a collection of three booklets published by the WA Department of Education in 1971.
    
    “It contains 23 lessons covering grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, composition and comprehension. The text…reflects the author’s many years of experience in teaching English.”
    
    “It’s a shame that it has taken our educators so long to rediscover what one concerned parent learnt back in 1997.
    
    “And, frankly, it deserves an apology from someone.”
     
    From The West Australian

     

  • Letters to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • Who will teach teachers?
      
      “Forgive my cynicism, but your report (Spelling, grammar back at heart of new English, 17/10) that the previously much-maligned English language skills of punctuation, spelling and grammar are set to make a comeback in the new school curriculum raises one very pertinent question: who is going to teach them?
      
      “It's hard for me, as an English tutor of many years' standing, to be totally enthusiastic about yet another scheme to improve English standards when my experience of teaching senior students across the northern suburbs, from both public and private schools (which has involved me in looking at their corrected essays), has demonstrated only too clearly that their own teachers are often abysmally lacking in correct grammar and spelling themselves!
      
      “These poor teachers, of course, are not to blame because we all know that, if they are under 40, they will have had little or no grammar tuition and often very little exposure to either Shakespeare and the "classics" or even what is considered to be just good writing. My contemporaries of 60-plus, on the other hand, all of whom received the obligatory grammar lessons and analysis of literature, are almost without exception reasonably literate and grammatical - and grateful to be so.
      
      “Very few went on to tertiary education. Over the past eight years of private tutoring of students aiming for university, I have noticed how the writing standards of the students when they first come to me have declined as they struggle to express themselves coherently. Added to this, the choice of many of their texts has become very questionable as these appear to follow whatever politically-correct thinking is in vogue.
      
      “For unlucky students, a few of their texts, masquerading under the guise of "modernism" and "realism" with liberal use of crude language and themes of rape, murder and drugs, are frankly just embarrassing and unenlightening. I can only applaud the acknowledgement by the experts that "students need to know how to correctly construct a sentence" and that knowledge of grammar and literature would in future be built up from the earliest years of school, but the vital question of who is to teach the teachers remains!
      
      “So come on all those retired seniors, who know where to put an apostrophe or a semi-colon, know how to parse a sentence and to spell without a computer, and were exposed to the "classics" and what is generally acknowledged as "good literature", there may be a whole new career out there for you.
      
      Jennifer E. Hine, Wanneroo
      
      

    • Remedial English for undergraduates
      
      “Like many parents, I welcome the claims that a national curriculum will emphasis grammar, spelling and punctuation, but I do wonder who will teacher these skills in schools unless Edith Cowan University and similar institutions intend to start remedial English lesson for the undergraduates who have chosen education as their faculty of last resort.
      
      “I have vivid memories of one of the cheerful young women who taught my daughter assuring me that she was definatly (sic) correct in her assessment of my child's work because she had been trained in making consistant (sic) judgments about the work produced by her student's (sic).
      
      “I could give many more examples, but any educated parent who has had a child go through school in the past couple of decades will have far too many of their own (or is that "far to many of there own"?).”
      
      Bernadette Lee, Ardross 
      
      

    • Are they ready for this?
      
      “One can only express delight at the prospect of increased focus on spelling, punctuation and grammar - and wonder why it was ever shifted. Assuming this increased focus is adopted, will it mean that children will be taught that "there's" is an abbreviation of "there is" and, as such required a singular noun to follow? The use of personal pronouns will be reintroduced? The difference between being "good" and being "well" will be explained?
      
      “I could go on as nauseam, but am sure your readers will get the general idea.
      
      “Whoever conjured up the quaint notion that our future leaders could somehow survive without a thorough knowledge and understanding of the English language clearly lacked the same knowledge and understanding themselves.
      
      “With so many more families from overseas now choosing to call Australia home, the need for their children - with all others - to absorb that knowledge and understanding is more critical today than ever before.
      
      “Of course, I'm still left wondering who is going to ensure that the teachers themselves have the knowledge and understanding of the language to pass on to their students. That there is now a proposal to shift the focus back on to spelling, punctuation and grammar carries with it the implication that it's currently missing. And that must raise the question about whether teachers themselves are geared for the changes ahead. For the sake of future generations, I can only hope so.
      
      G.M Paddick, Karrinyup
      
      
      
  • AHA urges gambling lessons for schools (page 15)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “School students would be taught how to gamble responsibly under a plan being pushed by the hotel industry.
     
    “The Australian Hotels Association said in a submission to a Senate inquiry into problem gambling there was a genuine need to teach students the facts on all forms of gambling.
     
    “It said research showed that young people between 18 and 30 were most at risk of developing problems because they did not understand the odds when gambling and overestimated their chance of success.
     
    “At present, schools throughout Australia teach students about safe sex, the dangers of smoking and drugs and the responsible consumption of alcohol,” it said. “To adequately prepare students for life after school, gambling education needs to be included in the national curriculum.”
     
    “AHA chief executive Bill Healey told The West Australian that teaching students the pros and cons of gambling would empower them to manage their lives better.
     
    “He said gambling education would not be about warning students against the perils of gambling, but would help them make an informed choice about how they chose to spend their money. It could be included in financial literacy programs already in use in schools.
     
    “It’s really to give them the capacity to gamble in a responsible way if they choose to,” he said.
     
    “Mr Healey said a Brisbane teacher recently drew fire for taking his students to the races. “We’re not advocating that, or putting poker machines in classrooms,” he said.
     
    “Though WA did not have gaming machines, it had a casino and race courses and was the biggest consumer of lottery tickets in the nation. “People need to know what their chances (of winning) are for the various forms of gambling,” he said. Mr Healey said he would write to Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard to propose gambling education be added to the national curriculum. But Ms Gillard said yesterday educational experts were best placed to develop the new curriculum, not politicians.
     
    “WA Education Department school support programs chief David Axworthy said: “WA public schools assist students to make wise financial and health decisions through financial literacy and health education.”
     
    “State School Teachers Union general secretary David Kelly said children should be taught life skills, not given gambling lessons.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Children don't come first in lucky country, says OECD report
    by Stephen Lunn, Social affairs writer
    
    "Australia's prosperity is masking an unpalatable truth - the health and wellbeing of our children lag unacceptably behind those of many developed countries.
    
    "More than 7 per cent of Australian children have fewer than 11 books in their family home, we rank in the bottom third of the OECD nations for infant mortality, and we are 21st out of 27 for children eating meals with their parents.
    
    "These are just a few of a raft of international indicators of childhood health and wellbeing that reveal the chasm between our perceptions of a prosperous country and the harsh reality, childhood expert Fiona Stanley has warned.
    
    "An international comparison of 42 measures of childhood wellbeing to be published for the first time today by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth shows we rank 13th out of 23 OECD countries on childhood mental health. Indigenous children fare disproportionately badly across a range of indicators from infant mortality through teenage pregnancy and exposure to poverty.
    
    "Professor Stanley, chair of the alliance board, told The Australian that the nation "continues to accept mediocrity for our young people" at a time when we top the rankings of some global prosperity indices.
    
    "I'm disappointed in the way Australia has become smug about being top of the pops in wealth and sport, but for the most important element for the future of the country, our children, we're way behind the eight ball," she said.
    
    "An international prosperity index published just last week had Australia the No1 one country in the world for life satisfaction, but how can we be so self-satisfied when there are so many indicators of childhood wellbeing that are in the middle of the range?
    
    "We need to be asking how an affluent and successful country like Australia can be so average when it comes to raising our children and whether we're prepared to continue to accept mediocrity for our young people." ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Education divide reopening, childhood expert warns
    by Stephen Lunn, Social affairs writer
    
    "The chance for Australian children to reach their potential, regardless of social class, is under growing threat, a leading childhood expert has warned.
    
    "Australian Institute of Family Studies director Alan Hayes said evidence was mounting that access to quality education, the key driver of outcomes for children, was being decided increasingly along class lines.
    
    "And what had traditionally been one of Australia's great strengths, equity in education, "may be changing", Professor Hayes said.
    
    "Speaking in Sydney last week, Professor Hayes said Australia had a proud history of educational attainment and progress being decided by merit and opportunity.
    
    "OECD comparisons of inter-generational mobility bear this out, with Australia showing the highest educational mobility and third-highest earnings mobility," Professor Hayes said.
    
    "These indicate that parents' education level or earnings do not predict their children's outcome to the extent they do in the US or UK, for example.
    
    "(But there is) some evidence that this may be changing.
    
    "While educational achievement is above the OECD average, we do less well on measures of educational equity.
    
    "'Other gaps in health and wellbeing appear to be widening and differences solidifying, especially within indigenous Australia." ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Students fear jobs will dry up by graduation day
    by Matthew Clayfield and Nicolas Perpitch
    
    "Daniel Townend had it all planned out.
    
    "The 26-year-old Curtin University student was going to complete his applied geology degree, land a plum graduate position and ride Western Australia's economic boom all the way to a healthy pay packet and a little bit of stability.
    
    "Of course, that was before the economic storm clouds rolled in, seemingly overnight.
    
    "Now Mr Townend is considering forgoing his honours year and entering the job market instead..."
    
    "Graduate Careers Australia executive director Cindy Tilbrook said that, although there were reasons for concern, graduates would benefit in the medium term from Australia's ageing population.
    
    "History tends to show that the graduate recruitment pattern does tend to follow the economic pattern," she said. "Usually, when there's a downturn, the grad market will ease off..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Most Talked About:
      An English Curriculum
      
      New methods lose in translation on way to pupils
      
      "Greg Smith (Letters 20/10) correctly raises the issue of implementation of the much-needed changes to the English curriculum.
      
      "What needs to be guarded against is the phenomenon known as Chinese whispers, which has plagued almost every new curriculum that has been implemented in my 40-odd years of secondary and tertiary teaching.
      
      "The process starts with the development of a new curriculum by a group of experts.
      
      "Then, in the process of disseminating the curriculum to teachers, it goes through a watering-down phase called “in-servicing”.
      
      "Those who are charged with responsibility for this process form part of a chain which tends to alter the message the further it gets from the original source.
      
      "This is not due to intentional distortion but is the result of an attempt to clarify by imposing a familiar take on new concepts.
      
      "Whatever the reason, it leads inevitably to oversimplifications such as “grammar is in/out”; “phonics is in/out”; “whole language is in/out”; “literature is in/out”; “critical literacy is in/out”.
      
      Dr Gary Birch, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Griffith University, Nathan, Qld
      
      
      
    • "It's an inspired English curriculum that returns English teaching to basics—learning to read phonetically instead of “whole language guessing”—and the teaching of grammar, spelling and punctuation.
      
      "The fly in the ointment is that literary texts will still be judged on gender, race and class by 21st century biased standards, instead of the values of 50 or 100 years ago.
      
      "As Shakespeare’s texts and so many others are about human nature—its malignancies, aggressiveness, jealousies, ambitions, cruelties, obsessions as well as kind and generous intentions—it is left-wing bigotry that drives some academics to reduce this panorama of emotions to three “politically correct’ interpretations only: is the text racist, gender or class-driven?
      
      "Students are forced to write on this, never gaining from the texts’ revelations of human behaviour as they hunt for derogatory reference to race, gender or class—line by line and word by word."
      
      Judith McPherson, Toowoomba, Qld
      
      
      
    • "I am the mother of three children, all now university students.
      
      "When my children were in primary school the “whole language” technique was in full swing. I remember asking my son’s Grade 4 teacher what he was doing about grammar.
      
      "The reply was “we don’t teach that any more”.
      
      "When I asked why not he said the theory was that students “would pick it up as they went along”. My children did pick it up but it had nothing to do with “whole language”.
      
      "My husband and I spent unknown sums purchasing books and we read endlessly to our children; and we encouraged them to read independently.
      
      "When they brought work home from school, supposedly corrected, with spelling and grammar mistakes left unmarked I again asked the question of the teachers. I was told not all mistakes were highlighted because this would be “demoralising” for the child.
      
      "We spent time going through their work with them and showing them how to use a dictionary.
      
      "I have read the comments of many people since this debate began. The person or people I have yet to hear from are those who developed this teaching method and introduced it into our schools. Where are you now?
      
      "If your program was so good and you believe it is not responsible for the current state of literacy in Australia, why are you silent?
      
      "If the English teaching methods which were in place prior to the introduction of “whole language” are reintroduced, it can only be a blessing for all our school-age children."
      
      Deirdre McQueen, Eltham, Vic
      
      
      
    • "Now that grammar is back, who is going to teach it?
      
      "Two generations of teachers have passed through the systems, and I mean systems, in Australia, knowing nothing about spelling, phonics, grammar and sentence structure. The fault of course lies not with the teachers who taught at the time, but the airheads who imposed the chaotic changes to teaching and learning in the seventies, eighties and nineties. Many teachers of the time did try to instil some of the basics, but it was very difficult to buck the system. Teachers who know about grammar, spelling and phonics will be in their fifties and sixties. Maybe some of them can be lured form the retirement villas to teach the teachers.
      
      "Then we can tackle history and geography in the primary schools."
      
      Marie Radford, Townsville, Qld
      
      
      
    • "It is good that Ken Goodwin expounds the sense of “putting the two principles (of phonics and look-say) together” in the teaching of reading. But his letter as printed seemed to veer dangerously close to the widely-claimed view that English spelling is irrational.
      
      "English has not just one, but three highly evolved phonetic systems, and teachers of the language need to be taught its historical development.
      
      "Then they can authoritatively answer some of their students’ more curly spelling questions by starting with “Well, you can blame the Romans/the French/Whoever for that”, rather than claiming that it’s just irrational."
      
      Leonard Colquhoun, Invermay, Tas
      
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Xavier suspends whole of year 12
    by Bridie Smith
    
    "An exclusive Melbourne boys school has suspended its entire year 12 group after end-of-year high jinx resulted in one student being taken to hospital and complaints of drunken, disruptive behaviour by neighbours.
    
    "A 17-year-old student at Kew's Xavier College was admitted to the Epworth's emergency department yesterday afternoon with multiple leg fractures, after allegations that a schoolyard game became too rough.
    
    "In separate incidents yesterday, The Age understands some Xavier students let off fireworks at Balaclava train station, while three others ran through school assembly wearing little else but their school ties as g-strings.
    
    "A neighbour of the Kew school also contacted The Age complaining that students were "blind drunk" and disruptive.
    
    "Their behaviour was disgraceful," said the man. "They were blind drunk and some of them could barely stand. My kids have been through muck-up day, but I've never seen anything like that."
    
    "The Catholic school released a statement late yesterday saying that all year 12 classes had been cancelled for the remainder of the year "in the best interests of students at all levels" after "a large number of year 12 students exhibited unacceptable behaviour"...
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    Similar story in The Australian
    
    
    
  • Waiting list grows for school breakfast clubs
    
    Schools are increasingly having to feed disadvantaged children, and demand for breakfast clubs is so great that more than 200 schools are now on a waiting list to set up a program.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Something is rotten in the English syllabus, students say
    by Erik Jensen
    
    "The English syllabus, set to be refocused on grammar and classic texts under a nationalised curriculum, found little support among students leaving it behind after yesterday's Higher School Certificate exam.
    
    "Students at Sydney Grammar, which placed seventh in the state at last year's HSC, were sceptical about the focus of the syllabus and the ends for which they had been prepared. They said yesterday's paper was open to prepared responses and rote learning - knowledge they did not see as applicable outside the exam room.
    
    "The HSC prepares you for the HSC," said Dominic Kavanagh, a student at the school. "It doesn't prepare you for English for life - I think it prepares you for an exam at the end of the year.
    
    "With this exam, essentially we got questions engendered towards general answers. We just had to write essays, which is a prepared thing you can do - just download the response."
    
    "The paper asked students in the advanced course to analyse reflections invited by two texts they had studied, including Shakespeare's Hamlet and Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead.
    
    "They were asked to explain how language or dramatic techniques had been used in their second module of texts and explore how texts had emphasised complexities in their final module.
    
    "Students in the standard course were asked to argue whether their texts led them to think about significant issues in the world, to explain how a certain extract drew together the central concerns of another text, and to write about what their final set of texts revealed to them about society.
    
    "Chris Weiontec, also a student at Sydney Grammar, said the syllabus did not allow for a curiosity about language in the senior years. "In year 11 and 12 it sort of takes a turn towards memorising different aspects of the text and memorising sentences to help you sound intelligent," he said.
    
    "But a spokeswoman for the Board of Studies defended the exam. "If students have studied hard and prepared well for the examination, there is no doubt they'll have the in-depth knowledge of the texts they've studied," she said."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    A word of advise (sic) from the pedant of Perth Modern
    
    As the bench seats in the House of Representatives gradually filled yesterday for question time, arrivals were entertained - as they so often are - by a rousing performance starring Wilson Tuckey, the irascible Member for O'Connor.
    
    Yesterday his topic was the English language, his twin targets the Rudd Government and the Australian media.
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Academic freedom: exit, far left
    
    Have a different opinion? Think again. The debate is over. A highly politicised ideological bias exists in academia - one harmful to students, damaging to standards and which threatens intellectual diversity - according to the majority of submissions to the Senate's academic freedom inquiry.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Just learn the rules
      
      "Michael Bailey (Letters, October 20) asks: "If phonics is the universal answer to literacy, how do Chinese children learn to read?" Answer: with a lot of tedious rote-learning that it would be better to do without.
      
      "Treating English written words as though they were Chinese characters is silly. The oddities of English spelling are vastly exaggerated. Most short words are reasonably regular, once you have learnt a few extra rules."
      
      Geoff Dawson, Narrabundah
      
      
      
    • "Michael Bailey says the pronunciation of "read" could not be inferred from its letters. He has obviously not been taught using a thorough phonics method or he would know that "ea" can say "E" as in eat, or "e" as in bread, or "A" as in break. He would have learnt that "E" is the most common, "e" the next most common and "A" the least common. He would have been taught to try the most common first until he got a word he understood and that fitted the context of the sentence.
      
      "Who knows how more accessible very complex text would be to him if he had been taught all the symbols for the sounds of the English language and the spelling and pronunciation rules that go with them?"
      
      Susan Byrne, Chatswood
      
      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • Teachers holding stop-work meetings in south-east Qld
    
    Queensland state school teachers in the Logan-Beaudesert region will walk off the job for an hour today as part of a campaign for more resources.
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • Trainee teachers re-sitting maths
    
    Increasing numbers of trainee teachers are having to re-sit the basic maths tests they must pass to qualify.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Students to get report cards at end of courses
    
    British universities edge closer to scrapping their 200-year-old degree classifications today with a trial of report cards for thousands of graduates.
    
    Similar stories in The Independent and BBC News
    

 

Wednesday 22 October

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • Vital language
      
      “The renewed interest in our English language is very encouraging. For the past 20 years, ignorance of language use such as grammar and spelling has been abysmal. Far from being unimportant, the correct use of language is vital if one is to be able to construct and intelligent sentence.
      
      “The knowledge of the structure of language is essential in the learning of another language. For example, in the Indonesian language, there are basic words and different affixes which change the values of the words for them to become nouns, verbs, etc.
      
      “When I was learning this language at university, there were young people who did not even know what a noun was, let alone know how to use it!
      This meant the teacher had to teach English to be able to teach Indonesian. How ludicrous.
      
      “Perhaps, too, with proper understanding of our own language we will be able finally to rid ourselves of the ubiquitous and irritatingly unnecessary and improper use of the apostrophe.”
      
      Roma Lester, Dianella
      
      

    • 'Your' joking
      
      “To enter the debate on how the knowledge of correct grammar and the English language has deteriorated, a huge wall sign for a finance company near where my local bus stops says" "Find out what your worth."
      
      “This reveals that neither the person in the company who ordered the sign nor the sign-writing company could see anything wrong with it. I won't even bother going into the hundreds of signs around where apostrophes are scattered around with joyous abandon at any word ending with an "s".
      
      Norma Lambert, Tuart Hill
      
      

    • In Short: English
      
      “Hurray, at last it appears that we are to rid ourselves, after 30 years, of the feel good, touchy feely claptrap in the education system and actually teach our children what they really need to know to succeed in life. All we need to do next is re-invent discipline and we may have half a chance of becoming a decent society.”
      
      Peter Bourne, Glen Forrest
      
      

    • “I am glad that English is again to be taught in schools - it should never have been stopped - but I would add that if children were encouraged to do more reading, much of the spelling, grammar and punctuation would be naturally absorbed with little effort.”
      
      D. Hicks, Beckenham
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • Labor MP breaks ranks over 'education revolution'
    
    "The Federal Government's "education revolution" has come under attack from one of its own backbenchers.
    
    "In an outburst in Parliament, New South Wales MP Julia Irwin called for a massive Commonwealth allocation of resources for public schools.
    
    "Ms Irwin attacked the Government's plan to compare school performance standards.
    
    "She said the education changes proposed by Labor so far were hardly a revolution.
    
    "It is not hard to see why there is some confusion about the so-called education revolution," she said.
    
    "We have measures which set in concrete for four years a private school funding formula which is no different to the Howard model and will provide an even greater proportion of Commonwealth funding to private schools.
    
    "We may speak of an education revolution but we are a long way from equity, excellence and social inclusion into our education system unless the measures to be announced following the negotiations with the states bring a massive allocation of resources to disadvantaged schools."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    The AEU response to this story
    
    
    
  • Teachers stop work over violent behaviour
    
    "The Queensland Teachers Union says the number of violent incidents and suspensions at schools south of Brisbane will fall if more resources and staff are provided.
    
    "Teachers will continue stop-work action today with 1,700 staff walking off the job at schools in Browns Plains, Logan East, Logan West and Woodridge.
    
    "Union president Steve Ryan says they want to highlight the fact the region is under-resourced and records more suspensions due to violence.
    
    "There is zero tolerance for any sort of violence or abusive behaviour in schools and those schools are no different in that respect to any other school in Queensland," he said.
    
    "The unfortunate part about that is that quite often because those schools take action sometimes their figures are questioned in terms of the action they do take.
    
    "What it does indicate though is that the schools are doing the best that they possibly can."

    From ABC News at link
    
    

  • Principal expresses regret over student antics
    
    "The exclusive Melbourne private school, Xavier College has denied there is a widespread discipline problem at its Kew campus.
    
    "Staff cancelled classes for the entire Year 12 because of their muck-up day antics on Monday.
    
    "Police are considering laying charges over $5,000 damage done to a car.
    
    "But the school's principal, Chris McCabe, says Xavier students are no worse than any others..."
    
    Full story at ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Cyber bullying an increasing problem: academic
    
    An expert on cyber bullying has warned the problem could escalate to the point where half of all Australian children are harassed online.
    
    More details on this [WA] study in The Sunday Times Online / PerthNow
    
    
    
    
• SSTUWA
  
  
  • WAIRC rejects TAFE interim increase!
    
    "Yesterday, 21st October, the WAIRC rejected our application for a 7% interim pay increase back dated to 1/1/08. (A copy of the Commissioner’s decision  is available on the union website, at the link below.)
    
    "In the face of this  savage  blow for members, in their fight for fair pay and conditions, our Senior Officers will be meeting with Training Minister, Peter Collier, tomorrow afternoon and will endeavour to explore a way forward in resolving the TAFE dispute.
    
    "Tomorrow evening at 5.30pm, TAFE Committee  will meet to consider a course of action.  Members should call branch meetings for next week for feedback from their TAFE Committee representative and to develop branch action strategies."
    
    662 DAYS SINCE LAST PAY INCREASE
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Op Ed / Blog
    Pedagogue’s prejudices
    by Janet Albrechtsen
    
    "At one of Sydney’s best private girls schools, Year 8 geography students opened their term three materials on changing global relationships to read the following definition: “Globalisation is what happens when you lose your job in Brunswick, Bankstown or Elizabeth because the company for which you work has been bought out by the Australian subsidiary of a Dallas-based transnational company that has decided to relocate its production of T-shirts to Mexico because of cheaper wage costs and lower health and safety standards.”
    
    "Assuming it was a scholarly attempt to provoke robust debate, I searched the students’ materials for the other side to the globalisation and free-trade story. Alas, there wasn’t one. No facts explaining how globalisation and trade have lifted millions of people out of poverty, improving living standards, mortality rates, education, training and the like.
    
    "The geography teacher who stands in front of his teenage students is surely entitled to his view that globalisation is an evil force. He is not, however, entitled to use his position to indoctrinate his young charges. And that is why, as his students edge towards their final school years, facing assessments and exams that will determine their future, they should have a copy of Mark Lopez’s The Little Black Schoolbook tucked away in their schoolbags.
    
    "Launched last week in Melbourne, Lopez’s book is aimed at exposing the bias within the classroom so that students can turn it to their advantage rather than bombing in exams by courageously trying to tackle the received political wisdom in schools and universities.
    
    "Expect howls of derision from critics who deny that teachers express and impose political orthodoxy in the classroom. But Lopez, a high school tutor, has seen many of his students submit brilliant work only to receive mediocre marks because an essay did not accord with their teacher’s views on a subject..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    This year's mob lack old derring-do
    by Padraic Murphy
    
    "The story of the horse and the Great Hall at Melbourne's Xavier College shows that this year's naughty revellers are part of a long tradition.
    
    "According to the stories, some inventive boarders had walked a horse to the lofts above the school's Great Hall. As horses are unable to walk down stairs, the school was forced to hire a crane to lift the animal down.
    
    "Xavier College, overlooking the inner city that once housed the Catholics the school was established to improve, has a long and ignoble tradition of Year 12 muck-up days and mass suspensions.
    
    "While the school has produced champion athletes such as Robert de Castella, much of Melbourne's legal fraternity, and more recently Bill Shorten, who is tipped by some as a future Labor prime minister, it has never managed to completely remove the larrikin stain.
    
    "This week's antics will no doubt cement the current year's place in the school folklore, simply because of the number of students suspended, but the trampling of cars and the boozy displays seem to lack the derring-do of those that went before.
    
    "After the horse in the loft, the incident generally regarded as the most inventive was in the 1980s, when students redirected peak-hour traffic through the school grounds, causing early-morning chaos.
    
    "In 1990, students again made the papers and copped a brace of suspensions after Melbourne socialite and newspaper gossip columnist Lillian Frank was showered with flour bombs, eggs and water balloons when she attempted to calm a noisy early-morning last-day-of-school gathering as she power-walked up Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn.
    
    "The school threatened to stop those at the gathering from sitting their exams at the school, but backed down after one parent - who was also a prominent lawyer - threatened legal action. This was a foreseeable consequence for a school whose alumni makes a sizeable chunk of the Victoria Bar."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • VCs in pitch for share of surplus
    
    Universities are preparing an action plan on infrastructure spending to fast-track the repair of deteriorating facilities and stimulate the economy.
    
    
    
  • Razor gangs eye more cuts as universities shift focus
    
    Universities are to continue shedding staff on the back of 450 job losses last week as tumbling investment returns, shrinking government funding and uncertainty over student markets put institutions under pressure.
    
    
    
  • Grant recipients discover new low
    
    Rob Donovan has had his share of run-ins with the Australian Research Council over its National Competitive Grants Program. Now the Curtin University of Technology is considering declining money the professor was allocated last week in the NCGP's $288 million Discovery Projects scheme.
    
    "One of the projects will simply not retain scientific validity with the funds awarded, so we will be declining that award unless we are offered top-up funds from elsewhere," Professor Donovan told the HES.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Schools dig in for students' muck-up mayhem
    by Bridie Smith and Dan Oakes
    
    "Police are investigating two cases of students vandalising property as schools brace themselves for further "muck-up day" disruption today.
    
    "A string of pranks marking the end of year 12 classes for the year have forced some schools to cancel student functions this week to discipline students.
    
    "In the past week, Caulfield Grammar and the Catholic Regional College at Sydenham have been hit by student vandalism.
    
    "Xavier College students who allegedly caused $5000 damage to a woman's car have been warned they could face criminal charges.
    
    "Acting Senior Sergeant Rod Phillips said police had spoken to some students in Argyle Street, Kew, on Monday night but would be seeking information from others.
    
    "When these people are located, the charges we would be looking at are criminal damage to the car, and there may be some peripheral charges also in relation to the behaviour of the students on the afternoon," Senior Sergeant Phillips said..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    Related story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
  • Principals see need to celebrate - but keep it nice
    by Lorna Edwards
    
    "Despite the tradition of muck-up days for year 12 students, many schools do not believe they are a rite of passage and have tried to phase them out.
    
    "Most schools believe last-day high jinks - water fights, flour-bombing and covering the school in toilet paper - are unacceptable but acknowledge students need to unwind and celebrate finishing school.
    
    "There will always be high jinks at the end of year 12 but you just hope it is in the form of gentle parody rather than malicious intent," said Melbourne Grammar headmaster Paul Sheahan. "The school … (can't) bring in military troops to quell riots and so forth, and it relies very much on the goodwill of students."
    
    "But teachers had to put themselves in the shoes of young people who had endured years of study and pressure from family, schools and society, Trinity Grammar deputy headmaster Rohan Brown said.
    
    "Why are we paranoid about stopping muck-up?" he said. "Because we as schools sometimes squash the living daylights out of people and we don't allow them to be able to celebrate what is a milestone."
    
    "Most schools allowed their students to celebrate their final school days before exams with a valedictory dinner, dress-up day and student-run assembly.
    
    "McKinnon Secondary College principal Pitsa Binnion said the school had not had a muck-up day for a long time but the students' need to celebrate the milestone was important.
    
    "Methodist Ladies' College principal Rosa Storelli blamed the media for fuelling misbehaviour by using the term "muck-up", which many schools had replaced with "final day" over a decade ago. She urged the media to stop using the term - "because language does bring about expectations".
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Young men were just letting off steam
      
      "Why is it that the media has a penchant for exposing problems in what it terms "exclusive" schools ("Xavier suspends whole of year 12", The Age, 21/10)? Many parents of children attending private schools really struggle to pay the fees. More importantly, there are a multitude of serious problems besetting us including the global financial crisis and drought, but The Age pushes these aside and puts this storm in a teacup story on its front page.
      
      "Although the schoolyard games proved dangerous and must be prevented in future, I note the boys did not actually cause any other trouble of substance. They were a large group of young males letting off steam after two pressure-cooker years with high parental and school expectations weighing upon them. In suspending them for more than half a day and making them miss out on vital teaching days, their success in exams and their future has been placed in jeopardy."
      
      Cait Ellis, Parkville
      
      
      
    • Behaving like thugs
      
      "As a former teacher who spent 10 years in the state secondary system, I never saw anything that resulted in a student being hospitalised with several fractures on muck-up day. I remember rotting fish put in lockers at Brunswick Secondary College and the roaming brass band in fancy dress at Blackburn, but nothing involving violence.
      
      "These students, whose parents pay $16,000 to complete year 12, have behaved like thugs rather than well-educated Christians. I was not in a financial position to send my two sons to the school their grandfather and father attended. Perhaps it was just as well."
      
      Susan Burke, Brunswick
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Islamic college rejected again
    
    Bankstown Council last night voted to reject an amended application for an Islamic school at Bass Hill. In December the council refused a development application for the school for 1200 students next door to Bass Hill High School on planning, design, environmental and amenity grounds. But Al Amanah College appealed the decision in the Land and Environment Court.
    
    
    
  • Greens bid to halt new campus
    
    Sydney University's controversial plan for a harbourside campus at Callan Park could be jeopardised by a Greens bid to hand control of the parklands to a community trust.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • We must spot learning problems earlier, says thinktank
    
    Huge scope to end under-achievement and improve mental health of nation
    
    Spotting and treating learning difficulties early is vital for children's mental wellbeing, a government report has found.
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    School for scandal
    
    As councils employ positive discrimination to get more male teachers, it's time to tackle boys' underachievement in education
    
    Female adults may have a problem breaking through the glass ceiling to achieve their full potential. (Let's hope that if she becomes vice-president of the United States, Sarah Palin will provide an encouraging role model for them.)
    
    But when it comes to children, the genders are reversed. Girls are outperforming boys by such a consistent and significant margin that educationalists are starting to take the problem seriously. For British as well as American boys, Bart Simpson's catchphrase "Underachiever and proud of it" is uncomfortably close.

 

Thursday 23 October

• The West Australian
  

  • Schools 200 teachers short for next year (Front Page)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “The WA education system was expected to be about 200 teachers short when school resumed next year because not enough staff were recruited this year, Education Minister Liz Constable said yesterday.
    
    “The predicted shortfall across State and private schools shows that the Department of Education and Training has made little or no progress in its bid to solve the staffing crisis. State schools began this year short of 134 teachers and were left scrambling to find 264 at the start of last year.
    
    “Dr Constable hoped that a range of factors, including the impact of the sharemarket meltdown on teachers’ super funds, would help the department reduce the estimated shortfall significantly by the start of next year.
    
    “There’s some anecdotal evidence that the economic slowdown will have some impact on the numbers,” she said. “People who maybe were thinking of retiring or even going part-time are now reassessing that.”
    
    “The recent 6 per cent increase in teachers’ pay also would help get teachers and keep them, on top of measures implemented by the previous government. “It’s possible we’ll attract some from interstate as well with that change in salaries,” she said.
    
    “In the past two years, the department has tackled teacher shortages a number of ways, including providing lucrative scholarships, recruiting interstate and overseas, sending desk bound teachers back into classrooms and recruiting student teachers half-way through their final year of study.
    
    “Dr Constable also hoped to attract more retired teachers back into the profession, saying previous attempts had failed because they were not flexible enough.
    
    “State schools began this year’s final school term last week with a shortfall of about 60 teachers, which Dr Constable said was an improvement on the start of third term, when schools were down 88 teachers. Figures were not available for private schools.
    
    “Association of Independent Schools of WA executive director Valerie Gould said she assumed that independent schools would be short of teachers next year, even though principals had not said they were having problems recruiting staff. She said more support was needed to keep new teachers in the profession and reduce the significant number who left with-in five years.
    
    “A department report this year on long-term teacher demand and supply said the school system would be short by more than 2000 teachers by 2015.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • We must take pride in our language
      
      “When the loony-Left brigade decided that teaching  the structure of English didn’t matter, because expression was paramount and English had to be “fun”, they did students and society in general a great disservice.
      
      “Today, mispronunciation is rife among television and radio newsreaders and prominent figures and spelling errors are common on news items scrolled across the screen during a TV news bulletin and in newspapers.
      
      “While it can be argued, to a certain extent, that language is in a constant state of flux (ending a sentence with a preposition and splitting infinitives are now accepted changes through common use) there nevertheless has to be a set of guidelines and a structure for a language which should be taught to students. They will not absorb correct pronunciation, grammar and punctuation simply by reading, writing and speaking. Rather, it will be mistakes that are reinforced. As well, students cannot possibly hope to learn another language properly if they don’t know their own.
      
      "Some years ago I was in Montreal, Quebec, just before a provincial election. The opposition Parti Quebecois was promising a referendum on secession for Quebec from the rest of Canada if it won the election (it won, but the majority voted “no”). The opposition leader and the premier (who opposed succession) debated the issue on TV. It was a pleasure to hear the beautiful, flawless French of these two politicians. I couldn’t help thinking that French-speaking people take a pride in their language, unlike English speakers, many of whom know little or nothing about the pronunciation or the grammatical structure of English.
      
      “I applaud the decision to return to the basics and I thank God that at last we have a State Education Minister who was a teacher and knows what education is all about.”
      
      Bob Stephen, Hillarys
      
      

    • Too elitist?
      
      “Like Paul Murray (Sorry Day for English teaching long overdue, 21/10), I am also waiting for someone to put their hand up and take responsibility for messing up the way English has been taught in our schools.
      
      “Some years ago, when my children were going through the education system, I was appalled by the grammar, punctuation and spelling in their written work.
      
      “At the time I was fixed with a very cold eye and told that I was just being an “elitist” and that sort of emphasis in the teaching of English only inhibits creative expression.

      “Because of this, it was pointed out to me, the correct use of grammar must give way to creative expression.
      
      “As I didn’t consider I was receiving either (with apologies to my children), I would have much preferred the former. But then, as was pointed out, I was just being an elitist.”
      
      Diana Williams, Salter Point
      
      

    • In short
      
      “I’m, like, wow that the teaching of grammar will, like, reappear in schools, and, like, give students a better chance to, like, learn how to create, like, sentences, and even, like, paragraphs that are properly and, like, coherently constructed without the work “like”. Like, that would be so, like, cool!”
      
      R. Robinson, Bedfordale
      
      

    • “It’s great to see people like Roma Lester (Vital language, 22/10) and Norma Lambert (You’re joking) are out there. The greatest tragedy of a generation of Australians struggling with spelling, writing and mental arithmetic is that they have been encouraged to defend themselves by saying “that doesn’t matter anymore”. Perhaps there is a case to answer for the acronym-addicted, misguided education experts who helped cause this sad state of affairs.”
      
      Frank Wright, Churchlands
      
      

    • It won’t work
      
      “The report about the Australian Hotels’ Association (AHA urges gambling lessons for schools, 21/10) putting in a submission try8ing to persuade the Government to allow schools to teach children how to gamble responsibly is ridiculous. It sounds too much like the harm-reduction policies introduced to Australian law back in the early 1980s.
      
      “Mainly aimed at the drug problem, these policies said “children are going to experiment with drugs, so let’s legalise it and also teach them how to use them safely and responsibly”. Of course, we are talking about substances that are highly addictive and now, in 2008, none of these policies has worked in improving social problems.
      
      “High drug and alcohol abuse, high levels of sex diseases and a disturbing increase in unwanted pregnancies and abortions mean that instead of getting schools to raise our children, parents simply need to teach our kids to say no – and that is a beautiful thing. It moulds character and teaches responsibility.
      
      “What is behind AHS’s motivation to write such a submission? To eventually wear down society so that the poker machines can be introduced into the hotels? It beggars belief even more that when a government inquiry into gambling was put into process some eitht years ago it resulted in a massive book of submissions about adults who had lost their homes and families from their gambling addictions.
      
      “Maybe if the AHA is so concerned about social issues it could help with positive and constructive ideas about the huge binge drinking and violence associated with their establishments.”
      
      Paul Hotchkin, Padbury
      
      

    • Parents at fault
      
      “Jason Robbins’ excoriating assessment of generation Y (Spoilt brats, 22/10) is a classic example of chickens coming home to roost.
      
      “For the past 30 years, the economy has been more important than family, community or environment, parents and teachers have been confused and intimidated about potential damage to the holy grail, self-esteem, so boundaries, rues and the word “no” have been all but abandoned and the insidious spectre of political correctness has muzzled robust debate and constructive action.
      
      “Parents must bear much of the blame for this predicament, because by allowing themselves to be distracted and manipulated by advertising and the world of paid work, they have relegated the choice and responsibility of having children to the status of addendum to career.
      
      “And nothing will change until a major reassessment of priorities by individuals and governments takes place.”
      
      Stephanie Woods, Wembley
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • 'Unlicensed' teacher allowed back into classroom
    
    "A Goldfields teacher who was sent home yesterday because she had not renewed her teaching licence has been allowed back in the classroom.
    
    "The West Kambalda District High School teacher was told to stay home until her paperwork, which included a police clearance, was finalised with the WA College of Teaching.
    
    "The woman's colleagues threatened industrial action if she wasn't allowed back.
    
    "Colleague Daniel Carter says the incident highlights the fact that the college is not functioning well.
    
    "If anything, that's what we found out in the last few days that WACOT [West Australian College of Teaching], the way that they're doing things, is not working very well," he said.
    
    "I think the teachers have felt, since the beginning of WACOT really for the last couple of years that it's not an ideal system and it's not working very well."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    • Teachers threaten strike over licence renewal
      
      
      
  • Teachers protest transfer denial
    
    About 150 teachers have rallied outside New South Wales Parliament in support of a teacher who has been denied a transfer under the state's new school staffing policy.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Gillard defends 'revolution'
    by Justine Ferrari and Patricia Karvelas
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard yesterday rejected an attack from within government ranks that Labor's education revolution had done nothing to redress disadvantage in the school system.
    
    "Responding to criticism by ALP backbencher Julia Irwin in parliament that the Government was locking in the Coalition's favouritism of private schools, Ms Gillard said Labor had already delivered increased funding to schools around the country.
    
    "The education revolution is about new resources, new ways of doing things and, importantly, new quality," she said at the launch of a government website for parents.
    
    "We want to lift the quality in every Australian school around the country -- that's what the education revolution is about.
    
    "It has its achievements to date and funding agreements at the end of this year will make a major difference for our schools."
    
    "Ms Gillard said the Government had invested millions in computers and trades training centres in schools, and on vocational and early childhood education programs.
    
    "Ms Irwin's comments were made on Tuesday night when speaking to the Government's bill for the next four-year funding agreement for non-government schools, which provides $28 million of funding until 2012.
    
    "As well as criticising the Government for continuing its predecessor's funding system for private schools, Ms Irwin said Labor's plan to compare the performance of individual schools was unfair.
    
    "During the election, Labor committed to maintaining current funding arrangements for the next four years to give the sector financial certainty, but Ms Gillard has announced a review of the funding model for the next four-year agreement.
    
    "Ms Irwin said the national reform agenda had been put on hold for four years and the bill would continue the imbalance in commonwealth funding of public schools, which had dropped from 43 per cent to 35 per cent under the Howard government.
    
    "Ms Gillard rejected the figures Ms Irwin cited, saying it overlooked the Government's investment in computers and trades centres and the funding agreement with the states still being finalised.
    
    "Government figures show in Ms Irwin's electorate of Fowler in western Sydney, of the 11 schools that together received more than $2 million in the first round of funding for computers, seven were government schools which received about $1.5 million in total.
    
    "In a Senate education budget estimates hearing, the federal education department's national education system group manager, Carol Nicoll, insisted there would be an increase in government funding for public schools following the signing of the national education agreement at next month's COAG meeting.
    
    "The states and territories are well aware there will be increased investment in public education by this Government," she said.
    
    "But Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said: "The education revolution is a news grab, a farce and a fraud, even Labor MPs agree."
    
    "Questioning by Opposition parliamentary secretary for education Brett Mason in the estimates hearing revealed only 10,000 laptops are sitting on students' desks.
    
    "At this rate it will take Kevin Rudd 100 years to deliver on his policy (of a computer for the one million year 9 to 12 students). Unfortunately, Australian students cannot afford to wait for Kevin2107," Senator Mason said.
    
    "But the departmental manager of the program, Evan Arthur, said rolling out 10,000 computers in the three months since funding was approved was a "rapid deployment".
    
    "Senator Mason said the Government had grossly underfunded the computer program, budgeting $1.2 billion when the true cost of running and maintaining the computers was closer to $2.5 billion.
    
    "He said the states were reluctant to pay the difference and fund a federal election promise, so were holding off on delivering the computers until the issue was resolved."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Learning to make sense
    by Mark Tredinnick
    
    "Far more of us are writing than ever wrote before, and far fewer of us know what the hell we're doing. Grammar (beyond the rudiments) disappeared from the curriculum in the mid-1970s; syntax has become a dark art.
    
    "While the information revolution spins around us, we are writing sloppier, longer, vaguer, looser sentences than ever. I read it everyday in the newspapers; I hear it on the radio news; I bump into it in the work of my creative writing students; I encounter it in letters from the council, in policy documents and business brochures.
    
    "And I'm not the first person to notice. The National Curriculum Board has recommended we start teaching some grammar again at school. This is good news. The only worry is who is going to teach it - a generation of teachers has learned next to nothing about it, too - and how will they learn to teach it in engaging new ways?
    
    "The decision to let grammar slip from the school curriculum in Australia was premised on a false dichotomy. It was - and still often is - assumed that grammar constrains expressiveness. But grammar enables expression; it helps you articulate your ideas concisely and, if you want, audaciously. Grammar is the mathematics of meaning; it is the inner life of sentences. It's logical, not pedantic. One needn't - in fact, one cannot - choose between grammatical correctness and expressiveness. Writing depends on grammar and writing well depends on knowing it well. Sure, grammar constrains a writer, but it doesn't encumber them. It's the kind of constraint that sets you free: to be clear, as beautifully or as efficiently as you like.
    
    "For a sentence is a physical thing, a structure that invents and carries meaning into the world. And grammar is the body of inherited, evolving wisdom that helps a writer make sentences sound, so that what one means arrives clear and clean into the world. But the truth is, no one can avoid grammar.
    
    "Even if you can't tell a pronoun from a participle at 10 paces, you're still an amateur grammarian; you employ grammar every time you speak or text or write a half-decent sentence, even a sentence fragment. You need grammar if you want to make sense, no matter how fast you want to make it. You can use some SMS code, some emoticons and a few abbreviations if you like, but you can't do without grammar; grammar is the system by which we make meaning out of those otherwise autistic blobs of sound we call words.
    
    "Good writers master grammar, so well, in the end, they stop thinking about it and get on with making beautiful sense.
    
    "Dropping grammar left a generation of Australians bereft of that feeling for a sentence on which supple writing and clear, inventive expression depend. But it won't take all that long to get it back, if only our teachers can learn to teach it with some verve and subtlety. They'll kill it again if they turn it into a set of rules, of Thou ShaltNots. [emphasis added]
    
    "Interestingly, two of the most widely read and respected authorities on English grammar the world over are Australians: Rodney Huddleston (The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language) and Pam Peters (The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide). At the same time, one encounters more basic grammar glitches in Australian academic papers, policy documents, newspapers, novels, annual reports and political speeches than in writing of the same kind in other comparable jurisdictions: the US, Britain or Canada.
    
    "I listened, the other day, to a wonderfully intelligent and passionate scholar read an otherwise painstaking seminar paper that included the phrase "the research undertaken by ProfessorX and I" (which should be "and me"). OK, it's a small breach and it hardly matters in itself, but it jars; some people would say it's a habit of speech and so common in writing, it may not be a breach at all. For me, it speaks of the lack of comfort with, knowledge about and care with sentence construction that characterises too much Australian writing.
    
    "You could say that our lack of grammatical fluency reflects an aspect of the culture: we value showing more than telling; we are famously and proudly laconic (although on paper - in legislative drafting and report writing, for instance - we write the most long-winded prose in the world). Or you could say, as in so many other fields of human endeavour, that a little more care might go a long way. It may help us do what we're trying to do more elegantly. Australians, in my view, would write and speak more like themselves if they learned to take a bit more care: to write and utter tauter, more robust sentences.
    
    "An Australia that knew its grammar better would be an Australia that made more sense, and made it more humanely. Putting grammar back on the schools curriculum is the right place to start.

    Mark Tredinnick, a poet and essayist, recently won the Blake Poetry Prize and is the author of The Little Green Grammar Book.
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    

  • Canberra to pump money into unis
    
    Canberra is to fast-track hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure funding to the university sector as part of its effort to pump-prime the economy in the face of the global credit crisis and worldwide fears of recession.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Xavier boys have spit but not much disciplined polish
      
      Three Letters on Muck-Up Day and Xavier College
      
      
      
      
• BBC News
  
  
  • Relationship lessons from age 5
    
    Lessons about personal, social and health matters including sex and relationships will be compulsory in all England's schools from ages five to 16.
    
    [Similar stories in most UK media]
    
    
    
  • Dons fear degrees are dumbed down
    
    Most academics feel under increasing pressure to award undergraduates higher than deserved grades, a poll suggests.

    The survey of 500 dons by Times Higher Education magazine showed 77% had felt coerced to award higher marks.

    [Again, similar stories in most UK media]
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Friend claims culture of bullying at Xavier
    by Bridie Smith
    
    "The 17-year-old Xavier College student taken to hospital with leg fractures on Monday had been the target of years of bullying, a close family friend said yesterday.
    
    "The friend, who wanted to remain anonymous but is not a student at Xavier, said he was concerned that Monday's injuries would be dismissed as the result of an isolated accident, and criticised the school for failing in its duty of care to protect vulnerable students.
    
    "He said Nick Mooney, a year 12 student at the Kew Jesuit school throughout his secondary years, was the same student targeted in the wheelie bin incident last year and in the earlier fight club footage where two students were bullied into fighting in front of about 100 jeering peers..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Schools fear revived 'hit list'
    
    Private schools fear proposed laws forcing them to disclose their fees and finances will pave the way for a Federal Government "hit list" of schools that could have their funding cut.
    
    
    
  • Anger as Koori school shuts
    
    The State Government has been accused of closing Victoria's only Aboriginal public school without properly notifying parents and staff.
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    School parents put the 'sorry' into Montessori
    
    Don't you worry about those schoolboy road warriors from Xavier — it's the parents who are running riot at the Melbourne Montessori school, according to the board.
    
    Cast your quivering eyeballs over this letter sent out before a school meeting at the Caulfield campus last night: "(There has been) a verbal threat of violence by a parent to a member of our board. There has been identity fraud in relation to using an email address and correspondence that claimed to be (from) principal Nicolette Correy. Both the email fraud and the verbal intimidation have been reported to police."
    
    
    
  • Victoria Uni chief accused of 'pea and thimble trick' to justify job cuts
    
    A member of Victoria University's governing council has accused the vice-chancellor of manufacturing a cash crisis to justify the cutting of about 270 jobs.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Four Letters on Muck-Up Day in general and Xavier College in particular
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Money fails to help rural, indigenous students' education
    
    As many as one in five children at state schools are at or below minimum literacy levels, a government report has found...
    
    It found that children at risk were not being identified and that they were difficult to track through the education system. The department should focus on the child at risk, not on the school in which he or she was enrolled, he said. Training for teachers needed to be improved. As well, more work should be undertaken with preschools and parents to have children ready for school.
    
    Similar story in The Australian
    
    
    
  • Schools turn blind eye to groomers
    
    Many schools and children's agencies minimise or overlook so-called "grooming" behaviour from adults, with sometimes devastating consequences for the children involved, the NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, has found.
    
    In his annual report, tabled yesterday, the Ombudsman highlighted several cases where agencies had let children down by failing to identify, or dismissing, inappropriate behaviour by staff members towards children in their care.
    
    
    
  • Vice-chancellors' salaries hidden from public view
    
    Some of the biggest universities in NSW have been hiding the salaries of their vice-chancellors by deliberately writing their employment contracts to make them exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the NSW Ombudsman has found.
    

 

Friday 24 October

• The West Australian
  

  • Private schools fear funding hit list (page 6)
    by Andrew Tillett  
    
    “Private schools have warned they will face financial limbo at the start of the next academic year if $28 billion in Federal funding is delayed or defeated in the Senate.
    
    “The coalition and the Greens have launched separate attacks on new funding package proposed by Education Minister Julia Gillard, which will require non-government schools to sign up to the new national curriculum and report all their sources of funding, including private grants and bequests.
    
    “Coalition MPs argue that making schools reveal their funding would potentially create a "hit list" of wealthy schools which might lose some of their government grants, unfairly force them to dump parts of their curriculum like the world recognised International Baccalaureate and allow the minister to cut or delay funding to individual schools. They have begun a letter-writing campaign to local independent schools in their electorates and plan to move amendments to the Bill in the Senate.
    
    “The Greens, who hold the balance of power in the Senate with Independent Nick Xenophon and Family First Senator Nick Fielding, are also unhappy with the package but say it gives independent schools too much money at the expense of public education.
    
    “They have sent the Bill to a Senate committee for investigation, which will not report until November 27, leaving the Rudd Government with just four sitting days left to get it passed before the end of the year.
    
    “Association for Independent Schools of WA executive director Valerie Gould said private schools feared they could be left without any money if the Bill was not passed in time.
    
    "To have the Bill passed before the end of the year is crucial," she said.
    
    "There could be a problem for some schools meeting their costs before the beginning of term if that cheque doesn't come through in January."
    
    “Ms Gillard dismissed the Opposition's claims and urged all parties to pass the funding deal.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    See related Editorial in The Australian
    
    

  • Letter to the editor (page 22)
    

    • In short
      
      “I welcome the promise if English to be reintroduced to the classroom. My 15 year-old grandson (who is still at school) speaks a language known only to him and his friends. When he speaks to me I have his mother translate. One or two-word answers from him are similar to small grunts. Also, the fact that he cannot add 17 and 17 without a calculator, or tell the time unless the wrist watch or clock is digital, does nothing for his future employment prospects. Is my grandson an isolated case? God help us.”
      
      Graham Chapman, Rockingham
      
      
      

• WA Today
  
  
  • Man threatened school children with knife: police
    
    A 28-year-old Gosnells man will face court later this month after he allegedly threatened children with a knife at high school in Gosnells.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    All students deserve taxpayer support
    
    MP Julia Irwin is out of step with education reform
    
    "Labor MP Julia Irwin committed the sin of omission when she attacked private school funding in parliament on Tuesday. She claimed that the Government's decision to continue the Howard government's socio-economic status (SES) funding model for private schools for another four years, would entrench "imbalance" in commonwealth funding of public schools. This, she said, had dropped from 43 per cent to 35 per cent under the Coalition.
    
    "It is an old argument beloved by teachers' unions which, even when uttered in the parliamentary chamber, does not withstand scrutiny. The latest available figures for recurrent government spending - state and federal combined - show state school students receive substantially more taxpayer support. Each public school student received $11,243 in 2005-2006, compared with $6287 per private school student. State schools are funded mainly by states, with revenue derived from the commonwealth, mainly through the GST. The overall commonwealth figures also reflect the fact that in the past decade, the independent school sector has grown substantially compared with the government sector.
    
    "Far from being bastions of elitism, most of Australia's private schools are low-fee religious schools in ordinary suburbs. Many parents make significant sacrifices to educate them within their faith while paying the same taxes as parents of public school children.
    
    "Flimsy financial arguments arguments apart, the real opposition is driven by something else - a modern, twisted sectarianism. Unlike the religious divide of the early 20th century Australia, this modern phenomenon opposes religious education per se - not only in Catholic parish schools, but in schools of all denominations, including Jewish, Islamic and other non-Christian faiths.
    
    "In educating 33 per cent of Australian children overall and more than 40per cent at senior secondary level, private schools are a vast saving for taxpayers. Were they to cease operating, the imposts on taxpayers would be crippling. At the 2004 election, Labor paid a heavy price for Mark Latham's class warfare "hit list" of 67 private schools that would have had their funding cut and 111 that would have had it frozen, had he been elected.
    
    "While no funding model is perfect, the SES model differentiates between wealthier and poorer schools. It is the most effective model used to date. Under it, some of the nation's wealthiest independent schools receive as little as $1690 per student, while poorer private schools receive as much as $7690 per student - well short of the average for state students.
    
    "Some of the nation's highest-fee schools receive about a quarter of the funding they would if they were public schools. Such schools, including boarding schools, of which there are fewer and fewer with the decline in the rural sector, have their fair share of wealthy students. But they also play an important role in giving bush students the same opportunities as city students. In subsidising them, the Government is meeting some of its responsibilities to rural students.
    
    "The Australian supports choice in education as a means of reinforcing parents' values, as opposed to the values of most teachers' unions. We also support better resourcing of all schools. IT infrastructure, good libraries and science laboratories are vital for the complexities of 21st century education. A good curriculum and good teachers, however, are even more important.
    
    "As Justine Ferrari reported yesterday in The Australian, a study published in the Treasury's latest Economic Roundup has confirmed that the school a child attends can make a substantial difference to academic success. One-third more students pass literacy and numeracy tests at good schools than at average schools. The study also identified considerable variation between schools with students of similar socio-economic backgrounds.
    
    "After 11 months in office, the Rudd Government is to be commended for advancing the national curriculum further than the Howard government was able to do in 11 years. Kevin Rudd, who spoke out against the sloppy Study of Society and the Environment (SOSE) course in Queensland a decade ago, has long been a stickler for a more rigorous curriculum and greater accountability. He is right to ignore Ms Irwin's criticisms and to press on with plans to make the funding of schools contingent on the public release of the performance of individual schools. This will be important in lifting education standards, especially in basic literacy and numeracy at a time when one in five Australian children are falling short of accepted benchmarks. So will better teacher training. But overhauling university arts and education faculties from decades of mediocre postmodernism and left-wing bias will be a herculean task.
    
    "Ms Irwin's rejection of "a competitive education system where parents in a position to make choices about their children's schooling may select from a smorgasbord of educational offerings" summed up her underlying approach. In other words, education bureaucrats and teachers' unions know what's best for children and parents do not. Her speech had all the credibility of her boycott of the parliamentary motion acknowledging the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel, and her ludicrous claim that Belinda Neal was a victim of sexism.
    
    "Mr Rudd and his deputy and Education Minister, Julia Gillard, should ignore her and press ahead."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • If you want standards to lift, use teaching skills that work
      
      "Surprise! Surprise! More money does not increase literacy and numeracy standards ("Funding fails to lift skills of pupils”, 23/10). Neither will a national curriculum.
      
      "Why not try a few old-fashioned methods that we retirees were exposed to? How about weekly spelling, composition, dictation, speed and accuracy, and arithmetic tests? These, by the way, were given to classes of 40-plus students and then marked and corrected straight away. And how about parents testing and helping their children at home in preparation for these tests?
      
      "Of course society has changed, but if you want high standards you need to use methods that have been proven to work. Asian schools use these methods but in Australian schools everyone has to be a winner."
      
      John Langrehr, Hazelwood Park, SA
      
      
      
    • "It is certainly ironic that it has taken the NSW Auditor-General to alert the country to the fact that throwing money at schools will not, of itself, improve children’s literacy and numeracy. But, I suppose, that is in fact the bottom line.
      
      "However, I am appalled that the discussion can fail to even mention the key operator (apart from the pupils themselves) in the enterprise—the teacher. Does the nation think that schools are some sort of impersonal machine that automatically injects learning into kids?
      
      "The key to every aspect of the much-needed education revolution is the effective training and fair payment of teachers. When will the Government realise this?"
      
      Donald Richardson, Mount Barker, SA
      
      
      
    • "Lots of money thrown at numeracy and literacy doesn’t seem to make a dent. Who’d have thought?
      
      "Why not turn the attention away from bureaucrats and academics and actually towards those who run the classrooms? Today’s teachers will give the experts any insight they need into the exponentially growing behavioural problems of children today. Kids simply don’t want to work. They are fed misinformation about their responsibilities and their behaviour through this ever-misinforming and growingly dysfunctional world and we teachers are left to somehow piece it all together for them.
      
      "Raising literacy and numeracy is a community problem with a community solution. Ask any teacher."
      
      Peter Wilson, Fentonbury, Tas
      
      
      
    • "Thank goodness there’s going to be a return to the teaching of correct grammar. Perhaps there’s even a slim chance that the first person reflexive pronoun “myself” will once again be used accurately, even by our illustrious Prime Minister, and not as a lazy and incorrect substitute for the simple first person pronoun. And so we’ll hear “Bring it to me” rather than “Bring it to myself” and the absurdity will end at last."
      
      Garry Bickley, Elizabeth Downs, SA
      
      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • [SA] Teachers' dispute heading to IRC
    
    A ballot of public school teachers in South Australia has endorsed their union's planned half-day strike for next Thursday... Teachers want a 21 per cent pay rise over three years and changes to conditions, but the SA Government has offered much less.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Canberra axes music academy funds
    
    An academy teaching Australia's most talented music students appears doomed after an abrupt decision by the Federal Government to end its funding at the end of the year.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Moral responsibility starts at the top
      
      "The recent turmoil caused by students at Xavier College has left many people bemused over how such behaviour could be possible at one of Melbourne's premier schools. There may be no single answer to this, but one part of the puzzle has been revealed in principal Chris McCabe's various statements to the media.
      
      "His continued denial of having a bullying culture at Xavier is laughable at best, culpable at worst. First, there were the "fight club" and "bullet" incidents. Now, the same student is in hospital with what sounds like a badly broken leg.
      
      "For Mr McCabe to claim the boy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time is an affront both to the student and the public's intelligence. An accident may happen once. Occasionally twice. But when you reach three times your credibility is in serious jeopardy.
      
      "Mr McCabe, leadership must come from the top down. If you want your students to own up and take responsibility for their actions, then the person who should set the example is you. Clearly, you have a problem with bullying in your school and the first step towards rectifying it is acknowledging it."
      
      Dr David Kok, Carlton
      
      
      
    • A wider meaning
      
      "Xavier was a big part of my life and is a big part of who I am. Last year I went to a 30-year reunion and it all came flooding back. Forget the pools, courts and ovals. I remember the committed teachers who cared for the kids and went well beyond their duties. Especially, I remember the environment set by the Jesuits that emphasised tolerance and learning.
      
      "The word elitist is an easy and understandable tag for the media to use. But when you are there, you have no such sense. Yes, some kids were from wealthy families. But the other two-thirds, like me, were not. The notion of being better than others is anathema to Jesuit teaching.
      
      "Maybe, in this secular age, the Jesuit influence has diminished. Maybe the broader culture of competition and greed has had its effect. But there are several thousand men who are better people because of their time there.
      
      "The stupid behaviour of a bunch of idiots and the media storm it has caused is an opportunity for a great school to reassess its values. And with the free-market culture now deemed culpable and in decline, perhaps Xavier's story has a wider meaning."
      
      Tony O'Connor, Fairfield
      
      
      
      
• BBC News
  
  
  • Pupils' behaviour 'has worsened'
    
    Nearly half of England's teachers think pupil behaviour has deteriorated in their school in the past five years, a survey for the government suggests.
    
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • Anger at sex lessons for five-year-olds
    by Sarah Cassidy, Education Correspondent
    
    Family values campaigners say curriculum shake-up will 'encourage experimentation'
    
    "Children as young as five will receive compulsory lessons in sex education and the dangers of drink and drugs, the Government announced.
    
    "The curriculum shake-up is intended to tackle Britain's high teenage pregnancy rate and steer youngsters away from drug and alcohol abuse.
    
    "Children aged five and upwards will be taught to correctly name body parts and facts about animal reproduction. Two years later, they will learn about puberty and the facts of life. From the age of 11, they will receive detailed information about contraception, sexually transmitted infections and abortion..."
    
    "But campaigners for traditional family values condemned the plan, accusing ministers of subjecting pupils to controversial issues before they are ready..."
    
    Full story in The Independent at link

 

Saturday – Sunday, 25 – 26 October

• The West Australian
  

  • Parents win payout for children hurt at school (page 70)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “Parents are suing State schools for thousands of dollars for injuries caused by machinery in manual arts classrooms or accidents in school playgrounds or on sports fields.
    
    “The Deportment of Education and Training said 25 students had lodged compensation claims over the past two years - 12 in the 2006-07 financial year and 13 in 2007-08.
    
    “Two students received about $50,000 in 2007, nine received payments of between $5000 and $50,000 over the two years and 14 received $5000 or less.
    
    “State schools are not considered legal entities under the School Education Act so all claims are referred to the Education Minister's insurer, RiskCover.
    
    “DET acting finance and administration deputy director Kevin Smith said examples of incidents for which students lodged claims included slipping on a wet floor, being struck by sports equipment such as bats, hockey sticks or balls, collisions with doors or walls or injuries during manual arts lessons or workplace training. The types of injuries included facial or dental, fractures to an arm or a leg, lacerations, eye damage and head trauma.
    
    “Mr Smith said the claims were a small proportion of the public school population of about 250,000 students across 800 sites in WA.
    
    “Kidsafe WA says schools are the second most frequent location for child injury after the home, accounting for 11 per cent of all injuries treated at Princess Margaret Hospital for CHildren.
    
    “The latest statistics provided on its website show that 62 per cent of recorded school-based injury presentations occur in primary school children aged between five and 12.
    
    “During 2006-07 there were 1265 presentations to PMH by children injured at school, with nearly twice as many boys as girls.
    
    “Kidsafe chief executive Sue Wicks said school-based injuries had not noticeably decreased in recent years.
    
    "Schools really need to think about safety as a whole school environment," he said.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Teacher pay rise makes private school fees soar (page 12)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “Fees at hundreds of private schools will rise as much as 11 per cent next year as the struggle to keep pace with pay rises to schoolteachers and other spiraling costs.
    
    “Education chiefs said yesterday Catholic schools would increase fees between 7 and 11 per cent and charges at low-fee Anglican schools would go up between 5 and 11 per cent.
    
    “The rises, which will apply to more than 150 Catholic schools and nine schools run by the Anglican Schools Commission, could add hundreds of dollars to annual high school fees, which range from about $3000 to $10,000 at the most expensive Catholic school, Aquinas College.
    
    “Heads of elite independent schools, which now charge between $13,000 and $16,000 a year, said 2009 fees had not been decided.
    
    “In the past few years, school fees have soared at up to double the inflation rate, between 5 and 9 percent each year.
    
    “Anglican Schools Commission executive director the Rev. Peter Laurence said rising teacher salaries were the main reason for next year's jump in fees on top of escalating building and living costs.
    
    “The State Government recently gave an interim 6 per cent pay rise to State schoolteachers.
    
    "Reflecting on the fact that the Government is throwing a lot more money to teachers, the non-government sector is responding accordingly and it's expecting to have to put more money towards that," he said.
    
    "Hence fee rises might be a little larger than previous years."
    
    “Mr Laurence said schools were encouraged to support families who struggled to pay fees by offering bursaries and other assistance.
    
    "I think it's quite reasonable to expect that there might be a slightly larger number of families going into next year that might struggle more than in the past," he said.
    
    “Catholic Education Office director Ron Dullard said increases in costs and all salaries, not just those of teachers, had contributed to fee rises.
    
    “He said families facing unemployment or extreme financial difficulty in the uncertain economic climate should contact their principal for fee relief. "Our policy is no child will be denied a Catholic education,"
    he said.
    
    “The Parents and Friends Federation, which represents parents of children at Catholic schools, said 11 per cent increases could concern some parents.
    
    "But they do have the avenue or approaching the principal at their school to seek assistance," executive director Laurie Eastwood said.
    
    "The fact that there is a perceived necessity to increase fees by between 7 and 11 per cent just indicates that we are not receiving sufficient government funding in order to keep fee increases under control.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Sunday Times
  

  • Call for exam revamp (page 20)
    by Paul Lampathakis
    
    “Principals want to scrap compulsory exams for all senior students and have called for more non-exam university entry.
    
    “Under an edict by previous education minister Mark McGowan, exams will be mandatory from next year for all Year 12 students, whether or not they want to go to university, with the exception of those doing trade certificates.
    
    “But WA Secondary Schools Executive Association president Rob Nairn said this week that not everyone was suited to exams, particularly the many students not seeking tertiary entrance.
    
    “I don’t think exams should be compulsory,” he said.
    
    “And I think there’s widespread disagreement among principals as to whether or not they (students) should be made to do exams.
    
    “I also think there’s an overemphasis on exams for entrance to university.
    
    “And though it (exams) is something that they (universities) use predominantly, I don’t think that it always gets the right people.
    
    “Looking at different ways of getting the right people into university and whether that involves some sort of alternative entry, I think that’s a good move.”
    
    “Mr Nairn said Edith Cowan University, particularly, had done a lot of work around non-exam tertiary entry.
    
    “He backed previous WASSEA president Alison Woodman’s view that students could do exams if they wanted to go into an academic stream, but not everybody should be forced to sit them.
    
    “Ms Woodman told The Sunday Times last November that: “The consequences for many such students would be that their final results would be judged on the exams when their heart isn’t in it, when they’re not suited for exams. [I suspect that students “not suited for exams” are quite likely “not suited for uni”, either. Web]
    
    “Their selection (for other paths) may well be affected. This discourages kids who might just want to broaden their horizons... from doing anything academic, which would be such a pity.”
    
    “Ms Woodman said at the time that Mr McGowan’s system was a “one size fits all” approach, driven by the perception that when exams were involved in education there was some sort of rigour.
    
    “But she said this was a short-sighted view because, while exams had a place, students might not do well because they had crammed and then forget what they had learnt.
    
    “However, Education Minister Liz Constable said she was not looking at overturning Mr McGowan’s system.”
    
    From The Sunday Times
    
    
    

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • Feature
    A slow, steady learning curve
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The educator charged with steering the development of Australia's first national curriculum likens his job to growing a forest. National Curriculum Board chairman Barry McGaw says the draft outlines for English, maths, science and history released last week are intended to set out a broad direction before sniping begins over the details.
    
    "We thought that would facilitate an interesting discussion about the nature of the forest before we have the discussion about the species of trees we should grow," he tells an assembled throng of teachers, academics and curriculum experts at a series of forums in Melbourne to discuss the drafts. "It starts the discussion in a slightly different way and that's to lay out in 10 to 20 pages the broad scope and sequence of study for English K (kindergarten) to (year) 12, for maths K to 12, the sciences and history."
    
    "McGaw, director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at Melbourne University, says it's a novel approach in designing curriculum in Australia and while it leaves questions unanswered, prompting remarks that the devil will be in the detail, it will allow a robust discussion about the curriculum structure in each subject.
    
    "The forums were held earlier this month. The strategy is clever given the toxic debates that have waged in recent years over what schools should teach in English and history. It allows consensus to be reached on the overall shape of the curriculum, without the distraction of Shakespeare v Home and Away or invasion v settlement of Australia.
    
    "The strategy has been largely successful, with the curriculum outlines broadly endorsed. The debate so far has focused on how to implement the sometimes ambitious plans, rather than rejecting the general thrust.
    
    "While the critical debate lies ahead on the content and topics that students should study, even the warring English factions agree the time has come for Australia to jettison its eight different school curriculums for one common curriculum of essential knowledge.
    
    "Early concerns that the process would involve such compromise to appease parochial state interests that it would result in a lowering of standards are so far unproven. If the process to date is any guide, the chance to start from scratch is proving irresistible.
    
    "The authors of the initial papers have not cut and pasted from existing curriculum, but started on the first page of a brand new exercise book to sketch out an ideal. They are advised by a panel of academics and teachers, and the NCB reserves the right to rewrite the documents. It is significant that the drafts this week were released by the board, not the authors, and the board is prepared to reshape the documents up to the moment of release.
    
    "The two best documents are on history and maths. The board's decision to appoint left-wing historian Melbourne university professor Stuart Macintyre has been attacked by the conservative side of the history wars, which identifies him with the black armband view of history. But whatever one thinks of Macintyre's politics, there is no disputing his credentials as a historian nor the sensible approach he has drafted for teaching history, a subject that has been downgraded over the past few decades with its subsumption into an integrated social studies course that includes geography, economics and legal studies.
    
    "Macintyre delivered an ambitious school course that covers the entire ambit of human history across all continents, from the beginnings of civilisation to the present day, taught as a chronological series of events.
    
    "It's a more traditional course structure than recent proposals to teach history in themes, and in fact replicates the way in which Macintyre studied history at school. The outline recommends history be made compulsory through to Year 10 and taught as a distinct subject in primary school, where students investigate their family and local community history, and significant national events such as Anzac Day.
    
    "In Year 7, students would study the ancient world, moving in Year 8 to the period between ancient and modern history, to modern history from 1750 in Year 9 before a detailed study of Australian history from federation in Year 10. Importantly, Australian history is to be taught in the context of the wider world history. Rather than downplaying the significance of the national story, the move addresses concerns that the focus on Australian history of recent years, particularly by politicians, had resulted in it being taught in isolation from global events. So in studying the beginnings of human societies, students would learn about the first peoples of Australia while the decision to form settlement in Australia in the 18th century would be taught in the context of wider European expansion and the different ways colonies were formed.
    
    "To think one can study Australian history in isolation is a bit short-sighted. There was a concern ... that it was solipsistic and not conducive to understanding Australia and its place in the world," Macintyre says.
    
    "He links content and process as inseparable, so that students must learn key facts to develop the skills of historical thinking. Macintyre likens it to a mortar andpestle; you can't have one without the other.
    
    "Similarly in maths, Monash professor of science, maths and technology education Peter Sullivan emphasises the importance of content to inform outcomes, or what students should be able to do. The draft maths curriculum advocates a single maths course until the end of Year 10 for all students, with four courses in years 11 and 12 catering for vocational, elementary and more advanced mathematics.
    
    "The draft curriculum argues for a streamlining of maths to focus on core topics, in a structured sequence across the key domains of number, measurement, space, chance and data, and algebra. "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 draft curriculums in science and English had significant input from the NCB members, and were rewritten up until the time of their release to address concerns that they focused on process to the exclusion of content. One criticism of the science draft is that it divorces the doing of science and the learning of scientific process from the need to know fundamental facts. Drafted by former Canberra University education dean Denis Goodrum, who has a long involvement in science education, the draft curriculum recommends dropping the traditional subjects of biology, physics and chemistry through to Year 10 and teaching one course of "science for life". The outline is a fundamental shift in the approach to teaching science. Instead of focusing on facts, it aims to foster students' own inquiries and give them an understanding of the big ideas of science in everyday life.
    
    "Goodrum advocates teaching contemporary scientific ideas to attract students to the subject, and he criticises previous curriculums for containing too much content, which turns students off science.
    
    "Discussion at the science forum was broadly supportive, so much so that Goodrum noted the absence of the conservative voices in the debate. Teachers talked about the need for school science to focus on the advances in scientific knowledge, which occurs at the boundaries of the traditional disciplines and where they intersect.
    
    "It's a view that does not necessarily have the support of the board. McGaw, a scientist by training, argues all the specialisation in science stems from a solid background in one of the traditional disciplines. He says students can't do science without knowing the facts underpinning the discipline.
    
    "A criticism made of the science draft is that it falls into the relevancy trap, the idea that students will only learn what's relevant to their lives. So give students interesting activities, have them do experiments based on the real world, and they'll be more attracted to the subject, and pick up the facts by doing the science.
    
    "While the history and maths draft curriculums take clear positions, setting out the intent and supporting the argument they mount, the English draft reads like it is trying to appease all parties. The author, University of Sydney education professor Peter Freebody, advocates three key elements in teaching subject English: language, literature and literacy or using language. Freebody says these are the traditional elements taught in English for 100 years or more.
    
    "Freebody is a dividing figure, noted for his advocacy of a sociological approach to teaching reading, which holds that literacy is a social construct, not a skill. Freebody's draft confounded some of his critics for recommending a return to the explicit and systematic teaching of the basics of language: the much maligned subject of grammar, spelling rules, letter-sound relationships and punctuation.
    
    "But two of the most divisive debates in English were left hanging. The draft defines literary texts to include multimodal texts, including websites, television shows and visual texts, and it retains critical literacy as a tool enabling students to analyse political and ideological bias in literature to protect themselves against propaganda and being manipulated. Freebody talks about these two issues quite sensibly. Films and multimodal texts, he says, should not comprise a significant focus of the curriculum, but teachers should be able to incorporate them as they wish. Neither should critical literacy be applied to every book or text studied, and Freebody dismisses as nonsensical the idea of students conducting Marxist readings of literature.
    
    "School English over the past few decades has been colonised by cultural studies, recasting the subject from its traditional focus on the study of literature. Advocates of this more traditional approach argue students learn about the English language through studying literature, the most exemplary use of language. Their opponents argue the dominance of technology in today's society requires students to learn about its use. And of course, the old chestnut of relevancy: it's more relevant to students than old books written by white men.
    
    "The point overlooked in the relevancy argument, whether in science or English or any other subject, is this: How can students be interested in something they are unaware exists? The purpose of education should be to go to the unknown. And that should be the guiding light of the national curriculum."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Job fears turning school leavers back towards uni
    by Guy Healy and Andrew Trounson
    
    "After years of turning their backs on universities during the jobs boom, there are early signs school leavers may be surging back to higher education as tougher times loom.
    
    "Student demand for tertiary education in Victoria next year has jumped, with applications up by more than 6 per cent, reversing a 4 per cent fall the previous year, Victoria Tertiary Admissions Centre data shows.
    
    "Victorian university applications were up 6.5 per cent on first preferences.
    
    "In NSW, on-time applications for university study next year have leapt 5.1 per cent as both school leavers and mature-age students show renewed interest in universities, the University Admissions Centre says.
    
    "In Queensland, there have been an extra 500 applications compared with the same time last year, although these include a surge in applications for this summer's third semester, the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre reports.
    
    "In Western Australia, non-school-leaver applications are up a "significant" 13.5 per cent, the first year in the past five that applications from mature-agers have increased.
    
    "WA school-leaver applications are down slightly, but there are fewer Year 12s this year, a Tertiary Institutions Service Centre spokesman said..." [emphasis added]
    
    Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • In the eye of school funds storm
    
    The debate over the government funding of private schools heated up this week with an outburst from within federal Labor by western Sydney MP Julia Irwin.
    
    
    
    
• The Age [Saturday]
  
  
  • Editorial
    Under the muck-up flows a murkier undercurrent
    
    "It is comforting to imagine the jolly japes of schoolyard memory, the ones with Tom Brown as victim or Harry Flashman as perpetrator, are as much an ossified relic of academic history as chalkdust or the cane. Surely, the sophistication of modern education with its increased competitiveness and concentration on learning means less time for extra-curricular jokery.
    
    "Or surely not. As a string of incidents at Victorian schools this week have proved, the make-mischief gene is still active, particularly among year 12 students at muck-up time. At Xavier College, in Kew, a new school record was set, with the entire year being suspended after a series of end-of-year pranks, which included drunkenness, fireworks and a version of rugby, "jock ball", that turned violent and resulted in one student being admitted to hospital with multiple leg fractures. In addition, a car was damaged as a mob of schoolboys descended on a nearby street. "It was like Lord of the Flies," said the owner.
    
    "The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart (a Xavier old boy) has rightly called this behaviour "unruly and unacceptable". Other, similarly disquieting incidents have occurred at Caulfield Grammar, the Catholic Regional College at Sydenham, and the Greek Orthodox College, Oakleigh, which was pelted with hundreds of eggs.
    
    "While some have dismissed all this as a form of boys-will-be-boys pranksterism — as if Xavier is the St Hogwart's of the eastern suburbs, and that "jock ball" is little more than quasi-Quidditch — it is not so simple when public and private property are involved, and when levels of behaviour reach beyond the borderline to the disturbingly threatening, involving police action and possible charges. Worse still is what happens when one looks beneath the muck-up to a murkier, more sinister undercurrent that still pervades not only Xavier, but also at other schools.
    
    "The culture of bullying and harassment is at once insidious and ingrained: it exists, but to what degree is largely indeterminate, given the reluctance of the victims and, in some cases, of the schools themselves in accepting that bullying exists. As The Age reported on Thursday, the hospitalised Xavier student appears to have been the target of years of bullying, including last year's notorious wheelie-bin incident and being forced to fight another student in front of 100 jeering peers.
    
    "Yesterday, more disturbing evidence came to light when an adolescent-psychologist, Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, told The Age that Xavier has "an entrenched bullying and boozing culture tied up with sport" and that he saw more students from Xavier than any other school. Although Dr Carr-Gregg's claims have been criticised by some parents and called "not logical" by the Director of Catholic Education, Stephen Elder, they cannot be ignored. The evidence to the contrary is too strong — particularly given other recent incidents. These have included claims of one boy being sent a threatening letter and a bullet in the mail by a fellow student, and the suspension of five students over an incident in which a boy was kicked and verbally abused while lying on the ground with his school jumper over his head; the latter incident, described by Xavier as "role playing", was filmed on a student's mobile phone and broadcast via the internet.
    
    "Admittedly, even with checks and balances in place, it can be difficult for school authorities anywhere to detect, monitor and discipline bullying — a system that often functions under its own archaic codes and is sometimes heightened by the environment of a same-sex school. It can also be hard to determine bullying-by-stealth, via text messaging, YouTube or Facebook. None of this, however, should be an excuse for dereliction of the fundamental duty of care that is the primary responsibility of any school to its students and parents. Archbishop Hart's condemnation of the end-of-year behaviour of students only emphasises the importance of that duty.
    
    "At the same time, parents also have a continuing vital role to play. They are, after all, the primary carers of their children and, as such, take ultimate responsibility in matters of welfare, conduct and discipline. That part of this duty is relinquished to educational institutions during school hours — and school authorities should always be aware of the sensitivities of their tasks — should not absolve parents from their essential functions. Parental responsibility remains the major influence in children's lives, and this cannot be supplanted by any other means."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Incendiary devices found at Brighton school
    by Andra Jackson
    
    "Some pupils from a Brighton school will spend the weekend waiting for a knock on the door from police who suspect they planted incendiary devices at the school as part of a "muck-up" day prank.
    
    "Twelve Brighton Secondary College students are to be questioned by police after their school was closed yesterday.
    
    "The school's 1200 pupils and 100 staff had to be evacuated and the street closed off, after incendiary devices - with "the potential for significant harm"- were found planted around its grounds.
    
    "We're having to take them seriously," the head of the arson and explosives squad, Senior Sergeant Stephen White, said of the devices.
    
    "Up to five devices have been found at Brighton Secondary College since Thursday night, including one that caught alight.
    
    "This follows the suspension of Xavier College's entire year 12 class over muck-up day pranks."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Xavier College learning a bitter lesson
    
    It had been some valedictory: indeed, a very public one that had brought a proud school into disrepute, left a community in uproar and invited the scorn of those who say privilege carries with it the burden of greater responsibility.
    
    But on Thursday evening, more than 200 year 12 students, their parents and their teachers gathered for a last time in Xavier College's Great Hall for the prestige school's traditional valete dinner, an event that would provide something of a bookend to a tumultuous week.
    
    
    • What readers say
      
      
      
  • 'Sham' colleges operating with impunity
    
    Rogue training colleges for international students are operating in the Victorian education system because the state's regulator is failing to do its job properly, industry insiders say.
    
    
    • Reining in rogue colleges
      
      
      
      
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Five on the federal government's decision to axe funding to the Australian National Academy of Music and one on violence in schools.
      
      
      
      
      
• WA Today
  
  
  • Call for mental health revolution in Australian schools
    AAP
    
    "Australian secondary schools are the perfect places to start a mental health revolution, national youth mental health foundation Headspace says.
    
    "The group has called for funding of $100 a student to finance resources such as counsellors and psychologists to enable schools to provide professional services.
    
    "Headspace chief executive Chris Tanti said early intervention targeting young people aged 12 to 25 years should be a community and government priority.
    
    "We know that young people are already susceptible to the worst mental health of the whole life-cycle with 75 per cent of all mental health problems starting before the age of 25," Mr Tanti said.
    
    "Statistics tell us that in an average Australian secondary school class, six students will be struggling with a mental health problem.
    
    "Australian secondary school principals back the call.
    
    "Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Blair said the federal government should understand that mental health and wellbeing was as important as literacy and numeracy.
    
    "If there isn't a mental health revolution, there won't be any meaningful education revolution," Mr Blair said..."
    
    Full story in WA Today at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sunday Age
  
  
  • Pupils play one metre from asbestos 'hot spot'
    
    Children at Sunshine East Primary School have been studying and playing within a metre of a building site so riddled with asbestos that WorkSafe shut it down last week because it posed "an immediate" health risk.
    
    
    
  • Playing mind games in the battle of the brains
    
    More than 550 quick-witted, lateral thinking, team-spirited primary and secondary students from across Australia and Singapore - as well as their support crews of teachers, parents and grandparents - converged on La Trobe University's Bundoora campus yesterday for the Australasian Pacific finals of the 2008 Tournament of Minds.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • One language at a time
      
      "I absolutely support the need for a language other than English to be taught in our schools. Our future demands it.
      
      "The letter "Two is better than one" (Sunday Age, 19/10) says: "It is a pleasure to hear children from monolingual backgrounds speaking Mandarin with lovely accents".
      
      "(This) is a laudable remark, but how about it "being a pleasure to hear children from any kind of background speaking English with a reasonable vocabulary and knowledge of grammar".
      
      "Conversations overheard on trains, buses, etc reveal that our youth today have very little knowledge of our language.
      
      "Wouldn't it be a really good idea to teach English in our schools before we embark on another tongue?"
      
      Marline McAllister, Blackburn
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • School and pool at fault for drowning
    
    Children on school swimming excursions should be identified as swimmers and non-swimmers by coloured wrist bands and more lifeguards should monitor them, said a coroner who has held the Department of Education and a council swimming pool responsible for the death of an eight-year-old girl.
    
    
    
    
  • Warning to schoolies: stay away from Bali [late update: online only]
    
    Thousands of Australian teenagers planning to visit Bali for schoolies week have been warned to change their plans after Indonesia announced it would execute the Bali bombers.
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • More pupils on repeat suspensions
    
    Disruptive pupils are being given repeat suspensions rather than being permanently excluded from England's schools, official figures suggest.

    The number of pupils suspended 10 times or more in a year more than doubled between 2004 and 2007, while permanent exclusions fell by 13%.
    
    
    
    

• The Guardian / The Observer
  
  
  • Editorial
    Children need to know about sex and all its consequences
    
    "Sex education" is a much misinterpreted phrase. The idea is not to make children more proficient at sex, the way maths education should make them better at doing sums.
    
    "That is why, when Schools Minister Jim Knight launched a review of the subject last week, he referred carefully to 'relationship education'. The government intends some kind of tuition in 'personal and social health' to become compulsory in English schools, taught from the age of five. It is already a mandatory part of the curriculum in Wales and Northern Ireland.
    
    "What the precise content of those lessons will be and what right parents will have to exclude their children from them are still open to discussion. But whatever language the government prefers to use, that discussion will really be about sex.
    
    "Children already learn the facts of procreation. What worries the government is that, outside the classroom, sex is increasingly seen as a normal form of recreation. Britain has the highest level of teenage pregnancy in Europe. It also suffers from high levels of sexually transmitted infection. According to the Health Protection Agency, people aged 16-24 accounted for half of all diagnosed cases of genital warts and gonorrhoea last year and nearly two-thirds of chlamydia cases.
    
    "A poll in today's Observer reveals one in three has had sex before the age of consent.
    
    "According to moral conservatives, this is all symptomatic of a culture of sexual licence that rejects self-restraint and abstinence. By extension, they argue, teaching children about contraception in school legitimises promiscuity and undermines parents who want to impart more traditional values to their children.
    
    "There are three problems with that argument. First, the actual content of sex education classes is not licentious. They aim to empower children to resist social pressure to have sex and to understand the risks involved. Second, advocating abstinence is fine, but teenagers still have to understand what it is they are abstaining from. Upholding 'traditional values' often means treating sex as taboo altogether. Third, even if it is desirable for parents to teach a responsible approach to sex, many are clearly failing to do so.
    
    "It is true that British attitudes to sex are generally permissive, as The Observer poll also shows. There is nothing wrong with that. It is certainly better than a culture of sexual repression. The important thing is not to deny that sex happens, but to teach about all the consequences. It is ignorance, not education, that puts young people at risk."
    
    From The Guardian / The Observer at link

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This page last updated 26 October, 2008 11:37 PM