Monday 1 December

Tuesday 2 December

Wednesday 3 December   EBA-4 accepted

Thursday 4 December

Friday 5 December

Saturday – Sunday, 6 – 7 December

Monday 1 December

• The Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    School is about more than tests
    by Patricia Buoncristiani
    
    The experience in America has shown that rigid adherence to passing tests is not necessarily best for children and Australia should find its own way.
    
    "When it comes to the New York school testing scheme Education Minister Julia Gillard should speak with some of the US principals and teachers who work in schools in low socio-economic areas and their struggle to commit to their districts' quest for high test scores.
    
    "Minister Gillard should also talk to those New York parents who are fuming about too much testing or the $350 million extra being spent on it while there is a 50 per cent drop in the number of students attending gifted programs in the city.
    
    "Yes, we need accountability and we need to close the achievement gap between our most affluent and our poorest schools, but let's not fall into the trap of emulating a system that leaves its students below the OECD average in all tested areas in spite of spending more money per capita than almost any other developed nation.
    
    "Widespread high-stakes standardised testing is sending the US education system spiralling to the bottom. We need to seek out our own solutions and not follow them down.
    
    "New York schools chancellor Joel Klein's focus on accountability is improving test scores in New York but is it improving the education of the children they serve?
    
    "I retired three years ago after serving four years as a school principal in Virginia. Before that I was a principal here in Victoria. The demographics of my US school were typical of many urban schools - a majority of families living below the poverty line and 95 per cent of my children were African-American. Test scores when I arrived were deplorably low. The year after I left we had dragged scores up to the acceptable, accreditation level. The school was considered to be a success story. In spite of this I left frustrated, dismayed and angry.
    
    "How did we raise these scores? In a centrally managed system the curriculum was tightened relentlessly until teachers taught only what was going to be tested. The school district produced pacing guides and every teacher, in every school, was required to conform to the specific content and timing of curriculum specified in those nine-week guides. The side effect of this was that in struggling schools like mine there was no time for creativity or for responsiveness to the emerging interests of children. All that mattered was getting through the nine-week pacing guide before the nine-week assessments tested that content.
    
    "Results for individual students and individual teachers were scrutinised by administrators trained in "data disaggregation" and pressure was brought to bear on any teacher who had not covered the required curriculum in the required time span. A significant amount of time was spent teaching children "test-taking skills", a set of skills that would serve the school district well as it helped increase test scores, but would do nothing for children who would probably never face four-point multiple choice questions in the world outside the school.
    
    "They were taught how to read questions accurately - a useful skill - as well as how to maximise their chances if they had to guess. Struggling students, who were increasingly disengaged by this approach of teaching the curriculum rather than teaching the children, were required to attend additional half-day classes during vacation periods. In the nine-week period leading up to the large-scale statewide testing, students would also be required to attend after-school classes beginning as young as grade two.
    
    "State-wide testing was carried out under intense security. Teachers and principals were under huge pressure because scores would become public knowledge and schools and school districts would be publicly compared. There was considerable temptation for some to interfere with the process by either assisting students taking the tests or fiddling with returns.
    
    "Stress levels among children soared. I recall intervening in a fifth grade class when the teacher foolishly told children they may need to re-take the test because of a possible irregularity. When I arrived in the room I was met by hysteria, one child sitting rocking and banging her head against a wall and another tugging lumps of hair out of her head while the distressed teacher sat on the floor holding a third girl and trying to calm her down.
    
    "Once all the relevant data was received by the State Department of Education a period of months would go by while they were analysed.
    
    "In my first year I was surprised by the final results and asked my supervisor how they were calculated. She laughed and said even she didn't understand that, so it was best I didn't waste my time trying to. What we did understand was that a great deal of statistical manipulation was carried out to ensure that each school got "the best result possible".
    
    "The financial cost of the testing was also an issue. The unfortunate result was that the curriculum began to be determined by what could be tested by multiple choice questions, which can be easily electronically scanned. Content predominates and processes such as creative thinking are overlooked because they are too hard to test. How do you test a student's ability to think divergently with a four-point question?
    
    "My frustration grew out of my inability to respond to the individual, divergent needs and abilities of the students and teachers in my school. My dismay was fed as I watched the curriculum become narrower and narrower as fearful administrators and teachers focused on teaching only what was likely to be tested.
    
    "Anger began to rise in me when I saw how my economically disadvantaged students were becoming pawns in a numbers game. While they needed to learn that school was an exciting place that engaged their interests, explored the world outside their limited experiences and nourished their developing passions, they were being taught how to pass tests. It was time I left." [emphasis added]

    Patricia Buoncristiani is a former Victorian school principal who taught for many years in the United States.

    Widespread high-stakes standardised testing is sending the US education system spiralling to the bottom.
    
    From The Age at link
    
    

  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Ready to learn, just need a teacher
      
      "Recent Government claims of commitment to improving education outcomes for indigenous children are impossible to swallow when there are Aboriginal communities desperately working towards this goal, yet being thwarted by the same bureaucracies.
      
      "In the remote homeland of Mapuru, in Arnhem Land, in 1982, families saved their own money to build a schoolhouse. Now its children face uncertain educational futures because pleas for a full-time teacher are ignored and denied.
      
      "Neither the territory nor the Federal Government has deemed a permanent teacher a worthwhile investment, despite the fact that the Mapuru school boasts 100 per cent attendance every day — a feat rarely achieved in mainstream schools. Its 40 pupils are bright-eyed, enthusiastic and keen to learn.
      
      "If governments do not believe the children of Mapuru are important enough to be granted this basic right, any words of commitment to indigenous education are hollow."
      
      Georgia Vallance, Lauren Hargreaves and Phillipa Tabone (Charles Darwin University students), Darwin, NT
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • PM targets education inequality with $1bn handout
    by Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent
    
    "Kevin Rudd will identify the nation's 1500 poorest-performing schools and flood them with $1.1 billion over the next five years in a front-on attack on inequality of access to education.
    
    "The Prime Minister has also won agreement from the states to deliver the improvements by giving school principals greater power to hire and fire and to lift pay for their best teachers - smashing years of entrenched opposition from state governments and education unions.
    
    "The changes sit at the centre of $140 billion worth of new commonwealth-state funding deals clinched between Mr Rudd and premiers at the Council of Australian Governments meeting on the weekend.
    
    "COAG struck new agreements on health, education, housing, disability, productivity and indigenous services, most requiring states to publish data about their relative performance so voters would be able to assess whether the money was being used properly..."
    
    "The Australian Education Union - a trenchant critic of the education transparency reforms when they were raised by Mr Rudd earlier this year - said the commonwealth had stepped away from earlier proposals that would have created "league tables", which would have been harmful to disadvantaged schools.
    
    "Saturday's agreements ended a year of reform work by the Rudd Government, which came to power offering to "end the blame game" between the commonwealth and the states and to improve the quality of health and education services. To meet its promises, the Government had to impose accountability measures to ensure states used the extra funding to improve service delivery.
    
    "Ms Gillard said yesterday COAG had agreed to a new $42.4 billion, four-year deal on continuing school funding as well as separate and new nation partnerships targeting underperforming schools ($1.1 billion), improved teacher training ($550 million) and literacy and numeracy ($540 million).
    
    "She said the states' agreement to publish data about the relative performance of schools would allow the commonwealth to identify schools that were struggling to produce adequate outcomes and to inject further resources.
    
    "We've had disadvantaged school programs in the past," Ms Gillard said.
    
    "What Labor has never used before is full transparency." ...
    
    "Australian Education Union spokeswoman Mary Bluett said public schools needed an extra $2.9 billion a year in funding and that the COAG agreement delivered only $400 million a year.
    
    "While welcome, it's nowhere near enough to deliver the type of quality education we want," Ms Bluett said.
    
    "She said her union backed the targeting of disadvantaged schools because they were most in need. However, this meant 95 per cent of schools would not benefit.
    
    "She also backed greater training for teachers but said giving headmasters greater power to hire and fire would not promote collaboration between principals and teachers."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
  • Business Council of Australia media statement
    
    
    • COAG Agreement Provides Accountability and Leadership
      
      
      
  • Editorial
    Rudd stamps reform mettle on COAG
    
    The states' challenge now is to lift service delivery.
    
    The new education funding, too, is linked to the school performance reporting measures that Mr Rudd and Julia Gillard have outlined in recent weeks. In addressing educational disadvantage directly, Mr Rudd will identify the nation's poorest performing 1500 schools and provide them with $1.1 billion over the next five years.

    After years of opposition from teachers' unions and state bureaucracy to performance pay, Mr Rudd has tied the funding to state principals being given unprecedented flexibility to hire and fire teachers and reward their best teachers with higher pay.

    In the spirit of the agreement, Queensland's Education Minister Rod Welford moved quickly to unveil a plan to provide incentives for top teacher graduates to work in specialist subject areas, difficult schools and remote locations.
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    COAG's new era depends on the fine print
    
    Whether Saturday's COAG meeting truly qualifies as a new era of federalism, and for all the other lavish descriptions Kevin Rudd and the premiers heaped on it, will depend critically on the web of performance measurements, conditions and benchmarks embedded in the funding agreements...
    
    ... in education, incentive payments would lift the proportion of children completing Year 12, improve teacher quality, raise standards of literacy and numeracy, improve performances in disadvantaged schools and make it easier for parents to compare performance between schools.
    
    
    
    
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Schools fear flood of ex-private pupils (page 18)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "The only two public schools servicing Perth’s western suburbs are bracing for a wave of enrolments over concerns that cash-strapped parents will pull their children out of private schools.
      
    "Prestigious independent schools say they have not noticed any downturn in enrolments or waiting lists, but Churchlands Senior High School principal Neil Hunt said he was expecting an increase in applications because of the economic situation.
      
    “We are thinking that we might get a bit of a flood next year,” he said. “We don’t have any proof of that. Local community and business perception is suggesting that might occur.”
      
    "Mr Hunt was concerned that a big increase in numbers could put extra pressure on resources and facilities which were already under strain because of the school’s rapid growth in recent years. This year the school has almost 1800 students, compared with 1550 in 2005.
      
    “The Education Department policies are that if they live in the area, I have to enrol them,” he said. “But I don’t know where I’ll put them.”
      
    "Mr Hunt said he did not know if the potential increase in student numbers would be in Year 8 or whether some would be older students whose families could no longer afford to keep them at an independent school.
      
    “The hope is they don’t all turn up in Year 8, then it becomes a problem,” he said.
      
    "Shenton College, the only other non-selective State school in the western suburbs, said it had noted an increase in expressions of interest from students wanting to enrol.
      
    "But principal Michael Morgan said parents based their decisions on which school to send their children on a range of factors, of which price was just one, and he could not tell whether the rise in expressions of interest was due to the financial crisis.
      
    “By next year I will certainly know if we have a wave of increased enrolments, but at this stage we are on track to run the same class structures that we would have run from the beginning of this year,” he said.
      
    "Hale School headmaster Stuart Meade said he had not yet seen any impact on enrolments.
      
    “However, we are mindful of the possibility of enrolments declining given the continuing financial instability,” he said.
      
    "St Hilda’s Anglican Girls’ School principal Joy Shepherd said she did not expect to see any effects until 2010."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • School computers are not for keeps (page 18)
    
    “There are not plans for WA school students to keep Federal Government-allocated computers, even though their NSW counterparts will have theirs to keep after graduating from high school.
    
    “The WA Department of Education and Training said yesterday staff at each school would make their own decisions depending on the needs of their students about whether to buy laptop or desktop computers under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's promise to give all senior high school students access to a computer with a fast internet connection.
    
    “On Saturday, that package was sweetened by $807 million for States and Territories who had threatened to pull the plug over the burden of high running costs.
    
    “The State Government has estimated WA will require 51,000 computers which would cost it $167 million. The Federal Government has pledged $79.8 million for installation and maintenance, cabling, electricity, software licensing, teacher training and security.
    
    “In June, 86 WA schools received funding in the first round of the national rollout of computers to schools that had one computer between eight or more students. Schools have been given extra time to apply for the second round.
    
    “Under funding agreements, schools have up to two years to buy and install the computers.
    
    “NSW Education Minister Verity Firth said laptops would revolutionist the way students learnt and teachers taught in that State the hardware would continue giving beyond the classroom.
    
    “They can take it home, back to school, and then … when they leave school, they can take their computer away with them,” she said.
    
    “They need to know their way around computers in a way that no previous generation has had to.”
    
    “Ms Firth said laptops were better value than the original plan which was for 80 per cent of new computers to be desktops. A laptop-only deal was less than half the cost per student at $2245.
    
    “That figure included software, wireless internet for schools and training for teachers. A 10 per cent contingency for lost and damaged laptops was also factored in.
    
    “WA ministers have consistently warned that the State would not put money into Mr Rudd's election commitments but last week Premier Colin Barnett said WA would jointly fund the scheme.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    See related story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 22)
    

    • Cash for schools
      
      “In regard to your report (Gillard $500m boost to lift teaching standards, 24/11), I believe $500 million should be put towards improving disadvantaged schools instead of bribing “high quality” teachers to work there.
      
      “For starters, what makes a “high quality” teacher? A teacher could have several degrees and be extremely intelligent, but that does not necessarily mean that they can pass on that knowledge efficiently. So how do we evaluate this?
      
      “Second, everyone has a right to an equal education, so disadvantaged schools should surely be improved. If we can make sure that there are no “disadvantaged” schools in Australia there would be no need to pay teachers extra to work there.
      
      “Third, if teachers have the opportunity to be paid extra because they teach at a disadvantaged school then surely this would make “high quality” teachers transfer to them. This would mean that high quality facilities at non-disadvantaged schools would go to waste without enough quality teachers there to use them.”
      
      T. Stanley, Darning Downs
      
      
      

• ABC News
  
  
  • Oppn to block $28b school funding bill
    
    The Federal Government says it will not give in to the Coalition in the Senate over the allocation of $28 billion worth of private school funding...
    
    The Coalition is refusing to vote for parts of the bill that set a national curriculum and that force private schools to publicly disclose all their funding sources.
    
    
    
  • $800m school computers funding 'reflects Govt mismanagement'
    
    The role of Federal Government funding in education has dominated a rowdy day in Parliament.

    The Government is putting an extra $800 million towards its computers in schools program to cover running costs. Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne says its evidence of mismanagement.
    
    
    

• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Teacher Turnover: How Long Will They Stay
    
    "Teaching is an occupation with a famously high attrition rate. One figure often bandied about is that 50 percent of new teachers leave within five years. Other studies have shown it's not quite that dire, but turnover is still remarkably high. Prince George's County, where Paul Murdock teaches, is no exception. To learn what educators think of their jobs, the Prince George's school system last year surveyed more than 4,000 teachers. Here are some of the results:
    
    61.8% -- Agreed with the statement, "I like the way things are run at this school."
    
    82.4% -- Agreed with the statement, "There is a cooperative effort among the teaching staff to help students succeed."
    
    47.1% -- Reported that "acts of disrespect for teachers" interfere with instruction on a daily or weekly basis.
    
    60.4% -- Said "disruptive behavior" was a moderate or serious problem in their schools.
    
    61.6% -- Said "students coming to school unprepared to learn" was a moderate or serious problem in their schools.
    
    39.1% -- Said bugs and rodents were a moderate or serious problem in their schools.
    
    64.3% -- Disagreed with the statement, "I am satisfied with my teaching salary."
    
    41.7% -- Agreed with the statement, "I am burdened by data collection requirements."
    
    63.1% -- Agreed with the statement, "The teachers at this school like being here. I would describe us as a satisfied group."
    
    67.4% -- Agreed with the statement, "I often think about staying home from school because I'm just too tired, too stressed or not motivated to go."
    
    66.6% -- Agreed with the statement, "If I could get a higher-paying job, I'd leave teaching as soon as possible."
    
    From The Washington Post at link
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • 'Soft' A-level warning for pupils
    
    "More needs to be done to warn pupils that choosing a "soft" A-level subject could limit their choice of university course, a think-tank says.
    
    "Only two top universities publish a list of "non-preferred" subjects, the Policy Exchange report claims.
    
    "In January, the Russell Group of top research institutions warned that state pupils especially could be hampered by choosing "soft subjects" at A-level.
    
    "The report says universities and schools must make things clearer..."
    
    Full story at BBC News at link [similar stories in all major UK media]
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Laptops in schools will be antisocial
    by Yuko Narushima
    
    "A zippy internet connection? Sure. A social network? No way.
    
    "The State Government will give 197,000 senior public high school students a mini laptop next year. It will have wireless but no access to Facebook and MySpace.
    
    "The Minister for Education, Verity Firth, said the Government would prevent access to the social networking sites, and other sites, even when the laptops were used at home.
    
    "We don't want these kids to be using these computers for the not-so-wholesome things that can be on the net. And they won't be able to because essentially the whole server is coming through the Department of Education."
    
    "Before Labor was elected a year ago it promised that all students in years 9 to 12 would have access to a computer with a fast internet connection. On Saturday it offered $807 million in funding for states and territories that threatened to pull the plug over high running costs.
    
    "The $285 million allocated to NSW, including $189 million for public schools, was enough to get the state back onside.
    
    "Ms Firth said the laptops would revolutionise the way students learnt and teachers taught.
    
    "[Students] can take it home, back to school, and then after four years, when they leave school, they can take their computer away with them."
    
    "The Federal Government initially intended to supply desktop computers in 80 per cent of cases, but Ms Firth said laptops were a better option because at $2245 apiece, including software, wireless internet for schools and training for teachers, the plan would cost half as much as it would have if it involved desktops."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Learn to do without extras
      
      "It was pleasing to hear the head of SCEGGS say that "the success of any school is dependent first, last and every reason in between, on the quality of the teachers" ("Pay rises push up school fees to $24,000", November 28).
      
      "But if quality teaching is all that matters, would it not make sense to reduce funding for the "extras" parents are really paying for? In the past year I have seen job advertisements for a "strings co-ordinator" (known in a public school as the music teacher); rowing co-ordinator (the PE teacher); campus manager (the general assistant); and archivist (the librarian).
      
      "If private schools were serious about reducing fees, they would stop pretending that they believe quality teaching is all that matters, and start reducing the costs of all of those positions that public schools manage to provide quality education without."
      
      Julia Alvarado, Croydon
      
      
      
    • Laptops a crazy idea
      
      "It is crazy to give laptops to high school children ("NSW students to get promised laptops", smh.com.au, November 30). I predict vast numbers will be broken, stolen or lost within a few weeks - and then what? A more intelligent approach would be to develop a centralised system that can be logged into from anywhere via the web. The key to this is a decent broadband connection - that is where we should be concentrating research and funding."
      
      Greg Graham, Artarmon

 

Tuesday 2 December

• The West Australian
  

  • English exam risk to poetry: teachers (page 3)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “TEE English students will still be required to interpret pictures as part of next year's exam despite teachers warning that the decision will force schools to drop poetry because the curriculum was too crowded.
    
    “The Curriculum Council has confirmed it will not adopt all the changes to next year's English exam demanded by teachers. New sample Year 12 exam papers sent to schools last week include questions in which students must analyse photographs and are given and option to write creatively, even though a panel of English teachers had called for those elements to be dropped from 2009. The “teacher jury” set up by the State Government last year to review the outcomes-based education English course recommended students should not have to write about still images seen for the first time in the exam. Instead, they should be allowed to refer to “non-print” texts such as films studied during the year.
    
    “The jury also said creative writing should not be examined, though it should be retained in the course. Creative writing options and the requirement to interpret pictures caused controversy when they were included in the 2007 and 2008 exams, contributing to allegations that students could do the exams without reading books during the year.
    
    “Denis McMahon, spokesman for the English Teachers Forum which opposed the OBE English course, said analysis of still images belonged more to cultural studies than to English. Including them in the exam meant less time could be devoted to other important aspects of English, such as poetry.
    
    “In a busy would you make selection decisions and when you select still images it means you can't be selecting other things that we think are more likely to enrich children's educational experiences,” he said. “A number of schools no longer teach poetry in Years 11 and 12 any more, for example, because time constraints mean they have to focus their energies on these other things.”
    
    “Mr McMahon said creative writing was difficult for students to produce under exam conditions and hard to mark. The reference group set up to implement the jury recommendations should not have been permitted to ignore them but weary English teachers had given up the fight.
    
    “Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood said the requirement to analyse black and white still images in the viewing section of the exam had been retained because people relied heavily on images for information. “It is therefore important that students learn and are assessed on how to interpret these,” he said.
    
    “He said the optional creative writing questions would now require students to apply writing skills developed through their study of texts. For example, a question that asked students to “persuade and audience that the most dangerous thin in the world at the moment is our own complacency” could only be answered well if students had studied a range of texts such as scripts of persuasive speeches. The new sample exam required students to refer to texts they had studied during the year in the reading and viewing sections.”
    
    From The West Australian

     

  • Alston (page 20)

    
    
    

  © The West Australian
  
  

  • MPs told to end spat on schools Bill
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “Private schools are urging Education Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition rival Christopher Pyne to call off their high-stakes game of brinksmanship over funding, warning schools could close if the Senate bocks $28 billion in education grants.
    
    “Ms Gillard and Mr Pyne are blaming each other over the possibility that Parliament will not pass the legislation in the three sitting days left.
    
    “Debate on the Schools Assistance Bill is likely to begin today, with the possibility Parliament could sit indefinitely if the Government does not get its way.
    
    “Key Senator Steve Fielding is set to join the coalition to scuttle the Bill because of some schools' opposition to requirements the sign up to the unfinished national curriculum and disclose their income sources in return for taxpayer funding.
    
    “The strongest objection is from the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria, whose chief executive Michelle Green said the Bill would have Canberra telling teachers how to do their job.
    
    “But the association is becoming isolated from other State-based bodies, which want the Bill passed so schools can get their grants next month.
    
    “Association of Independent Schools WA deputy director Ron Gorman said principals were getting desperate because they relied on the Government grant to help run their schools until revenue from school fees was collected.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    See related stories from The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    

• SSTUWA
  
  
  • Educators can learn nothing from Chancellor Klein’s visit
    by Gary S Stager
    
    "Educational consultant Gary S Stager writes: As an American teacher educator and consultant I have enjoyed the great privilege of working with dozens of Australian schools and thousands of teachers over the past 18 years. My work has taken me from the most-troubled to the most affluent schools across your nation. The world is indebted to Australian educators for their innovations in primary education, literacy development and 1-to-1 computing.
    
    "Therefore, it is from a position of expertise and vast experience that I question November's tour of Australia by New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. Had Deputy Prime Minister Gillard not invited Chancellor Klein to “share his reform experience,” I might have suggested he visit Australia to learn a thing or two about education. His seven years in New York City have failed to demonstrate even a rudimentary understanding of teaching, learning or leadership. There is not a sliver of difference between Chancellor Klein’s education policies and those of George W Bush. In fact, you might call Klein, the “Donald Rumsfeld of education”.
    
    "Mr Klein is not the first ideologue with no education qualifications and simplistic get-tough theories to be put in charge of a large American school district. He may just be the worst. [emphasis added] Upon being named Schools Chancellor by the billionaire mayor of NY, Michael Bloomberg, the duo’s first order of business was to suspend democracy and eliminate elected school boards, as well as parental involvement across the city. Now accountable to nobody, but his mayoral benefactor, Klein changed the district’s organisational structure so many times that chaos ensued. Klein spent millions on public relations, British examiners and smearing critics while cutting services to students. Class sizes are up. Morale is down.
    
    "Anyone with access to Google could easily learn that Klein’s claims of miraculous test score increases have been discredited by experts across the political spectrum. This is particularly tragic since under his leadership, NY City schools have been turned into Dickensian sweatshops where frightened administrators browbeat otherwise creative teachers into following scripted curricula in order to increase student test scores. Klein’s heralded school report system with which he seeks to shame schools into increasing test scores have proven invalid as schools nationally recognised for excellence have earned low marks. [emphasis added]
    
    "Klein takes pride in the retention of students while research demonstrates that holding children back does not lead them to catch-up, but does increase dramatically their probability of dropping out. He unilaterally banned cell phones from schools over the safety objections of parents and then proposed a scheme in which students would be awarded cell phones for improved performance. In some neighbourhoods, corner milk bars charge poor students $3 per day to store their phones on the way to school. He extended the school day by 37 and a half minutes each day and killed off extracurricular activities in the process.
    
    "Recently, the New York City Council held its first oversight hearing of the school district in five years. When one Councilman compared Klein’s leadership to Marshall Law that has kept parents severed from the educational process, the combative Chancellor served up a scrumptious Orwellian confection. Klein offered a faux mea culpa and apologised for not acting quickly enough to follow-up on the millions he spent to hire “parent coordinators” in each school and admitted that he had waited too long to create the post of a “chief family engagement officer.” Klein’s administration is full of similarly hilarious job titles.
    
    "Klein is considered a tyrant, bully and worse by teachers in his schools who indicated that 82% believed he had little confidence in his teachers' expertise while 85% believed that the emphasis on standardised testing has failed to improve schools. His tenure has been marked by a constant attack on tenure, teacher rights and unionisation. Klein has not resisted an opportunity to engage in union busting, intimidation or teacher bashing. [emphasis added]
    
    "Klein may be remembered for the sordid period of the “rubber rooms.” I am the last person to defend incompetence or malfeasance on the part of teachers. Any teacher accused of crimes or infractions should be removed from the classroom and be afforded due process in a swift and deliberate fashion. Despite his prosecutorial experience Klein has failed to remove “bad teachers” from the system while violating the civil liberties of countless others who may be wrongly accused.
    
    "Run afoul of Klein or his enforcers and you may find yourself with the more than 700 teachers assigned to what are known as “rubber rooms” across the city. Rather than engage in the process of firing accused teachers or putting them on leave, Klein prefers to humiliate and punish them before any guilt has been proven. These 700+ teachers must report to a “teacher reassignment center” where they stare at a clock all day, five days a week. If this were not sufficiently Kafkaesque, Klein employs psychologists who use dubious assessments to determine fitness to teach. It doesn’t matter that the 7th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals deemed such quackery illegal, get a memo to visit the good doctor and your next stop is the “rubber room”. A veteran educator named “Teacher of the Year” by Mayor Giuliani has spent close to five years in a “rubber room”.
    
    "Why is a foreign bank, UBS, sponsoring his visit, especially during a time of global financial collapse? Surely there are ethical concerns in both the United States and Australia regarding such a gratuity to a public official.
    
    "How expensive could this trip be? A Qantas Boomerang Pass costs approximately $2,000 and would allow Klein to visit several cities. Then he could stay in the homes of educators like so many Americans who visit Australian schools. Better yet, he could spend some his personal walth on a proper Aussie holiday, one that won’t destroy the educational future of Australian children."
    
    Gary S. Stager, PhD is an educational consultant, journalist and Visiting Professor of Education at Pepperdine University. He earned his PhD from The University of Melbourne. The views expressed in this letter are his own.
    
    From SSTUWA and link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Catholic teachers stop work
    
    Teachers at Catholic schools across New South Wales have stopped work for an hour to campaign for a 5 per cent payrise. The Independent Education Union (IEU) says the stoppage will allow teachers to demonstrate their opposition to an interim pay offer of 2.5 per cent.
    
    
  • Gillard won't budge on school funding bill
    
    Education Minister Julia Gillard says Opposition demands to split the Government's $28 billion private school funding bill are "completely unreasonable".
    
    
    
  • Govt a 'bully-boy' on private school funding bill: Fielding
    
    Family First Senator Steve Fielding says the Government is being a "bully" over its private school funding bill... He says the Government must back down on its insistence that the bill cannot be changed. "That sounds like some bully-boy tactics that you'd use in a school yard, sort of saying you're not going to get the money unless you do this," he said.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Education sector divided over schools funding bill
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "A split has emerged in the independent schools sector over the Rudd Government's private schools funding bill, which the Opposition has delayed in the Senate, threatening the payment of $28 billion to Catholic and independent schools from next year.
    
    "The Association of Independent Schools of Victoria, representing 223 schools, has campaigned against the bill and its linking of funding to the implementation of a national curriculum and reporting of income.
    
    "Its campaign puts it at odds with other states, the national association and the independent schools teachers union, which have argued from the start for the bill to be passed to ensure private schools funding.
    
    "The Coalition, with the support of Family First senator Steve Fielding, is expected to split the bill to defer the contentious provisions and pass the funding in time for next year.
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard is standing firm that the bill will not pass without the provisions, saying the same requirements apply to government schools and the Government is determined to deliver greater transparency of schools.
    
    "Ms Gillard has assured the sector that the national curriculum will not prevent schools offering courses such as the International Baccalaureate or Steiner and Montessori, but these have been rejected as inadequate by the AISV.
    
    "The legislation must pass this week before the Senate rises on Thursday to ensure funding is paid to the schools in January.
    
    "Non-government schools receive about half their annual funding to start the year, with fees generally gathered during the term."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Related story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
  • Julia Gillard defends schools computer blowout
    
    Julia Gillard has been accused of serial bungling, leading to an $800million blowout in the cost of meeting her pledge to provide computers for all students in years 9 to 12... Ms Gillard defended the spending, saying the computer shortage, particularly in disadvantaged schools, was worse than Labor had thought. She added that Labor's election promise had included a clear undertaking to engage states on further funding needs.
    
    
    
  • Students play to preserve music academy
    
    A group of students from the Australian National Academy of Music will fly to Canberra today to lobby the federal Government for a 12-month stay of execution following the decision six weeks ago to axe funding.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • The Monday Education Section has been updated and contains six articles, including:
    
    
    • Time to get fair dinkum about a fair go
      
      The 2008 Australian Review of Higher Education provides the opportunity to facilitate improvements in higher education that will have a wide-reaching, positive and lasting impact on the future of this country and its people, particularly the people from lower socio-economic (SES) backgrounds and indigenous Australians.
      
      
      
    • Grads fail on emotional IQ
      
      Many employers say graduates lack empathy, self-awareness and thoughtfulness... Almost 20 per cent of employers are dissatisfied with the emotional intelligence of university graduates.
      
      
      
    • There's a bear in there [on maths puzzles]
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Editorial
    Premiers leave Canberra happy
    
    The premiers have been given an extra $3.5 billion to spend before next July on laptop computers for senior high school students, hospital emergency wards, and indigenous and low-income housing. This comes on top of the Rudd Government's $10.4 billion stimulus that will result in parents and pensioners getting big cheques next week to use at their discretion. The question is whether the states can get their act together and spend it in such a short time.
    
    This is not the revolution. In education, that will come gradually and more from an increase in status for the teaching profession than from laptops and league tables... [emphasis added]
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Uni experience is all the better if you leave home
    
    My personal experience and professional observations make me think students are better off leaving home and going into residence when they start university. This is a highly chosen option, if not the norm, in my native Canada, as well as in the US and Britain. New Zealand's oldest university, and one of its two best, is situated in a small university town, and relies on the bulk of its students coming from all over the country, including almost a third who come down from Auckland.
    
    Australian universities, and especially the older, elite ones, are overwhelmingly big-city commuter universities. They take a small percentage of students into residence, mainly from the country. On top of that, there is next to no tradition of large numbers of students travelling out of state to another university.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • An error message or two for Kevin Rudd
      
      "How many days will it take for the school-issued laptops to become the new mobile phones - the target for bullies on the school bus and petty thieves ("Laptops in schools will be antisocial", December 1)? And how much longer before insurance companies introduce a policy to cover the loss of school-issued laptops?
      
      "Maybe the money should be used to buy computers that stay in school, for loans to parents to buy a computer for home and for students to be issued with a memory stick."
      
      Helen Howes, Elanora Heights
      
      
      
    • "I would like to see the teachers at my daughter's high school have their own laptops, and then computers in the classrooms, long before the students get their own. Just one more thing for the children to lug around, lose, have stolen, sell, break or worry about."
      
      Madeleine Challen, Kareela
      
      
      
    • "The Department of Education has reported that it expects to supply a computer to each senior pupil for about $2250 each, yet shops are advertising high quality laptops for less than $1000, with operating systems, wireless networks and warranty. With such strategic thinking within the department, is it any wonder that pupils are not taking economics as an elective, and that we are not receiving the best value for the education dollar?"
      
      Michael Brennan, Richmond
      
      
      
    • "In his great wisdom King Rudd issued all students in his kingdom with shiny new laptop computers. The students were indeed enthused and happy until one by one little problems beset these wonderful machines. No one had been hired in the school to fix laptop problems. These small problems grew and grew and eventually became enormous problems. Soon the students grew tired and frustrated by their laptops. A year later a huge pile of broken and disused laptops gathered in the kingdom. The citizens decided to leave it there as a reminder to the king that he should ask for advice from his teachers before rushing into a very expensive and poorly thought out plan."
      
      Aine de Paor, Bondi
      
      Most schools that have a "personal student laptop program" require at least one full-time IT specialist just to service the student laptops. Web
      
      
      
      
• The Guardian
  
  
  • State urged to help deprived children to communicate
    
    The state should intervene to help bring up the nation's most disadvantaged children, to tackle a cycle of deprivation which has its roots in poor parenting, according to a report from two thinktanks.
    
    Pupils starting primary school increasingly need to be taught to speak because they have heard little language at home beyond the "daily grunt" from their parents, according to the report. It also says that children growing up in the most deprived homes need lessons in empathy and self-control. Schools are increasingly teaching pupils social skills usually learned at home, but such lessons are most effective when they involve the parents, the report argues.
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Media Bombardment Is Linked To Ill Effects During Childhood
    
    In a detailed look at nearly 30 years of research on how television, music, movies and other media affect the lives of children and adolescents, a new study released today found an array of negative health effects linked to greater use. The report found strong connections between media exposure and problems of childhood obesity and tobacco use. Nearly as strong was the link to early sexual behavior.
    
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • Left-handed children 'do badly at school'
    
    Children who are left-handed or ambidextrous perform worse at school than right-handers, according to a study of national curriculum test results. Left-handed girls fare worse than boys: while left-handers from both sexes start off performing worse, girls fail to catch up with their right-handed peers during later school life.

 

Wednesday 3 December

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Constable needs to heed public resistance to OBE (page 20)
    
    "Despite being killed off in Years 11 and 12, it appears that outcomes-based education refuses to die. TEE English students will still be required to interpret pictures and given the chance to write creatively as part of next years' exam. This is despite a teachers' review panel recommending against that amid concerns that students could do the exams without reading books during the year.
    
    "Education Minister Liz Constable must avoid the folly of the previous government and take note of public resistance to the influence of OBE and the clear desire for a system which delivers the basics of a sound, well-rounded education."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Schools feel pressure of community service plan (page 51)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "Schools are concerned their graduation rates will suffer because of a requirement for every student to do compulsory community service, a new report has revealed.
    
    "The Curriculum Council report found many schools were also struggling to implement the requirement for all students to complete 20 hours of community service because of a lack of staff and time.
    
    "It said the challenges had “implications for the ongoing implementation” of the program.
    
    “Staff shortages are impacting heavily on the implementation of the program in many schools, with the outlook for 2009 worse'” it said.
    
    "This comes after the WA Secondary School Executives Association warned some students might not qualify for university if they did not do their community service.
    
    "Students have to prove they have done 20 hours of community service to get their WA Certificate of Education, which they need to qualify for university entry in WA.
    
    "The requirement, introduced last year, will affect Year 12s for the first time next year.
    
    "The review said advantages of the program included benefits to sporting and volunteer organisations, more career opportunities and a boost to school profiles in the community.
    
    "The Curriculum Council decided the program would continue to be a compulsory requirement of graduation after it considered the report last week.
    
    "However, chief executive David Wood said schools would be able to request exemptions for a small number of students in 2009 and 2010. Reasons for granting an exemption could include cancellation of a planned program or extended illness."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Gillard caves in on school donor details (page 6)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    "Private and Catholic schools are close to getting $28 billion funding after Education Minister Julia Gillard promised they would not be forced to publish the details of individual donors.
    
    "Ms Gillard made the comment to key Independent Senator Nick Xenophon yesterday, which was seized on by the coalition after it had threatened to vote against the requirement schools disclose their funding sources in return for taxpayer funding..."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• SSTUWA
  
  
  • EBA4 Overwhelmingly Accepted
    
    Members of the State School Teacher’s Union of WA (SSTUWA) have voted to accept the salaries and conditions package negotiated between the Union and the Department of Education and Training.
    
    92.93% of teachers voting supported the EBA.
    
    The package included a 6 per cent interim payment already being received by teachers along with increased allowances – and further salary increases over the next two years.
    
    President of the union Ms Anne Gisborne said this afternoon that the new EBA took Western Australian teachers to the top of the national salary scale but pointed out that there were still issues to be resolved over the next year including workload and behavior management problems.
    
    “We have had more than a year of disputation with the previous Government with all of the resultant damage to teacher morale and there are still members who don’t believe that the Government has gone far enough towards solving the issues that face teachers on a daily basis,” she said.
    
    “I’d like to see Brendon Grylls move to have some of his Royalties for Regions funds diverted to pay teachers for their many hours of unpaid voluntary work - when they take part in Country Week and similar community events,” she added.
    
    The Union and the Department of Education and Training will now move to have the agreement registered by the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
  • The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
    
    
    • WA teachers accept pay deal
      by Paul Lampathakis, education reporter
      
      "WA teachers have overwhelmingly said yes to their latest pay offer - which will mean raises of more than 20 per cent over three years for most chalkies..."
      
      Election commitment
      
      "Education Minister Liz Constable said WA public school teachers had voted in favour of a new $1.067billion salaries and conditions package for 21,000 public school teachers and school administrators.
      
      "Dr Constable said it was a Liberal party pre-election commitment to deal with the teacher pay issue within the first 100 days of government.
      
      "The commitment had included an extra $120 million for teacher salaries.
      
      "She said the salary increases, which included a six per cent interim payment that had already been received by teachers, would ensure that WA Government school teachers continued to be among the highest paid in the nation.
      
      “Most teachers and school administrators will receive increases in excess of 20 per cent, with 5,000 experienced teachers receiving an increase of 22.75 per cent,” she said
      
      “This is in recognition of the efforts, skills and responsibilities of teachers and administrators in Government schools."
      
      "She was pleased that the Government had resolved the issue swiftly and honoured pre-election commitments.
      
      “It has been more than a year since negotiations began under the previous Labor government and the prolonged negotiations have frustrated many teachers," she said.
      
      “Teachers can now start their summer holidays later this month knowing that this important issue has been resolved.
      
      “I would like to congratulate the State School Teachers Union, its members, the Department of Education and Training and all teachers for their commitment to education in WA."
      
      "Dr Constable said teachers were highly valued by the Liberal-Nationals State Government and she looked forward to continuing to work with them to improve the overall standard of classroom teaching in the years ahead.
      
      "She said an application would now be made to the WA Industrial Relations Commission for the agreement to be registered."
      
      From The Sunday Times online / PerthNow at link
      
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Teachers in line for merit pay by 2010
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Victorian teachers could earn performance pay by 2010, and public schools may also get bonuses for lifting students' results under a State Government shake-up.
    
    "In a move that could be widely resisted by some schools, Education Minister Bronwyn Pike is set to introduce a new system that would pay teachers based on merit — and not just years of service — as part of a broader push to boost teaching quality in public schools.
    
    "Ms Pike told The Age the salary overhaul could take place by 2010, rewarding high-performing teachers who "add value" to students and share their skills with peers.
    
    "I don't want to pay teachers more for doing what they're already doing. I want to look at models that reward teams, potentially reward schools and reward individuals," Ms Pike said.
    
    "Details of the planned salary shake-up come days after the state and federal governments struck a historic deal for education funding at Saturday's Council of Australian Governments meeting..."
    
    "Opposition education spokesman Martin Dixon said it was appropriate to reward teachers who excel, but questioned the Government's motives, which are in line with a similar push by the Federal Government.

    "It seems that after COAG, the states have said yes to everything because they want the money," Mr Dixon said..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    

  • Schools' funding in doubt
    by Dan Harrison
    
    "Billions of dollars in Commonwealth funding for private schools remains in doubt after the Federal Government vowed to defeat a bid by Family First senator Steve Fielding to remove a clause from the legislation requiring schools to teach the unfinished national curriculum.
    
    "The coalition joined Senator Fielding last night to remove the contentious provision from the Schools Assistance Bill — which will provide about $28 billion in federal funds to the nation's 2220 private schools over the next four years.
    
    "But Labor senator Kim Carr said the bill must be considered as a whole and would be returned to the House of Representatives.
    
    "The Government believes that this is an unprecedented effort by the Senate to split a bill," Senator Carr said.
    
    "Private schools groups have warned that some of their schools may shut down if the legislation does not pass Parliament before it rises for the year tomorrow.
    
    "The bill will return to the lower house today, where Labor will move amendments to address concerns from schools about the disclosure of donors and the minister's power to delay or deny schools' funding."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
• News.com
  
  
  • Red pen too aggressive, Queensland teachers told
    by Gabrielle Dunlevy (AAP)
    
    "Teachers have been told to stop marking schoolchildren's work with red pen because it is an "aggressive" colour.
    
    "Queensland's Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle told parliament today that teachers were being advised to reconsider their pen choice because it may offend children.
    
    "Mr McArdle tabled a Queensland Health document proposing "strategies for addressing mental health wellbeing in any classroom".
    
    "It says: "Don't mark in a red pen (which can be seen as aggressive) - use a different colour."

    "Given your 10-year-old Labor government presides over the lowest numeracy and literacy standards of any state in Australia, don't you think it's time we focused on classroom outcomes rather than these kooky, loony, loopy, lefty policies?" Mr McArdle asked.
    
    "Premier Anna Bligh called the question trivial at a time of "such economic peril".
    
    From News.com at link [see related story from ABC News]
    
    

  • Google generation doesn't need rote learning
    
    School children no longer need to memorise facts and figures because everything they need is just a mouse click away, an internet educator says.
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • 'Oppn threatening funding', Gillard warns schools
    
    The Federal Government has written to every independent school in the country warning them their funding is under threat because of the Opposition's actions in the Senate.
    
    
    
  • Qld Govt slams 'tasteless' red pen debate
    
    The Queensland Government says a parliamentary debate about banning red pens is tasteless and trivial.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Op Ed
    The Gillard revolution
    by Janet Albrechtsen
    
    "... Far more important than the underfunded election gimmick of computers that still excites the ABC is Gillard’s grassroots change to education. There was no coincidence to the visit to our shores in the lead-up to COAG by New York City education chancellor Joel Klein. In Sydney late last week, he told me, with a cheeky smile, that he enjoyed being described by 2GB radio broadcaster Alan Jones as Julia’s pin-up boy. And it’s not hard to understand why Gillard is enamoured with Klein, who has run the largest public school system in the US - more than 1400 schools - for the past six years.
    
    "His bold reforms have challenged the status quo, lifting the prospects of thousands of children. Based on accountability, transparency and leadership, Klein’s system tests literacy and numeracy, and tracks the progress of students in every school and the outcomes delivered by every teacher.
    
    "His bold reforms have challenged the status quo, lifting the prospects of thousands of children. Based on accountability, transparency and leadership, Klein’s system tests literacy and numeracy, and tracks the progress of students in every school and the outcomes delivered by every teacher. 
    
    "Critics who complain that Klein’s reforms teach students to master mindless tests miss the point, he says. Every mark of progress students earn in the tests increases their probability of graduating. And lifting the outcomes of students stuck in the tail of educational disadvantage is Klein’s driving focus.
    
    "Importantly, parents can access all the information on the New York City education department’s website. Schools are awarded a grade for student progress, from A to D or F forfail.
    
    "The D and F schools face restructure or closure unless they improve. Principals and parents are surveyed regularly. That, too, is all public.
    
    "As Klein said, transparency means the public becomes your ally in reform, “so that parents can raise hell” about schools that are failing their children. Added to that powerful cocktail of transparency and accountability is competition from small, independent charter schools.
    
    "Parents with students at failing schools have the option to move their children to other schools. Underperforming schools stop taking students for granted..."
    
    "At COAG on Saturday, Gillard dipped her toe in the water of a Klein-inspired education revolution by scoring agreement with the states to publish data about the relative performance of schools. The commonwealth can then identify struggling schools and inject further resources into them. “What Labor has never used before is full transparency,” Gillard said. Klein said that “once this genie (of transparency) is out of the bottle, it’s very hard to put it back in”.
    
    "But if Gillard is serious about reforming education and confronting the tail of education underachievement, she will need to do more. The model of rewards and penalties that she has previously ruled out will, ultimately, need to be on the table. Handing out money to disadvantaged schools cannot be the end game if student outcomes do not improve. Closing down consistently failing schools, encouraging competition and providing incentives to schools that achieve have proven to be critical reforms in NYC.
    
    "Klein’s bold agenda is to position education of the most disadvantaged as the civil rights issue of the 21st century. If Gillard can do the same, she will, in the process, position herself as a true leader and Kevin Rudd’s natural successor. Sometimes the best reforms are done from within. For all the bluster about reforming education, none of the Coalition education ministers, including most recently Julie Bishop, could win over teachers unions to this cause..."
    
    "But if, as Klein has done, she can build on the present moves towards transparency with tougher reforms in the future aimed at greater accountability, she will deliver a real education revolution. And she will have earned the thanks of those who count: parents and students, especially those most disadvantaged among us who deserve a quality education..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Bradley expected to blur lines
    
    Tertiary leaders expect the imminent Bradley review to urge regulation of the higher and vocational education sectors to form a single system to boost equity, eliminate public and private sector barriers, and maximise skill recognition.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • First Byte
      
      "Now the so-called “Education Revolution” is under way, the first enrolment should be Julia Gillard. Her arithmetic is atrocious ("Gillard defends computer blowout”, 2/12)."
      
      John Clough, Carlingford, NSW
      
      
    • Judgment is premature
      
      "Let's see how Kevin Rudd’s $1.1billion funding for poor schools is applied before calling it “an excellent use of funds”, Brad Ruting (Letters, 2/12). That judgment is premature, given the appalling use of funds in the public school system in recent decades. Money given to private schools is probably better spent because, unlike public schools, they are responsible to parents."
      
      Michael Cunningham, West End, Qld
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Too many uni students cry poor
    
    I like to think I care about the plight of the less fortunate. But if you feel sorry for everyone with a hard-luck story you debase the currency. So one of the groups I've never had much sympathy for is self-pitying university students.
    
    They're middle-class kids pretending to be poor and deserving, whereas they're actually setting themselves up for a life of well-above-average earnings. The few years of their life they spend having to scrimp and save won't do them any harm. It might teach them to have some concern for the genuinely needy.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Grants a better way to give schoolchildren computers
      
      "With the speed at which technology develops, giving laptops to schoolchildren is inefficient (Letters, December 2). The answer is to provide yet another grant, because within three years, at most, the laptop will be out of date. All branded laptops meet the specifications required for school work so it is better to allow individuals to choose the laptop they prefer within a certain price band. If people want to pay more, they can do so.
      
      "Technology is so fluid it requires flexibility in allocating resources. Thecentralised provision of computers defies the very reason they are such successful tools. I suspect the Government does not understand that, and a lot of money is about to be wasted."
      
      Michael Stanbridge, Bonnet Bay
      
      
      
    • "As a teenager I find it exceedingly easy to bypass the parental controls on Windows computers ("Laptops in schools will be antisocial", December 1). Any student wishing to view blocked websites would simply need to obtain a portable version of the Linux operating system and temporarily install it from a bootable live CD/DVD or flash drive.
      
      "Then they could go to a wi-fi hotspot (usually a library) to connect to the internet. They would be able to visit all the websites allowed by the provider of the hotspot (in my case this includes Myspace, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia).
      
      "The computers the Government intends to provide to high school students can be easily used to look up inappropriate material."
      
      Gabriel Hooper, Armidale
      
      
      
    • "Is the Government really going to pay $2000 each for computers worth about $400? To whom? The Rum Corps?"
      
      Tony Turner, Tuross Head
      
      
      
    • Schools bill not all bad
      
      "It appears the wealthier private schools expect to have their cake and eat it ("Funding row puts private schools at risk", December 2). When Stephen O'Doherty (who represents many low-fee schools) has no issue with the bill that would make private schools disclose their income, what has the Association of Independent Schools to fear? Could it be the large amounts of extra private funding they amass? The only positive things in the bill are those the association disagrees with: adherence to a national curriculum and private funding disclosure.
      
      "In 2008-09, private schools are expected to gain $6.4 billion in federal funding, compared with government schools, which will receive only $3.1 billion. Even though the bill is steeped in inequity, at least it ties funding. If this will bring about change to the federal funding inequity between private and public schools, then bring it on."
      
      Sharon McGuinness, Thirroul
      
      
      
    • "Geoff Newcombe, of the Association of Independent Schools, is concerned that the publication of information on sources of funding would lead to misrepresentation of the data and unfair comparisons among schools. Good. At least he and others in the independent schools lobby might be able to appreciate what public schools have put up with for the past 20 years or more."
      
      Cliff Jahnsen, Bowral
      
      
      
    • Study priorities: domestic support or campus culture
      
      "Like any number of people itching to tell us how much better they do things somewhere else, James Allan makes assertion a substitute for understanding ("Uni experience is all the better if you leave home", December 2).
      
      "As a parent of former students and as an academic of 40 years' experience, I would say undergraduate students benefit immeasurably from the support of home if it is available. That support makes it easier for them to take part in all the activities of university life, sanctioned and otherwise, without having to worry about and spend time on practical things that belong to a later stage of life.
      
      "At an age when depression and other illnesses are common, and when personal failings can make life a mess, the student without the support of home is often in trouble. Time enough to dismantle those supports when a young person is ready for it."
      
      Alex Jones. Kirribilli
      
      
      
    • "I attended a residential university in the US and support James Allan's observations. In the US all the famous universities are residential. The commuter universities are, by and large, seen as in a lower tier. A key reason is that after classes students go home and campus life is relatively weak. It is accepted that valuable learning goes on outside the classroom, where students have opportunities to meet people from disciplines other than their own.
      
      "When residential universities are strong, a mobile student body searches for the best courses, and universities have to compete nationally for students."
      
      Richard Letts, Sydney
      
      
      
    • "Although we live in Sydney, the best thing we ever did for our daughter was to encourage her to follow the family tradition of living on campus at the University of Sydney. The residential experience is a far richer one; an opportunity to fully immerse in all that those special years of tertiary education have to offer.
      
      "Rather than wasting hours on public transport, she is socialising with students from all faculties and participating in vibrant inter-college sporting and cultural pursuits. A bonus is the need to become more self-sufficient and independent. It is very sad that so few have the opportunity to experience campus life."
      
      Debbie Page, Warrawee

 

Thursday 4 December

• The West Australian
  

  • Dispute ends as teachers accept pay deal (page 4)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “The long-running dispute over teachers’ pay has ended, with teachers voting overwhelmingly yesterday to accept the Liberal-Nationals Government deal.
    
    “The State School Teachers Union said 93 per cent of about 7000 members who voted agreed to the deal, which will hand most teachers pay rises of about 20 per cent over three years.
    
    “The package included a 6 per cent interim pay rise, which teachers have already received. Under the agreement, a senior teacher will earn $88,190 by October 2010.
    
    “Union president Anne Gisborne said the new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement took WA teachers to the top of the national salary scale but issues still to be resolved included problems with workload and behaviour management.
    
    “We have had more than a year of disputation with the previous government with all the resultant damage to teacher morale and there are still members who don’t believe that the Government has gone far enough towards solving the issues that face teachers on a daily basis,” she said.
    
    “The breakthrough comes after more than a year of negotiations, a stop-work meeting which forced many schools to shut and led to protracted legal action in the WA Industrial Relations Commission. Teachers rejected three pay offers from the Carpenter government. The third promised most teachers rises of about 17 per cent over three years.
    
    “Union activist Marko Vojkovic, who led the opposition to the previous pay deal, said yesterday’s result vindicated the stance members had taken.
    
    “Education Minister Liz Constable said the decision had ended a year of anxiety for teachers.
    
    “Education director-general Sharyn O’Neill said she was pleased the EBS had been resolved before the end of the year.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Last-ditch bid for school funding (page 4)
    by Andrew Tillett, Canberra
    
    “Family First Senator Steve Fielding and the coalition are under pressure to accept the Rudd Government’s push for a national curriculum so that $28 billion in funding can be guaranteed for non-government schools.
    
    “Education Minister Julia Gillard will launch a last-ditch attempt this morning to end the Senate stand-off that threatens to deny private and Catholic schools the taxpayer grants due in January.
    
    “To ratchet up pressure yesterday. The chiefs of the Independent Schools Council of Australia and the Catholic Education Commission flanked Ms Gillard at a news conference begging for the Schools Assistance Bill to be passed.
    
    “ISCA executive director Bill Daniels said that before the election the Government had flagged introducing the national curriculum and private schools were “comfortable” with their role in developing it.
    
    “We regard it as absolutely essential that this legislation is passed to give schools and parents the certainty and funding stability that they need from January 1,” Mr Daniels said.
    
    “The coalition and Senator Fielding oppose funding being conditional to signing the national curriculum, to be introduced from 2012. They say it is unfair for schools to agree to the curriculum when they do not know what is in it.
    
    “They want it possible for an “accredited equivalent” to be taught to give flexibility to schools with unique philosophies such as Steiner and Montessori schools, faith-based schools and those that offer specialist programs.
    
    “Montessori Australia Foundation torpedoed that argument with a statement saying its schools could still offer its program with the new national curriculum.
    
    “Despite the pressure, Senator Fielding and Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne were unmoved.
    
    “I don’t think that is surprising quite frankly, that the peak body groups, two years from an election with $28 billion on the table, which they’ve been told they won’t get unless they lobby the Opposition to pass the Bill,” Mr Pyne said..
    
    “Senator Fielding said the Government had made a “fine mess” of the Bill and denied he was being obstructionist.
    
    “Ms Gillard said she did not want to be “alarmist” but predicted “chaos” if some schools were unable to open next year because they did not get their money.
    
    “She said the Government would not amend the funding Bill and there was no contingency plan.
    
    “This is not a curriculum being written by politicians,” she said.
    
    “It’s a curriculum being written by educational experts, including expert representatives of the Independent and Catholic school systems.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    The bill has now been passed: see ABC News story below
    
    Also see several related stories from others newspapers, below
    
    
    

• ABC News
  
  
  • Opposition in 'humiliating backdown' on schools bill
    
    Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne has denied the Coalition has backflipped on its opposition to the Schools Assistance bill, after agreeing to pass it without further amendments.
    
    
    
  • Public school teachers stop work again
    
    New South Wales public school teachers will carry out more industrial action today as part of their ongoing dispute with the State Government.
    
    
    
  • Texting research overturns poor English blame
    
    Mobile phone texting isn't destroying the English language and proficient texters are usually better at reading and using traditional spelling and grammar.
    
    
    
    
• SSTUWA
  
  
  • EBA 2008 Update 92: Offer Accepted
    by Anne Gisborne   
    
    The WAIRC has advised that the count of votes has been completed. The member vote has determined that this proposal be accepted by the Union.
    
    
    • 92.94% YES
    • 6.92% NO
      
      
    DET and the Union will now proceed to have the documents registered in the WAIRC.
    
    EBA 2008 UPDATE 92 is the last EBA 2008 UPDATE.
    
    Members are thanked for their participation in the ballot process.
    
    The ongoing work of Union Reps and tremendous support and activity by members during the period of negotiations [September 2007 to December 3 2008] is acknowledged and I thank you.
    
    Union Reps and Members are encouraged to celebrate the finalisation of our new Agreement for conditions and salaries. Together we have taken W.A. teachers to a position of being the best paid in Australia [6th to 1st in just over two years]; hundreds more members will be advantaged with the expansion of the CTP/MTP [number of locations and quantums]; and many conditions have been preserved and not put at risk in arbitration.
    
    You will hear more detail on your new conditions in the New Year. Again thank you!
    
    From SSTUWA at link
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Coalition shaky on national curriculum
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The Coalition's support for a national curriculum is wavering as a result of Labor's intractable position that one national curriculum be mandated in schools.
    
    "Opposition sources say the intransigence of Education Minister Julia Gillard to acknowledge the place of other accredited curriculums -- such as Steiner, Montessori and the International Baccalaureate -- is threatening bipartisan support for a national curriculum.
    
    "After blocking moves to make private schools adopt the national curriculum as a funding condition, the Opposition intends to move an amendment in the Senate today that schools must implement the curriculum "or an accredited equivalent" as a condition of funding. [emphasis added]
    
    "The bill must be passed this week to ensure private schools receive funding from January, with most receiving about half their annual grant to start the school year.
    
    "Ms Gillard said the introduction of a national curriculum was a Rudd government election promise and would not preclude flexibility in the way schools taught the curriculum.
    
    "We have made it perfectly clear that the national curriculum will be about content and achievement standards," she told parliament yesterday.
    
    "There will continue to be room for innovation and creativity and for the development and delivery of curriculum methods at the local level in schools."
    
    "Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said the Coalition was in favour of the national curriculum.
    
    "But we have always said it was the national curriculum or its accredited equivalent so that Steiner, Montessori, International Baccalaureate, Cambridge International Examination Schools, Emilio Reggio Schools could continue to provide unique schooling methods which suit some students."
    
    "Mr Pyne yesterday released a number of emails of support for the Opposition's stance from school principals, all of which are based in Victoria.
    
    "The Association of Independent Schools of Victoria has campaigned strongly against the bill, putting it at odds with the national body and the Independent Education Union.
    
    "The Independent Schools Council of Australia and the National Catholic Education Commission yesterday called for the bill to be passed, and stated their support for the national curriculum."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Related stories in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
    Updated AAP story in The Age [online only, added at 9 am]
    
    
    
  • Pupils 'won't trash tax-funded laptops'
    by Imre Salusinszky and Matthew Clayfield
    
    "Senior NSW education bureaucrats have angrily rejected suggestions that public school students will trash the 197,000 laptop computers to be provided for them next year using federal taxpayer funds.
    
    "The $98 million tender for the mini-laptops, also known as netbooks, was issued yesterday and is believed to be the single largest purchase ever of such devices.
    
    "A further $60 million will be spent rolling out a wireless computer network in 571 NSW public schools.
    
    "The states and territories have received about $2 billion from the Rudd Government to upgrade computers in schools, with the NSW Labor Government deciding to spend its share on netbooks that students between Years 9 and 12 can use at school and at home.
    
    "Many students in elite private schools are already provided with laptops.
    
    "While the NSW program has broad support among principals, teachers and parent groups, one principal has dismissed the plan as "crazy".
    
    "Ian Parnaby, the principal of Bossley Park High School in western Sydney, told a Sydney newspaper on Tuesday that the netbooks would be damaged "when kids throw them around".
    
    "But Stephen Wilson, the senior official in charge of information technology for the NSW Department of Education and Training, said Mr Parnaby was "not giving enough responsibility and trust to the students".
    
    "Mr Wilson said NSW had factored in an annual loss of one in 10 machines and repairs and replacements would be funded out of the $807 million NSW demanded Canberra add to the national program for on-costs."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • First Byte
      
      "Giving all the kids a computer is like giving them all a puppy. Only some of the computers, though, will end up dogs."
      
      Geoff Phillips, Killarney, Qld
      
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Principal on tenterhooks over bill
    by Miki Perkins
    
    "School principal Simon Gipson has spent a nervous week tuned to the radio for updates on the passage of the Schools Assistance Bill through the Senate.
    
    "The bill is set to provide about $28 billion in funding to the nation's private schools but Mr Gipson, from St Michael's Grammar School in St Kilda, opposes a key condition that requires schools to sign up to a new national curriculum.
    
    "Mr Gipson has no quibbles with Labor's proposal for a national curriculum and believes most educators across the country are united in support for the idea. But the devil, he said, lies in the detail.
    
    "The problem is that at the moment the new national curriculum is ill defined and in the early stages, it's embryonic," he said.
    
    "He said the Federal Government should either accept the Opposition's amendment — which removes the provision — or split the bill.
    
    "But the Government yesterday rejected the amendment and Education Minister Julia Gillard warned Parliament that if the bill failed to pass through the Senate this week, private schools would face a new year without federal funding.
    
    "Mr Gipson said the Government was guilty of "politicking" and there was an element of "bullying" in tying funding to the national curriculum.
    
    "For many independent and non-government schools the notion that funding will be denied on the basis of this is of considerable concern."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • School Employees Forgo 5% Raises in Montgomery
    
    Montgomery County teachers and other school employees have agreed to give up a 5 percent pay raise next year, a concession that saves the school system $89 million and allows Superintendent Jerry D. Weast to balance the budget.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Parents can't buy selective school
    by Anna Patty Education Editor
    
    "The stakes are getting higher in the competition for selective school places.
    
    "The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating a complaint about the parents of a year 6 pupil in Sydney whose high hopes for their son may have got the better of them.
    
    "Xiaodong Lu and Qinghua Pei allegedly gave money to a teacher at Westmead Public School with what ICAC says was the "intention of gaining favouritism for their son".
    
    "The Herald understands the parents were seeking assistance from the teacher to help their son gain entry into a selective high school. The incident was then referred to the NSW corruption watchdog.
    
    "This year, more than 13,300 students in year 6 sat the selective entry test but only 3522 students received offers for year 7 at a selective school.
    
    "ICAC is seeking interested parties to take part in its public inquiry into the Westmead Public School incident on Tuesday.
    
    "The NSW Department of Education declined to comment on the matter yesterday.
    
    "The president of the NSW Primary Principals Association, Geoff Scott, said it was appropriate for teachers to accept small gifts from students, such as at Christmas time. However, offers of cash or valuable goods should be rejected, in line with the Department of Education's code of conduct.
    
    "Parents have the option of donating money or goods to a school, but this must always be openly declared.
    
    "Mr Scott said any attempt to bribe a teacher for a selective school place was misguided because individual teachers had no control over the marking of the selective schools test or in the placement of children.
    
    "The State Government finalised the location of an extra 603 selective school places in comprehensive high schools for year 7 students from 2010.
    
    "The schools chosen include Parramatta, Blacktown girls and Blacktown boys high schools, Elizabeth Macarthur, Bonnyrigg, Moorebank and Prairiewood.
    
    "Gorokan High School on the Central Coast and Grafton High on the North Coast have also been chosen along with Peel High, Armidale and Duval High schools in the New England region.

    "A virtual selective class will be established for western NSW."
    
    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • School computers: the software is the hard part
      
      "Computers for students should be based on need: if they don't have one, by all means give them a laptop (Letters, December 3). However, I suspect most would just be adding their laptop to the network at home. The real need is for software upgrades and support.
      
      "Due to licensing costs and the lack of technical support, schools often run old versions of software. Students completing assignments at home need to save their work in the old version so their teacher can read it, often losing features in the process. Forget the laptops - put the money into installing and maintaining the latest software."
      
      Anne Kirman. Kellyville
      
      
      
    • "The federal Computers in Schools program will give NSW students the best possible start in a workforce dominated by computers. Of the $2250 cost, $500 is for the laptop and the remaining amount will be spent on wireless internet, teacher training and hundreds of IT support experts.
      
      "Concerns that large numbers of laptops will be damaged or stolen are misplaced. Our laptops will be encoded strictly for use within a Department of Education network, so they are of no value if stolen. Our students deserve the best possible technology, and the best opportunity to equip themselves with the skills they need."
      
      Nathan Rees, MP NSW Premier, Sydney
      
      
      
    • Toll is too great for students to be at their best
      
      "It is self-evident that students get an advantage from a tertiary education ("Too many uni students cry poor", December 3). However, having worked at several universities in different states for 30 years, I can report that the number of students who are not from privileged backgrounds and who have to spend much of their time working has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Having to work three days a week and at weekends is not unusual.
      
      "This takes a toll and that toll, I believe, is on their intellectual and material effectiveness."
      
      Derek Kreckler, Austinmer
      
      
      
    • "Ross Gittins makes the all-too-common mistake of confusing HECS debt with cost-of-living pressures. Many students have no beef with HECS. It is a generally well-structured and equitable system. What he fails to take into account is the rising cost of basic essentials such as rent and food. Naturally this affects all low-income earners, and this includes most students who do not live at home. Although a vocal minority may bleat about HECS, it is the day-to-day cost of living that causes the most distress for students."
      
      Louise Merrington. Ainslie (ACT)
      
      
      
    • "Students do complain too much. They complain about HECS debts; whinge about overcrowded classes and drastic decreases in Government spending; go on about campus culture and student rights being stripped away by voluntary student unionism, and student income support being 33 per cent below the poverty line.
      
      "I would love to stop complaining. And I will, when we have a fair and accessible education system."
      
      Tom Patton, Newtown
      
      
      
    • "Ross Gittins is spot on. All fools have a reason to feel sorry for themselves and when students are not trying to force people into politicised unions, they are whingeing about investing in their own future, while apprentices are busting their guts for more than 40 hours a week for less than a student earns as a casual bartender.
      
      "I have amassed about $20,000 in HECS debts knowing that the result is a secure, stimulating, satisfying career with enough pay to compensate for my debt. HECS is a fair balance.
      
      "What is dumbfounding, however, is that the system was intended to relax the burden on the education budget, yet instead the Howard government hoarded the savings to help boast about budget surpluses. The state of our tertiary system has been in sharp decline ever since."
      
      Nick Kenny. North Ryde
      
      
      
    • "The collegial lifestyle may seem fun and exciting, but it is hardly financially viable ("Uni experience is all the better if you leave home", December 2).
      
      "James Allan seems to think travelling to university is as expensive as renting a place at a college. I spent about $750 a year travelling to and from the city.
      
      "My sister attended a country university where accommodation cost a minimum of $4000; in Sydney this figure is closer to $10,000.
      
      "How many students earn enough to pay rents like that and still eat? Mostly they can't and their parents foot the bill.
      
      "My social life was not lacking during my studies and I saved money that I can now use to support myself. I'm also glad I don't have an extra $20,000 on my HECS debt."
      
      Isabel Staas, St Ives

 

Friday 5 December

• The West Australian
  

  • Visa children 'burden schools' (page 3)
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    “Children of foreign workers are putting a huge burden on State schools because of their poor English skills and the Federal Government had no plan to deal with the problem, Liberal MP Mike Nahan said yesterday.
    
    “Dr Nahan said his recent survey of State schools in his Riverton electorate found 205 children belonging to workers on 457 visas workers who needed special English tuition, representing 5 per cent of total enrolments.
    
    “Colin Barnett predicted it would be a “growing problem” with widespread implications for many WA schools and said he would support a parliamentary inquiry into the issue. The Premier said the number of non-English speaking students belonging to temporary 457 visa workers had increased 30 per cent a year since 2001.
    
    “He told parliament there were 800 such students in WA schools.
    
    “I think it's an issue that should be looked at carefully... what has happened, are we looking after these children as well as we can, is it having in any way a damaging effect on schools or other children's education?” Mr Barnett said.
    
    “South Perth MP John McGrath said Como Primary School in his electorate had 50 children of 457 visa workers with special English needs out of a student population of 270.
    
    “Dr Nahan told Parliament while he and the schools in his electorate “welcomed and wanted” the foreign workers, many schools lacked the funding to provide these children with the expert language tuition they required.
    
    “The problem lies with the extra demand these kids are imposing on schools and the failure of the Rudd Government to plan for and fund their needs,” he said. “The issue is not just the number of children with special needs but with the diversity of their needs, ages and backgrounds.
    
    “The children range from pre-school to Year 11, they range from weakness in English to no English, they come from 10 different countries and speak 11 different languages.”
    
    “Dr Nahan said one school had four such children arrive at its door unannounced, all of whom had special English needs. He accused the Commonwealth of handballing its responsibility to the States.
    
    “Teachers are not complaining, they're happy to do their best by the children, but it is testing them and increasing their level of frustration,” he said. “The schools are not complaining but they are feeling more stretched.
    
    “This is a serious deficiency of the 457 visa program and the Commonwealth funding of schools. It is also a major gap in the Rudd Government's so-called education revolution. The reported aim of that so-called education revolution is to improve the performance of schools, specifically in the area of English language skills.

    “Mr Barnett said that as well as the 457 visa workers' children, the number of humanitarian refugees attending public schools had increased from 500 in 2000 to almost 970.
    
    “Federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans said he had acknowledged the education of 457 workers was an issue.”
    
    From The West Australian

     

  • Libs cave in on school funding (page 5)
    by Andrew Tillett
    
    “A complete backdown by the coalition had guaranteed private schools will begin receiving $28 billion in Federal Government funding, quelling fears some would have to close if they did not get the money in January.
    
    “In a significant win for Education Minister Julia Gillard, all private schools will have to sign up to the national curriculum as a condition of receiving the money.
    
    “The Senate passed the Schools Assistance Bill yesterday morning when the Opposition suddenly caved in to sustained pressure from school groups and Ms Gillard. Ms Gillard warned the Bill had to be passed in the final parliamentary sitting week to ensure schools would get their grants from the start of next year.

    “But the Opposition, with Family First's Steve Fielding, used their numbers in the Senate on Tuesday night to remove the requirement for schools to sign up to the national curriculum in return for funding.
    
    “They argued the curriculum would have too little flexibility for Steiner and Montessori schools and it was unfair to expect schools to sign up to something that was incomplete.
    
    “But the coalition failed to even more amendments, claiming a speech by Industry Minister Kim Carr minutes before the vote, in which he said the curriculum would not “mandate particular classroom practices” was an adequate assurance.
    
    “Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne, who was in the Senate listening to the debate, rejected suggestions he rolled over to avoid being blamed for blocking school funding. “I think the fact that we didn't proceed with our amendment underlines the fact that we're satisfied with what Senator Carr said on the (Hansard) record,” Mr Pyne said.
    
    “But Ms Gillard savaged Mr Pyne in Parliament, saying she had offered countless reassurances that specialist schools would not be restricted by the national curriculum.
    
    “She said the Government got everything it wanted with the Bill, including greater transparency measures that require private schools to reveal their income sources, as well as the commitment to the curriculum.
    
    “The Bill had also been contentious over the Government's insistence that schools disclose their income sources, including grants, fees and donations.
    
    “Ms Gillard claimed such a move was necessary to see hour resources affected results. But schools had been wary that publication of the data would see them envied and attacked for their wealth. Schools will still have to publish their income sources, but the identity of individual donors will be hidden.
    
    “School groups yesterday welcomes the legislation. Association of Independent Schools WA deputy director Ron Gorman said he was relieved schoos would get their grants after some smaller ones had scrambled for bank loans or faced closure. Schools would be able to work within the bounds of their new requirements.
    
    “National Catholic Education Commission president Therese Temby said “it was great news”.
    
    From The West Australian
    
    See Editorial [following] and related articles from other newspapers [below]
    
    

  • Editorial
    Rudd coercion prevails as coalition gives in on schools (page 20)
    
    “The Rudd Government got away with brazen political coercion yesterday when the Opposition abandoned its stance against school funding legislation under pressure. Continuing opposition to the legislation could have help up $28 billion in funding for non-government schools.
    
    “However, there were matters of principal involved. The Government insisted that private schools would have to sign up to a national curriculum that hadn't been written yet to get the money.
    
    “The coalition initially took the stance that this was an unreasonable condition and it was right. There was no logical reason for connecting funding to an unseen curriculum. Any new curriculum should be judged on its merit, not made a condition of funding.
    
    “The coalition, in effect, now has accepted the idea that the Government can use its funding powers to impose unreasonable conditions on schools. It was clearly spooked by the threat that it would be held responsible if it blocked the legislation and taxpayer grants did not flow to private and Catholic schools in January. In other words, the Government was able to stare down the Opposition.
    
    “The Government could have solved the problem by treating the proposed national curriculum and funding as separate issues, which is what they are.
    
    “It was the Government that created the threat to private schools that their funding may not be guaranteed by linking it to acceptance of the unseen curriculum.
    
    “The coalition was all too ready to abandon the principal that people ought not to be pressured under threat of financial penalty to sign up to something they haven't seen. Some representatives of schools, which no-doubt teach students not to put their names to what they didn't don't know or understand, also were prepared to go along with what the Government wanted.
    
    “They and the Opposition have taken a short-term view based on the expediency of the moment in the face of a threat arising initially from the Government's decision to impose an unreasonable condition on schools. There is a barely concealed element of hostility by the Government towards the richer private schools, reminiscent of that shown by former Labor leader Mark Latham who at one stage wanted to cut funding for some high-fee private schools.
    
    “This is reinforced by the demand for private to make known the sources of their non-government income, for no evident valid reason. Private schools must be held answerable to government on how they use taxpayer funds, but surely they do not have a similar public accountability obligation for funds from private sources. The Latham-like politics of envy is discernible again.
    
    “In a sense, the coalition has politically validated this style of government coercion by dropping its opposition to the legislation. It did so on the flimsy ground that Government frontbencher Kim Carr gave an assurance that the proposed curriculum would not “mandate particular classroom practices” and would give schools plenty of room for innovation and creativity.
    
    “In effect, the Government made acceptance of its ideology a condition of taxpayer funding of education and that is wrong in principal. The Opposition's cave-in allowed a bad precedent to be set.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
  • WA Private schools get access to solar funds [late update: online only]
    
    WA independent and Catholic schools will have access State Government renewable energy funding for the first time after a multi-million dollar expansion of the Solar Schools program.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor (page 22)
    
    
    • We told you so
      
      “Isn’t it wonderful! The powers that be of the Education Department have finally admitted that too many students were leaving school unprepared for life in the workforce. It has taken them 30 years to discover what parents and employers have been telling them all along. There may be a lot of support for Mr Rudd’s offer of computers for senior students, but keeping in mind the ongoing costs, I feel the millions would be better spent on providing resources for primary students to prepare them for high school.”
      
      Irene Neale, Busselton

    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • Private schools winners as Senate stand-off ends
    by Dan Harrison
    
    "Private schools have breathed a sigh of relief after the Opposition backed away from a threat to block legislation that tied billions of dollars in federal funding to the teaching of a national curriculum.
    
    "The Schools Assistance Bill, which allocates $28 billion to non-government schools over four years, passed the Senate yesterday, the last scheduled sitting day of the year, ending a long-running stand-off between Labor, the Coalition and Family First senator Steve Fielding.
    
    "The Coalition had proposed a change to allow schools to teach an "accredited equivalent" to the national curriculum, but it did not proceed with its amendment.
    
    "Coalition education spokesman Christopher Pyne sat in an advisor's box at the edge of the Senate chamber as Labor senator Kim Carr said the national curriculum would allow schools room for "innovation and creativity" and not "mandate particular classroom practices".
    
    "The national curriculum will be flexible enough to accommodate all schools including the Montessori and Steiner schools, schools preparing students for the International Baccalaureate, the University of Cambridge International Examinations and programs of that quality," Senator Carr said.
    
    "With those words, Queensland Liberal Brett Mason, the Coalition senator responsible for education in the Senate, walked over to Mr Pyne, who told him Senator Carr's assurance was good enough, and that the senator should withdraw the Coalition's amendments and pass the bill.
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard said the move represented "one of the most humiliating backflips in Australian politics", and that Senator Carr had simply restated the Government's longstanding position.
    
    "But Mr Pyne tried to save face yesterday, saying schools could rely on Senator Carr's speech in any future court challenge if the curriculum threatened their teaching methods.
    
    "I made the assessment on the spot that this was a very important clarification by the Government, that they had backed down to one of our key outcomes and we regarded that as a victory," Mr Pyne said.
    
    "Earlier in the week, the Government made changes to protect the identity of those who donated to schools, and to subject to parliamentary scrutiny a minister's decision to deny or delay funding to a school."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    Similar story in The Australian
    
    
    
  • Pressure can lift standards: UK minister
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Victoria has one of the strongest education systems in the world, but making life "uncomfortable" for under-performing schools can encourage them to do better, according to British Schools Minister Jim Knight.
    
    "In Melbourne this week for an international education leaders' conference, Mr Knight said he was impressed by the State Government's bid to improve public schools by demanding stronger leadership.
    
    "But as Victoria embarks on new reporting measures to make schools more accountable for their results, Mr Knight said publishing raw test scores in Britain — which resulted in controversial league tables — had lifted the bar in many schools. In some cases, struggling schools were closed and teachers or principals removed if they continually failed to help their students.
    
    "A lot of it is down to making it uncomfortable for schools that aren't doing well enough," Mr Knight told The Age.
    
    "There's a generation of children who can't wait for us to make things better incrementally. We've got to continue to be impatient — and do better for them." [emphasis added]
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Deal sets new goals for tolerance
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Schools will be asked to place more emphasis on Asian culture, sexual and religious tolerance and personal values such as honesty and respect under new education goals.
    
    "Days after brokering a multibillion-dollar funding agreement for schools, state and federal education ministers today will sign up to goals that every child should reach by the time they finish year 12.
    
    "The so-called "Melbourne Declaration" will underpin the new national school curriculum for students from kindergarten to year 12. Literacy and numeracy will remain the foundations of learning, but the new goals are expected to place greater focus on values.
    
    "The Melbourne Declaration was developed by Victorian Education Department secretary Peter Dawkins after talks between state and federal governments."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    So, Ms Gillard, the education debate is about values. Whose?
    by Kenneth Davidson
    
    "Although Education Minister Julia Gillard hasn't quite had the guts to say it, the clear conclusion from the education funding outcome of the COAG meeting last weekend is that the Federal Government is hell-bent on making government schools the residual system. This is the real meaning of the so-called education revolution.
    
    "Last August, a research paper on school funding for the Australian Education Union by Jim McMorrow showed that, based on forward estimates contained in the Government's first budget, unless it restored government schools to the 1996 funding relativity with non-government schools by giving them another $1.5 billion a year, schools could lose up to 1000 teachers.
    
    "Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called the report inherently dishonest even though McMorrow had been a senior bureaucrat in the NSW Education Department, is an honorary professor of education at Sydney University and was an adviser to Jenny Macklin when she was shadow education minister.
    
    "Gillard dismissed McMorrow's figures on the grounds that "the conclusions are based on information currently provided in the budget papers". Wow! So much for budget accuracy.
    
    "As Gillard says, the debate is no longer about resourcing schools, it's about values. Perhaps. But the values that underpin the increasingly inequitable funding that is leading to a two-tiered education system can no longer stand the light of day in a civilised society. But a civilised society is a hollow concept unless it is based on giving children equal educational opportunity. The school system that has evolved in Australia since the axing of the Schools Commission in the 1980s and the disappearance of any evidence of an equitable basis for resourcing schools has been a switch from seeing education playing a central role in nation building, both economically and socially, to a system that reinforces the dangerous tendency of ambitious parents to see education as a "positional good", which determines access to top jobs, high incomes and social status.
    
    "Once the middle class have switched their children into private schools because they believe it is superior, their enthusiasm for paying taxes for an education system they don't use drops off. Worse, why should they fund a system that, properly funded, is capable of achieving a level of excellence that might intensify competition for places in the best faculties in the best universities?
    
    "Of course, the argument is never put this way by those who have a vested interest in educational inequality..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • And the answer to this most vital inquiry is ... nothing
    
    After 69 submissions, 25 witnesses and three public hearings, a senate inquiry into accusations of academic bias at universities and schools has not made one recommendation. The committee said it found no evidence of a "left-wing conspiracy" designed to influence the nation's direction by subverting a generation of students, as had been alleged.
    
    Similar story in The Australian
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • For the record
      
      "RE: "Award adds weight to academy battle" (The Age, 2/12), the Government remains absolutely committed to elite classical music training in this country and recently provided an extra $500,000 on top of our $2.5 million commitment to the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM).
      
      "Contrary to claims that these funds are not new, readers should know that the newly constituted ANAM, under the auspices of Melbourne University, will receive these funds on top of the remainder of this financial year's $2.5 million.
      
      "I am absolutely confident that the Government's decision to make the overdue changes to the way our commitment to this elite training is governed and administered is the right decision, in the best interests of students.
      
      "I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet ANAM students and artistic director Brett Dean in Canberra earlier this week to put this view, and I welcome Mr Dean's indication that he would be meeting representatives from Melbourne University to discuss his possible future involvement with ANAM."
      
      Peter Garrett, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Turn off the laptops so students learn
    
    'There words where write' - the spellcheck said
    
    "The Rudd Government is to be congratulated that its real education revolution is taking shape after only a year, including performance standards, the public reporting of results and rewards for top teachers. The provision of a personal computer or laptop for every student in Years 9 to 12, however, will not lift education standards.
    
    "The Computers in Schools program will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than originally estimated. As schools know, maintaining computers and running a reliable intranet to draw the best from the technology costs more than the capital investment. The cost blowout, however, is not the main reason to rethink the program.
    
    "The internet is many things. Used well, it is a vast, convenient library. It is also the world's largest repository of pornography, rumour and error. Broadband, PCs and laptops are not, despite political stunts, the basis of a "digital education revolution". Neither are they "the toolbox of the 21st century" as Kevin Rudd claimed in a catchy grab during last year's campaign. The best education toolbox for the 21st century is the same as in ancient Rome and the Victorian era: the human brain. In the wrong hands, the internet and computers impede rather than enhance its use.
    
    "In such subjects as English and drama, cutting and pasting slabs of text, instead of reading and analysing books and plays, is prevalent. Despite detection software, plagiarism and even buying assignments online is rife. Too often, studying Shakespeare means watching a DVD of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Watching it on individual laptops will not make it any more educational.
    
    "Spell and grammar checks, as frustrated employers and teachers over 50 know too well, are detrimental to spelling and grammar skills. The spell check indicates "there words where write" when their words were wrong. In word processing, those functions should be turned off at school. Nor should computers and calculators be used so often, especially in primary school, that they erode students' abilities to write by hand, learn their tables or solve maths problems.
    
    "On the positive side, computers have advanced such secondary subjects as design, accounting, information and computer technology and foreign languages. This is no reason to have them on all day, however.
    
    "Experienced secondary teachers understand why the internet has rendered much humanities research superficial. Geoffrey Partington, in an incisive Quadrant essay this month On the reading of books, explains how distorted arguments can mislead non-experts. Most students are ill-equipped, for instance, to evaluate emotive arguments, disguised online as fact, on contentious subjects such as global warming.
    
    "Well applied, the web has been a boon in some humanities study, making primary sources, even thousands of years old, readily accessible. Online resources like Hansard, UN and US State Department bulletins have also enriched good history students' assignments. The key is teachers helping students discern worthwhile material and weed out the rest. This means keeping the laptops shut most of the time as teachers take students through a rich content-based curriculum and the students focus on their books, as free as possible of what Partington calls "ideological capture".
    
    "Poorer teachers, whose own school and university educations were probably inadequate, find it too easy to disengage with the actual teaching as classes and homework become protracted Google sessions. But however well schools and parents filter out chat rooms, social sites and pornography, it is impossible to prevent students wasting online study and school time on games and entertainment that at best belongs in their leisure time.
    
    "Individual computers, which many students, including some of the poorest, already have at home, must not be allowed to impede the broader goals of the education revolution. This means keeping them off more often than on."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Dad files protest on school Ark story
    by Caroline Overington
    
    "A Queensland father of five has taken action in the Anti-Discrimination Commission after his four-year-old daughter was asked to help make a replica of Noah's Ark at the local state school.
    
    "Ron Williams, who has five children under the age of 10, is opposed to religious instruction in state schools.
    
    "He said he was taking action because he did not believe students should be "exposed to superstitious mumbo-jumbo, presented as fact, in an educational setting".
    
    "Mr Williams complained that his daughter, Kathleen, now 5, was asked to make the "sizeable" replica of Noah's Ark during her prep class at Gabbinbar State School, "despite the fact that Queensland Education bans prep children from taking part in religious education programs in state schools".
    
    "Mr Williams said the Ark replica was later pinned to the classroom wall, and the teacher showed his daughter a DVD "with a Genesis theme and a book about Noah's Ark".
    
    "The school denies the claim, saying the children were shown a video of Evan Almighty -- a comedy about a man who builds a replica of Noah's Ark -- and a book about the Ark as part of a unit of study on animals and the noises they make.
    
    "Mr Williams has withdrawn his daughter from Gabbinbar State School.
    
    "Besides taking action in the Anti-Discrimination Commission, Mr Williams intends to sue Queensland Education for the cost of having his children educated by distance education or some other, secular alternative to the state school program.
    
    "His two sons still attend Gabbinbar. His two other children are not of school-age.
    
    "In taking action against Kathleen's teacher, Trina Savio, and the school's principal, Greg Brand, Mr Williams said he was standing up for a "significant, disgruntled underbelly of parents" who do not want Christian stories taught at state schools.
    
    "He said Australians lived in a society with a separation of church and state and he was therefore protecting Kathleen's fundamental human right: freedom from religion..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    • Genesis of complaint
      by Caroline Overington
      
      "Ron Williams is a father of five from Toowoomba in Queensland, a town he calls the "buckle of the Bible belt". He's not a Christian. He thinks the Bible stories - the creation of the world in six days, the mass evacuation of animals on an ark - are superstitious nonsense.
      
      "He scoffs at people in his neighbourhood who are evangelical Christians: he calls them fundies, for fundamentalists, or happy clappers. He does not want his five children, all under 10, exposed to any "mumbo-jumbo".
      
      "So Williams enrolled his children in a state school. It was his understanding that they would "get an education free of supernatural stories presented as fact". But in his view, in Queensland at least, that's no longer possible..."
      
      "In taking action against EQ and in withdrawing Kathleen from school, Williams says he is standing up for a "significant, disgruntled underbelly of parents" who do not want Christian stories taught at state schools. He says Australians live in a society with a separation of church and state. Therefore, he is protecting Kathleen's human right: freedom from religion.
      
      "Williams is the kind of parent who could conceivably drive a schoolteacher nuts, and his campaign did not start - and surely will not end - with the drama of the ark..."
      
      Full story in The Australian at link
      
      
      
  • Stokes' man set to take over West
    by Tony Barrass
    
    "Respected newspaper executive Bob Cronin is expected to play a pivotal role in Kerry Stokes's plan to overhaul The West Australian and rebuild the monopoly's damaged brand and public reputation.
    
    "Cronin, the paper's last editor-in-chief before former West Australian Newspapers managing director Denis Thompson made the position redundant when Cronin resigned a decade ago, is firming as the "steady hand" Stokes will install after the tumultuous editorship of Paul Armstrong.
    
    "The newspaper is in turmoil after WAN chief executive Ken Steinke, chairman Peter Mansell and two other board members resigned on Wednesday, effectively giving control of the board to Stokes."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Lingering blame game
    by Michael Costa [former Labor Treasurer of NSW]
    
    "Kevin Rudd's handling of the recent Council of Australian Governments negotiations reminds me of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy's dog Toto pulls back a curtain to reveal the great and powerful Wizard of Oz is actually an ordinary man in control of a machine that creates a lot of noise and motion but in reality does nothing very useful.
    
    "After promising for nearly two years to end the blame game between the commonwealth and the states, the Prime Minister has done nothing more than buy off the states until the next federal election with some additional funding. The schools computer deal is silent on who bears the ongoing costs beyond this package, or is this a one-off computer policy?" ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Brisbane Courier Mail [late pickups from 4 Dec]
  
  
  • Policy gets an F
    by Kevin Donnelly
    
    "Education systems with no red pens and no wrong answers feed the delusion that our students are doing well. State education gets an F for setting up children for failure.
    
    "The Queensland Health document calling on teachers not to use a red pen when correcting students' work (it's seen as aggressive and damaging to self-esteem) is so bizarre, it has to be true.
    
    "In the Alice in Wonderland world of education – where teachers no longer teach, they become guides by the side, where classic literature is replaced by SMS messaging and graffiti and history is reduced to studying the local tip (it's the environment, stupid) – nothing surprises.
    
    "Read state and territory curriculum documents from the past five to 10 years and the fact is that no one fails. Learning is developmental, so don't worry if children cannot read or write as, eventually, they will pick it up.
    
    "Ranking kids one against the other or giving a test marked out of 10, where 4 means fail, is wrong as each student is precious and unique and being competitive reinforces a capitalist, winner/loser mentality.
    
    "Failure is redefined as "deferred success" and reports describe student achievement with comments like "consolidating", "not yet achieved" and "establishing". No wonder parents don't have a clue where their children rank in the class.
    
    "It's also no wonder that so many thousands of primary school children enter secondary school with such poor literacy and numeracy skills and that universities now have remedial classes for first-year students, teaching essay writing and basic algebra.
    
    "Fast forward to Gen-Y and the results of this care, share, grow approach to assessment and correcting work are clear to see. Having never been told their work is substandard or that, compared with others, they may have failed, Gen-Y has an inbuilt sense of invincibility and success.
    
    "Ask employers about working with Gen-Y and the consensus is that this is a generation that expects never to be corrected, that promotion is automatic and that near enough is good enough.
    
    "After years of being told at school that everyone has a right to an opinion – after all, how we read the world is subjective and teachers are only facilitators – no wonder many young people are incapable of working out the difference between success and mediocrity.
    
    "There is an alternative. As every good parent and teacher knows, children need a disciplined approach to learning, and to be told when they have passed or failed. Boys, in particular, need clear and immediate feedback about what's expected and whether they have reached the required standard.
    
    "Look at the stronger-performing education systems of Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, and it's obvious they rely on competitive assessment at key stages and students suffer the consequences of not doing well enough.
    
    "It's ironic that Australian students, who are in the "second 11" when it comes to international maths and science tests, on being interviewed express a high opinion of themselves and their ability to do well.
    
    "Asian students, on the other hand, who consistently rank at the top of the table, say that they need to work harder as they feel there is always room for improvement. So much for the smart state."

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

    From The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
    
    
    
  • Red pen saga - teachers told to leave wrong answers blank
    by Patrick Lion
    
    "Teachers at a Brisbane school were told to leave wrong answers by students blank, as marking it wrong would have hurt the child's confidence.
    
    "The case at Algester State Primary School on the southside has emerged in the wake of the red pen controversy this week involving Queensland Health warning teachers to stop using red pens as the colour was too "aggressive".
    
    "One teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was shocked at the recent directive to leave answers blank.
    
    "They didn't want us to write anything," he told The Courier-Mail.
    
    "A spokeswoman for Education Minister Rod Welford said he was too busy to be interviewed and that he did not comment on "operational" issues anyway.
    
    "There's nothing for our minister to say," the spokeswoman said.
    
    "A one-paragraph statement from Education Queensland issued later failed to discuss issues proposed.
    
    "It came after the red pen controversy played out in State Parliament again, with the Bligh Government turning the tables on the Opposition over the source of the red pen advice.
    
    "It was contained in a Queensland Health kit given to 30 schools to provide a range of tips and hints on dealing with mental health issues in the classroom.
    
    "The Liberal National Party had claimed the document was "kooky, loopy, loony, Left policy" but the Government yesterday revealed the kit was initially released nationally by the Howard government in 2000.
    
    "Health Minister Stephen Robertson lampooned the LNP claims, questioning who the "Marx and Engels of the Howard socialist government" were who devised the kit.
    
    "None other than comrade Dr Michael Wooldridge and comrade Dr David Kemp - a couple of loony lefties full of kooky, loony and loopy ideas if there ever were any," Mr Robertson said."
    
    From The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Indigenous language teachers need better training, report says
    
    The Federal Government's report into the future of Indigenous language programs in schools says teachers need better training to ensure the success of courses into the future.
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Strapped Schools May Boost Class Sizes
    
    

    Worsening budget conditions are pressing school officials in the Washington area and across the country to consider backing away from what has become a mantra of education: Kids learn best in smaller classes. Area school systems are moving into the difficult part of their budget seasons, and many of them say that trimming spending by increasing class size is a real possibility.
    
    

  • The Guardian
    

    • Harvard fears big cuts after $8bn fund slump
      
      The global economic crisis has breached America's ivory towers, with Harvard University yesterday considering steep cuts to make up for an $8bn fall in its endowment fund.
      
      
      
• BBC News
  
  
  • Minister checks on science exams
    
    A government minister has said he is calling in copies of GCSE and A-level science exam papers to satisfy himself they are not being "dumbed down". Science Minister Lord Drayson said it was vital that the brightest and best pupils were stretched by education.
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • Log on to the virtual world of tomorrow at Olympia
    
    For those people who don't know a virtual learning environment from an integrated learning and management system, but have never liked to say so, help is at hand.
    
    
    
  • 'Educate girls to stop population soaring'
    
    The longer girls stay at school, the fewer children they have, professor says
    
    The explosive growth in the global population could be curbed significantly if teenage girls in the developing world were given the opportunity of completing a secondary school education, says a leading expert in human numbers.
    
    Putting girls in developing countries through secondary school is one of the single most important factors that causes them to have fewer babies in later life, said Joel Cohen, professor of populations at the Rockefeller University in New York.
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Gillard permits different rules for non-public schools
      
      "Well, that didn't take long, Julia Gillard. On radio on Tuesday you vigorously asserted the non-negotiable necessity for non-public schools to reveal their sources of funding so you could compare performances between schools. This was essential for the education revolution - you must have meant it was "non-core" essential.
      
      "By mid-afternoon the religious lobby had worked a miracle. Non-public education does not have to be transparent nor accountable but it will still receive its $28 billion to educate 1.1 million of the easiest-to-educate students. Of course this includes an acknowledged $2.7 billion overpayment that comes from the highly skewed application of the socio-economic status funding formula.
      
      "So transparency and accountability are only for the public sector. Remember the public education sector, Julia? It's the one that has to provide education for all children - regardless of ability or disability, location, socio-economic status, ethnicity etc. It does this effectively - despite the imposition of politically correct doctrines by politicians of both main parties whose (non-public school) children do not have to bear the consequences of their parents' "feel-good" impositions.
      
      "Why is the non-public education system so afraid of having its funding sources disclosed in return for $28 billion of taxpayers' money for educating or indoctrinating 1.1 million easy-to-educate students? Is it afraid that the full extent of direct and indirect taxpayer funding at federal, state and local government levels will be revealed? Is it afraid that the reasons for such schools being able to "lose" more than $1 million to embezzlement without noticing, and having the money to pay almost $13 million for acquiring land now owned by taxpayers, will become common knowledge?
      
      "Religious schools and alternative schools demand the right to taxpayer funding yet are not prepared to accept the responsibilities demanded of the public system. They claim exclusivity because they exclude those with disabilities, who cost more to educate; those whose ethnicity does not "match" their desired clientele; and those who cannot pay the fees. They include the most likely to succeed academically because of family socio-economic status and educational levels. Not much value being added there, Julia. But that's OK. After all, it is the "independent", non-public education system, isn't it?
      
      "We need to use accurate descriptors. Public schools are paid for by the public, are accessible to all of the public and are fully accountable to the public - they are not government schools. And "independent schools" are not independent - they are religious schools or schools of alternative educational philosophy that are highly subsidised by the taxpayer yet are neither accessible or accountable to the public.
      
      Margaret Gunter, Armidale
      
      
      
    • Top secret laptops? That's a laugh
      
      "Mr Premier (Letters, December 4), the intelligence and defence agencies of the world cannot secure the laptops they lose. Would you please explain how the serially incompetent NSW Government intends to achieve this for schoolchildren?"
      
      James Mason, Redfern
      
      
      
    • "Nathan Rees obviously does not have children who are easily distracted and leave things on buses. As a parent I would be forever on tenterhooks that my child was going to lose a laptop if she were carting it to school each day. And spare a thought for students completing their schooling through TAFE. With fees rising, many of them cannot afford textbooks or even a basic scientific calculator costing less than $30. Will these students be offered the same deal as schoolchildren?"
      
      Margaret Grove, Abbotsford
      
      
      
    • "So if the Premier is right and the free laptops are encrypted to only work on the Department of Education network, why are students allowed to keep a very expensive paperweight after finishing high school?"
      
      Peter Denham, Hornsby

 

Saturday – Sunday, 6 – 7 December

• The Sunday Times
  
  
  • Computer reporting error for WA schoolkids [page 5: different title in newsprint version]
    by Paul Lampathakis, education reporter
    
    Exclusive: "Hundreds of WA children could be getting the wrong marks and comments on their school reports.
    
    "Teachers say a computer system malfunction means grades and remarks for Years 8 to 10 students have been input against wrong names.
    
    "They say affected schools are using an old computer system and many hundreds of children were involved.
    
    "The Education Department confirmed yesterday that the system had crashed in 12 schools, but would not name the schools or say how many students were involved.
    
    "A spokesman said solutions had been provided for the schools so they could continue working on reports.
    
    "The deputy director-general of finance and administration, Peter McCaffery, played down the situation, saying a "very small number'' of schools had reported a problem with the school report template.
    
    "It is not widespread and will not affect students receiving their school reports,'' he said. "The issue will be addressed on Monday and, if necessary, the reports can be produced centrally.''
    
    "But teachers said so many children were involved they were not confident all mistakes would be picked up. They also expressed concern about Year 11 reports that had already been processed before it was realised there was a problem.
    
    "If it's happening this week when we've been picking the problem up, there is a chance it could have been happening last week when the Year 11 students were being done and no one would have known,'' one teacher said.
    
    Teachers at Applecross Senior High School, which has about 900 lower-school children, said the situation was "shocking''.
    
    "Over the last week the system has . . . deteriorated to such an extent that when teachers input a student's marks, they are recorded incorrectly or recorded under a different student's name,'' one teacher said.
    
    "I have never experienced anything like it.''
    
    "Teachers said the situation got so bad on Thursday that administration closed down the system three times trying to rectify the problem, without success.
    
    "It actually seems to have made the circus worse,'' the teacher said.
    
    "With all these starts, stops and errors, I don't know if the reports will be ready for parents before the end of the school year.
    
    "If they are, I am really concerned about their validity.
    
    "Because of the time taken over trying to rectify the problem and it still not working, it is highly likely that not all these errors are being picked up on.
    
    "It is highly likely that some students will be receiving the wrong grades.
    
    "I am also not at all confident that the system recorded all the marks correctly last week when we were inputting the Year 11 results and comments.''
    
    From The Sunday Times at link
    
    
    
  • Students on missing list (page 30)
    by Nick Taylor
    
    800 fail their report card
    
    "Hundreds of schoolchildren are "missing" from the education system.
    
    "An Education Department student-tracking database cannot find the "children whose whereabouts are unknown".
    
    "About 800 children who have enrolled at WA schools, but have disappeared off the radar, are on a confidential list compiled by the department..."
    
    "Education Minister Liz Constable said: "This list exposes one of the issues that I am talking to the director-general of education about.
    
    "There are obviously children on the list who should be in school and we must ensure all children get the best education..."
    
    Full story in The Sunday Times
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • School goals focus on values
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Federal and state governments have demanded that children are taught more about tolerance, respect and other core values.
    
    "In a landmark agreement, education ministers have signed up to a broad range of goals that every child must reach by the time they finish year 12.
    
    "The so-called "Melbourne Declaration" identifies the eight key learning areas that all states and territories must incorporate into the curriculum: English; maths; the sciences; the humanities and social sciences; the arts; languages; computer technology, and design and technology; and health and physical education.
    
    "But in a deliberate government push to make students more well-rounded citizens by the time they leave school, the declaration also calls for teachers, parents and the broader community to place greater emphasis on values and student wellbeing.
    
    "The new goals, which will underpin the national curriculum, were released at an education ministers' meeting in Melbourne yesterday. They state:
    
    ■ Students should graduate from school with "a sense of self-worth" and "personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience, empathy and respect for others".
    
    ■ Students must "act with moral integrity" and appreciate Australia's religious and cultural diversity.
    
    ■ Governments and schools must commit to bridging the gap between rich and poor students.
    
    ■ Schools should place more emphasis on Asian culture and computer technology to take into account societal changes — and increased global competition — over the past 10 years.
    
    "Victorian Education Minister Bronwyn Pike said schools worked hard to teach students good values, but the declaration required families and the broader community do the same.
    
    "There are clearly some gaps. Kids learn a lot about values but then sometimes that's not interpreted in their behaviour," Ms Pike said.
    
    "Therefore … we clearly have a challenge — and these goals sign up to further work in that space," she said.
    
    "The Melbourne Declaration was developed by Victorian Education Department secretary Peter Dawkins.
    
    "It will replace the standards set out under the Adelaide Declaration of 1999, which is regarded as outdated given changes in Australia's education system over the past decade."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    Making progress
    
    Wary of alienating middle-class voters, the Labor Government is pursuing more of an education evolution than a revolution.
    
    "... What happened in education this week was the first stage of a three-stage policy transformation planned by the Labor Party. Labor does not like the socio-economic status, or SES, formula, which links student addresses with census data to form an index of entitlement for each school. In Labor's view, the SES formula has such a broad application that it can be used to provide justification for some of the richest schools, with some of the richest parents, to receive windfall amounts of public money based on postcodes..."
    
    "The second stage is to be re-elected in 2010. Stage three is to put together a new formula in 2012, using the information provided by private schools in return for the taxpayer funds they will receive over the next four years..."
    
    Full stroy in The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Aboriginal language at risk in NT: watchdog
    
    Australia's human rights watchdog has accused the Northern Territory ALP government of threatening the existence of the world's "longest surviving continuous culture" by severely restricting the teaching of Aboriginal languages.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Privates must be private
      
      "With the Federal Government discussing a $28 billion funding plan for private schools, one has to ask the question "when will private schools actually become private?" We are a wealthy nation and can afford to fund a completely public schooling system.
      
      "Private schools discriminate on gender, class, race and are not compatible with an open, tolerant and equitable society. Very few OECD nations have a government propping up such a large number of private schools. In fact, many OECD nations have fewer private schools than Australia, and many of those are completely privately funded.
      
      "I believe our future generation would benefit enormously from the removal of these discriminatory schools from the public budget. Private schools should be exactly that: "private" (no public funding)."
      
      Luke Vanni, Wavell Heights
      
  
  
  
  
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Pay rises lead to 8pc jump in school fees (page 12)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "Private school fees will rise as much as 8 per cent next year as WA’s elite colleges claim teacher pay rises and an effective cut to Federal Government funding have put pressure on budgets.
    
    "Parents of children at some of Perth’s most expensive schools will have to pay about $1300 more a year as the annual fee breaks through the $17,000 barrier for the first time.
    
    "Under the existing funding model, which the Federal Government has pledged to keep until 2012, independent schools receive grants based on the socioeconomic status (SES) of their students.
    
    "Presbyterian Ladies College principal Beth Blackwood said the Government funding, which provided 11.4 per cent of the school’s income, had been frozen at its current level per student for the next four years, effectively reducing its future income.
    
    “If the past quadrennium is a guide, this will mean missing out on compounding increases of 11.9 per cent for secondary students and 18.5 per cent for primary students,” she said.
    
    “Obviously this impacts on budget outcomes each year.”
    
    "Ms Blackwood said fees at the Peppermint Grove school had soared above the inflation rate in recent years because all the costs involved in running a school had gone up.
    
    “It is because CPI represents price increases across a broad basket of goods while the costs of running a school like PLC, such as salaries, maintenance and capital expenditure, have been well in excess of CPI in recent years,” she said.
    
    "Staff salaries had to increase so the school could remain competitive in a tight labour market, she said. After a pay rise this year of 7 per cent, PLC teachers would get another 5 per cent next year, as well as allowances for extra responsibilities.
    
    "State school teachers were granted a 6 per cent increase in September and will receive 5 per cent in October next year.
    
    "Christ Church Grammar School principal Garth Wynne said his staff would receive a 6 per cent salary increase next year and the school had budgeted to employ more education assistants and school psychologists.
    
    "The SES score for the Claremont-based school went up when it was reassessed after the latest census, which means it will receive less Federal funding for the next four years.
    
    “The particular way independent schools are funded places unique pressures on Christ Church,” Mr Wynne said. “The next quadrennium of funding by the Federal Government will see a reduction of about 11.4 per cent over four years.”
    
    "All Saints College principal Geoff Shaw said 2009 fees would rise 8.5 per cent, mainly because of a rise in teachers’ salaries.
    
    “Before we set fees we look at our cost commitments and the capacities of parents,” he said. “It’s a matter of finding the best balance possible.”
    
    "Catholic and Anglican school chiefs recently revealed Catholic schools would lift fees between 7 and 11 per cent and charges at low-fee Anglican schools would rise between 5 and 11 per cent.
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • Full-fee discrimination
    by Glenda Korporaal
    
    "As another generation of Year 12 students await their exam results and the academic community awaits Denise Bradley's report on higher education, the financial pressure on Australia's universities is growing.
    
    "A combination of higher costs, reduced income from investments, uncertainty about overseas student demand in a difficult global economic environment and the Rudd Government's ideologically driven abolition of domestic fee-paying students has further squeezed our tertiary institutions. At the same time, with the job market tightening up, more young Australians are expected to try for university places next year.
    
    "The situation highlights the folly of the Rudd Government's decision to deny universities the chance to tap into funds from domestic fee-paying students. With the surplus fast disappearing as the Government tries to boost a slowing economy, its decision will cost Australian taxpayers an extra $130 million a year: to replace funds universities were easily raising from Australian parents and students prepared to pay full fees.
    
    "At the heart of any plans for the future of Australian universities should be the goal of a simple, efficient system that can provide high quality tertiary education, producing as many skilled young Australians as possible.
    
    "However, the unrealistic assumption that the federal Government should - or could - provide most of the income for our universities has led to a hotchpotch funding system. As a result, too much energy is being expended on trying to cover costs by desperately wooing foreign students.
    
    "Although there should always be a place in the Australian system for foreign students, the pendulum has swung too far the other way, leading to a much higher percentage of foreign students than in most other developed economies.
    
    "At the moment, a staggering 25 per cent of Australia's one million university students are foreign fee-paying students; on some campuses the figure is more than 50per cent. The number of international students in our tertiary institutions soared from 17,248 in 1986, when the government introduced the scheme of fee-paying places for foreign students, to 53,000 in 1996, when the Howard government came in; it now stands at more than 250,000.
    
    "More than half the extra places in tertiary institutions during the past decade have gone to foreign students, with only 43 per cent going to Australians.
    
    "The wooing of foreign students has been revenue-driven, with the added carrot of Australian residency being facilitated by obtaining an Australian university degree.
    
    "You can't blame the foreign students who seek out a good quality education and possible Australian residency, but you have to question a system that seeks to shore up funding for its tertiary education system by selling places to foreigners when there are Australians who would also be prepared to pay the same amount for the right to educate their children. The system takes a large number of university places off the market for Australian students and artificially raises entrance scores for local students, which are largely set on a supply and demand basis..."
    
    Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Rupert Murdoch: Final Boyer Lecture
    A nation coasting in neutral
    
    Australia is not preparing itself adequately for the challenges ahead.
    
    
    
  • Islamic college denies assembly anthem ban
    
    A Brisbane Islamic school has denied it banned students from singing the national anthem at assemblies.
    
    
    
  • School chaplains 'worked miracles'
    
    God has cured at least one state school student of attention deficit disorder and another of asthma, according to interviews with chaplains employed in 2850 schools under a $165 million federal government program.
    
    The Lord has also made it stop raining at a state school assembly in Queensland and performed other miracles to bring state school children to Jesus. One chaplain was able to "fix the head" of a disruptive student by placing his hands upon the boy's head, and praying for him. These and other miraculous claims are included in a book about the national school chaplaincy program, which was introduced by the Howard government in October 2006.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Christian knowledge is vital to a well-rounded education
      
      Eight Letters at that link
      
      
      
      
• The Brisbane Courier Mail
  
  
  • Red marks for system gone mad [5 December]
    by Paul Syvret
    
    Suffer the children.
    
    "No wonder thousands of the poor little mites are reportedly on anti-stress and anxiety drugs, what with all the psychological abuse they are subjected to in the gulags that masquerade as our public schools.
    
    "That said, there have been some steps taken towards a more humane education system that reflect our modern, politically correct society.
    
    "For starters, corporal punishment has been banned, meaning sadistic headmasters can now keep their belts on when little Johnny decides to throw rocks at passing cars from the sanctity of the playground.
    
    "He's not a bad boy, just misunderstood. Six of the best would be counter-productive.
    
    "And before long, school tuckshops will resemble nice, healthy vegan cafeterias, with nary a calorie nor a single gram of trans-fat to be seen.
    
    "Our children are also now safe from physical injury. Parents can put away the Band-Aids, resting assured there will be no scraped knees from activities as perilous as contact sport, running or cartwheels.
    
    "Our progeny's report cards have been redesigned so that no one fails, they perform below expectations. After all, we wouldn't want them to think mediocrity wasn't good enough, would we? [emphasis added]
    
    "And now, thanks to helpful suggestions from our state's teaching fraternity, aided and abetted by Queensland Health, comes the next wave of long-overdue reform.
    
    "Red pens are out for starters. And good riddance. They are the tool of Lucifer himself.
    
    "They serve only to tell children that parts of the work they submitted were not up to scratch in an age when we should be taking a more post-modern approach to such out-dated thinking as the absolute concept of right and wrong.
    
    "Bean bags for children stressed out by the idea of learning their times tables and other arcane concepts such as subject, verb and object, is also a great idea. Maybe Education Queensland could retrofit them with i-Pods playing whale music, just to round out the experience?
    
    "But why stop there?
    
    "Is not learning in itself a stressful and, at times, traumatic experience?
    
    "Consider the poor child whose brain is just not geared to things mathematical, trying to struggle with algebra and long division or, in later years, the challenges of calculus and trigonometry.
    
    "Or the hapless youngster whose frontal lobe is more attuned to blowing up aliens on an X-Box than having to endure Shakespeare or Steinbeck.
    
    "They shouldn't be subjected to this state-sanctioned abuse - or worse, the ignominy of outside tutoring - and instead be allowed to opt out for some bean bag time, lest their fragile young psyches are permanently scarred.
    
    "What a crock of politically correct lunacy. The world has gone truly mad. I need some bean bag time." [emphasis added]
    
    From The Brisbane Courier Mail at link
    
    
    
  • 791 Reader Comments on the "no red pen" article
    
    
  • 126 Reader Comments on the "don't mark answers wrong" article
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • WA Oppn slams lack of funding for Busselton schools
    
    "The Western Australian Opposition has criticised a decision not to upgrade two Busselton schools, despite an election promise to the contrary.
    
    "During the election campaign, Liberal member for Vasse Troy Buswell said his government would work to rebuild the West Busselton Primary School and improve the Busselton Senior High School.
    
    "But no funds have been allocated to either school under the school improvements program.
    
    "Education Minister Liz Constable says she worked from a list provided by the Premier.
    
    "I haven't received any information about the schools in Busselton," she said.
    
    "Mr Buswell refused to speak to the ABC, but issued a statement saying he promised only to work towards the improvements.
    
    "South West Labor MP Adele Farina says it is not good enough.
    
    "The electorate has been hoodwinked," she said.
    
    "Dr Constable plans to visit the schools on December 16."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Christian school cleared over scriptural evolution class
    
    The Board of Studies has found a Christian school in Sydney's north-west did not breach syllabus guidelines during the teaching of evolutionary theory.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Get ready for a revolution in the way you interact with your computer
    
    Like Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report, we will soon be working computers by gesturing in thin air, Prof Chris Bishop will predict in this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures

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This page last updated 9 December, 2008 0:22 AM