Monday 24 November

Tuesday 25 November

Wednesday 26 November

Thursday 27 November

Friday 28 November

Saturday – Sunday, 29 – 30 November

 

Monday 24 November

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Children first policy raises bar at New York schools
    by Joel Klein, chancellor of New York's Education Department
    
    "Many urban school districts in the United States are inefficient and ineffective bureaucracies where authority is widely dispersed, political patronage is entrenched and no one is held responsible for student outcomes. Rigid and inconsistent rules and regulations stifle innovation and educators are not sensibly compensated. Under these conditions, it is no surprise when student achievement remains stagnant.
    
    "New York City's school system functioned in this way for decades. Schools were not safe, parents had no choices, teachers were paid far too little and were rewarded for the wrong things. Curriculums - and standards - varied by neighbourhood. Schools were unfairly funded and school leaders hobbled because they lacked the authority to make good decisions for students.
    
    "Public school culture in New York City valued compliance over innovative decision-making and accepted low expectations and finger-pointing as excuses for results in student outcomes. Results were largely stagnant at a very low level. Far too many children were failing in reading and maths, yet were pushed from grade to grade, perpetuating an acceptance of failure. The graduation rate was low and had hardly budged in decades.
    
    "Six years ago, when the Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, appointed me as chancellor of America's largest school district, we pledged to transform this broken system. Bloomberg had secured legislation giving him control over his city's school district. Since then, we have worked to create a new system that puts children first and all other (adult) interests second.
    
    "We have turned a decentralised system that lacked clear citywide standards into a system in which principals have clear performance goals and have the decision-making power and resources they need to do the best job possible in educating their students.
    
    "Our "children first" reform strategy is based on three principles: leadership, empowerment and accountability. If we have strong, prepared leaders who will attract and support great teachers, if we set high standards, and if we give leaders the tools and the support they need, as well as the power to make decisions and the resources to execute those decisions, we will change outcomes for students.
    
    "We have implemented strategies to accomplish our goals. We have worked to build leadership capacity by creating a top-tier "leadership academy" to train principals and created more rigorous mentoring and support. We have also raised principal salaries by almost 25 per cent and made principals eligible for up to $50,000 in bonuses each year for taking on the hardest jobs and being successful in helping students make progress.
    
    "We have set clear, high standards based on helping students learn - and we have created tools to measure how well schools are achieving. We created a progress report, giving each school a yearly grade of A to F. The grade is based on student performance, student progress and on schools' environments, as measured by a new survey we created, which asks all parents, teachers, and students in years 6 to 12 to assess how well the school is serving students. We also created a system of quality reviews, so each school receives an on-site evaluation by experienced educators.
    
    "Accountability is not just about measuring results, rewarding success and doling out consequences for failure; it is also about giving schools tools and resources to help them measure how well they are helping students learn and devise strategies to improve. That is why we have created a system of periodic assessments allowing teachers to measure what students understand and where they need more help. That is why we have invested in teaching our teachers how to use data effectively to advance student learning. It is also why we have created a world-class data-management system, which allows teachers and principals to track student performance, analyse results and connect via the internet with educators in other schools across the city to share ideas and strategies.
    
    "Six years ago, roughly half the city's fourth-graders and a third of the eighth-graders were meeting or exceeding state standards in maths and reading. Today, seven in 10 New York City public school students in years three to eight are meeting or exceeding state standards in maths, and almost six in 10 are meeting or exceeding these standards in English language arts. Since 2002 our graduation rate has increased by more than 10 percentage points. It is now the highest it has been in decades.
    
    "What does all this add up to? A new culture of learning with a strong focus on student achievement, plus a new focus on working together to put the interests of our children first."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Horses for courses, say logical parents
    
    What's suitable for one child may not be for the next, writes Keeli Cambourne
    
    
    
  • Families seek values for money
    
    Compassion is part of the curriculum at Catholic schools, writes Melinda Ham.
    
    
    
  • There's a lesson in saving ahead
    
    The Australian Scholarships Group (ASG) is a non-profit Friendly Society established by parents and teachers 30 years ago. It's the first and the biggest in Australia and it involves about 250,000 parents and grandparents, and $1.6 billion of funds. Terry O'Connell, ASG's managing director, says people are attracted by the security, stability and enforced savings discipline.
    
    
    
  • Suing after affair with his teacher
    
    A convicted felon who claims his schoolteacher's decision to end their sexual relationship drove him to crime has won the right to sue the state and his ex-lover for breaching their duty of care.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Quality in teaching key to new grant deal
    by Dan Harrison, Canberra
    
    "A $500 million bid to lift teacher quality will be at the centre of more than $1 billion in federal money for education to be announced at this weekend's Council of Australian Governments meeting.
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard will flag the funding injection in a speech to an education forum in Melbourne this morning in which she will nominate better teaching as "the absolute precondition for improving our schools".
    
    "The Commonwealth is expected to provide $150 million over four years in "facilitation" payments to states and territories that sign up, and an extra $350 million in reward payments as targets are met.
    
    "The national partnership agreement is aimed at driving changes such as national consistency in teacher registration and certification of accomplished teachers, better pay for high-performing teachers, national accreditation of pre-service teacher education courses, improved performance management in schools and creating new pathways to teaching, such as accelerated training programs to lure talented graduates from other fields of study to teaching.
    
    "In her speech, Ms Gillard will appeal for support to teacher unions and education deans, who are expected to resist some of the changes. [emphasis added]
    
    "Ms Gillard will also flag new money to lift the performance of disadvantaged schools, which she will describe as "a huge economic and moral failure on our part".
    
    "A national action plan to improve literacy and numeracy is also expected to be finalised at the meeting of Commonwealth, state and territory leaders.
    
    "Ms Gillard will also defend the Government's push for greater transparency in school results and funding sources."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    See Glen Milne Op Ed in yesterday's The Sunday Times; also a related story in today's The Sydney Morning Herald. Also a similar AAP story in The West Australan.
    
    
    • Julia Gillard's Speech
      Leading Transformational Change in Schools
      
      
      
      
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • An open mind
      
      "Tim Saclier says the teaching of intelligent design has no place in science classes (Letters, 21/11). My understanding of intelligent design is that it presents experimental evidence that is inconsistent with the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. It is not presented as a mechanism for evolution.
      
      "In this way it provides a challenge for science to improve and refine its theoretical models. Is this not the aim of science? So while I teach intelligent design in my VCE biology class, I also teach it in my VCE chemistry classes as we, for example, study materials theory.
      
      "This aspect of science teaching, where theoretical models are scrutinised, is vital if we are to produce scientists who are not going to be satisfied with the present theory just because it is the only one around."
      
      Dr Roger Fernando, Montrose
  
  
  
  
• ABC News
  
  
  • Education Union criticises Gillard's education plans
    
    The federal president of the Australian Education Union has criticised the Federal Government's plan to boost transparency for Australian schools...
    
    But AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos says it would be counter-productive to take New York as an example. "We shouldn't be looking at importing flawed ideas from overseas. Let's look at importing successful ideas from overseas," he said. "Australia getting advice from the US on how to do education is like Ian Thorpe getting advice from Eric the Eel." He was referring to the Sydney 2000 Olympics, when a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea took almost two minutes to swim the 100-metres freestyle.
    
    
    
  • Barr backs push for greater school transparency
    
    The ACT Government says the $1 billion boost for education announced by Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard will pave the way for a major restructure of teachers' pay.
    
    
    
  • Business groups praise Murdoch's education call
    
    Business groups have applauded media mogul Rupert Murdoch's call for companies to be more involved in public education.
    
    
    
    
• SSTUWA / AEU
  
  
  • New York Is Not Working
    
    A research paper released today by Save Our Schools (SOS) refutes claims by the Federal Education Minister that reforms to the New York City school system have produced “remarkable outcomes”. Trevor Cobbold, spokesman for the Canberra-based public education advocacy group, said that Julia Gillard’s claims are “just plain wrong”.
    
    
    • An Analysis of Student Test Results in New York City
      
      
      
      
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Obama Faces Fierce Fight to Keep Education Promises
    by Maria Glod
    
    "President-elect Barack Obama has made big promises to educators, parents and the nation's nearly 50 million public school students. He vowed to recruit an "army of new teachers," create better tests and give public schools more funding. He also said he would make college more affordable..."
    
    "Helping ensure college access is likely to be the next president's most pressing education priority. The financial downturn has raised concerns about the continuing availability of student loans. On Thursday, the Education Department announced plans to expand purchases of the loans it backs, the most recent of several steps to help avert a student loan crisis..."
    
    "But it is Obama's vision of refining the federal role in America's classrooms that may be the biggest political and policy challenge. He inherits an agency -- and a law -- that is seen by some local schools and union leaders as focusing more on sanctions and policing than on helping build better schools.
    
    "The Education Department, created in 1980, has a $68.6 billion annual budget and plays a relatively minor role in financing for the nation's public schools. Much of its kindergarten-through-12th-grade spending focuses on helping students from poor families. But No Child Left Behind, enacted under President Bush, ushered in unprecedented federal influence in classrooms with a massive expansion of testing. With the aim of having all children proficient in reading and math by 2014, schools must meet steadily rising test score goals or risk sanctions as severe as a forced management shakeup..."
    
    "On Thursday, Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association, called on the incoming administration to "facilitate, not dictate." ...
    
    "The big challenge for President-elect Obama is he's going to have to appease the reformers, but also the teacher's unions, and that's going to be a delicate dance," said Michael J. Petrilli, who was associate assistant deputy secretary in the Education Department from 2001 to 2005 and now works at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, an education think tank. "They are all going to be watching for signs that he's with them."
    
    Full story in The Washington Post at link
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • It's the intake, stupid
    
    The results of private schools reveal that neither wealth nor class size dictate performance
    
    You don't always get what you pay for - in education, at least. Ofsted's latest report on the independent schools it is allowed to inspect (two other lots of monitors also swim in the same, highly contentious pond) shows an "outstanding" quality rating in only 5% of the 433 reviewed. Some 6% were "inadequate", and the rest merely pottered around between "satisfactory" and "good". That is marginally worse than state school results (where 15% were outstanding) - and you can add in some inspectorate worries about standards of care and child safety for bad luck. So look hard before you reach for a chequebook. Think hard, too.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Education is currency
      
      "Rupert Murdoch’s Boyer Lecture with its emphasis on education is to be admired ("Education is a global currency”, 22-23/11).
      
      "Pity he did not pick up the phone and admonish the Liberals in 1997 when they started a cycle of unnecessary budget cutting to the states’ education sector of Australia under the pretext that there was a budget deficit.
      
      "Most of the parliamentary democracies in the world survive on large budget deficits and they are functioning quite well, thank you. The best investment a nation can make for its future is education of its up-and-coming generations.
      
      "The days of labour-intensive industries to employ those with limited education are over for Australians. We are faced with subsidising the existing manufacturing industries, which only postpones the day of reckoning without solving the problem.
      
      "In this globalised world it is paramount that today’s children get the best possible opportunity for an education that will serve them well in the future."
      
      Kon Kourteff, Stonyfell, SA

 

Tuesday 25 November

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Perth school ‘fight club’ investigated (page 11)
    by Flip Prior
    
    "The Department of Education is investigating allegations of an illicit “fight club” operated by students from a Morley high school, who have posted footage of the fights on the popular YouTube website.
      
    "A department spokesman confirmed last night that the claim made by an anonymous caller to the John Forrest Senior High School last Friday, was being investigated.
    
    "Disturbing footage aired on television last night showed students throwing punches at each other while cheering students egged them on.
      
    "Education Minister Liz Constable said she had met department’s director-general Sharyn O’Neill and asked for a report.
      
    "Dr Constable said she hoped the school had taken appropriate action against the perpetrators. “These types of incidents should not be tolerated,” she said. “The perpetrators need to be identified and appropriate action taken, perhaps suspension or even exclusion.
      
    “While these fights appear to have occurred off school grounds and out of school time, they are students from the school. This is as much a school issue as it is a community issue.”
      
    "Police were also informed about the footage.
      
    "Similar fights in 2006 involving students from at least one other school in the area are also on You-Tube.
      
    "State School Teachers’ Union president Anne Gisborne said she hoped parents would examine the behaviour of their children outside school and that it be stamped out now that it had come to the attention of authorities. Of particular concern was the fact that children were allegedly being forced to take part in the fights.
      
    “It’s disturbing that we would see this type of behaviour,” she said. “I think it’s distressing to see that … we see other young people then cheering them on.”
      
    "Shadow education minister Michelle Roberts said she found the footage “horrific”.
      
    “John Forrest are saying they became aware of it on Friday,” she said. “If they became aware on Friday, what did they do to alert parents?”
      
    “It is shocking and I think most parents would be horrified to find out about it.
      
    “It needs to be taken very seriously and it needs to involve the police.”
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    • The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
      
      Police not looking at high school 'fight club'
      
      [DET appears to be in a state of denial]
      
      
      WA fight videos prompt plan for school police
      
      Police may be stationed at schools to suppress violence, says Premier Colin Barnett - after reports that illegal "fight clubs" are allegedly being run at WA schools.
      
      
      
  • ABC News
    
    Authorities vow to stamp out school 'fight club'
    
    
    
    
  • COAG to weigh up schools offer (page 17)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “Parents will be able to see how their child's school compares with other schools in national testing if the premiers back the Rudd Government's overhaul of education funding on Saturday.
    
    “They will also be able to examine the resources each school gets, including what it raises in revenue such as fees, as well as the quality of teachers against every other Australian school.
    
    “But Education Minister Julia Gillard has played down hopes of a big bonanza for the States, with the global financial crisis ripping $40 billion out of the Budget in coming years.
    
    “The Government expects to sign with the States the next education funding deal for public schools at Council of Australian Governments conference on Saturday.
    
    “Part of Ms Gillard's demands include making the States more transparent and accountable for how they spend money, requiring them to publicly outline how each school performs, the resources they get and their demographic makeup in an effort to copy the best practices of successful school sectors.
    
    “Ms Gillard revealed yesterday parents would get the information about their child's school performance in and annual report.
    
    “Data about all schools would be published on a website, enabling parents to make meaningful comparisons between schools in their neighbourhood, and schools with a similar student population.
    
    “We want to make sure that people know where there are problems in out school system, and if (so, then identify) those problems – that will be a challenge to all of us, including the politicians, to get in and get the problem addressed,” Ms Gillard said.
    
    “The Government's push for schools reform coincides with the Australian visit of Ms Gillard's education guru Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City's public schools.
    
    “Mr Klein, whose drive to fix New York's schools had split parents and educators, told The West Australian that making individual schools publicly accountable for student performance meant problems could be quickly diagnosed. “If you just pretend that things are all good because you don’t want to make transparency a priority, then you run the risk of hurting children,” he said.
    
    “Ms Gillard had upped the ante in her battle with the coalition to get $28 billion in funding for private schools passed through the Senate. The Bill needs to be passed in the next two weeks to ensure schools get their money on time.
    
    “With the Education Department confirming there was no backup plan to fund schools if the Bill did not go through the Senate, she called on the coalition to “abandon the debate of the past”.
    
    “The Opposition should get out of the way so the Governments can deliver these important reforms,” she said.
    
    “Coalition education spokesman Chris Pyne told Parliament he supported a national curriculum in principle but did not want it “hijacked” by left-wing academics.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    See below for several related stories from other media
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • Where blame lies
      
      “Shadow minister Robert Cook's concerns regarding the under-staffing of hospitals and the crisis in the health system that sees fragile young patients sent east for treatment (report, 24/11) ring hollow. Talk about stating the obvious – it is due to the deficiencies of the previous Labor government that our health and education systems have fallen to such a state.
      
      “At least Liz Constable seems to be on the right track by being openly critical of the micro-management of the previous minister and trusting professionals to work for the benefit of education of our children.
      
      “Also in a matter of weeks she was able to resolve serious industrial strife by presenting a pay deal that will be attractive to most teachers.
      
      “In short, ALP politicians got it wrong. We told you so, you wouldn't listen and you got what you deserved.”
      
      Andrew Bell, Woodvale
      
      
      

• The Age
  
  
  • Disclosure push on school results
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "All schools may soon be required to disclose their results and resources on the internet and be publicly compared with their peers, while parents will get an annual report card detailing how their child's school fares.
    
    "In what Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said yesterday would be an era of unprecedented transparency and "transformational change", everything from literacy and numeracy results, retention rates, student satisfaction surveys and school income may become readily available online as part of a four-year funding deal with the states.
    
    "Families will also get a separate report card outlining the performance of their child's school, as the Government conceded too many Australian students are not getting a quality education — and too many parents do not know about it.
    
    "It's my strong view that lack of transparency both hides failures and helps us ignore it," Ms Gillard said. "It feeds a culture where all the adults involved — the teachers, the principals, the community leaders and the members of parliament — avoid accountability."
    
    "Ms Gillard's push for schools to be more transparent was inspired by the tough accountability requirements introduced in New York by the city's schools chancellor, Joel Klein, who is in Australia this week as a guest of the Government. Under the New York model, students are given standardised tests, and schools get an annual report card that grades them from A to F. Those that consistently fail to perform are closed or restructured, while those that lift achievement are eligible for rewards. Schools are clustered into groups of about 40 so they can be compared with others with similar profiles..."
    
    "As a condition of funding over the next four years, public and private schools will be required to sign up to the Government's new transparency requirements. States will also receive $500 million to improve teaching quality, with changes such as better pay for high-performing teachers, national accreditation of pre-service teacher education courses and improved pathways to teaching.
    
    "Ms Gillard said she rejected the notion that performance information on schools "should be confidential to government and denied to the parents of children in schools and the taxpayers who fund schools".
    
    "While schools already provide much information on their results and finances, much of it has to be sought by the public from individual schools or education authorities. Asked how more information would be provided in future, Ms Gillard replied: "I envisage it would be in two forms. There would be a paper-based report for parents. There would also be a website that people could hop on and look at the results of schools." ...
    
    "Ms Gillard endorsed the comments of News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch, who on Sunday described Australia's public education system as a "disgrace" and called for poor-performing schools to be held accountable. "I certainly think Rupert Murdoch is making a hell of a lot of sense," she told ABC radio."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Close schools that don't perform, says educator
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "As a lawyer and former White House deputy counsel to Bill Clinton, Joel Klein isn't an average education bureaucrat.
    
    "But while he might not have had any formal training as an educator, the tough-talking New Yorker has fast become Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's pin-up for schools reform.
    
    "Addressing an education conference in Melbourne yesterday, Mr Klein's message was simple: stop making excuses for underperformance. Force schools to be accountable for their results. Take bold, tough decisions, even if unpopular..."
    
    "His critics argue that the measures are too punitive, that he relies too heavily on standardised testing and that the improvements to his students' results are not significant.
    
    "The only independent check on student achievement in New York City shows a completely different picture from that claimed by Klein," said Save our Schools convener Trevor Cobbold. "The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress administered by the US Department of Education shows that student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, between Hispanics and whites and between low and high-income students are as large as they were when Klein began to overhaul the system." ...
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    Also see the related story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
  • The Monday Education Section is now available online, and contains five articles, including:
    
    
    • Time to fix decrepit state schools
      
      "The level of investment in school buildings has not been sufficient to renew and maintain facilities to provide the type of environment needed to develop students' learning potential." That's the somewhat alarming view of the state Auditor-General, Des Pearson, in a report tabled in Parliament this month.
      
      
      
  • Unlicensed agents luring students
    
    Training colleges are using unlicensed agents overseas to recruit students to study in Australia.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Schools must stick to the curriculum
      
      "As a VCE chemistry teacher, I thought our subject was safe from the threat of creationism dressed up as "intelligent design". Then I read that Dr Roger Fernando (Letters, 24/11) manages to indoctrinate the chemistry, as well as the biology, students in this so-called "scientific" theory.
      
      "The last time I looked at the VCE Chemistry Study Design, which mandates what we must teach through both years of the VCE course, there was no mention of intelligent design. Quite properly, it sticks to tested scientific theories for which there is abundant evidence, much of which we can test for in the school lab.
      
      "Given that chemistry is the subject whose curriculum is most alike across the states, a national version will bear a close resemblance to our current one. Schools or teachers that approach science from a mythological perspective will feel compelled to either omit sections of the course or, as with Dr Fernando, put forward an opinion dressed up as science.
      
      "Schools' funding must therefore be mandatory on actually teaching the curriculum, as it clearly does not seem to be now."
      
      Ralph Judd, Blackburn North
      
      
      
    • I see the nakedness
      
      "The emperor has no clothes. Intelligent design is not a scientific theory. It is a piece of marketing created by the Discovery Institute, with the stated aim of defeating mainstream "materialistic" science, and promoting God with a conservative brand of Christianity.
      
      "One of the creators, Michael Behe, has admitted in court that intelligent design cannot be tested in experiments — that's one of the requirements for something to be called science.
      
      "The core principle in intelligent design is "irreducible complexity". In practice, this is the action of pointing to objects and declaring that only God can know such things. It's intellectual laziness.
      
      "I'm sure many Christian schools see intelligent design as some sort of champion for their faith. They should know that many religious writers have spoken out against this poisoned chalice, which may well do their students more harm than good."
      
      Christopher Short, Hawthorn East
      
      Also see the article in The Sydney Morning Herald
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Don't mimic US school model: experts
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor
    
    "Education authorities have warned the Federal Government against following the New York education model, saying it has failed to deliver reported improvements in student results.
    
    "The architect of the system, the chancellor of the city's education department, Joel Klein, is in Australia this week at the invitation of the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, who wants to embrace his model of publicly comparing the test results of schools. While Mr Klein says student scores have vastly improved under his watch, analysis by Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution in Washington, shows the scores have been mainly flat or declining.
    
    "A former Productivity Commission economist, Trevor Cobbold, the convener of Save Our Schools, said reported improvements in New York schools had been artificially inflated and lacked credibility.
    
    "The results of the national assessment of education progress administered by the US Department of Education show the student achievement in New York City has stagnated since 2003," he said. "Adopting such a model in Australia would lead to inaccurate and misleading comparisons of school performance."
    
    "An Australian education authority, Brian Caldwell, professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, said: "If we were looking for international examples, we should be looking at countries like Finland that has no national testing scheme. Their schools operate with a high degree of autonomy and they focus on making sure their teachers are well trained."
    
    "Angelo Gavrielatos, of the Australian Education Union, said the US performed 29th in science and 35th in mathematics in OECD assessments.
    
    "The New York model is not one Australia should emulate." [emphasis added]
    
    "Mr Klein said national testing in the US required a smaller sample than the New York tests and Professor Ravitch was "looking at selective data". "I don't put any validity in her analysis," he said.
    
    "Ms Gillard said she agreed with Rupert Murdoch's criticism of the Australian public education system as a disgraceful failure. She endorsed his recommendation that corporations should become more involved in forming partnerships with schools in the same way News Limited had done in the US."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Creationism v science: school on report
    by Anna Patty, Education Editor
    
    "The state school registration and curriculum authority has investigated the teaching of creation theory in science classes at a Christian school.
    
    "The Board of Studies responded to a complaint about Pacific Hills Christian School in Dural and will hand down its findings early next month.
    
    "The general manager of the board, John Bennett, told a budget estimates committee last week that the school was under investigation for "teaching creationism in science classes".
    
    "A spokeswoman for the board said it had acted on a complaint that the school had not properly followed its requirements for teaching the science syllabus.
    
    "The board referred the complaint to Christian Schools Australia, asking it to investigate..."
    
    "The head of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, said his organisation had found no reason for Pacific Christian School to lose its registration. "The whole thing is a complete furphy," he said. The school did not teach intelligent design or "creationism" - creation as scientific theory. He said the school had met the Board of Studies syllabus requirements in teaching evolution theory as science.
    
    "It doesn't breach Darwinian theory to ask who set up the world to work in this way or even to say who was there before the big bang," he said. "We are not arguing for the ability to replace science with some other theory." ...
    
    Full story in The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Student affair did not happen, says teacher
    
    A teacher who lost her job over an alleged sexual relationship with one of her students says the teenager fabricated the affair because he had formed a schoolboy infatuation with her, which later caused him to stalk and assault her.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Marks deducted for missing the true fall in standards
      
      "Julia Gillard could at least provide a few statistics in rebuttal of Rupert Murdoch's assertion that public education in Australia is a disgrace ("Murdoch right on school 'disgrace': Gillard", smh.com.au, November 24).
      
      "In the latest Program for International Student Assessment survey run by the OECD (2006), Australia ranks seventh in reading literacy, eighth in science and 13th in maths. Higher than most G20 countries, but behind Canada and Japan. Hardly a disgrace.
      
      "The issue we should concentrate on from that survey was that Australia had dropped from fourth place in reading literacy since 2003 - that really is a disgrace. And note the fall happened during (though not necessarily because of) massive government investment in private education.
      
      "State governments must share some of the blame for our standards slipping, but there must be substantially more investment in education at all levels if Australia is to regain its position. A rational discussion is needed on spending priorities, and populism should be abhorred in this debate.
      
      "Let Mr Murdoch go home and talk to his president-elect about how education levels in the US may be improved before advising our governments."
      
      Patrick McConnell, Bowral
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • School making the grade
    
    Turning a school's fortunes around requires more than chalk and talk. First you have to get the students to show up.
    
    
    
  • Student testing 'gets best results' [a bit slow, but The Australian finally caught up with this story]
    
    Testing literacy and numeracy is vital to helping students complete high school and continue their education into adulthood, says the head of New York's education department, Joel Klein.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Education the key to growth and a happier citizenry
      
      "Rupert Murdoch ("Education is a global currency”, Inquirer, 22-23/11) is undoubtedly on firm ground to stress not only the linkage between education and opportunity but also that quality basic education should be “the first civil right of any decent society”. He is in distinguished company.
      
      "Adam Smith, who advocated strongly and successfully for a more market-orientated economy to boost human welfare and freedom of choice for individuals as consumers and citizens, was also a very strong supporter of education, championing quality free public education to a basic level, as a means of both promoting economic growth and producing a happier and better-informed citizenry.
      
      "With many of our public schools sadly lacking even toilet doors in 21st century Australia and a disturbing stand-off between government and unions over mechanisms to boost the quality of learning, there is no time to lose in injecting more funds into our public education system. This should be combined with urgent measures to raise the standard and prestige of public education by introducing much higher levels of accountability and by instituting genuine career paths which reward excellence in teaching linked to quality outcomes for students."
      
      Thomas Watson, Wagga Wagga, NSW
      
      
      
    • "Rupert Murdoch is right in his criticism of the Australian education system—it is inequitable, with an ever-widening gap between wealthy schools that are propped up by both private and government funding and other schools that rely on public funding alone. However, asking business to step in to bridge the gap is not the solution.
      
      "Education is more than a means to employment. When we lose a multi-dimensional approach to education so that we may concentrate on direct pathways from school to work, we are creating a shell of an education system that may serve business well but empties society of our cultural values. Working life is filled with many jobs that are tedious and boring yet must be done. An education that reveals a deeper side to life is what makes those jobs bearable. What a shame it would be if, in our rush to get our children into the workforce, we forgot to teach them the things that speak of more than their future economic worth."
      
      Emily Windon, Smithton, Tas
      
      
      
    • "I was raised in a family of modest means in a small rural town where I went to primary and secondary school. For me to even contemplate studying for a university degree I needed free tertiary education. As it was, I worked while studying to cover my accommodation, living expenses, books and so on.
      
      "Assistance from corporate Australia to level the education playing field at the primary and secondary level is important, but free tertiary education is the key."
      
      Claire Gibson, Koondrook, Vic

 

Wednesday 26 November

• The West Australian
  

  • Rudd school computer plan to cost WA $167m (page 12)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “WA taxpayers face a bill of $167 million to pay for Kevin Rudd's plan to give every senior high school students a computer, casting doubt on the State's continued participation in one of the Prime Minister's pet projects.
    
    “State Education Department documents obtained under freedom of information by the Federal Opposition reveal the massive burden facing the WA Government, which remains uncommitted about participating in future rounds of the program.
    
    “The department's assessment, prepared for former Labor education minister Mark McGowan, reveals the State would have been responsible for the installation of network cabling and infrastructure, software licensing, technical support, electricity and teacher training.
    
    “It added up to $167 million for 51,000 computers to be delivered over four years. The Government picked up the tab for the first round of computers, which gave 38 public schools 1243 machines.
    
    “Mr Rudd promised the $1.2 billion program would initially focus on giving every student in Years 9-12 a computer but the former WA government was the first to recognise the hidden cost the States faced to roll them out.
    
    “Since then the other States have put up resistance with the NSW Government pulling out because of the uncertainty over who pays for the running costs.
    
    “To avoid the cost of installation, the ACT government used its allocation of new computers to replace old ones instead of boost the numbers.
    
    “While WA schools have made bids for round two, Education Minister Liz Constable last night could not guarantee the State's ongoing commitment to the Federal Program.
    
    “She said the Government did not have $167 million allocated in future State Budgets to meet the costs and warned that the Rudd Government would have to cough up more money when premiers met on Saturday for the Council of Australian Governments meeting.
    
    “The States are very upset that there was an election commitment from Kevin Rudd and we are expected to pay the lion's share of the promise,” Dr Constable said. “I'm looking for a sizeable commitment because it is patently absurd that Mr Rudd can make an election promise that the States have to meet.”
    
    “A spokeswoman for Education Minister Julia Gillard said a review into the costs facing the States and Territories had been completed and additional funding would be considered at Saturday's COAG meeting.
    
    “But Federal Opposition education spokesman Chris Pyne said the computers-in-schools program had become an “embarrassing failure” because of the hidden costs.
    
    “He said based on WA's calculation of needing to chip in $3.27 for every $1 of Federal money, it would cost the States and Territories an extra $3.9 billion to equip schools for their promised computers.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • New school year at risk of turmoil (page 12)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “State school office staff have threatened to throw the first day of school next year into turmoil by going on strike. About 400 school administrators are expected to protest outside Parliament House today, claiming the State Government is forcing staff to bear heavy workloads because it has cut administrative funding.
    
    “Community and Public Sector Union assistant secretary Jo Gaines said office staff would vote on whether to strike if their calls for adequate resources were ignored.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Big business dominates educational planning
    by Sharon Beder
    
    "Joel Klein is in Australia to "spruik" his business-friendly school reforms courtesy of the giant Swiss bank UBS, the recipient of a multibillion-dollar bail-out from Swiss taxpayers, and dubbed the "world's biggest subprime loser" by The Age.
    
    "The federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard, "welcomes the active involvement of UBS" in education reform. Since her recent US visit, she has been championing the "remarkable outcomes" she claims Klein has achieved in New York, where he is the chancellor of the city's education department.
    
    "Klein, who was previously chief executive of the international media company Bertelsmann (and who had an article on this page on Monday), believes schools should be run more like businesses, and is an enthusiastic promoter of "charter" schools, some of which are operated for profit. He told Fortune magazine, "We're converting the role of the principal into a CEO role."
    
    "On occasion, according to The Nation magazine, Klein has referred to children as cars in a shop, a collection of malfunctions to be adjusted. Teachers, he said, needed "to look under the hood" to figure out the origins of the pings.
    
    "His key ideas - accountability; a focus on outcomes, measured by standardised tests; increased autonomy for principals (also called school devolution) - are not new to schools, nor limited to US schools.
    
    "In 1989, the powerful Business Roundtable began a major 10-year campaign "to reform the entire system of public education" in the US. The business leaders wanted standards "that spell out what students should learn in school and how well they should learn it"; tests ensuring teachers and schools stick to the material spelt out in the standards and consequences for those that don't; and increasing budgetary and management autonomy at the school level.
    
    "The campaign was aimed at narrowing the scope of school education to the basic skills employers wanted, particularly literacy, numeracy and computer skills, thereby avoiding the sort of education that might encourage too much critical thinking in future employees. Second, it sought to undermine demands for increased government spending to increase student-teacher ratios by shifting responsibility for the quality of education to individual school managements and teaching staff.
    
    "Teachers have always used tests of various kinds to assess how well students are learning and which students are falling behind. However, standardised tests are aimed at assessing teachers and schools rather than for educational purposes. They ensure that poorly resourced schools spend most of their time drilling students to be able to pass the tests. Instead of aiding their students to develop their potential, teachers help them to remember the authorised information modules for long enough to pass the test.
    
    "In the US, as much as a quarter of the school year can be devoted to test preparation. [emphasis added] The assessments are supposed to show where the students have gaps in their knowledge so lessons can be adjusted. For the first few years of any testing regime, as students get used to sitting standardised tests, as teachers learn how to teach to the tests and as schools narrow their curriculums, test scores tend to improve. So it is not surprising that New York students are getting better scores in the national standardised tests.
    
    "This enables Klein to claim great educational improvements even though a national study released earlier this year using 2004 data found that New York has one of the worst graduation rates in the US, 43rd out of 50 large cities. Gillard is preparing to adopt key elements of Klein's business approach for use in Australian schools on the basis of Klein's ability to improve student test results, without examination of what those test results really represent. Will she unquestioningly adopt the business mantra of "standards, assessment and accountability" in the face of opposition from education experts? [emphasis added]
    
    "Education is not a business and corporations that have made such bad judgments with regard to their core business, like banks, shouldn't be poking their gnomic noses into our schools."

    Sharon Beder is a professor at Wollongong University's faculty of arts and author of the forthcoming book This Little Kiddy Went To Market: The Corporate Capture Of Childhood.
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link

  
  
  
• ABC News
  
  
  • Opinion
    Critics come to the aid of the (education) revolution
    by Chris Bonner
    
    "Australia has gained from ideas and cultures originating beyond our shores - so it might seem churlish to dismiss criticisms of our schools by two high profile citizens of the USA. After all, one of them is Rupert Murdoch and he is half Australian. The other is Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.
    
    "In his latest speech in the Boyer lecture series, Murdoch says tens of thousands of children are being betrayed by a system that fails to provide quality education. He is right, to a point - we have a long tail of underachieving kids. And he has some good suggestions - there is a place for business investment in education as long as it doesn't worsen the divides between schools and between communities. A few years ago principals in NSW joined with Goldman Sachs JBWere in a scholarship scheme to help students complete their studies. This support kept achieving role models in their existing school and community.
    
    "There is potential to expand such programs but the role of business has to be considered very carefully. England's privately supported academies are often cited as success stories, but the reality on the ground can be quite different. Many academies have folded and others are accused of excessively cherry-picking their enrolments - a sure pathway to school 'success'.
    
    "Joel Klein's arrival has been accompanied by unanswered questions about the extent of his improvements to schools in NYC. Anyone can admire his energy and commitment, and even some of his ideas. It's just that the evidence, other than that offered by Klein himself, questions the claims made about student achievement under his stewardship.
    
    "Anyone can review the evidence. Go to http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/dst2007/2008455.pdf - if you are not sure what to do just ask a kid from one of our disgraceful schools. The document you'll find is one of many showing results of national testing in the USA. Check them out, then for more analysis go to http://www.soscanberra.com/
    
    "You'll soon find yourself wondering why Julia Gillard, with her apparent commitment to evidence-based policy, has adopted Klein as a guru and NYC as a model. Even more puzzling is why we look to the USA (and England) for solutions to our apparent problems. After all, according to Rupert Murdoch, public education systems are a disgrace in countries such as Australia, Britain and particularly the United States. [emphasis added]
    
    "Murdoch should leave Australia out of this company. Even the kindest interpretation of international testing places kids in the USA and Britain as just average or below average - our students are above average. And why blame the Welsh and the Scots? They have largely managed to avoid the excess silliness of many of Blair's reforms.
    
    "But the three places do have something else in common: we all have, or want, a regime of testing, ranking, naming and shaming schools. We are adopting a punishment culture for our schools. It resonates well, but why have so many leading education systems managed to avoid much of this nonsense? Everyone talks about Finland, but Canada, much of Europe and East Asia manage to register strong achievement by focusing on the carrot rather than the stick.
    
    "In our search for answers why do we parade the likes of Rupert and Joel? Maybe my own experience as a new principal in two schools suggests the answer. It's easy to achieve initial success: you say the right things, get some quick runs on the board and keep most people happy. That probably also sums up the first year of the Rudd government.
    
    "But unless you solve the really hard issues the criticism will start to mount. Rudd and Gillard have chosen to attack the critics, supported by some high profile intervention. They need to make long term and even unpopular decisions, including how to raise standards in a framework of schools which has been busy separating out the advantaged from the disadvantaged. Apart from anything else this is a part explanation for our underachieving tail.
    
    "Changing the odds for these kids, teachers and schools is a tough ask. It isn't enough to parade the heroes, those people who have seemingly made a difference for underachieving kids against the odds. And many are remarkable people - Gillard has mentioned several school principals in this category. We can learn from people like this.
    
    "But the significant changes are going to rely on hardworking ordinary professional teachers and principals. Their names may never be up there in lights but they will do better when she stops shaming them with high profile critics and the war stories of successful heroes - and expands her effort to even the odds, especially for our teachers and kids in disadvantaged schools.
    
    "To achieve this she needs to forget about the revolution and start on the reconstruction."

    Chris Bonnor is co-author with Jane Caro of The Stupid Country - How Australia is dismantling public education, UNSW Press. He also manages a website, the Future Education Forum.
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    

• NYC Public School Parents:
  Independent voices of New York City public school parents
  
  
  • Australians agree: Joel Klein is a fraud!
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • US education evangelist calls for culture of performance
    by Christian Kerr
    
    "Success in education is all about hard work, New York City Schools chancellor Joel Klein has declared.
    
    "The philosophy is quite straightforward," said the US education evangelist, who has caught the eye of federal Education Minister Julia Gillard.
    
    "There's a series of skills and knowledge that our children have to master, master at the interface where teaching and learning occurs, between teachers and students. "There is very hard work by both parties. We need to stay with that simple model."
    
    "In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday, Mr Klein bemoaned the multitude of "fads and gimmicks that we try to deal with".
    
    "Higher-order thinking: I hear about this all the time," he said. "Problem-solving, higher-order thinking, it will be necessary for the 21st century.
    
    "Well, let me assure you, kids who don't do math, kids who don't understand algebra, kids who are not fluent readers, they're not doing higher-order thinking. [emphasis added]
    
    "We've just got to be candid about that and do the tough work."
    
    "Mr Klein talked about transforming New York's schools from "a culture of excuse to a culture of performance" with a mix of tough love and can-do.
    
    "People tell me you're never going to fix education in America until you fix poverty," he said. "I think those people have it exactly backward. I don't think we're going to fix poverty in America until we fix education. In order to do that you do have to have a culture of performance."
    
    "Mr Klein, who has drawn the ire of teachers' unions, described accountability as a pillar of the process. This involved giving school principals more responsibility for outcomes and publicising the results.
    
    "He rejected claims his reforms had not lifted standards. "State tests show that we're outperforming the rest of the state and everyone else. The overall story is one of success," he said."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Related story in The Age
    
    
    
  • Cops ignore schools' illegal 'fight clubs'
    
    Incidents of Perth students allegedly brutally bashing each other in an illegal "fight club" are not being investigated by police. Police in Western Australia say they cannot act because no official complaint has been lodged - even though footage on the website YouTube shows youths savagely punching each other while crowds of other youngsters cheer, Perthnow reports.
    
    
    • 'Fight clubs in schools'
      
      The West Australian Government is considering putting police into some troubled schoolyards after footage of students brutally beating each other was posted online.
      
      
      
  • Editorial
    A debt of gratitude
    
    Student loans are still the fairest way to fund education
    
    "Generation Y was crying poor yesterday after new research showed students might have to dig deeper into their own pockets to fund the cost of a university education. The University of Canberra's National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling found that the average student would pay $20,579 towards the cost of a standard bachelor degree, which it rated as the third-most expensive fee structure in the world, behind the US and Japan. The ABC website went into meltdown as students - presumably with time on their hands now that exams are mostly over - bleated about the debt they would owe under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme.
    
    "Perhaps they would do better to study the fine print of the NATSEM report. Rather than cause for complaint, it contains what author Alicia Payne calls a "silver lining" for our put-upon, 20-somethings. By the time they reach their 30s and early 40s they will be earning on average 70 per cent more than their contemporaries who did not attend university. Over a lifetime, this adds up to $1.5 million more than someone with a Year 12 high school pass or less. While workers with trade and other vocational qualifications fare better financially early in their careers, those with a degree soon overtake them.
    
    "In the circumstances, it hardly seems unreasonable for university students to pay something towards the cost of higher education, bearing in mind they can defer HECS repayments until they are in full-time work and earning more than $39,825 a year. A shop assistant on the minimum wage of $543 a week might understandably resent having to underwrite in full the future earnings of a budding barrister or surgeon; blue-collar workers struggling with mortgage and family commitments in these increasingly fraught economic times would probably have limited sympathy for the hard-luck stories students were trotting out yesterday on the national broadcaster.
    
    "The principle of social equity - that it is unfair to expect less financially advantaged members of society to totally pay the way for others to reap the rewards of a university education - was cited by the Hawke Labor government in setting up the HECS program nearly two decades ago. The argument for university students to contribute to the cost of their education remains as valid today as it was then. More than a million Australians are currently enrolled in the nation's universities, and, notwithstanding the shockwaves rolling out from Wall Street, graduates have every reason to look forward to a bright and prosperous future. Those who haven't paid their HECS upfront - or, more likely, who have had parents open up the wallet - will settle the debt within eight years of entering the workforce, according to the NATSEM report.
    
    "Late baby boomers might have benefited from free university in the 1970s but they've more than paid their way, delivering their children a quality life and opportunities that remain the envy of most of the world. Generation Y has come of age in a time of relatively easy living and with an overweening sense of entitlement. When it comes to HECS, today's me generation should get over itself."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Pre-Bradley review spat divides universities
    
    The higher education sector is deeply divided over questions of funding and status as it awaits the findings of the Bradley review.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • US educationist talks tough on schools
    by Dan Harrison and Farrah Tomazin
    
    "The tough-talking New Yorker who inspired Julia Gillard's education revolution has called for a shake-up of the American school system amid renewed speculation that President-elect Barack Obama will choose him as his education secretary.
    
    "New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein is in Australia as a guest of the Federal Government to talk about his efforts to lift student results by making schools more accountable — ideas Ms Gillard is using as a template for changes to Australian schools.
    
    "Mr Klein nominated two priorities for repairing American schools, which he said were not adequate for the challenges children faced today: the development of national standards and assessments and a huge federal investment in teacher quality.
    
    "The magic ingredient in education is teacher effectiveness … and our kids in high-needs communities do not remotely get their fair share of high-quality teachers," he said.
    
    "I would incentivise the greatest teachers to take on the greatest challenges." [emphasis added]
    
    "In his speech, Mr Klein said his controversial methods, including standardised testing, had transformed the culture of his city's schools from one of excuses to one of performance.
    
    "But Australians are divided over Mr Klein's approach. Vicki Froomes, one Melbourne educator who worked with the New York schools Mr Klein threatened to close, said teachers would "teach to the test".
    
    "Debney Park Secondary College principal Michael O'Brien said results should be compared only against those with similar backgrounds."
    
    From The Age at link [very similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald]
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    The best of both worlds
    by Shaun Carney
    
    It's a unity ticket you couldn't dream up: Australia's greatest living capitalist and a flame-haired Melbourne left-winger. This week, Rupert Murdoch and Julia Gillard did more to redirect and re-energise education policy in this country than any two leading public figures for a very long time.
    
    
    
  • Education Department ordered to reinstate teacher after high school spat
    
    The State Government has been ordered to return a teacher to the classroom after removing him from Balwyn High School a year ago following allegations of "overbearing conduct" towards other teachers... Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Mary Bluett said the decision vindicated the union's "strongly-held position that teachers should not be removed from their duties unless they have first had an opportunity to respond to allegations against them.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • More to teaching than test results
      
      "National standardised testing has a role to ensure that no child gets left behind in achieving basic literacy and numeracy skills. Julia Gillard's intention to publicly compare schools according to their test results ("Disclosure push on schools", The Age, 25/11) marks a considerable shift in the Federal Government's perception of education in Australia.
      
      "It reinforces the Howard government's neglect of rich and complex areas of learning, which includes capacities such as empathy, thinking, problem solving, creativity, collaboration and the joy of learning — capacities that are difficult to measure. It strengthens the perception of education as a process of learning "how to do the tests", so that schools retain their teachers and their funding and politicians look accountable.
      
      "While it seems a simple solution on the surface, it demonstrates a worrying lack of understanding about the complex and unpredictable nature of human learning and about the role of education in a democratic society."
      
      
      
    • The New York solution
      
      "For nearly six years I was one of 200-plus Australian educators employed by the City of New York as school-based professional development providers, supporting teachers and principals.
      
      "I worked in schools under constant threat of "closure", meaning restructure. Under a restructure, students continue to attend the school but the teachers and principal either lose their jobs or are relocated to another school. The severe shortage of teachers in NYC generally results in relocation.
      
      "A majority of students — mostly minority and new immigrant children — reside in high-rise, densely populated buildings. Profound emotional problems associated with poverty, parenting issues, substance abuse, and violence are common. Nevertheless, the children exhibit great potential. Teachers work hard to overcome such disadvantage.
      
      "Schools under threat of closure/restructure teach to pass "the test". The "best" teachers are placed in the fourth grade, on whose results a school can fail. For much of the year, the emphasis is on teaching to the test.
      
      "Australian educators who have worked in NYC can provide insightful and valuable perspectives on school reform. Maybe Julia Gillard ("Close schools that don't perform, says educator", The Age, 25/11) should listen to them, as well as Joel Klein and that other American, Rupert Murdoch."
      
      Vicki Froomes, Mornington
      
      
      
    • Not just more of the same
      
      "Julia Gillard is shaping up to be worse than David Kemp and Brendan Nelson. The Age has described, in the past, the excellent options for education in Scandinavian countries (especially Finland, a top performing country). So what does our new Education Minister do? She leaps onto another American hack with the usual baggage of standardised testing and league tables.
      
      "Teaching is becoming harder. Many parents don't support teachers. Many children don't respect (and do resist) the education offered.
      
      "Julia's solution: Close down poor performing schools. Spare me. After 40 years involved in education, I just despair."
      
      Peter Berenyi, Howes Creek
      
      
      
      
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Spelling: break words up into units of meaning
    
    Primary school children would be better at spelling if they were taught about morphemes - the units of meaning that form words – researchers claim today.
    
    
    
  • Shakespeare suffers slings and arrows of Sats fortune
    
    William Shakespeare is losing favour in schools, with half of teachers cancelling courses with the Royal Shakespeare Company since Sats for 14-year-olds in English and maths were scrapped.
    
    
    
  • Single-sex science lessons 'would be good for girls'
    
    Single-sex lessons could get more girls interested in science, the new schools minister, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, believes. She said girls often felt intimidated by boys who "hog the limelight", and suggested that introducing separate lessons in coeducational schools could help improve the take-up of science in particular.

 

Thursday 27 November

• The Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Ratings scheme for schools fails the test for improving them
    by Kenneth Davidson
    
    "... The only qualification that Murdoch has to judge our schools is that he owns about 70 per cent of capital city daily newspaper circulation. When billionaire media magnates speak, the rest of us listen.
    
    "The same cannot be said for the other American citizen, New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, who Gillard has brought to Australia, "impressed" by his education reforms, especially school league tables, which had produced "remarkable outcomes".
    
    "Rubbish. Internet comments on the test results show the improvement in school performance measurement comes from manipulating the tests by prepping students. Klein also makes claims about the results that cannot be supported by any fair analysis. Statisticians who have examined the results say they can be explained by random error.
    
    "Klein, a corporate lawyer and political apparatchik, is here to spruik the virtues of Gillard's wacky plan to publish a rating system for schools. Critics point out that the system, based on experience in Britain and the US, "names and shames" poorly performing schools whose output is predictable based on socio-economic background and lack of funding.
    
    "The schemes' great political virtue is that it allows governments without any real commitment to raising the standard of poorer schools to appear to be doing something..."
    
    "And this week Gillard announced half a billion dollars to supplement the wages of excellent teachers. Wow! Nice round figure. But it is a fleabite compared to the national teachers' wage bill, which will probably be about $60 billion over four years. [emphasis added]
    
    "Despite the underfunding of government schools, Australia rates eighth, seventh and 13th in the the OECD Program for International Student Assessment respectively in science, reading and maths literacy. By comparison, the US ranks 29th in science and 36th in maths literacy out of 58 countries. The US is not even listed in the literacy stakes as the results apparently weren't credible enough to warrant publication.
    
    "The countries that rank highest, such as Finland, focus their resources in the opposite direction from Australia. They concentrate on bringing the educational tail up to the average and they say this has a positive effect on the performance of the brightest students."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Schools must try harder: parents
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Most parents want schools to publicly disclose results and resources so they can make better choices about their children's education and ensure struggling schools are supported.
    
    "A Federal Government survey has found more than 80% of parents want schools to publish more information on everything from fees and finances, literacy and numeracy, and peer comparisons.
    
    "The phone poll of almost 2000 parents found many considered reports impersonal and full of jargon rather than information or "too politically correct" and not honest enough."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
• TAFE student fee blow for 240,000
  
  Almost 240,000 Victorian TAFE students will be hit with increased fees each year under a State Government shake-up of tertiary education. Premier John Brumby recently announced plans to overhaul Victoria's training system by almost tripling fees for higher qualifications, introducing a HECS-style loan scheme to TAFE and making public institutes and private providers compete for government funds.
  
  
  
• Squat students set to defy uni order
  
  Students [sic] squatters are refusing to leave a Melbourne University property in defiance of an final eviction notice. About 20 students have occupied four terrace houses in Faraday Street, Carlton, since August to highlight the scarcity of affordable accommodation.
  
  
  
• Letters to the Editor
  
  
  • Got a problem? Blame a teacher
    
    "Julia Gillard's approach to repairing our education system is gallant yet grossly misguided. As an ex-teacher who was fed up with having emasculated fools as employers, it is difficult to understand why the teacher once again, has to take the blame for poor bureaucratic decisions.
    
    "However, the decline in Australian education is not as simple as incompetent management or the odd rogue teacher. There are myriad social issues that affect students' learning that didn't exist to such a degree 20 years ago. Often children go home after school to an empty house with a PlayStation. By the time the tired parents come home from work and cook dinner they have little energy to read or spend time with their children. Factors such as these, drugs and other social ills are more prevalent in lower socio-economic areas, the exact areas where schools often perform badly.
    
    "Teachers are not police and have little power. The students clearly know this and often have the upper hand as a result. The teacher receives flak from every angle: the student, parent, co-ordinator, principal and the Federal Government. We need to take a much broader approach if we are to even begin to grapple with this problem."
    
    Greg Bowen-Jones, The Basin
    
    
    
  • More to the picture
    
    "Shaun Carney's final comment (Comment & Debate, 26/11) that society itself needs to want to be smarter says it all. Year after year we hear complaints about bad teachers and bad schools, but the other half of the mix — students, their families and communities — are held to be entirely without influence in the process of education.
    
    "As a teacher with more than 20 years' experience, I despair of ever hearing governments address the endemic problem of social apathy towards education and excellence.
    
    "One of the hardest problems for teachers to combat is the contempt of many young people for teachers and other hard-working students simply because these people value knowledge and understanding as goals worth striving for.
    
    "For many families, good marks are only of value if a child wants to go on to tertiary education.
    
    "No matter how good a teacher or a school is, a sizeable portion of society is not going to achieve academically because they don't see the value in it and choose not to give it any attention."
    
    Melanie Bennetts, Lower Templestowe
    
    
    
  • Flogging a dead horse
    
    "Limber up the statisticians. Without creative manipulation of the figures, the proposed "education revolution" will be a resounding failure. Why? Because once again we have failed to listen to the children. While we talk bonuses for teachers and unified national curriculum, the children are screaming that school is not relevant to their lives. At what point do we uncover our ears and take hundreds of thousands of young people seriously? They are not being deliberately defiant; they are in fact acutely perceptive.
    
    "A curriculum that has undergone nothing more than cosmetic changes over the past century can no longer engage children or pass the test of equipping them for modern life. A genuine education revolution would face this fact rather than searching for a new way to flog a dead horse."
    
    Lesley Smyth, Berwick
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • From The Prime Minister's statement to Parliament
    
    "... it would be responsible to draw further from the surplus and, if necessary, to use a temporary deficit to begin investing in our future infrastructure needs including hospitals, schools, TAFEs, universities, ports, roads, urban rail and high speed broadband..."
    
    
    
  • WA rebels over school computer finance
    
    Western Australia is on the verge of pulling out of the federal program to provide computers for all high school students, saying Kevin Rudd should pay for his own election commitments.
    
    [A bit ironic when read in conjunction with the item above... Web]
    
    
    
  • Smart IT tells how school students compare
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "With the click of a mouse, teachers will be able to identify gaps in their students' literacy and numeracy skills and track their progress against other students and schools using innovative software developed by NSW.
    
    "Available next year on a website, the School Measurement Assessment and Reporting Toolkit is already used in most NSW schools. The state Government hopes it will be adopted nationally as part of the federal push for greater transparency in schools and eventually be available to parents.
    
    "The SMART program was a revelation for New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, visiting Australia at the invitation of the federal Government, who said it was "absolutely brilliant" and "virtually identical" to the system adopted in New York.
    
    "It surprised me that I had to travel halfway around the world to find people on the same path," he said after a briefing with Premier Nathan Rees and Education Minister Verity Firth.
    
    "We may be separated by a common language but we're on the same page with the instructional mission."
    
    "Mr Rees said the approach to improving teaching was similar in New York and NSW, as were the databases developed for analysing results and improving teaching. "Only New York and NSW are using this style of software," he said. "This computer system enables teachers to look at the advance of individual students, their class against other like schools, and help is delivered literally with the click of a mouse."
    
    "The SMART program shows teachers which questions in the national literacy and numeracy tests their students answered incorrectly, and then provides links to about 800 electronic pages of teaching strategies.
    
    "It also enables teachers, principals and their supervisors to look at individual students, whole classes and whole school years across regions and the state.
    
    "It charts the improvement over the years of individual students and schools as well as the differences between schools.
    
    "The program took about 3.5 months' development by the department, headed by David Wasson, who taught Mr Rees English for two years at Northmead High School.
    
    "Ms Firth said the NSW Government "absolutely believed" in transparency for parents. "What we do need to work on is modern delivery of that transparency ... and we're looking at ways of building a website for parents," she said.
    
    "Earlier this week, federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said she envisaged a school reporting system providing a paper report for parents and a website enabling the whole community to compare like groups of schools.
    
    "On a tour of Blackwattle Senior Secondary College in Sydney's inner west yesterday, Mr Klein said using databases to analyse school performance was very powerful and showed the dramatic effect that small improvements in test results had.
    
    "Mr Klein said criticisms of standardised testing for narrowing the curriculum and causing teachers to "teach to the test" were unfounded.
    
    "He said the correlation between improvements in test scores in literacy and numeracy and high school graduation rates was dazzling.
    
    "Mr Klein has been criticised for his system of ranking and closing schools that fail to improve over time. But he said that for 70 schools that had closed, almost 200 smaller secondary schools had opened in the same areas with better results.

    "Mr Rees said it was premature for NSW to be talking about closing schools."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • The presence of books
      
      "Either Joel Klein ("Student testing ‘gets the best results“‘, 25/11) or Julia Gillard could walk into any household and offer a pretty accurate snap assessment of its potential for achievement in education. The simple parameters are a sense of order, encouragement and the presence of books. None of them have anything to do with availability of “excellence” in local schools, but without them a child’s prospects are dimmed to the point of actual neglect.
      
      "Nabobs from investment banks and principals with MBAs can test a child’s performance on a given day, and that’s important. However, no one but the parent is responsible for laying the foundations for education. Corporations may be able to build decent lavatories in schools and demonstrate superior techniques of management, but can do nothing about households that are chaotic and illiterate.
      
      "More “partnership” will attract only those kids who already have a good start, and who would most likely do well without a McCadetship. Government must not be allowed to accept involvement from businesses in educational outcomes, unless the plans are available for public scrutiny."
      
      Trevor Kerr, Blackburn, Vic
      
      
      
      
• BBC News
  
  
  • Big jump in top GCSE exam grades
    
    There has been the biggest annual rise since 1990 in the proportion of GCSE exam entries awarded the best grades.
    
    BUT:
    
    
  • Past science papers stump pupils
    
    Students who sat a chemistry exam made up of questions from over five decades scored an average of just 25%.

    The experiment, by the Royal Society of Chemistry, showed students scored highest on the most recent questions and worst on those from the 1960s.
    
    [The exam paper (and answers) are available at the above link.]
    
    

  • Science exam standards 'eroded'
    
    "Standards in science exams in UK schools have been eroded and the system is failing a generation, the Royal Society of Chemistry warns.
    
    "In an online petition to Downing Street, the body says record-breaking exam results are "illusory"...
    
    "The report will include details of an "experiment" into standards in science exams staged by the RSC earlier this year. The society set students an exam made up of questions from exams set over the past five decades.
    
    "The students scored highest on the most recent questions and worst on those from the 1960s..."
    
    "Chief executive Richard Pike said: "The target of our campaign is a failed education system, not the youngsters it's supposed to serve.
    
    "We know that enthusiastic teachers are being compelled to 'teach to the test' to meet the demands of school league tables which draws mainly on the recalling of facts, with no reference to logic or mathematics.
    
    "That means the brightest pupils are not being stretched, or trained in mathematical techniques, because they can get a grade A* without doing a single calculation.
    
    "Conversely, the majority get at least a 'good pass' (grade C) by showing merely a superficial knowledge on a wide range of issues, but no understanding of the fundamentals. A mark of 20% was sufficient in one of this summer's GCSE science examinations." ...
    
    Full story at BBC News at link
    
    
    
  • Results appraisals upset teachers
    
    New York City has started a pilot project to assess teachers on how well their students do in annual standard mathematics and reading tests.
    
    The move has caused huge controversy amongst the teaching community.
    
    
    
    
• Business Council of Australia media statement
  
  
  • High Achiever Initiative Will Boost the Status of Teaching
    
    The Business Council of Australia has strongly welcomed the announcement by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard of a new pathway for high-achieving people to teach in schools.
    
    BCA President Greig Gailey said recruiting more of Australia’s most talented people into the teaching profession is an important contribution towards giving Australia’s children the best education in the world.
    
    At the same time, such an initiative will build a generation of future leaders who understand intimately the challenges of education.
    
    The full statement is available at link
    
    
    
    
• The West Australian
  

  • Drugs greatest worry of kids as young as 11 (page 49)
    by Dawn Gibson
    
    “WA schoolchildren as young as 11 are increasingly worries about drug use and their ability to resist the peer pressure to experiment, a new snapshot of youth opinion reveals.
    
    “As thousands of teenagers migrate towards Rottnest and the South-West for the annual schoolies pilgrimage, the results of a nationwide survey by Mission Australia show young people rank illegal drugs as one of their most pressing concerns, a trend mirrored in WA statistics.
    
    “Asked to rank 15 issues in order of concern, one in four young West Australians put drugs in the top three.
    
    “Almost a third of 11 to 14-year-olds considered drugs a major issue, up from 23.4 per cent for this age group last year.
    
    “Mission Australia WA director Ross Kyrwood said the results suggested drug education campaigns needed to be targeted at late primary school and early high school for maximum impact.
    
    “That's when the issue is most likely to be worrying young people, providing us with the best opportunity to equip them with the strategies the need to deal with the issue,” he said.
    
    “At the same time, our survey results show that for young people in their late teens or early twenties, there is a relative decline in their concern about drugs.”
    
    “Moira O'Brien-Smith, a 14-year-old students Penrhos College, said she had only recently become aware of drugs as an issue for her age group, particularly the use of marijuana and ice.
    
    “The survey details of which were released yesterday, canvassed more than 45,000 11 to 24-year olds across Australia. They included more than 3300 in WA, the biggest group since the survey began seven years ago.
    
    “Penrhos was one of several WA high schools that took part.
    
    “The other main concerns identified in the survey were family conflict and body image.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• AEU media statement
  
  
  • COAG must lift overall public schools funding to ensure high quality education for all
    
    In the lead up to this Saturday’s COAG meeting, the Australian Education Union is warning targeted programs for teacher quality and disadvantaged schools alone will not deliver a high quality education for all students.
    
    AEU Federal President, Angelo Gavrielatos said an increase in general funding and investment in buildings and facilities was crucial for public schools.
    
    “Public schools are under-funded by at least $2.9 billion annually.
    
    “That means they do not have adequate funding to guarantee low class sizes, individual attention for those who need it or upgrade buildings and facilities.
    
    “While welcome, the Government’s announcements on teacher quality funding and a disadvantaged schools program will not give public schools the funding they need to lift overall student performance.
    
    The full statement is available at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Critical thinkers required
      
      "Sharon Beder is correct ("Big business should not be allowed to dominate educational planning", November 26). When an educational institution becomes concerned with profit, any meaningful educational experience for the students becomes secondary. The independent schools around Sydney that decided to run on a business model show how an obsession with building infrastructure and regarding students as product have led to plummeting academic and behavioural standards. It would be wise of Julia Gillard to study this model closely before she starts involving business in government schools."
      
      Elisabeth Goodsall, Wahroonga
      
      
      
    • "It seems Julia Gillard has fallen into line with the Howard government's choice of metaphor for spending on public education - the narrow factory model with a production line to produce identical spelling and calculating widgets.
      
      "The teacher as catalyst for the critical thinker has no room in this shift to the needs of business rather than citizenship."
      
      Trevor Kruger, Blue Bay

 

Friday 28 November

• The West Australian
  

  • Pupils don't know basic English: schools chief (page 4)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “WA's education chief has admitted that too many students were leaving school without knowing the basics of punctuation and grammar because the curriculum had distracted teacher from these key areas.
    
    “Education Department director general Sharyn O'Neill told department bureaucrats yesterday that she would try to refocus teachers' attention on grammar and punctuation in State schools next year after their dismal showing in national tests this year.
    
    “WA's worst results are in Year 7 and 9 grammar and punctuation, where we were ranked seventh among States and Territories,” she told The West Australian.
    
    “While this was the first national assessment for WA students in grammar and punctuation, we need to ensure that no student can move through their years in school without being taught these basic building blocks of reading and writing.”
    
    “Ms O'Neill said employers had complained that some school leavers struggled with simple tasks such as writing a simple letter. “Whenever you talk to parents, they pick up grammar and punctuation as something that they see there has been less of a focus on as well,”” she said.
    
    “School curriculums had become “overcrowded and diffused” with extras such as drug education and environmental sustainability, leaving less time to teach fundamental skills such as punctuation and grammar.
    
    “Over the last 20 or 30 years, a mixed curriculum ideology shifted teachers' attention away from what all students really need to know,” she said. “Teachers tell me they need and want more support and they want clarity.”
    
    “Even though Ms O'Neill would not admit that WA's outcomes-based education system was to blame for confusion about what students should be taught, she conceded the department was taking a more practical and explicit approach than in the past.
    
    “Teachers will receive booklets early next year outlining what students in each year group need to know in grammar, phonics, spelling and word study, including classroom activities and lesson plans. “It's a level of detail now that the teachers wouldn't have had before,” she said.
    
    “The department's renewed emphasis on the basics reflects the direction of the draft national curriculum for English, which is due to be introduced in schools in 2010.
    
    “Work started on the new resources last year but Ms O'Neill said it had been accelerated in response to the poor results recorded by WA students in national tests.
    
    “Education Minister Liz Constable said the new focus on grammar and punctuation was a response to evidence, not an admission of failure. She refused to say when she would set up an independent review of the curriculum framework, promised by former education shadow minister Peter Collier during the State election campaign.
    
    “The tasks .. that I've been working on are those commitments that were made by Colin Barnett,” she said. [emphasis added]
    
    “The State School Teachers Union said it welcomed any extra resources that provided guidance and support to teachers.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    Similar stories in The Sunday Times online / PerthNow and WA Today
    
    

  • Fielding casts new doubt on controversial school funding Bill (page 12)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “The Federal Government's push to make private schools sign up to the national curriculum in return for fresh funding is on the verge of collapse after Independent Senator Steve Fielding said yesterday he would vote with the coalition against the plan.
    
    “The Bill put forward by Education Minister Julia Mallard provides for private schools to be given $28 billion in Federal funding over the next four years, conditional on the schools agreeing to adopt the national curriculum, even though this is still in the preliminary planning stages.
    
    “Yesterday, a Senate inquiry into the Bill tabled its report, revealing major schisms between the Government, Opposition and the Greens.
    
    “Private schools are angry that the Bill requires them to reveal publicly all sources of funding, such as donations, fee income, bequests, in return for the cash.
    
    “School groups fear public education advocates will use that information to play the politics of envy against private institutions and scare off potential benefactors.
    
    “With just four sitting days left next week to pass the Bill before Parliament rises for the year, and delay will see some schools run out of money because they are so reliant on the January grant to stay afloat until fee can be collected.
    
    “Private schools have also flagged concerns that the national curriculum will limit what they can teach, particularly faith-based schools, specialist institutions such as Steiner or Montessori schools or those that offer specialist courses.
    
    “The curriculum will focus on English, maths, science and history. Ms Gillard has stated it will have “flexibility” and take into account the different needs of schools.
    
    “But coalition senators confirmed yesterday they would seek to remove these requirements from the Bill, which State schools will also have to comply with, while Senator Fielding said he would support their efforts to “de-hook” the demand regarding the curriculum.
    
    “The Rudd plan is holding schools to ransom,” Senator Fielding told The West Australian last night. “We're going to stand up for the schools.”
    
    “It also understood Independent Senator Nick Xenaphon is concerned about the push to link funding to the curriculum.
    
    “Greens education spokeswoman Christine Milne, in her dissenting report, said the party would back the Government on the national curriculum and disclosure requirements but was demanding the funding be made available for only two years so the controversial formula for private schools could be reviewed.
    
    “Ms Gillard said the report of the committee, which is dominated by Labor senators, backed the Bill and called on coalition senators to support the deal.
    
    “WA's peal private schools group is urging Federal politicians to set aside their differences and pass the Bill.
    
    “Association of Independent Schools WA deputy director Ron Gorman said he was confident any disputes about the curriculum or funding disclosure could be sorted out in talks.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Rudd won't pay full computer bill (page 4)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “Kevin Rudd will offer to pay less than half the $167 million it will cost the State Government to give every senior high school student a computer.
    
    “Mr Rudd will offer $807 million over four years to the States and Territories to roll out the computers-in-schools program, which was one of his Government's key election promises, at the Council of Australian Government meeting tomorrow. WA will get $79.8 million.
    
    “The funding offer coincides with the release of a report into the cost burden facing the States to deliver the program, which was a key plank of the Rudd Government's so-called education revolution.
    
    “The money on offer will be used to pay for installation and maintenance of the machines, cabling, electricity, software licensing, teacher training and security.
    
    “The $2 billion program will mean the Rudd Government will contribute $2500 towards the cost of buying and operating each machine. WA State schools will get and extra $47 million, Catholic schools $17.6 million and independent schools $15 million.
    
    “But as The West Australian revealed on Wednesday, the WA Education Department estimated these costs would be a $167 million slug on the State – more than twice the amount on offer.
    
    “That prompted Education Minister Liz Constable to warn that WA's participation in the program was in doubt without a big boost in Federal funding.
    
    “The Government review, commissioned in March when the premiers complained about being saddled with the extra costs, was led by Federal finance department deputy secretary Paul Grimes. But Dr Grimes' report accused the States of padding the cost of rolling out the computers. The WA Education Department told the review it put the cost of each computer at $4822. “The review has not accepted all costs proposed by education authorities as being 'legitimate and additional' costs,” Dr Grimes said.”
    
    From The West Australian
    

  • ABC News
    
    
    • Surplus raided for computers in schools: Opposition
      
      
      
  • Letter to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • In short
      
      “The State Government proposal to reinstate police officers in schools is a backward step and an overreaction to the so-called fight clubs. The Police Commissioner has done well to get police officers back on the front line. Previously, we had the ridiculous situation or trained police officers teaching children how to ride bikes and taking kids on camps, rather than carrying out their core function. The answer to the fight clubs is to get teachers out of their staff-rooms patrolling their schools. If police are required they can be called to a specific incident, rather than being permanently on-site.”
      
      Mark A. Smith, Mt Lawley
      
      
      

• The Age
  
  
  • Teacher plan goes ahead
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Plans to place non-teaching graduates into the nation's toughest schools are being pushed forward by the Federal Government.
    
    "This Saturday's COAG meeting is set to discuss the proposal — modelled on schemes in the US and Britain — as part of a $500 million plan to boost teaching quality.
    
    "Detailing the plan to business leaders this week, Education Minister Julia Gillard said the Government would fund a recruitment drive to get top graduates from areas such as law, medicine or accounting to work in challenging schools.
    
    "Graduates would undergo a rigorous selection process, then get up to six to eight weeks of accelerated training [emphasis added] before signing up work in a hard-to-staff area for at least two years. Ongoing mentoring will be provided, and the graduates would continue studying while they work to complete their teaching qualifications.
    
    "This is a program about bringing the best and the brightest to the schools where they will make the most difference," Ms Gillard said yesterday.
    
    "But educators have warned the plan may do little to lift school performance, and question whether young graduates from non-teaching fields — no matter how smart or altruistic — could cope with the demands of teaching in challenging schools. [emphasis added]
    
    "It's not really a recipe for stability to be putting students with very little experience into the classroom," said Sue Willis, head of the Australian Council of Deans of Education.
    
    "Victoria will be the first state to adopt the scheme from next year as part of its own education reforms, but the Federal Government wants the other states and territories to follow suit."

    From The Age at link
    
    

  • School gets all clear to favour girls over boys
    
    A prestigious co-educational school in Kew has won the right to refuse extra boys for three years so they do not "swamp" girls in some classes. Preshil, the Margaret Lyttle Memorial School, was granted an Equal Opportunity Act exemption in 2005 so it could maintain an equal ratio of boy and girl students.
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    We will mourn the day that more than just the music died
    
    In the decaying reality of education, which is increasingly being suffocated under the burden of bureaucracy and endless processes of degree validation, the very heart of inspired learning is dying. The proposed demise of the Australian National Academy of Music is vivid proof of this.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Bored? Get used to it
      
      "I am so sick of people like Lesley Smyth (Letters 27/11) adding to the never-ending criticism that education is not relevant to our children. It seems to be popular opinion that we should coat our education system in cotton wool so little Johnny doesn't get bored at school.
      
      "Not every aspect of education is interesting to every student. This is the same in working life. Another bloody school history assignment to an aspiring plumber is equivalent to another bloody year 7 typewriting class for a year 12 economics teacher; or another bloody floor to clean at the end of the day for a baker who would rather be baking bread, or even another bloody gall bladder to remove for a general surgeon who gains much more intellectual satisfaction from resecting a liver tumour.
      
      "Every job out there has its share of boring, monotonous tasks. These tasks need to be completed every day. School definitely has its boring and apparently irrelevant tasks, but by completing them, students are not only fulfilling curriculum requirements, they are also learning a valuable life skill. Sometimes school is boring. Sometimes life is boring. Get over it!"
      
      Shaun Brown, Ivanhoe
      
      
      
    • Bring on the real revolution
      
      "How refreshing to read an informed criticism of the populist political fad of testing as the panacea for education (Comment & Debate, 27/11). Any teacher knows that there are ways around tests.
      
      "Julia Gillard has called for improvements in the quality of teaching, higher standards in disadvantaged school communities and mandated transparency and accountability on performance. Nothing new at all.
      
      "What she fails to mention are teacher shortages, huge class sizes, overstretched curriculums, grossly underfunded state schools, lamentable resource deficiencies, inadequate mechanisms for removing poor teachers, teachers working in subject areas for which they were not trained because the profession is no longer regarded as an attractive career, parental neglect and abuse and state and federal ministers hell-bent on teacher bashing rather than defending public education.
      
      "When does the revolution begin to address some of these issues then?"
      
      Garry Bickley, Elizabeth Downs, SA
      
      
      
    • Hurting, not helping
      
      "Looking for an apartment to rent in Brooklyn, New York, the first thing the estate agent handed us was the league table of schools in the area — a list rating school performance on the standardised tests. Guess where rents were highest? Localities that are serviced by high-performing schools enjoy high property values and demand high rent. The league tables are used to promote sales and increase prices of property. Marking public school performance on standardised tests discriminates against minorities, the poor and disadvantaged members of the community. They cannot afford to live in areas serviced by high-performing public schools. They cannot afford to move into these areas to access a desirable school as can some families in the community.
      
      "The populations of schools reflect the local community they serve. Again, the neediest in our communities are discriminated against by political ambition to be seen to be reforming schools."
      
      Vicki Froomes, educational consultant, Mornington
      
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • Schools get additional $807mn for computers over four years
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The federal Government will provide an additional $807 million over the next four years to meet the costs of installing and running the computers provided under its digital revolution of giving every student in Years 9 to 12 access to a computer.
    
    "The commonwealth will make the offer to the states and territories at the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments on Saturday, bringing the total funding for the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund to about $2 billion.
    
    "The offer is based on a report commissioned by COAG on the "legitimate and additional" costs of deploying the computers.
    
    "The states and territories have argued that the $1000 provided for each computer was insufficient to cover the installation and running costs, with some states saying it cost $3 for every $1 spent on a computer.
    
    "The report, released yesterday by federal Education Minister Julia Gillard, says a reasonable estimate of the cost of installing and maintaining each computer is $2500 over four years. This amount includes the original allocation of $1000." ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    Similar story in The Age
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Learning from New York to improve our education system
    by Jennifer Buckingham
    
    "New York City's letter-grade school report cards form only one part of the reform program implemented by its schools chancellor, Joel Klein.
    
    "One of the first things Klein did was dismantle the "industrial" model of teacher employment. Teachers had been rewarded for how long they stayed in their jobs, not how well they did their jobs.
    
    "Tenure provided job security, but little professional satisfaction. The result was mediocrity.
    
    "School principals in New York now have the ability to hire the teachers that are most likely to meet the specific needs of their students.
    
    "The focus on strong school leadership and good teachers is to be expected. The value of strong leadership and high-quality teaching is well known. But why has New York taken this particular approach?
    
    "Critics of public accountability as a driver of school performance often hold up Finland as the example we ought to follow instead. Finland ranks highly in international tests, yet shares few of the features of the New York reform program. In Finland, there are no national nor external tests, and no published school-by-school comparisons. Schools play a role in the selection of staff, but have less freedom in this regard than other school systems.
    
    "Klein's response is that in formulating his approach, he looked to places with a comparable set of challenges to New York. Finland isn't one of them.
    
    "Finland and New York also diverge on socio-economics. On top of these differences, New York faces a different educational reality: its teachers are mostly drawn from the lowest quarter of tertiary graduates. In Finland, entry to teaching courses is competitive and only 10 per cent of applicants are admitted.
    
    "In New York, as in many other places, creating a workforce of highly skilled teachers is a goal. It can't be done immediately and won't help the children who are in under-performing schools right now.
    
    "For this reason, Klein is also a champion of programs that fast-track high-calibre university graduates into schools, such as Teach For America.
    
    "It makes sense that Education Minister Julia Gillard chose Klein's visit as the time to announce an Australian version of TFA. A similar initiative is taking shape in Victoria, but Gillard wants to create a national program, run by an independent, non-profit organisation with the help of businesses.
    
    "Fans of the Finnish system will again take umbrage, but there is no need. Australia can take what it needs from the New York experience to reveal and deal with the inequities we have in our schools right now. At the same time, there is scope to learn from how other countries attract the best people into teaching careers and keep them there, but this is a longer-term strategy.
    
    "Klein's message is potent because he has taken a good idea beyond the strictures of ideology and party politics. Hopefully, Gillard will do the same."

    Jennifer Buckingham is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

• BBC News
  
  
  • 'Good results' for reading scheme
    
    "Children who are struggling to read have made "spectacular" improvements under a reading scheme, academics say.
    
    "Results from a three-year pilot programme show on average pupils boosted their reading age by nearly two years in four or five months.
    
    "The scheme for six-year-olds, called Every Child a Reader, is being rolled out across England.
    
    "More than 5,000 pupils received one-to-one tuition for 30 minutes a day to help them catch up with their peers..."
    
    "A mixture of teaching systems - including phonics - is used to boost children's abilities." [emphasis added]
    
    Full story at BBC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Schools minister shifts focus to parents
    
    The schools minister, Jim Knight, shifted the onus for improving children's educational and life chances on to parents today.
    
    
    
  • Early schooling matters most for children
    
    Attending a good pre-school and primary has more impact on children's academic progress than their gender or family background, researchers claimed today.
    
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • Teachers take flight from state schools
    
    Independent sector offers smaller classes and more professional freedom
    
    Growing numbers of teachers are quitting state schools to work in the independent sector. About one in four (12,000) of the teachers in private schools has been "poached" from the state sector, shows research by the University of Kent.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Pay rises push up school fees to $24,000
    
    Teacher salary increases will drive up fees by about 7 per cent next year to more than $24,000 at some of Sydney's most prestigious private schools, forcing some parents to consider removing their children.

 

Saturday – Sunday, 29 – 30 November

• The West Australian
  

  • State caves in on school computers (page 2)
    by Robert Taylor, Andrew Probyn and Andrew Tillett
    
    “The Barnett Government has caved in to Kevin Rudd and will split the cost of implementing Federal Labor's election pledge to provide computers to all senior high school students.
    
    “The Education Department has estimated the 51,000 computers would cost the State Government $167 million. The Federal Government has pledged $79.8 million for installation and maintenance, cabling, electricity, software licensing, teacher training and security.
    
    “WA ministers have consistently warned the State would not put money into Mr Rudd's election commitments but Colin Barnett said before flying out yesterday to a crucial Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra that WA would agree to joint funding of the scheme.
    
    “Even though it's an undesirable result in the sense that a Federal election commitment imposes costs on the State, I don't lose sight of the broader picture, and that if it improves education in our schools so if we need to contribute to that we will,” the Premier said.
    
    “The original situation was something like $160 million extra on the State education budget,” he said. “That was not achievable but the Commonwealth looks like it's going to come half way on that so we'll reach some agreement.”
    
    “Mr Rudd is poised to increase his $11 billion offer in extra payments to ensure State premiers agree to four-year funding agreements on education, health, early childhood, disability services and housing.
    
    “Some of the extra cash will be in health which yesterday emerged as the major sticking point.
    
    “The States want the deal to include an annual 9 per cent indexation for hospital payments, rather than the 7.3 per cent offered. That would be an extra $1.9 billion but Treasurer Wayne Swan has ruled out such largesse because the global financial crisis had made money tight.
    
    “However, it is understood that Mr Swan made it clear there was some room to negotiate on health funding.
    
    “Mr Barnett said there was not likely to be enough Federal money to improver health and education services.
    
    “Just to maintain existing services in health requires significant increases in funding by the Commonwealth and the States and figures of around a 7 per cent increase have been bandied around Australia,” Mr Barnett said.
    
    “For education it's around 5 per cent and that's the dilema the Commonwealth and States share. Seven per cent increases in funding sound attractive but ut wont bring about the improvement in services that everyone wants to see. And with declining revenues I think everyones been forced, both States and Commonwealth, to lower their expectations.”
    
    “Education will get a $10 billion boost to $44.5 billion. Public schools will get $14 billion over the next four years, up from $10 billion and private schools $28 billion. However the States, Territories and other schools systems have to agree to publicly release income data on every school.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Sunday Age
  
  
  • Rudd's new deal to create 133,000 jobs
    by Josh Gordon
    
    "An extra $15.1 billion has been delivered to the states by Canberra in a new deal for health, education and housing set to drag the budget to the brink of deficit.
    
    "Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said after the COAG meeting with premiers that the five-year package would create an extra 133,000 jobs, and help stimulate the economy, with a "strong emphasis on reviving our flagging productivity growth, especially in education and infrastructure"...
    
    "Education funding will get an extra $3.5 billion over five years, but cash will hinge on a new regime forcing the states to publish information on the performance of individual schools.
    
    "The Government is also pushing ahead with plans to reward high-performing teachers and wants school principals to take a more active leadership role.

    "A core condition … is bringing about a new era of public transparency in the reporting of schools on their performance across the nation," Mr Rudd said..." [emphasis added]
    
    "But the $15.1 billion funding increase brings the federal budget close to deficit, even before factoring in new spending certain to be announced in next year's federal budget..."
    
    Full story in The Sunday Age at link
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Neutering the net is about repression, not protection
    by Chris Berg
    
    "It seems like only yesterday that the country was prosperous and the Labor Party was going to make everyone's internet faster.
    
    "But now the Federal Government's great broadband gift is floundering in the waves of the financial crisis and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is pushing ahead with an internet filter that will dramatically slow Australian internet speeds.
    
    "The Australian Communications and Media Authority conducted tests earlier this year on six filters that could be imposed on internet service providers. Five slowed internet speeds by at least 20 per cent. And two of them crippled speeds by more than 75 per cent.
    
    "And this is before we look at their habit of falsely blocking legal sites. A 1999 trial of internet filtering (censoring the internet has long been a bipartisan goal) even accidentally blocked some government websites. [emphasis added] Filters have improved since then but, as ACMA's test revealed, it is a certainty that some sites will be incorrectly blocked — let's be honest, the technology to efficiently and effectively censor the internet isn't quite ready yet..."
    
    "Nevertheless, the biggest problem with the filter isn't technical and it isn't its likely failure to reduce child pornography.
    
    "The biggest problem is a little word that Mr Conroy slipped out in the middle of a Senate committee hearing. The pilot filter program will not only target the existing blacklisted sites, most of which are child pornography, but will also target "unwanted" content, whatever that means.
    
    "The Government has developed a secret list of 10,000 unwanted sites (there are only 1300 on the current blacklist). [emphasis added]

    "But what the Communications Minister wants on the internet and others want on the internet are likely to be two very different things..."
    
    Full story in The Sunday Age at link
    
    
    

• ABC News
  
  
  • Gillard denies school computers cost blow-out
    
    The Federal Government has denied it has mismanaged its computers in schools program.
    
    
    • Govt defends computer funding boost
      
      
      
  • COAG schools spending welcome but not enough: union
    
    The Queensland Teachers Union has described the move to spend more than $45 billion on education over the next four years as too little, too late.
    
    
    
    
• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • Feature
    Rumble in the Big Apple's rotten blackboard jungle
    by David Nason, New York correspondent
    
    "Joel Klein has closed about 70 under-performing public schools in his six years as New York City Department of Education chancellor.
    
    "Michael Weinstein wishes it were 10 times as many.
    
    "We could have an education revolution here if we could take over all the decrepit schools," Weinstein said this week as Klein toured Australia at the invitation of federal Education Minister Julia Gillard.
    
    "Unfortunately, as a political exercise, it isn't easy in New York to close down a school, kick out the principal, kick out the teachers and then turn it over to a private operation. To his credit, Joel has done some of that, but if it could be done on a grander scale, it would be phenomenal."
    
    "Weinstein's views are unlikely to win him any friends among the union officials, academics and commentators who have spent the past week demonising Klein and his metrics-based approach to education, particularly its emphasis on standardised testing to evaluate student and teacher performance.
    
    "But as chief programs officer at the Robin Hood Foundation, a non-religious charitable institution that works with New York's most underprivileged children, Weinstein can't be pressed into the Dickensian Mr Gradgrind mould as easily as the education establishment has done with Klein.
    
    "Nor can Weinstein's perspective be dismissed as uninformed.
    
    "To the contrary, he has a coalface appreciation for the scale of the problems in New York, something the critics have tended to overlook this week in their headlong rush to discredit Klein and his theories.
    
    "Weinstein describes most of New York's 1400 schools as "dreadful places" that give children from poor families little or no chance of rising above their poverty.
    
    "Just look at the record," he says. "The school system here graduates fewer than half of its students. At least 30 per cent of the students are well below grade level, and grade level is not impressive. If you're at grade level, that's hardly a big deal." ...
    
    Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Pulling themselves up by their bootstraps
    
    Julia Gillard's reforms will empower schools
    
    "The "children first" focus of New York's school system reform that Joel Klein, chancellor of the city's Education Department, explained during his visit to Sydney this week, is based on three principles: leadership, empowerment and accountability. These are the hallmarks of the Rudd Government's education reforms, which Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is progressing with an effectiveness that would have seemed impossible a year ago. As a member of the Left, albeit a highly pragmatic one, Ms Gillard is well-placed to execute change. The Howard government, hamstrung by hostile teachers' unions and bureaucrats, talked the same language but faced such a wall of opposition that it could barely scratch the surface.
    
    "In putting her policies into practice, Ms Gillard is creating the conditions to empower schools in poorer areas to help themselves. Disadvantaged students will be the winners. This, the real education revolution, is about much more than culture wars. It is not a left-right debate. But the strident left-wing criticism it is attracting reflects how deeply some on that side of the ideological divide are mired in 1970s thinking, unable to grasp the role of metrics in improving service delivery to those who need it most.
    
    "Like black and Hispanic students in New York, whose life prospects have been enhanced by Klein's reforms, it is students in Australia's poorer postcodes, including outer-metropolitan areas like Campbelltown, Sunshine and Logan City, who have the most at stake. Too many schools have wallowed in neglect and underperformance for generations, reinforcing unemployment, welfare dependency and social problems.
    
    "Philosophically, Klein's approach resembles that of lawyer Noel Pearson, who eons ago recognised that rigid service-provider models had failed indigenous communities. Individuals and communities, he recognised, needed to be vested with responsibility for their own advancement.
    
    "The biggest challenges remain, but income management, Andrew Forrest's indigenous employment scheme and proper monitoring of health, education and child safety are beginning to show results. In a similar vein, Klein set about redressing educational failure in New York by setting high goals, implementing strategies to accomplish them and providing support to lift students' performances.
    
    "As David Nason reports today in Inquirer, Klein's approach has seen more black and Hispanic students in New York succeeding in tests than ever. Sharp reductions in the proficiency gap between them and white students have been noted. This reinforces a Centre for Independent Studies paper by Jennifer Buckingham, which found accountability and transparency in Florida has forced sustainable improvements over a decade.
    
    "Philosophically, however, this metrics-based approach appears anathema to The Sydney Morning Herald, which treated Klein's visit as a "spruik". "Will she (Julia Gillard) unquestioningly adopt the business mantra of 'standards, assessment and accountability' in the face of opposition from education experts?" Sharon Beder of Wollongong University's arts faculty wrote. The paper rounded up plenty of "experts" to agree with her.
    
    "While apparently trying to represent the views of teachers and bureaucrats ahead of the interests of students and parents, the Herald is reflecting the kind of provider capture that also disadvantages customers/taxpayers on the docks, in Aboriginal welfare and in many state health systems. Indicative of the mindset was columnist Adele Horin's gripe about "shaming struggling schools with hard-to-teach students". Notions that some students are so hard to teach that accountability measures are not worth bothering about has no place in the 21st century.
    
    "Rampant among the educational establishment are similarly twisted notions of noblesse oblige, which often leave students in poorer schools doing minimal homework compared with the four and five hours a night that many at selective state and more rigorous private schools spend at their desks.
    
    "Students, parents and teachers should have no illusions -- if Klein's approach is to succeed in Australia, it will mean harder and smarter work at school and more homework than most students are doing now. But the transformation of education systems in nations such as China and India show why it is their surest path to success. As Rupert Murdoch said in his recent Boyer lecture, instead of suggesting that their students cannot learn, such nations set high standards and expect they will be met, placing an emphasis on competition, merit and doing well on standardised tests.
    
    "The fact that in recent decades, tens of thousands of Australian parents have voted with their feet in pursuit of similar values, suggests the Gillard reforms are long overdue. The mushrooming of moderate-fee, non-government schools in outer suburbs and regional centres, many run by evangelical groups, reflects parental determination to give their children a better start in life.
    
    "Critics of public accountability as a driver of school performance frequently hold up Finland as an example to follow. Ranking highly in international tests, Finland has minimal external testing and does not publish school-by-school comparisons, to which the Rudd Government and Klein are committed. Finland's system, however, is vastly different to Australia's in important ways that render comparisons meaningless. Children start school later in Finland, and teaching is a prestigious, highly competitive profession to which only about 10 per cent of applicants are admitted. In New York, as in Australia, creating a workforce of highly skilled teachers is an important goal for the medium to long term. But as Jennifer Buckingham pointed out on these pages yesterday, it won't help the children in underperforming schools now. Accountability and insistence on standards are the surest path to better performance. Klein, however, like the Rudd Government, is also addressing the issue of teacher quality, through fast-track programs for high-calibre university graduates and increasing the best principals' salaries by as much as 25per cent. Interestingly, the man who hired Klein, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been a member of both major political parties in the US. Profound, pragmatic educational reform spans the political and ideological divide, because it serves children's best interests."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • More funds for primary schools
    
    Primary schools will receive an extra $100 a student a year and schools in disadvantaged areas will have access to $1.1 billion over the next four years under the federal Government's schools funding proposal. At the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments in Canberra today, the commonwealth will offer the states and territories $14 billion for public schools over the next four years, half the amount provided to non-government schools in a separate agreement.
    
    See related story in The Age
    
    
    
  • Premiers band together to demand more
    
    ... Mr Rudd will offer the states an extra $1.8 billion in the base funding for education, $1 billion in additional funding for schools and $807 million to meet the costs of installing and running the federally funded computers promised during last year's election campaign. He will also offer $1.6 billion in special national partnership payments for education -- reward-based payments for undertaking specific reforms. Another $1.1 billion is earmarked to improve schools in low socio-economic areas and the rest for the already announced program to pay the best teachers more.
    
    The federal Government has already budgeted another $540 million to improve students' literacy and numeracy. It will also require the states to report on their performance and implement the new national curriculum from 2011.
    
    
    
  • Long, bumpy road to nirvana
    
    Public hospitals humming with patients who are promptly and efficiently treated by satisfied staff, replacing the chaos of overcrowding and impossibly stretched resources. Public schools with dedicated, high quality teachers promoting excellence, and where parents can compare the results and resources between schools. Affordable housing for the 500,000 Australians threatened by high rents. A seamless national economy where a business faces the same regulations in Western Australia as in NSW.
    
    This is the nirvana offered by Kevin Rudd's renovation of the federation. Just don't expect Australia to arrive at this blessed state immediately following today's meeting of the Council of Australian Governments.
    
    
    
  • University education still beyond the reach of many
    
    Wealthy students remain about three times more likely to go to university than those from poorer backgrounds, despite more than 15 years of government policy to widen access to tertiary education. While the causes are complex, going back to poverty, family attitudes, aspiration and disadvantaged schooling, data shows that an expensive private school remains the best way to maximise the exam results needed to get into the top universities.
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Unthinking dogma
    
    Science must always be contested - even climate change

    If climate change is real -- and "if" is the operative word -- every aspect of the phenomenon needs to be picked over and analysed with the utmost rigour. It is too important for anything less. But in parts of the community, rigour and climate change have become mutually exclusive terms. Distressingly large numbers of people have elevated climate change to something verging on a fundamentalist religion. True believers draw comfort from endlessly repeating the dogma to each other. Those who demand proof are shunned as heretics.
    
    
    

• The Sunday Times
  

  • Blackboard jungle (page 36)
    by Paul Lampathakis
    
    “An embattled school was locked down when a student allegedly attacked teachers.
    
    “Education Department staff confirmed that Mandurah High School, where problems have been rife this year, went into lock-down on October 28 “to protect staff and students”.
    
    “We can't comment further as it is now a police matter (and) courts matter,” a department spokesman said.
    
    “Issues including antisocial behaviour and truancy are so common that a review group was called in.
    
    “In a report released this week, it said essential improvements were needed in student behaviour management, the quality of teaching and student attendance at the school, where absenteeism has been as high as 69 per cent. The report also confirmed that 11 staff had left since the start of the year.”
    
    From The Sunday Times
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Values put to the test (page 64)
    by Phil Haberland
    
    "These are indeed testing times we live in.
    
    "A total of 13,000 young West Australians are still scratching their bleary heads this morning wondering whether or not they have blown the Year 12 Tertiary Entrance Examination they have just sat.
    
    "Meanwhile, thousands of wannabe Aussie immigrants sit silently in cramped quarters around the world wondering if they should be boning up on Don Bradman's batting average just in case the question is thrown into the revised citizenship test at the last moment.
    
    "And there are those of us who are still questioning the value of this very expensive and cumbersome form of assessing our people.
    
    "Do tests and exams have any place on our national borders or in our schools?
    
    "Federally, the Rudd Government has decided to continue with the implementation of the citizenship test. At a state level, Education Minister Liz Constable has indicated that next year she will introduce mandatory exams for all Year 12 students. The citizenship test, even in its revised form, will remain an absolute joke. It was a desperate populist ploy launched in the dying days of the Howard Government. Many saw it for the simplistic turkey it was. How does answering a few questions in an exam booklet about our country's laws and democratic rights give any real indications as to what lies within the candidate's heart?
    
    "Would-be terrorists know how to swat for an exam; know how to rote learn a given body of knowledge, especially when they can sit the exam as many times as they like.
    
    "An exam is no way to assess the qualities that make up "The Good Australian Citizen". Rather, it is a long process of assimilation and living peacefully among the natives that will achieve this end.
    
    "And what value are exams at school? At present we are going through a hugely reactionary period in our educational history.
    
    "There are constant calls for a return to some mythical, idealised time when "the basics" were drummed into us. The halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s were when the three Rs were physically belted into us; where rote learning and "teaching to the test" were the standard school procedures.
    
    "It was a syllabus where problem solving, deep-level understanding, creativity and teamwork were shunned.
    
    "It was a time when 30-40 per cent of students were deemed to have failed their Intermediate final exams and told to go out and get a trade.
    
    "This stigma would follow them for the rest of their lives.
    
    "In WA there is pressure to create and publish school league tables where parents can view dubious and dodgy data as to how schools rate compared with others..."
    
    Full story in The Sunday TImes at link
    
    
    

• The Guardian
  
  
  • Author despairs of 'lazy' teachers and students
    by Sadie Gray
    
    Has the internet emasculated students?
    
    "The writer Susan Hill, whose books appear on GCSE, A-level and degree syllabuses, has laid into ignorant students who demand that she writes chunks of their essays and lazy teachers who fail to check their facts.
    
    "What makes me despair is not the emails I get from dozens of students... wanting me to do their work for them and displaying an ignorance of any sort of ability to look beyond Google, let alone write an essay or read more than bites of the text. It is not even that they address me as 'Hi Suze'.
    
    "I forgive them, because I then get emails from teachers displaying an ignorance and laziness which is almost as great," she told the Daily Telegraph, citing the example of a teacher who insisted Hill's 1971 novel Strange Meeting had been heavily influenced by a work published some 30 years later.
    
    "Hill's website features extensive advice for English literature students but her warning: "Please note, she will not do your coursework or write your essays for you," appears to be widely ignored.
    
    "One pupil asked her to provide an answer in bullet points which he could cut and paste straight into his essay. A teacher wrote: "I'm stuck with teaching your book and I need some pointers."
    
    "Hill's indictment of ill-informed internet use, the spoonfeeding of students and standard of English teaching adds fuel to a fire that academics have been stoking furiously this year. The Institute of Directors 2008 briefing book on education, compiled with the University of Durham provides a wealth of statistics to back up its assertion that 47% of IoD members believe the quality of education provided by schools, colleges and universities has declined over the last ten years..."
    
    Full story in The Guardian at link
    
    
    
    
• WA Today
  
  
  • Now we have too many teachers: education chief
    by Anna Patty [the Sydney Morning Herald education writer]
    
    "So many teachers are waiting for permanent jobs in NSW public education that in some areas it is a "significant problem", the Education Department chief has warned.
    
    "NSW Director-General for Education Michael Coutts-Trotter said there were 24,500 teachers on the department's waiting list for permanent work.
    
    "We find ourselves with massive fields of candidates for positions right around NSW," Mr Coutts-Trotter told a recent budget estimates committee hearing.
    
    "He said in some areas of NSW there was an oversupply of teachers, particularly in primary schools.
    
    "The department has denied union claims of a looming teacher shortage.
    
    "The NSW Teachers Federation predicts 16,000 teachers will retire in the next four years, with a total of 28,000 retiring over the next eight years..."
    
    Full story in WA Today at link
    
    
    
    
• The Age [Saturday]
  
  
  • A schoolies trip far from the gagging crowd
    
    The tail end of the wet season has eroded the soil of the killing fields near Phnom Penh. It has washed away the mud, revealing pieces of sodden clothing — trousers, skirts, shirts — worn by Cambodians who were killed and buried there during the murderous Pol Pot regime between 1975 and 1979.
    
    This sodden field was the first place 17 Australian teenagers visited when they arrived in Cambodia this week on a different kind of schoolies trip, far from the beer-soaked antics on the Gold Coast.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Aboriginal students make short work of success
    
    A Sydney private school's investment in Aboriginal children is starting to pay off, with dramatically improved literacy and numeracy results... A snapshot of results for this year's first national literacy and numeracy tests shows the year 5 Gawura pupils achieved results in writing that bettered the state average and were less than one point below the school average.
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Vic Uni staff vote to take industrial action
    
    Victoria University staff have voted to take protected industrial action following the largest round of redundancies in Australian university history.

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This page last updated 1 December, 2008 0:12 AM