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Breaking
News: Week of 22 December 2008
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From Monday 15 December 2008 through Sunday 18 January 2009, PLATO's Breaking News coverage is on "Summer Holidays", and will be limited to MAJOR Australian education news items. Major overseas stories will be added if and when time permits. The home page may be updated only once a day, normally in the evening.
We anticipate that full coverage will resume on Monday 19 January 2009.
Saturday – Sunday, 27 – 28 December
- The Australian
- Call for national centre on teaching
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"A national centre should be established to identify the best teaching strategies and disseminate the information to teachers in the classroom.
"Teaching Australia, the federal government-funded body charged with bolstering the profession, says the centre would bridge the gap between theory and practice in teaching.
"TA executive Fran Hinton said it was time for a serious investment of "energy, attention and money" into determining the most effective strategies for teaching students in particular subjects and contexts.
"The centre is about three things - about growing knowledge of the best teaching strategies, about articulating and documenting those teaching strategies ... (and) about sharing the knowledge of those teaching practices more widely," she said.
"Ms Hinton said the quality of teaching was one of the strongest influences on student results, and advising schools and teachers on the best methods to follow would improve student achievement.
"A feasibility study commissioned by Teaching Australia into a national centre for pedagogy proposes a body to act as a clearing house in gathering evidence on the best teaching methods from around the world, as well as conducting its own research.
"The feasibility study prepared by Monash University and a separate paper by Teaching Australia arguing the case for a national centre, propose a centre linked to a university, at a cost of about $5.4 million a year.
"But the proposal has been criticised for its focus on pedagogy and "knowledge of practice" rather than on a teacher's knowledge of the content in their subject.
"Leading international researcher into teacher quality Lawrence Ingvarson from the Australian Council for Educational Research said it "isn't acknowledged enough but it's a fact" that teachers had to understand content deeply to be able to teach it well.
"If teachers understand content superficially, they will use didactic, traditional, boring teaching methods and fail to engage their students," he said. [emphasis added]
"Dr Ingvarson was one of the authors of a paper commissioned by the Business Council of Australia released earlier this year on ways of improving teacher quality through performance pay."
From The Australian at link
- Op Ed
Balance academic freedom with rights of students
A look at the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations' report into academic freedom.
- The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
- Internet censorship expands
The Government's controversial internet censorship scheme may extend to filter more online traffic than was first thought, it was revealed today.
- The Age
- Overseas students exploited
International students in Victoria are regularly underpaid, face other exploitation in the workplace and are increasingly given misleading information by offshore student recruiters, a State Government inquiry has found.
- The Guardian
- Expulsion of pupils from academies hits neighbouring schools
Academies that expel large numbers of disruptive pupils are having a potentially bad impact on neighbouring schools, according to a review of the government's flagship programme in England.
Similar story in The Independent
- ABC News
- $16m for Vic private schools
Victoria's private schools have been given a Christmas funding boost. The State Government has announced an injection of more than $16 million. The money will be used on renovations and building upgrades.
- The Australian
- One in three indigenous kids fail test
The rate of illiteracy among Aboriginal children has been underestimated, with the first uniform national literacy tests showing the proportion of indigenous eight-year-olds unable to read is significantly higher than previously thought. A detailed report of the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy, released by education ministers, shows about one in three indigenous students in Year 3 failed to meet a minimum standard in reading.
- Editorial
A testing challenge
The NT Government must not waiver on classroom English
"The sad picture of indigenous children's literacy skills revealed by the National Assessment Program should serve as a catalyst for reform. Results of Australia's first uniform testing of Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students have shown that the extent of illiteracy among Aboriginal children is higher than previously thought. The problem is most acute in the Northern Territory, where only 30 per cent of indigenous Year 3 students met national benchmarks in reading. In Queensland, 66per cent did so, and in Western Australia 57 per cent.
"Part of the problem, pinpointed by Centre for Independent Studies senior fellow Helen Hughes, is lack of English in remote classrooms. This is not the fault of parents. "Remote community parents are desperate for mainstream education for their children so that they can get good jobs and lead decent lives," Professor Hughes wrote in April. "They argue that they teach their children their language and traditions at home and in the community, and want their children taught in English from kindergarten." Separate curriculums, she found, do not teach children to read, write or count in any language.
"Not everyone agrees. Sensible moves by the Territory Government to have the first four hours of schooling each day conducted in English met stiff opposition. Essential to boost Aboriginal children's chances of success, it was opposed, among others, by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma, whose own sophisticated command of the language helped propel him to a career as a diplomat and bureaucrat.
"In a speech last month in Darwin, Mr Calma disputed that bilingual education in NT schools has had a detrimental impact on English literacy. He also argued against teaching indigenous children predominantly in English on human rights grounds, citing the Convention on the Rights of the Child that "indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning".
"Nobody disputes the right of indigenous children to speak their own languages at home. But Mr Calma and others need to recognise that lack of basic skills, including English language proficiency, is holding his people back from better lives and job opportunities.
"A week ago, Territory Education Minister Marion Scrymgour unfortunately buckled in her bid to force teachers in remote schools to teach predominantly in English, with the matter to be negotiated with each of the nine bilingual schools on a case-by-case basis. These results, which show the most acute problems are in remote schools, should make the Territory Government press ahead with more English in the classroom in the interests of real social justice."
From The Australian at link
- The Age
- Internet censor scheme 'flawed' [Note: The same article is in The Sydney Morning Herald]
Trials of mandatory internet censorship will begin within days despite a secret high-level report to the Federal Government that found the technology does not work, will significantly slow internet speeds and will block access to legitimate sites. [Other than that, it's great! Web]
- ABC News
- Letter to the Editor
- Reading, writing and falling in the gaps
"Ton Arup's report ("Aboriginal children fail basic school tests", The Age, 20/12) reminds us yet again of our failure to improve literacy among indigenous children. Reasons for literacy shortcomings are diverse, including poor school attendance, lack of skilled teaching, lack of valuing of academic skills, and multiple daily life stresses in families.
"One fundamental cause of reading failure rarely gets a mention: lack of adequate language when beginning school. Without a knowledge of the letters, sounds, words and meanings in learning a strong vocabulary, children are way behind when they begin school.
"It is unpopular and politically sensitive to talk about indigenous language skills, and the place of English alongside "tribal" language. But if we want to help indigenous children to succeed in reading we must equip them with the English-language skills that are essential for any child to master reading.
"Failure to recognise and attend to the critical importance of the early pathways into literacy will perpetuate the seemingly insurmountable barriers to reaching national standards, and continue the unfair situation for indigenous young people in schools."
Margot Prior, Carlton North
- The Belfast Telegraph
- Op Ed
Black mark against reforms [22 December]
by Robert McCartney
"Teaching reforms proposed by Education Minister Caitriona Ruane will lead to more local children being disadvantaged, argues Robert McCartney QC
"Minister Ruane in her recent opinion piece first alleges that my comments on the education debacle are flawed and then offers what purports to be a response. If readers then expected a rational analysis of my views demonstrating their failings, disappointment was to be their lot.
"What the Education Minister produced was a mish-mash of unsupported assertion, political puff and an emotional appeal to class prejudice.
"All of the above were wrapped up in an insubstantial claim that her reform package heralds a golden age when children of all classes and abilities will enjoy a world class education that will produce an equality of results, which is a totally Marxist idea that even the Russians have since rejected. This baseless claim, peddled by so-called educational progressives will provide via the ‘revised curriculum’, a repeat of the disastrous results seen in England, where 40% of 11 year olds leave primary school unable to read to a minimum standard. These reforms are ‘child-centred’ rather than ‘teacher-led’.
"Teachers are no longer to be teachers, but simply facilitators. The Minister’s reforms are aimed at removing not only the means of selection but the principle as well..."
Full story in The Belfast Telegraph at link
- The original article by Education Minister Caitriona Ruane:
Why school reforms are in interest of all children [5 December]
Christmas Eve: Wednesday, 24 December
- The Australian
- Call for plan to tackle indigenous youth illiteracy
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"The higher than expected levels of illiteracy among Aboriginal children represents more a failure of the education system to teach than of the students to learn, a leading indigenous educator said yesterday.
"Indigenous Education Leadership Institute director Chris Sarra yesterday welcomed the collection of "tangible" data through the first national literacy and numeracy tests, but he said that what mattered was how thenation responded to the problem.
"We cannot walk away from Aboriginal children here," Dr Sarra said.
"From one angle, it can be said that Aboriginal children have failed dramatically, while, from another, it can be said that systemically we have failed Aboriginal children dramatically.
"Our response to the data must not be to explain why they are so far behind, but rather to articulate what we plan to do to about getting them up there with everyone else. While one in three might be failing, two in three are getting through. We can learn from this."
"As reported in The Australian yesterday, a detailed report of the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy shows the rate of illiteracy among indigenous children has been underestimated.
"Under NAPLAN, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in May sat the same test marked in the same way. Under the previous testing regime, every state and territory set its own tests, with the results moderated for comparison.
"The NAPLAN results reveal the state tests have masked the extent of illiteracy among indigenous children.
"The proportion of Year 3 students failing to meet the minimum standard in reading increased from one in five last year under the old testing regime, to one in three in this year's uniform test.
"The difference was most marked in the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia, where the proportion of students failing the minimum benchmark rose by between 10 and 25 percentage points.
"Dr Sarra targeted two areas to deal with the problem. The first was to put good teachers in remote communities for short periods to mentor less experienced teachers.
"We don't want the teachers only going there because they're paid extra cash ... and there shouldn't be the expectation they have to stay for 12 months or more," he said.
"The other area critical to improving standards was for principals and teachers to accept nothing less for their students than they would for their own children." [emphasis added]
From The Australian at link
- Letter to the Editor
- First Byte
“One in three indigenous kids fail test”, and “One in three fail literacy” (23/12)? One is singular. If that is the standard of their teachers, and of those who supposedly have been taught, we should not be surprised by the failures."
Michael Strangways Price, Mandurah, WA
Christmas Day: Thursday, 25 December
PLATO's Christmas Reruns
Memorable events from PLATO 2008
The [200 or so] top education news stories
The Best of Alston's education cartoons
EBA-3 posters and videos
PLATO Holiday Quiz
Plus a bit of nostalgia from earlier days
The original PLATO website
© The West Australian [18 August 2008]
Why There Is A Teacher Shortage In Western Australia
by "Stand Up"
To Anne Gisborne and the Unity Team
for persuading teachers to reject EBA-3 and thus get a larger pay rise from EBA-4
Merry Christmas, everyone... Web
Boxing Day: Friday 26 December
- Yahoo News
- Education Groups Compete for Piece of Stimulus Package
Teachers groups and school administrators, citing state budget shortfalls that are strangling local school districts, are continuing an end-of-the-year lobbying push to ensure education funding is part of the 2009 stimulus package.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), sent a letter Tuesday to members of Congress and President-elect Barack Obama in which she detailed the AFT's priorities for inclusion in the package. Weingarten said the legislation should provide fiscal relief to states, investment in infrastructure and measures to increase college access. Weingarten also called for a $3 billion temporary fund for school districts to pay for activities already authorized under the No Child Left Behind Act...
- The Sydney Morning Herald
- Editorial
More hole than filter
The Rudd Government is good at tilting at windmills, and the biggest windmill biggest so far - the internet. Against the best advice, the Government wants to censor it. There are many reasons why it should abandon this ill-conceived idea. First, it will not work... Second, it is an affront to freedom of speech... The further the Government gets drawn into this needless censorship quagmire, the less it will achieve and the greater the distraction from real issues...
- The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
- Policy review after school sex attack
"The WA Education Department will review its policies for managing school intruders following a sex attack on two children last month.
"A man discovered in the school toilets was escorted home - hours before he assaulted two children as they walked home from class.
"Education Minister Liz Constable said an investigation into the incident had found the school's actions in dealing with the intruder had not contributed to the sexual assault.
"But she said the report had identified policies and practices within the department that needed to be improved to give schools clear guidelines for handling future incidents.
“There is no doubt the department’s policy in managing intruders needs to be reviewed to provide greater clarity for schools,” Dr Constable said.
“It is important that this policy and the policy dealing with the management of emergencies, is understood and followed by all school personnel.
“I am pleased that the department’s Director General Sharyn O’Neill has undertaken to implement all of the report’s recommendations. This is a major step forward.
“I am also pleased that the department will work with Western Australia Police to improve communications between the two organisations, particularly in managing these critical incidents.”
"The minister also said the investigation had found that mobile phone SMS technology may be unreliable and should not be used as a substitute for more conventional means of communication with parents."
From The Sunday Times online / PerthNow at link
- The Canberra Times
- Tougher to teach the children well
The start and finish of the first academic year under the Rudd Government's ''education revolution'' hardly turned students' worlds upside down. In fact, they could be forgiven for thinking it was business as usual with the exception of a lot of furious counting of old school computers followed by deliveries of some shiny brand new ones.
This is a good "Education 2008 Review" and well worth a look. Web
- The Durban [South Africa] Daily News
- The sobering OBE reality [23 December]
by Glenn Ashton
Note: This article is available on the newspaper's website only by paid subscription. This copy has been distributed courtesy of the South African Civil Society Information Service.
"2008 is the first that pupils will matriculate under the new outcomes based education (OBE) system - one of the first major policy innovations under the new government and guided by the first Minister of Education, Sibusiso Bengu.
"The demand to meaningfully change the education system in South Africa was a priority intervention.
"Despite the best intentions of those who worked towards transforming the education system from within during the struggle years, such as the mass democratic movement-aligned National Education Crisis Committee (NECC), many years of hard work towards transformation were set aside in favour of the outright adoption of a completely new system.
"It was notable that the NECC, forged in the struggle to create alternatives to the hated Bantu education system, was backed not only by groups like the United Democratic Front, but also by the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu).
"It was, therefore, ironic that when Cosatu became a partner in the governing ANC alliance - along with the SA Communist Party and the ANC itself - it compromised its historical NECC alliance and supported the newly-proposed OBE system.
"While Cosatu wanted a national qualification framework, this was spliced inextricably into the OBE system that became the model for a revised national education system.
"OBE is not without controversy elsewhere in the world. Its conceptualisation by behavioural psychologists such as BF Skinner and the adoption of OBE in the US, Australia and New Zealand, led to early criticism of the system from disparate sources.
"In many parts of the world, its adoption was linked to a drop in standards and in the US it has been widely rejected.
"In South Africa, there was from the outset strident disparagement of the process behind the adoption of the OBE system and its implementation.
"This came from those within the NECC, but also perhaps as importantly, from bodies such as the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) as well as from academia and pedagogues.
"While some critique may have been tainted by vested interests, most was well-intentioned and aimed at the heart of the matter, namely that a technocratic-led coup d'etat had occurred in the education system - with little or no broad consultation.
"However, such criticism was rejected and OBE was declared a fait accompli and adopted with little consultation or debate.
"The OBE system was implemented by a vanguard of newly recruited young technocrats within the Department of Education.
"Its frameworks were formally adopted in 1997 and the curriculum in 1998. It is now widely accepted that there was insufficient dialogue about important details like curricula and teaching materials.
"It is also worth considering the hidden influence of neo-liberal ideology at the time of OBE adoption.
"World Bank and International Monetary Fund-influenced concepts of fiscal responsibility were neoliberal tools ostensibly implemented to drag SA out of the legacy of its apartheid debt and to integrate it into the global economic system.
"But such interference had profound consequences on everything, from the rejection of the Reconstruction and Development Programme to the adoption of OBE.
"One telltale sign was how increased class sizes were pushed, while teachers were simultaneously marginalised and "rationalised".
"But aside from the history, what has a decade of OBE shown us?
"We must ask on the eve of the announcement of the first matric results to be released under this new system, whether what has been promised has been delivered.
"Have we got a better system for all South Africans, irrespective of race or background?
"Indications are that all is not going to be well. The education system remains polarised. Well-resourced schools remain so, while poor urban and rural schools responsible for the education of the majority of our people continue to struggle, despite nearly 20 percent of our national budget being consumed by education.
"Poor infrastructure and lack of teaching aids are a reality. Gangsters make the attendance of school a daily hazard in urban slums.
"While the concept of a non-discriminatory education system is wonderful, the reality is rather more sobering. A one-size-fits-all system is fine, if everyone gets the same tools with which to learn, that is.
"But dishonest attempts to massage the system and to set the pace at the cadence of the slowest disadvantages the most able and limits the potential of those less so.
"In order for OBE to work, a curriculum that is open to constant improvement through learned collective experience is needed.
"OBE principles are widely recognised to work best in small classes, but instead we have classes of at least 35 and sometimes 50 or more.
"These are not ideal conditions by any stretch of the imagination, neither for the brightest nor slowest.
"Perhaps the most trenchant critique of the system from the outset has been that it is incapable of narrowing the gap between the educational haves and have-nots.
"Even Kader Asmal, who inherited the framework of the system and did his utmost to make it work while minister of education, commented that more work should have gone into training educators to adopt to the new system.
"This remains a serious shortcoming.
"It will be revealing to note how the traditionally successful schools, notably the old model C and private schools, will shape up compared with those at the other end of the scale. There are indications the gap may have widened instead of narrowing.
"We also need to enquire whether OBE simply lowers the bar for high achievers, while relegating those who have traditionally struggled to mediocrity, instead of realising individual potential.
"This may not only be the fault of OBE, but may be more closely tied to a national obsession with the matriculation exam as a hallmark of achievement.
"This fallacy needs careful interrogation. Every year, thousands of matriculants complete their curriculum unprepared for the challenges of the modern workplace.
"This will be the real test of OBE. Will this new crop of matrics be better prepared than any before?
"This is the question upon which the entire system should stand or fall.
"We must also ask whether there is a need to shift away from the sharp focus on academic achievement?
"Would not school training for trades, development work, agro-ecology and nation-building be more relevant?
"This may have been the intent behind adopting OBE, but has it, or even more relevantly, can it, achieve these goals?
"Do we throw vast amounts of money at the problem? Or should we change tack?
"In building our new country, students need to maximise their individual potential.
"This includes questioning the status quo in a realistic manner that benefits not only the individual, but the nation as a whole.
"Is OBE an experiment that is working? If not, where do we go now?"
From The Durban Daily News
- The Australian
- Letters to the Editor
- This is a modest triumph
"Everyone wants indigenous children to do better at school but there isn’t an easy solution ("One in three indigenous kids fail test”, 23/12). Helen Hughes’s absurd claim that indigenous language classes and curricula lead to a failure to learn English ignores the simple fact that most indigenous children do not have access to bilingual education or to indigenous language classes. So that can’t be the cause of their poor performance on the standardised tests.
"The real reasons include lack of English-as-a-second-language teaching, high teacher and principal turnover, lack of classroom resources, ill-thought-out changes in the curriculum on the part of the education system, as well as poor hearing, poor nutrition, poor attendance, lack of sleep, lack of community involvement in the schools and so on.
"It’s hard but immersion English can work for migrant children because often they have a lot of school friends who speak English and they live in English-speaking communities. But indigenous children who live in remote communities generally don’t hear English spoken around them. So, in the bilingual schools, for the first couple of years, the teachers teach the children using the traditional language. They are also taught English in preparation for later primary years when they will be taught in English.
"The bilingual schools are getting the same or better results as comparable non-bilingual schools, according to the Northern Territory Education Department’s publicly available reports. This is a modest triumph. The children are learning English and they are maintaining their traditional languages."
Jane Simpson, Department of Linguistics. University of Sydney
- "Helen Hughes’s views have passed their use-by date. The World Bank, which she formerly advised, now funds bilingual education in Asia, Africa and Latin America because it provides a better return on investment in terms of education and social capital than does education solely through a national language."
Rebecca Green, Moil, NT
Saturday – Sunday, 27 – 28 December
- The West Australian
Op Ed
Ministerial caning over edspeak long overdue (page 20)
by Zoltan Kovacs“O wise and merciful Minister, Thank you for your wonderful Christmas present to all the people who are fed up to the gullet with the unmitigated balderdash that gushes from some education bureaucrats and academics. At last, someone with ministerial authority has been prepared to make a public stand of sorts against the blight of politically correct education jargon, bless you.
“Admittedly, you had a remote and soft target for your displeasure: a draft national curriculum for teaching children under five. However, it is a good bet that many hearts soared with home when people read in this newspaper last week that you described the document as “woolly”, “Fuzzy” and “frothy”.
“Apparently, you weren't impressed by verbiage such as “create meaning using a variety of culturally valued symbol systems”, “work with children to challenge power assumptions and create play experiences that promote equity, fairness and justice” and “play is not always innocent and fun”.
“This is about children who are under five, for heavens sake. If the authors of this pretentious bilge wanted to say teachers should encourage children to give each other a fair go – a self-evident obligation of all responsible adults who have children in their care – why couldn't they just say so? Yes, Minister, you were right to challenge this stuff.
“However, the bigger job is to delouse the language of your department, which has been notorious among classroom teachers for a long time for its willfully self-indulgent obscurity. It's a painful paradox that education, which should be about clarity and precise communication, is administered from its higher reaches by some people who seem to make it their mission to issue unintelligible pronouncements, reports and so on.
“It is more that likely that some information about what happens in schools doesn't reach you, perhaps because of public servant's deference for you position. For example, this column has been told about a game called Wank Word Bingo, if you'll pardon the coarseness, which has been (and perhaps still is) played by school staffs. Players at, let's say a professional development day run by a bureaucrat from a district office would have sheets of paper with grids containing samples of the latest jargon expressions. Examples sent to this column are “unpacking the curriculum” and “scaffolding”.
“Each player would cross off each expression on his or her sheet as it was uttered by the supposed expert running the show. The first player to cross off a line of a sheet would be the winner.
“This game probably emerged from the jargon generators that were once popular in education and other circles. Each of these had three columns of words that could be selected at random and combined to make impressive-seeming nonsense phrases.
“An example that is available on the internet has columns of verbs, which can be genuine or made up (for example, recontextualise, expedite, enhance, strategise, optimise, maximise), adjectives (assessment-driven, constructivist, cross-curricular, developmentally appropriate, mastery-focused, synergistic) and nouns (methodologies, outcomes, processes, pedagogy, networks, functionalities). All you have to do is take a word or expression from each column and combine them to form a phrase: “bingo”, you'll have a specimen of highfalutin drivel. Why don't you try it, Minister? It can be a lot of fun.
“There's also, of course, a message behind such games, or should we call them structured linguistic-manipulation activity experiences? That is that there is a vast gap between what goes on at the upper levels of the education bureaucracy and the everyday problems and demands faced by teachers in classrooms. Teaching is a practical job and teachers need practical support, not the self-serving theoretical sludge they get from parts of the bureaucracy and academe.
“From a public perspective, you've been a fairly low-key minister so far. Perhaps you've been boning up on the portfolio: fair enough. You have now shown promising signs of being independent-minded (in more ways than one, of course). Most people would say education administration should be about the quality of what happens in classrooms, not the fanciful theories or ambitions of bureaucrats. If you can make that your guiding principal in offering a welcome return to commonsense leadership in education, you will win much support and admiration. Go for it.” [emphasis added]
From The West Australian
School cleared over sex attack on siblings (page 11)
by Joseph Catanzaro“Staff at a northern suburbs primary schools were cleared of blame in an independent report into the vicious sex attacks on a boy aged 11 and his sister, seven, in a park as they walked home from school least month.
“The school's involvement was questioned after it emerged a 000 call by staff was aborted after the drunk 19-year-old attacker politely agreed to leave the girls' toilets at the school where he was found loitering.
“Adam Bradley Field, who was known to a staff member, was escorted home but went to the park, lured the girl into bushes and assaulted her. When her brother intervened, he was hit and also sexually assaulted.
“The report, released yesterday, found no school staff actions had a material bearing on or contributed to the assaults, even though they did not ask police to attend after Field was found in the toilet. Recommendations included a review of the Department of Education and Training's emergency management and visitor policies.
“Shadow education minister Michelle Roberts said rather than another review, stronger protocols were needed now, including for mandatory reporting to police when suspicious people were found at schools. She said Education Minister Liz Constable agreed two months ago to review protocols and now this report concluded that review was needed.
“The Minister basically said there was nothing wrong with doing everything exactly the same again, that having a drunk man in the kid's toilets is not something you need to report to police or parents,” she said.
“Dr Constable would not say yesterday when the next review would be finished and tighter protocols established.
“She was satisfied the report was thorough and that staff at the school acted correctly. Critical incidents required staff to call police, but they had decided the incident was not critical, a judgement call she agreed with.
“Dr Constable expected the review to recommend making it mandatory for police to attend a school in similar circumstances.
“The lack of co-ordination between police and the Department of Education, which meant parents were not told of the assault until after classes began the next day, was being addressed. Neither Dr Constable not the head of the report's panel, Therese Temby, was able to confirm whether the parents of the children assaulted were informed of the findings. Mrs Roberts said this should have been a priority.”
From The West Australian
- The Canberra Times
- 2020 vision: teachers signing out
by Emily Sherlock
"By 2020 almost a third of the ACT teaching workforce will be retired, the ACT Education Department has revealed.
"The prediction is based on the 28 per cent of existing teachers who will be aged over 65 years in 11 years.
"It comes on the back of the NSW Teachers Federation predicting 40 per cent of teachers in NSW are due to retire in the next six years.
"But the department said it was working to ensure the territory would have enough teachers in coming years. ''The average age of the ACT public school teaching workforce has declined from 46 years [and] two months in 2000 to 42 years [and] nine months currently,'' a spokesman said.
''This compares extremely favourably with many other jurisdictions where the average age is almost 50 years.''
"However, a national survey by the Australian Education Union earlier this year found it was also difficult to retain younger teachers in the profession.
"The survey of more than 1700 public school teachers with one to three years' experience found almost half expected to leave the profession within 10 years.
"Pay, workload, class sizes, and behaviour management were the main reasons public school teachers gave for wanting to leave. [emphasis added]
"The ACT department said that despite the overall predicted decline in teacher numbers, Canberra was faring better than most and was attracting a good number of younger teaching candidates.
''The ACT has recruited strongly from the university graduate pool and continues to do so,'' the spokesman said. ACT teachers were provided with more flexible working patterns to suit families, and more leave-without-pay options for teachers wanting to travel without losing their permanent position in the ACT public school system.
"The ACT could also ''lay claim'' to recruiting potential teachers from non-teaching backgrounds.
''These include youth workers, psychologists, social and health workers, and IT support staff,'' he said. ''Most jurisdictions only recognise experience gained in teaching, which limits the pool of potential recruits and ignores the valuable experience that people in non-teaching careers can bring to schools.''
"This year 250 new teachers would take up posts within ACT Public schools. The Department had also offered 100 temporary contracts to cover vacancies left by existing teachers on leave.
"The ACT had received ''strong'' numbers of applications for the teaching posts with more than 900 received for the 250 places. The most difficult places to fill were ''highly specialised and technical subjects''. This was an issue in all jurisdictions in Australia."
From The Canberra Times at link
- ABC News
- Intervention leading to more attacks on teachers: union
"The Northern Territory Education Union says about 7 per cent of Territory's teachers are on sick or stress leave as a result of violent behaviour by students.
"The union's Northern Territory president Nadine Williams says teachers are being assaulted verbally and physically in and out of school.
"She says violence is escalating because the intervention is pushing more disadvantaged pupils into an-under resourced public school system.
"There is increasing violence between students and teachers, or teacher-directed violence, or bullying and intimidation and victimisation of teachers," she said.
"All of these things we believe are increasing because we have children who can't be engaged because we don't have enough resources."
From ABC News at link
- The Sunday Sydney Morning Herald [online only]
- Maths: who is confused?
by Anna Patty, Education Editor
"The NSW Government will delay introduction of a long-awaited new syllabus for Higher School Certificate mathematics courses to avoid confusing schools with further changes when a national curriculum is introduced.
"The new courses were to be taught to year 11 students from 2010. It is about 30 years since the senior maths curriculum has been reviewed.
"The Minister for Education, Verity Firth, has asked the Board of Studies to delay the new documents to avoid complicating the national curriculum agenda.
"In light of the current work on the national curriculum, the minister has asked the Board of Studies to complete initial work on the senior maths syllabus but to delay implementation while monitoring the progress of the national curriculum," a spokeswoman said. "This is to avoid confusion for students, teachers and parents."
"The NSW Board of Studies said it would meet on February 17 to discuss the status of the new HSC maths courses in the context of a national curriculum.
"Representatives of the school-resources publishing industry contacted The Sun-Herald about the delay. A maths editor said book sellers who relied on income from the sale of syllabus documents were concerned."
From The Sunday Sydney Morning Herald online at link
- The Weekend Australian
- Indigenous literacy levels higher for city kids
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"More than three in four Aboriginal children living in the city meet minimum literacy and numeracy standards, with economist Helen Hughes saying their success masks the extent of illiteracy among remote indigenous students.
"Professor Hughes said the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy tests held this year showed an average one in three indigenous eight-year-olds failed to meet minimum standards in reading.
"But almost 80 per cent of Year 3 indigenous students in metropolitan areas met the standard, dropping to 54 per cent of remote and 30 per cent of very remote Aboriginal students.
"The Australian National University emeritus professor said the failure rate was actually higher than the 70 per cent indicated by the NAPLAN results because 10 per cent of indigenous students nationally -- and 30 per cent in the Northern Territory -- failed to sit the tests.
"Professor Hughes, also a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, said the proportion not sitting the test would be even higher in very remote areas, where absenteeism was a chronic problem.
"In the Territory, 14 per cent of very remote indigenous students met the national reading standard for Year 3; 8 per cent in Year 5; 14 per cent in Year 7; and 13 per cent in Year 9..."
Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
- Op Ed
Rule of reckless vows
by Peter van Onselen
"The Rudd Government is at risk of becoming little more than an over-promising, under-delivering administration. However, Kevin Rudd's political dominance is blinding him to this looming reality. The first full calendar year of the Labor Government is coming to an end and the early indications are that the Prime Minister is more salesman than leader, watering down the policy detail of his pre-election rhetoric and using further rhetorical flights of fancy to sell new initiatives he simply won't achieve..."
"The PM's pledge to initiate "nothing less than a revolution in education" is a sign of further rhetorical overreach. According to Mao Zedong, a revolution is "an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another". The steadily receding promise to provide every high school student with a laptop computer as well as high-speed broadband for primary schools hardly amounts to a revolution.
"Denise Bradley's review into higher education called this month for a huge injection of funding coupled with significant reforms. The early indications are that Labor will shy away from the more complex recommendations, as have previous governments that have looked to reform the higher education sector..." [emphasis added]
"In each of these policy areas Rudd's delivery has not matched his rhetoric and it doesn't look likely to match up any better in 2009... The federal Labor Government is at risk of replicating the performance of recent state administrations: successful in the context of the short-term electoral cycle but ultimately remembered for a failure to get things done..."
Full story in The Weekend Australian at link
- The Age
- Op Ed
Kids and corporate speak: a scary mix
by Dan Oakes
"Like some kind of introduced pest surreptitiously creeping through the landscape, management speak has colonised language in recent years. This "authentic frontier gibberish" (to borrow the timeless words of one of the characters from Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles) truly is the equivalent of the cane toad or crown of thorns starfish.
"Hands up if the little vein in your temple starts pulsing when you hear the words "key performance indicator", "moving forward", "paradigm shift" or "business improvement plan" (which often, as in the case of Fairfax, owner of The Age, means making hundreds of people redundant).
"While this type of meaningless, garbled nonsense is anathema to lovers of the English language, hitherto it has only been inflicted on consenting adults. It appears that is no longer the case..."
Full story in The Age at link
- The Washington Post
- Spring Break Might Shrink in Howard
School System Latest to Seek More Preparation Time for Tests Under 'No Child' Law
Schools have reduced recess, cut back on physical education and done away with field trips. Now spring break could be the next target as some educators try to find more teaching time to accommodate testing requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
All Alston cartoons are © The West Australian Newspaper
All media quotations, photographs and cartoons © their respective publishers
This page last updated 28 December, 2008 10:10 PM
