Monday 23 February

Tuesday 24 February

Wednesday 25 February

Thursday 26 February  Levelling Abolished !

Friday 27 February

Saturday – Sunday, 28 February – 1 March

Monday 23 February

• The Age
  
  
  • The Monday Education Section has been updated and contains seven articles today, including:

  [Note: The Age Education page has been reformatted: look under the "Features" section]
  

  • Op Ed
    Summing up a failure
    by Marty Ross
    
    Unless the curriculum is rewritten to reflect maths' fun and beauty, its future is doomed.
    
    "Education Minister Julia Gillard has just called for a renewed emphasis on "the basics". Is there really a problem? Yes, with maths there is definitely a problem. We certainly need the times tables, but it is not merely an issue of the basics. The real problem is one of basic meaningfulness.
    
    "To illustrate, here is an exercise from a current Victorian year 9 maths text: a farmer has 2C cows and 3H horses. The exercise is to find the square of the sum of the farmer's animals.
    
    "The Victorian texts are not uniformly that pointless or that bad. But not much is good. Definitions are clumsy, problems are contrived, natural connections and beautiful insights are overlooked. The texts do not reflect a mathematical culture.
    
    "It is not just the textbooks. Teachers are poorly trained; the curriculum is moribund, rife with silly, contrived applications; and everywhere there is pointless calculation. And calculators - the cane toads of education.
    
    "Is there still proof? Proof is the source of the power of mathematics, the reasoning and the understanding: it's what holds the discipline together. But it is practically dead. The very little proof that remains is meaningless and ritualised: maths as Latin Mass.
    
    "How did it get this bad? Primarily, it results from the failure to involve mathematicians, the people for whom mathematics is their life's blood. The simple fact is, many of those responsible for mathematics education do not know sufficient mathematics to do the job.
    
    "Things are unlikely to improve. The answer is to engage mathematicians, but they are scarce. University mathematics is being destroyed by budget cutbacks and absurd funding models, and consequently by a perverting overemphasis on industry funding. The hiring of mathematics lecturers is not solely determined by quality of research or teaching: what matters at least as much is the ability to raise money, and to play the game.
    
    "The consequence is that many lecturers are simply unqualified to teach university mathematics. This is a remarkable statement, but there is ample evidence to support it. A perusal of many university lecture notes reveals fundamental misunderstandings of the mathematics, and the reasons to learn it. The clangers may not be on a par with squaring cows and horses, but they are not far off. How can such lecturers continue in the system? They are saved by the huge decline in the standards of university mathematics, and a pass-them-at-all-costs mentality.
    
    "And what of the education faculties? The lecturers generally have even less training in mathematics, and their interests definitely lie elsewhere. Perhaps they are too preoccupied with technology fetishism to face the overarching fact that the majority of their student-teachers have little clue what mathematics is about.
    
    "The Federal Government is concerned about maths in school. The drafting of a national mathematics curriculum is under way. But it can do little good until someone begins teaching genuine mathematics to the teachers.
    
    "And a national curriculum may well make things worse. The framing paper - feedback may be submitted until February 28 - makes some good points, but there is clear cause for concern.
    
    "The paper is naively trusting of the power of "technology" to repair the teaching of maths. It ignores the fact that calculators have been an unmitigated disaster. Higher level students must have arithmetic and trigonometric facts at their fingertips. Thanks to calculators, they do not.
    
    "And now the presumption is to mimic Victoria's awful decision to impose high-powered CAS calculators. Students' algebraic skills will be weakened to the point of non-existence. And the already slight presence of proof in the curriculum will be removed entirely.
    
    "The paper also features a recurring buzzword: numeracy. It may please Ms Gillard, but it is meaningless jargon. The heavy focus in the paper is on what could be called functional numeracy: the arithmetic and statistics needed for everyday life. This is tragic.
    
    "People need to be functionally numerate, just as they need to be functionally literate. But any suggestion that all this "relevance" and "real-life connection" will induce anybody to learn to read or to add is delusional. What is needed is the mathematical equivalent of Harry Potter, and what is being offered is the calculation of interest rates. Dickens' mind-numbing schoolmaster Mr Gradgrind would be delighted.
    
    "What do I want from a national curriculum? I want a dodecahedron in every classroom, and beautiful diagrams to ponder. I want students to know why there are infinitely many prime numbers, and for them to realise no one knows about twin-primes. I want them to know what the golden mean is, and why it is irrational, and why we care. I want pattern and play and beauty. And I want the times tables.
    
    "Is teaching any of the above useful? It is exactly as useful as teaching Harry Potter and Shakespeare.
    
    "Mathematicians do mathematics because it is fun and it is beautiful. If the curriculum is not written in that spirit, and if teachers are not trained in that spirit, then we are doomed. We will have yet another generation devoted to gradgrinding students into hating mathematics."

    Marty Ross co-writes Education's Maths Masters column. He received his PhD in mathematics from Stanford University. He has lectured at Melbourne, Monash and La Trobe universities. Link: qedcat.com
    
    From The Age at link
    
    

  • Going for broke
    
    Private schools are taking a harder line on parents who default on fees.
    
    
    
  • Feature
    New kids on the books
    
    Whether they've come straight from year 12 or via the school of hard knocks, this year's university intake has high hopes. Claire Halliday meets some diverse "freshies".
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Territory teachers fear attacks under welfare trial
    
    A Northern Territory teacher says a new trial cutting welfare payments for indigenous parents with truant children could lead to attacks on education staff.
    
    
    
    
• Teaching Australia
  
  
  • My Favourite Teacher
    
    My Favourite Teacher is a book and website in progress. It is designed to highlight the pivotal role of our teachers in Australian society, to help raise their status and to encourage the best and brightest to enter the profession. Australians from across the nation are telling life-changing stories of their favourite teachers - humorous, poignant or just plain thankful. 
    
    Everyone has a favourite teacher. Whether they look back on their school experience with pleasure or pain, there will be one particular teacher who stands out as a beacon in a stormy sea. And the stories surrounding that relationship - at such a critical time - can be poignant, humorous, dramatic and insightful.
    
    This website gives you the opportunity to tell the story of your favourite teacher.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Parents nervous about bush camps
    
    Parents are expressing concerns about the safety of school bush camps in Victoria as the psychological wounds of the Black Saturday fires begin to be felt in schools.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Indigenous education
      
      Six Letters at that link
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • HSC essayists told that to say less will be worth more
    
    Higher School Certificate students are to be told that quality, not quantity, is the key when sitting their exams from next year. They are to be given suggested word lengths for essays to stop some students from writing thousands of words when only a few hundred may be necessary.
    
    
    
  • Uni chief warns against 'flawed' dealing process
    
    The architect of the Federal Government's review of higher education says the Government risks trying to please individual universities to the detriment of the entire sector.

Tuesday 24 February

• The West Australian
  
  
  • School fights filmed and posted on internet [late update: online only]
    by Bridget Lacy, The Albany Advertiser
    
    "Cyber violence has struck at North Albany Senior High School with fights between students being filmed and posted on the internet.
    
    "North Albany principal Sharon Doohan would not reveal exactly how many fights had occurred since the beginning of term but said she was “extremely disappointed” in the number.
    
    “While it is inevitable the problems of the wider community will occasionally spill over into schools, I will not tolerate violence or bullying of any kind in my school,” Ms Doohan said.
    
    “Where it has been possible to identify students, they have been suspended and we will be working with those students to improve their behaviour.”
    
    "A concerned parent who did not wish to be named said she was alerted to the fights when her son came home from school talking about a fight he had seen.
    
    "She later became more concerned when another NASHS student told her of a number of other fights, mostly involving lower-school girls.
    
    "Students are also filming the violent episodes, sending them around and posting them on YouTube.
    
    "The parent said she had seen a number of the fights on students’ mobile phones as well as a particularly sickening clash between a Year 8 and a Year 9 girl on YouTube.
    
    “It just made me sick to see the videos and the excitement of the kids watching and egging them on,” the mother said.
    
    "Ms Doohan acknowledged the ability to record such incidents was an added concern for the school.
    
    “Videos posted online can quickly be seen by a large number of people and it can take a long time to remove them, which can be very upsetting for those involved,” she said.
    
    “Students are banned from having mobile phones switched on in class and we will review the school’s mobile phone policy to see whether we need to go further than that.”
    
    "But the parent said the students were distracting the teachers so the fights could go on.
    
    "Ms Doohan called on parents to reinforce the importance of good behaviour and appropriate use of mobile phones with their children."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    Similar story from ABC News
    
    The YouTube video
    
    
    
  • Plan for elite WA science and maths school
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "WA could soon have its own specialist maths and science school for bright students in a bid to raise the State’s international performance and get more students studying the subjects at university.
    
    "The Department of Education and Training will sign a formal agreement today with Curtin University which could lead to the establishment of a dedicated maths and science school at neighbouring Como Secondary College.
    
    "Project officer Ross Sweeney, who recently retired as principal of Como, said that WA needed a specialist school because its achievements in international maths and science tests had declined over the past 20 years.
    
    “Our State used to be a leader in maths and science,” he said.
    
    "There was an international trend towards such schools.
    
    "Two specialist science, maths and technology schools have been set up in partnership with local universities in South Australia and Victoria.
    
    "Canning education district director Eirlys Ingram said there was already a long-standing partnership between Curtin and Como which strengthened in 2001 with the establishment of a maths and science enrichment program at the school.
    
    "But the new agreement would allow Como to collaborate with Curtin to create a “distinctive” campus.
    
    “Curtin University will now formalise its assistance in the further development of Como Secondary College as a school with a focus on science, mathematics and technology,” Ms Ingram said.
    
    "Curtin deputy vice-chancellor (education) Robyn Quin said the university wanted to foster the study of advanced maths and science in all high schools.
    
    “It’s of concern to us that over the past decade, enrolments in the more difficult maths and sciences, physics and chemistry, have been declining,” she said.
    
    “And many of our programs, such as engineering or actuarial studies, require advanced science and maths as prerequisites to get in.”
    
    "Professor Quin said Curtin also wanted to focus on helping teachers with their professional development.
    
    "Como principal Digby Mercer said the school would help train teachers from other schools in the most effective strategies for teaching maths and science.
    
    "Students from outside the school’s boundaries could apply for its special programs. Local students who did not qualify to enter the specialised maths and science program could still enrol."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Don’t close small schools, say parents
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “Closing small public schools and merging them with others just to make State Budget savings would not be acceptable, WA’s main parents’ group said yesterday.
    
    “A proposal to save costs by amalgamating schools with declining numbers is contained in a pre-Budget submission to the State Government by the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry...”
    
    “The Department of Education and Training said it monitored population plans and new developments, particularly demographic changes that could affect schools’ long-term enrolment numbers. No public school was being considered for amalgamation.
    
    “Deputy director-general Margery Evans said recent testing produced no evidence to suggest that the size of a school had any noticeable impact on student performance/ “Good quality teaching and interesting and challenging programs are far stronger indicators of a successful school,” she said...”
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Students posting violent videos face suspension
    
    "The Education Department will order all WA public schools to suspend students caught posting video of violent behaviour on the internet.
    
    "The order was made after mobile phone videos showing brawls between students at North Albany Senior High School surfaced on the internet website YouTube.
    
    "It is the latest in a string of incidents involving West Australian students.
    
    "The Education Department's Director-General, Sharyn O'Neill, says any student caught engaging in such behaviour must be suspended immediately.
    
    "Ms O'Neill will also direct all public schools to implement a mobile phone policy.
    
    "I would expect every principal to have a policy that clearly answers the rules and the consequences of inappropriate use," she said.
    
    "She says while mobile phones are banned in classrooms across the state it is up to individual schools whether they also ban them at lunch and recess."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • Teachers' union want Labor, LNP to reveal education policies
    
    Teachers are calling on Queensland Labor and the Liberal National Party (LNP) to release detailed and fully costed education policies early in the state's election campaign.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • School reopening a sign of progress
    
    The brass school bell rings. It's 9am and the children of Flowerdale sit cross-legged for assembly on the first day of school since the Black Saturday bushfires. Smoke still hangs between the hills. About three-quarters of school families have lost their homes.
    
    
    
    
• The New York Times
  
  
  • The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess
    
    The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take them out of it. New research suggests that play and down time may be as important to a child’s academic experience as reading, science and math, and that regular recess, fitness or nature time can influence behavior, concentration and even grades.
    
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • Trainees sign up to teach maths and science
    
    Increasing numbers of people are signing up to train as maths and science teachers, figures showed today.
    
    Related story from BBC News

 

Wednesday 25 February

• The West Australian
  

  • Geography teachers ‘blamed’ for poor marks
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “WA’s chief TEE geography marker has highlighted concerns about declining standards in the subject, saying the results from last year’s exam were “worryingly poor”.
    
    “Alan May, who is also a senior officer at the Geographical Association of WA, raised questions about teachers’ qualifications to take the subject saying a significant proportion of students were not adequately prepared for the exam.
    
    “The average mark more the last year’s geography paper was 52.53 per cent, well below the target of 58 percent and one of the lowest in 10 years. And for the first time, the average score for the six questions requiring extended answers was below half marks.
    
    “The general standard of literacy skills, geographical knowledge, skills and understandings, as well as examination techniques, was worryingly poor.” Mr May said in his report on the association’s website this week.
    
    “He said exam markers had reported a general decline in the quality of answers. They said many students were unable to analyse and interpret information, struggled to compose sentences and paragraphs and had poor handwriting. And many demonstrated “appallingly poor levels of general and specific geographical literacy”.
    
    “The report raised questions about whether the new geography course, which started for Year 11s this year, would be too difficult for students because it would place even more emphasis on extended written answers in Year 12.
    
    “Mr May told The West Australian he could not elaborate on the written report because they were his opinions and were not endorsed by the association or the Curriculum Council.
    
    “A separate council report released recently said that WA’s first ever TEE paper in physical education studies was so difficult the average mark was just 43 per cent.
    
    “Accounting, aviation and engineering studies also had difficult papers. Five subjects had comparatively easy papers with average marks above 65 per cent – English literature, music, German, Chinese and Indonesian.
    
    “Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood said even though the exam average for physical education was low, all marks and all courses were standardized to take into account the difficulty of different exams.
    
    “This ensures all students studying the different courses are treated equitably,” he said.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • School fights fuel mobile phone fears
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    “The Education Department is under pressure to toughen up its rules on students’ use of mobile phones after a surge in fights being filmed and shared on the internet.
    
    “There has been a sudden spike in student fights at North Albany Senior High school with 15 this year. Many were recorded and aired on video-sharing website YouTube.
    
    “A North Albany parent said yesterday that students were deliberately egging on the fights while filming them.
    
    “The cyber violence comes after a series of fights at John Forrest Senior High School were posted on YouTube late last year, sparking allegations that students were organizing fights for the publicity.
    
    “The department’s mobile phone policy says students should switch off their phones in classrooms but leaves to principals’ discretion whether students are able to use their phones during recess and lunch breaks.
    
    “Shadow education minister Michelle Roberts said stronger guidelines would help reduce fights being organised during school hours. There also needed to be more support for the victims.
    
    “She said many people dismissed school fights, saying they were no different to schoolyard spats 30 years ago, but there were key difference to school yard spats 30 years ago, but there were key differences.
    
    “This is about fights being instigated for the purpose of putting them on YouTube,” she said. “It is not just a bit of embarrassment for 10 minutes in front of 20 mates, it’s an audience of tens of thousands of people and the humiliation is played over and over again.”
    
    “WA Council of State School Organisations president Robert Fry said phones should not be turned on until after school. Education director-general Sharyn O’Neill said she wrote to all principals yesterday directing them to suspend immediately any students caught filming or distributing inappropriate images of other students for up to 10 days.
    
    “Mobile phones play no part in the classroom and in their policy they should make clear about what the rules are around mobile phones in schools, including the kinds of consequences that students can expect,” she said.
    
    “Principals could ban the use of mobile phones outside the classroom but the department would not impose a blanket ban across all schools.
    
    “These decisions are best made school by school,” Ms O’Neill said. “We will back our principals to have a touch line on inappropriate use of mobile phones.”
    
    “Education Minister Liz Constable said it was disturbing that students were filming children who were injured or hurt. “It’s part of the whole cyber bullying cycle,” she said. “They’re not values that this community can support.”
    
    “But she said principals should make their own decisions on school policy.”
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• ABC News
  
  
  • Explain guidelines: School principals
    
    "School principals in Western Australia say there is a need for clearer guidelines in the way schools deal with student violence.
    
    "The WA Secondary School Executive Association says the guidelines need to deal with fights involving students that occur off school premises.
    
    "A number of fights between high school students have been recorded and posted on the website YouTube in recent months.
    
    "The Association's President Rob Nairn says many of the incidents happen off school premises, which causes problems for principals.
    
    "I guess the question we need to ask is where does the responsibility of the schools start and finish," he said.
    
    "You know some of these incidents have occurred a long way away from school and I guess there needs to be some clarification around where you know where the responsibility lies."
    
    "Yesterday the Education Department revealed it would order all WA public schools to suspend students caught posting video of violent behaviour on the internet.
    
    "The order was made after mobile phone videos showing brawls between students at North Albany Senior High School surfaced on the internet website YouTube.
    
    "It is the latest in a string of incidents involving West Australian students.
    
    "The Education Department's Director-General, Sharyn O'Neill, said any student caught engaging in such behaviour must be suspended immediately.
    
    "Ms O'Neill said she would also direct all public schools to implement a mobile phone policy.
    
    "She said while mobile phones are banned in classrooms across the state it was up to individual schools whether they also ban them at lunch and recess."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Sector pursues unity on Bradley review
    
    Universities are trying to set aside their differences over the Bradley review amid fears that squabbling could detract from their joint efforts to secure increased long-term funding from the Government.
    
    
    
  • Vexed future for set texts
    
    The printed textbook may become another casualty on the digital highway.
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Recalcitrant learners
      
      "Bob Hawke launched his 1987 election campaign by infamously, cynically but above all fatuously asserting that, “By 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty.” Now, although they do it in a manner rather more circumspect and well-intentioned than Hawke, Mick Dodson and Noel Pearson tread the same pathway of wishful thinking apropos indigenous education.
      
      "While few Australians would not share Pearson’s ideal of a schooling for every Aboriginal child ("Countdown to close education gap”, Inquirer, 21-22/2), I have seen too many instances where indigenous children have been present at school “in body” but their minds are not engaged in learning for one moment of their attendance. More disturbing is the fact that they are often disruptive in their home classes, in some instances with displays of aggression towards teachers and other students, and, as a consequence of the behaviour, are permitted to avoid lessons in various ways.
      
      "Not by any means is it only indigenous children who behave in this manner, or for that matter miss attending school without adequate inquiry and explanation. But I want to hear much more from Pearson and Dodson on precisely how they see these recalcitrant, indigenous learners being educated, assuming they all can be corralled. After all, Pearson describes getting them there as “quickly achievable”, so I’m intrigued to see if he can inform your readers about a strategy for educating these masses that will be just as “quickly achievable”. I’m afraid that superficial reference to “proper teaching of foundational skills” and “implementation of effective approaches to the teaching of reading ... and numeracy” are far too glib and just don’t cut the mustard."
      
      Ray Jamieson, Willetton, WA
      
      
      
      
• The New York Times
  
  
  • Students Stand When Called Upon, and When Not
    
    Reports on a new type of adjustable-height school desk, allowing pupils to stand while they work.
    
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • Would-be teachers' crime records
    
    Thousands of teachers apply to work in schools despite criminal records for offences including paedophilia, manslaughter and theft, figures show.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Unis learn some hard lessons about their money
    
    [NSW's] top universities are fighting to hold the line against course and research cuts after losing hundreds of millions of dollars in investments exposed to falling financial markets.

 

Thursday 26 February

Levelling ABOLISHED !





OBEducRats Reinvent Themsleves
[as HMAS Levelling sinks...]

• Department of Education: Director-General's Media Release
  
  
  • Student assessment to be simplified
    
    Student assessment and reporting to parents will be simplified across the public education system with the discontinuation of levels to assess student achievement.
    
    Department of Education and Training Director General Sharyn O’Neill said the removal of levels would allow teachers to focus their energies on teaching and make it easier for parents to track their child’s achievement at school.
    
    “Teachers will continue to report to parents using A to E grades but without the current requirement of having to convert levels to grades,” she said.
    
    “They will use their professional judgement to directly assign these grades.”
    
    “Levels are a cumbersome and unwieldy process for teachers and complex for parents to understand.
    
    “It unnecessarily complicates the basis on which student work is assessed using A-E grades.”
    
    Ms O’Neill said Education Minister Liz Constable fully supported the move. [Translation: Liz put a gun to my head and said "Do it or get sacked"! Web]
    
    “Teachers in public schools have for many years been required by Department policy to use 8 levels as a basis for assessing student achievement to arrive at a grade from A to E which is reported to parents,” she said.
    
    “The use of levels has been a topic of much debate for many years in WA among teachers, parents and academics.
    
    “The removal of levels is consistent with my commitment to teachers to reduce bureaucratic requirements so they can focus on teaching.
    
    “The changes will also remove the difficulty many parents have in understanding how Levels are converted to grades to know how their child is achieving in school.”
    
    “Parents can also be confident that the grades on their child’s report will be based on sound assessment processes comparable across the State.”
    
    Ms O’Neill said student grades would be based on a range of information that teachers had, including work done in class, tests set by teachers and a student’s performance in national literacy and numeracy tests.
    
    “To help teachers make consistent judgements on grades, we will support them with examples of student work which illustrate the standard that earns an A-E grade in each year of schooling from Years 1-10,” she said.
    
    “The changes will come into effect from the start of the 2010 school year, though schools can choose to dispense with levels with immediate effect.”
    
    
    
• DET email to staff
  
  
  • Today I announced my intention to simplify the assessment processes to be used by teachers in all public schools. A copy of my media statement is attached.
    
    The changes include teachers no longer using levels to assess and report on student achievement throughout the public school system.
    
    In Classroom First I committed to reducing the complexity of policy requirements on teachers so they can focus their energies on teaching.
    
    Simplified assessment requirements will be included in a revised Curriculum Assessment and Reporting (CAR) policy to be published online by the beginning of Semester 2, 2009.
    
    These include:
    
    
    • Teachers no longer using the Outcomes and Standards Framework, levels or the Grade Allocation Resources to allocate grades for reporting.
      
      
    • Teachers continuing to report to parents using A-E grades.
      
      
    • Teachers making their own professional decisions about how they monitor and assess students’ progress and standards of achievement.
      
      
    • Teachers continuing to be provided with support to help them make decisions about students’ achievement. The support will include samples of students’ work that illustrate the standards that earn an A-E grade in Years 1-10. Samples for English/literacy, Mathematics/numeracy and Science will be published online by the beginning of Semester 2, 2009. Samples for The Arts, Health and Physical Education, Languages, Society and Environment, and Technology and Enterprise will be published online by the end of 2009.
      
      
    • The K-10 Syllabuses and resources remaining an important source of guidance for teachers to support them in planning and delivering programs.
      
      
    • Guidance being provided to principals on the expected distribution of grades in their school.

    This information will be provided via the Student Achievement Information System (SAIS).
    
    The revised CAR policy will come into effect from the start of the 2010 school year. Schools can begin to use the revised policy and the support materials during 2009 if they judge this to be useful.
    
    These changes to the assessment requirements do not remove the requirement for all schools to comply with the Curriculum Framework.
    
    Further information will be provided during the course of the year.
    
    
    

• The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
  
  
  • Schools dump controversial student levels
    by Paul Lampathakis, education writer
    
    "A pivotal part of the controversial outcomes-based education system will be killed off at WA schools.
    
    "From 2010, teachers will no longer use a "levels" system to calculate grades for school reports for Years 1 to 10.
    
    "But Education Department Director General Sharyn O'Neill said schools could "choose to dispense with levels with immediate effect".
    
    "Certainly the use of levels to assess and report to parents has been a major platform of OBE and we're removing that today," she said today at a media conference at Applecross Primary School.
    
    "Ms O'Neill said simplifying assessment by removing the use of levels would free teachers to focus on teaching and make it easier for parents to track their child's achievement at school.
    
    "Teachers will continue to report to parents using A to E grades, but without the current requirement of having to convert levels to grades," she said.
    
    "Levels were dropped for years 11 and 12 in early 2007, after extreme pressure on the previous Labor Government from the anti-OBE group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes. [emphasis added]
    
    "Many teachers felt that the eight levels of achievement were too complex, inconsistent, and created unnecessary and time-consuming paperwork.
    
    "Ms O'Neill said parents had told her they had been "confused" by levels.
    
    "She said that to determine grades under the new system, teachers would use their "professional judgement''.
    
    "But Ms O'Neill, who conceded that WA had previously gone further with OBE than other states, also said teachers would be given online resources showing what standard earned a particular grade.
    
    "I want to make sure that an A in Albany is the same as an A in Applecross, as in any other place,'' she said.
    
    "The Education Department would also give principals a grade distribution guide. [So North Nowhere SHS should have the same grade distribution as Rossmoyne??? Web]
    
    "Ms O'Neill said student grades would be based on information including class work, tests and a student's performance in national literacy and numeracy tests.
    
    "From what she could see, the new system would be compatible with the proposed national curriculum.
    
    "The move is seen as honouring a pre-election commitment by the Liberals, who when in Opposition promised an independent audit of WA's curriculum framework by an expert advisory group if they won government and to abolish levels from kindergarten to Year 10.
    
    "Education Minister Liz Constable said she applauded the decision because unlike the new system, the use of levels did not meet the criteria of being fair to students, easily understood by parents and not creating extra and unnecessary work for teachers.
    
    "Rob Fry, president of peak parent group the WA Council of State School Organisations, said the move was a positive step in the right direction.
    
    "This way the teachers can focus on doing the grades, making the best judgement from their professional point of view and everyone will know exactly how the child is progressing,'' Mr Fry said.
    
    "Applecross Primary School principal Barry France said his teachers would appreciate the decision because it would save them doing a "significant'' amount of work that was part of an "unnecessary bureaucratic step'' - freeing them to focus on teaching and learning."
    
    From The Sunday Times online / PerthNow at link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  

  • Changes to Outcomes Based Education
    
    "The West Australian Education Department has simplified its student assessment system but has stopped short of labelling the changes as an end to Outcomes Based Education.
    
    "The Director General of Education Sharyn O'Neill says students will receive grades from A to E but there will no longer be assessment levels.
    
    "Ms O'Neill says the department has responded to concerns from parents that assessment levels are too hard to understand.
    
    "It makes it more useable, more understandable, and I think more importantly, gives parents confidence that when their child is getting a B, it means B in this school, B in that school, in any school."
    
    "The move has been welcomed by the WA Council of State School Organisations.
    
    "The Council's President Robert Fry says parents found the levels system too confusing.
    
    "Parents want to know concisely how their child is going," he said.
    
    "The A to E is giving that concise information back up by the information contained on that report."
    
    "The President of the WA State School Teachers Union Anne Gisborne says the move is long overdue.
    
    "It is something that could have been resolved much easier," she said.
    
    "It has been a long hard fought struggle on behalf of the union for its members and we do believe that it could have been resolved earlier."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    Isn't is great to know the union opposed it all along ! Web

  
  [sorry... the dangly earrings are missing...]
  

  
  
  Other education news
  

• The Australian
  
  
  • Noel Pearson slams Kevin Rudd over indigenous schools
    by Mike Steketee and Patricia Karvelas
    
    "Indigenous leader Noel Pearson yesterday launched a scathing attack on the Rudd Government for refusing to take up the challenge of low school attendance and its "miserable" targets for reducing indigenous disadvantage.
    
    "Mr Pearson told The Australian that ensuring children went to school could open the way to tackling many more difficult issues in indigenous affairs.
    
    "But despite a strong public response to the proposal, which he backed, from fellow indigenous leader and Australian of the Year Mick Dodson that every indigenous child be enrolled in school by January 26 next year, there had been "not a word" from the Government, he said.
    
    "Coincidentally, Mr Pearson's stinging criticisms come on the eve of Kevin Rudd's delivery of his first annual report on progress towards closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
    
    "In indigenous education, the Rudd Government has set goals of giving all four-year-olds in remote communities access to early childhood education within five years, halving the gap with non-indigenous children in literacy and numeracy in 10 years and doing the same for Year 12 or an equivalent attainment by 2020.
    
    "Mr Pearson said: "The challenge I have for (Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny) Macklin and (Education Minister Julia) Gillard is: 'Mate, what is it about your commitment here?'.
    
    "When I look at the targets you have set, I can see that they don't betray the necessary belief and ambition that a serious approach to these problems would indicate."
    
    "Ms Gillard told The Australian she "could not agree more" with the aims outlined by Professor Dodson and she would be happy to talk to Mr Pearson.
    
    "But she would not commit the Government to universal indigenous enrolment by the 2010 school year.Instead, she said the Government was implementing ground-breaking reforms that had been agreed with the states and that covered issues such as disadvantaged schools and teacher quality, which could see major improvements in indigenous education.
    
    "As well, under trials in the Northern Territory, welfare payments were tied to school attendance.
    
    "We will be absolutely unapologetic about driving through whatever is necessary to get kids to school," Ms Gillard said.
    
    "If Mr Pearson wants to involve himself in what is not just truckloads of work but several trainloads, we would more than happily involve him in that journey."
    
    "Perth's Clontarf Aboriginal College boasts an attendance rate of about 80 per cent among its 150 high school students.
    
    "In 2000, inaugural Fremantle Dockers AFL coach Gerard Neesham, then a teacher at the college, developed a program to address truancy by threading sport through education.
    
    "College principal Tony Chinnock said the program had been developed over the past nine years with AFL the focus for boys and basketball the focus for girls.
    
    "Some kids might come just thinking they want to be a sports star, and we'll sneak up and give them an education while they're there," he said.
    
    "If it's a natural passion for Aboriginal kids, why not work on it?" ...
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    It's time to stop the spin
    
    A generation of Australians is having its future stolen
    
    "Talk is cheap, especially when the Rudd Government promises to address the continuing crisis in health and education, life expectancy and educational opportunity endured by indigenous Australians. And Noel Pearson knows it. In the last issue of The Weekend Australian, Mr Pearson wrote in support of Australian of the Year Mick Dodson's proposal that governments should commit to ensuring indigenous children, as well as all other young Australians, attend school. Stopping truancy, Mr Pearson says, is the "magic bullet" - "if we tackle attendance, it precipitates a movement towards achieving a whole lot of other solutions. Why can't we get a national momentum going here?" Mike Steketee reports him asking in The Australian this morning. Why not indeed. But it appears we can't. Mr Pearson says he has heard nothing from ministers or education officials about his proposal, and that this makes a mockery of last year's Council of Australian Governments commitment to improve indigenous education.
    
    "Mr Pearson should not be surprised. This new example of inertia is typical of the way ministers and mandarins deal with indigenous issues. A year ago, Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations and promised new solutions to enduring problems. But it appears the Prime Minister's minders have adopted the NSW Labor Government's story-a-day spin strategy: keep the promises coming and hope nobody notices when nothing actually occurs. This is certainly the situation a year on from Sorry Day. Nothing substantial has changed in indigenous affairs. Certainly the Government has left intact much of the Howard government's Northern Territory intervention, designed to reduce violence and substance abuse in remote communities. But in terms of actually improving anything from housing to literacy, it is bureaucratic business as usual in the Territory. And in the states, with the honourable exception of Premier Anna Bligh's personal intervention in Queensland, little is different. It will stay this way until all of us accept we have been sold a pup, or two pups in fact, in the way we address the problems that bedevil Aborigines who live outside mainstream Australia. Firstly, symbolic politics - Sorry Days, talk of Aboriginal parliaments and the like - do not teach children to read or reduce the rates of diabetes and alcohol abuse in indigenous communities. Secondly, the clients of existing programs are as much the bureaucrats who run them as the people they are ostensibly intended to assist. For years, Mr Dodson argued that acknowledging past wrongs was a foundation for addressing present problems. But while symbolic politics and the rights agenda, including his proposal for an indigenous legislative body, appeal to Aborigines who have prospered in the professions and public service, they do not do much to assist children whose future is being stolen from them because they do not go to school. Nor are the administrators charged with assisting indigenous Australians actually helping. Despite decades of work and billions of dollars, Aborigines still earn less, die younger, are worse educated and imprisoned more often than the rest of us. And the disgraceful fact is that if they grow up in some remote communities, they run a real risk of never learning to read and write. The grim truth is that powerless people are less the clients of the indigenous education and welfare system than the administrators.
    
    "There are as many, probably more, examples of bureaucrats focused on process who forget what they are supposed to be doing as there are people on the ground trying to assist indigenous Australians. People such as Lara Wieland, who campaigns on Cape York for mothers with newborn babies. Last year, she had to take her concerns about neglect to Ms Bligh before she secured support for a plan to provide infant care packs to women who would otherwise go without the basics. And people such as entrepreneur Andrew Forrest, who was told earlier this month that Aborigines with jobs lined up under his Australian Employment Covenant would have to wait five months for training administered by bureaucrats. These examples reflect the unacceptable outcome of public service cultures that have no intention of changing the way they work.
    
    "In uniting behind the plan for a national assault in truancy, Mr Pearson and Mr Dodson demonstrate that things must change. Last night, Education Minister Julia Gillard told Steketee about a trial in the Northern Territory that tied welfare payments to school attendance. This is a start, but if Ms Gillard and Families Minister Jenny Macklin are committed to helping indigenous children attend school, they can prove it by producing a national plan to reduce truancy rates and, as Mr Pearson suggests, ensure all education ministers report specific improvements in a year's time. And they can forget palming it off on the premiers. Indigenous children's rights are more important than those of the states. The Howard government's Territory intervention demonstrates the bureaucratic establishment can, and must, be circumvented. Mr Rudd and his ministers, as well as the states, must understand that when it comes to relying on spin and symbols in indigenous affairs, the jig is up."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    • Indigenous study needs magic bullet
      
      At last, a break from whacking Aboriginal parents around the head with grossly expensive quasi-bureaucracies and threats to welfare payments, to ask serious questions of those who are paid taxpayers' money to deliver quality education. Mick Dodson offers a noble challenge to all of us with demands that every Australian child be school-ready next year. The question is, how?
      
      
      
    • Feature: Voices of dissent
      
      
      
      
  • First-year attrition too high
    
    As thousands of first-year students flood campuses for orientation week, government data suggests that more than 30,000 of them won't still be at the university come the second year... an average attrition rate of more than 18 per cent nationally points to an ongoing challenge to retain first-year students struggling to adapt to university life.
    
    
    
    
  • $1 million junket to keep federal fat cats happy
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "The commonwealth department implementing the Rudd Government's education revolution and workplace reforms spent almost $1 million on three "happiness" conferences for public servants and teachers last month.
    
    "The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations treated 100 of its officials to a week-long seminar on wellbeing, held at Geelong Grammar School, in Victoria, at a cost of $642,000.
    
    "In addition, the department gave Geelong Grammar $350,000 to stage two six-day residential conferences on happiness and positive psychology for 200 teachers from government, independent and Catholic schools.
    
    "Geelong Grammar is one of the most expensive private schools in the nation, and this year increased its Year 12 fees by 8 per cent to $28,886.
    
    "The conferences were held by US psychologist Martin Seligman, the self-styled founder of positive psychology and director of the Positive Pyschology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Schools protect abusers
      
      "A church-run Toowoomba primary school, the expensive St Stanislaus school in Bathurst and now exclusive Knox Grammar in Sydney ("Third Knox teacher on sex charges”, 25/2) are all recently exposed as having hidden alleged abusers for years.
      
      "The reason private schools shelter alleged abusers is as simple as it is ugly—greed. A private school’s reputation is its biggest asset. Reputation means enrolments, which in turn means fees and generous government funding, so schools do not report abusers because the attendant loss of repute is also a loss of funds.
      
      "The solution is to turn this most un-Christian reasoning on its head. A school failing to report abuse should have its taxpayer funding and educational accreditation immediately and permanently revoked. Schools would then be afraid not to report suspected abusers, sparing generations of students predatory attacks by those who are meant to care for them." [emphasis added]
      
      Stephan Hammat, Prospect, SA
      
      
      
      
• The West Australian
  
  
• Truant plan held up by WA delays
  by Dawn Gibson
  
  "Education Minister Liz Constable has refused to say whether she will back a ground-breaking no school, no welfare trial in WA despite being urged by the Federal Government to make a decision for almost five months.
  
  "The State Opposition yesterday accused Dr Constable of wasting a valuable opportunity to try a new approach to tackling chronic truancy and poor educational prospects of students in some of Perth’s most disadvantaged suburbs.
  
  "The trial, which was meant to begin in schools across the Cannington district from the start of this school year, would involve the parents of chronic truants having their welfare payments suspended for up to 13 weeks.
  
  "The Carpenter government had signed an in-principal agreement with the Commonwealth to hold the trial in WA, but has not been endorsed by the Barnett Government.
  
  "A spokeswoman for Federal Families Minister Jenny Macklin said that Ms Macklin had written to Dr Constable on October 8 last year and again on January 9 seeking her support but had so far received no response. Dr Constable refused to be drawn on when she would provide the Commonwealth with an answer, saying it was a complex issue.
  
  “I am close to making a decision, but I want to make sure all options have been carefully considered,” she said.
  
  “I am far from convinced that the decision of the previous State government is fair or workable.”
  
  "Dr Constable’s procrastination has caused considerable confusion as at least 14 schools have agreed to take part. The situation has been made muddier by WA Child Protection Minister Robyn McSweeney making it clear that she does not support the trial, even though Dr Constable as the responsible minister has not made her mind up.
  
  "Shadow education minister Michelle Roberts said there was clearly as divergence of opinion within Cabinet that had caused the impasse. She urged the Government to stop dithering and support the project, which would be the first of its kind in a capital city.
  
  "While the Greens and social welfare groups have opposed “no school, no welfare” on the basis that it could punish already vulnerable families, Mrs Roberts said the idea offered a different approach to ensuring children got an adequate education to prevent them from getting trapped in a cycle of unemployment, crime and poverty as adults.
  
  “If the State Government does not seize this opportunity today, my experience is that the Commonwealth will look at other States to work with,” she said."
  
  From The West Australian
  
  
  
  
• The Sunday Times online / PerthNow
  

• Phone bans backed for WA schools to curb fight videos
  
  More school fights footage has emerged today with a boxing match in a classroom being filmed, with a teacher allegedly looking on.
  
  Related story from ABC News
  
  
  
  
• ABC News
  
  
  • School children brave croc infested waters
    
    The Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson says he'll look into reports children in a remote community are braving a billabong inhabited by crocodiles to get to school.
    
    
    
  • Vic schools closed ahead of Friday scorcher
    
    Hundreds of Victorian schools and child care centres will be closed tomorrow because of the bushfire threat.
    
    
    
    
• AEU
  
  
  • More support needed for new teachers to avoid exodus
    
    A survey has revealed one in five new teachers feel under-prepared for the reality of teaching when they enter the profession. The 2008 New Educators Survey of 1545 new teachers showed 21 per cent rated their pre-service education as ‘poor or very poor’ and only a third rated it ‘satisfactory’.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • A poor role model [this Letter is also in today's Sydney Morning Herald]
      
      "More than 90 per cent of teachers reportedly experience bullying from workmates and/or supervisors. Schoolyard bullying is similarly rife.
      
      "Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard has done nothing to arrest this blight on Australian education. On the contrary, in Parliament, she has casually hurled derogatory terms intended to humiliate and hurt others.
      
      "Attributing dog breeds and denigrating people as "mincing" (The Age, 24/2) demeans the senior leadership roles Gillard occupies. It models behaviour at the core of workplace bullying.
      
      "As Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion, Gillard has the crucial responsibility to model behaviour affirming every person's entitlement to live, study and work with dignity."
      
      Barbara Chapman, Hawthorn
      
      
      
      
• The Independent
  
  
  • Is the Government right to be concerned about home-schooling?
    
    Tens of thousands of home-educating parents are in a fury about a government decision to set up an inquiry into home schooling because of fears it could hide child abuse. They say there is no hard evidence, and the investigation smears them all with suspicion. Two thousand parents and organisations have written to the Government in protest at what pressure group Action for Home Education call "vile and unsubstantiated" allegations.

Friday 27 February

• The West Australian
  
  
  • OBE levels set to be scrapped
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    "More than five months after coming to power, the State Government yesterday fulfilled its election promise to abolish the contentious “levels” at the heart of outcomes-based education assessment.
      
    "But while the Liberals pledged to scrap levels for students from kindergarten to Year 10 during the election, the Government left it to Education director-general Sharyn O’Neill to announce the changes were going ahead.
      
    "Education Minister Liz Constable did not attend Applecross Primary School where the announcement was made.
      
    "Ms O’Neill said abolishing levels would simplify assessment and reporting for teachers and make it easier for parents to track their child’s progress at school.
      
    "She said teachers would continue to report to parents using A to E grades but those would now be based on a teacher’s “professional judgment” rather than derived from levels.
      
    "Many teachers had complained that levels were cumbersome, while parents found them confusing, she said.
      
    "Marko Vojkovic, chairman of anti-OBE group PLATO, said the decision was long overdue and it was what they had been calling for more than five years. He said the Government had been dragged kicking and screaming to accept conclusive evidence from academics that levels should not be used.
      
    "Applecross Primary School principal Barry France said teachers at his school would welcome the decision because levels were an unnecessary bureaucratic step in the assessment process.
      
    "WA Council of State School Organisations president Rob Fry said the change would make it easier for parents to follow a child’s progress.
      
    "Shadow education minister Michelle Roberts said it was inexplicable that Dr Constable did not make the announcement or attend the event when it related to a major policy issue and election promise. “I actually think that she’s hiding from scrutiny... she’s under pressure on a number of issues,” she said. “It’s all very well saying you’re removing the levels but what are they replacing it with?”
      
    "Labor abolished levels for Years 11 and 12 in 2007 but their use continued in many primary and lower secondary schools.
      
    "Critics say levels are too broad to measure student progress accurately and show little distinction between high and low achievers.
      
    "A spokesman for Dr Constable said she supported the decision to scrap levels. The announcement had been made by Ms O’Neill because it was an operational matter.
      
    "The spokesman said it would lessen staff workloads.
      
    "The changes will take effect next year."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Useless levels system to be ditched at last
    
    "At last, common sense has prevailed and the discredited system of levels used to assess students’ achievements is to be abolished.
    
    "It has taken a long time for the education bureaucracy to come to its senses, but finally yesterday education director-general Sharyn O’Neill acknowledged that the levels system was “a cumbersome and unwieldy process for teachers and complex for parents to understand”. There is now reason to hope that the department will abandon its fanciful theories about education and direct its attention to its job of meeting the practical needs of students, teachers and parents."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • PLATO gives assessment changes mark of approval
    
    "An education lobby group says a decision to scrap a key component of Outcomes Based Education will restore credibility to Western Australia's education system.
    
    "From 2010, teachers will no longer use levels to assess students, instead they will give grades from A to E.
    
    "The Education Department said the move was in response to both teacher and parent concern.
    
    "Marco Vojkovic from the group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes (PLATO) says it is welcome news.
    
    "I think it's going to restore some credibility because for the last 8 years we've been reporting in an invalid assessment method," he said.
    
    "It's made teachers look pretty stupid, frankly, and it's also restored a bit of faith in the profession.
    
    "The whole assumption that every task could be defined in 8 distinct levels is completely wrong. In some tasks there might only be 3, in other tasks there are 25 levels. It was an administrative construct that was just wrong from the beginning."
    
    "Professor Greg Robson from Edith Cowan University says it will make the task of reporting much clearer.
    
    "I think it is a sensible return to what parents are used to," he said.
    
    "He says the change will bring Western Australia into line with national assessment methods."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
  • National testing pressures won't help kids learn: teachers union
    
    The Queensland Teacher's Union says putting pressure on students to perform in one-off national tests is the wrong approach to helping children learn.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Young teachers give their training a thorough caning
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Teachers feel they are not properly trained to deal with life in the classroom, and many admit struggling to cope with difficult parents and colleagues.
    
    "Months after the Federal Government announced a $550 million plan to improve teaching quality in schools, a survey has painted a bleak picture of the level of training teachers receive, job pressures, and sexual or racial discrimination within the profession.
    
    "According to the survey, more than 20 per cent of new teachers say their university training was poor or very poor.
    
    "More than 86 per cent say they are not properly trained to deal with difficult parents and staff, and 70 per cent find it hard to teach difficult students, children with disabilities, or those from migrant families.
    
    "The survey, based on an Australian Education Union poll of more than 1500 young teachers, presents a challenge for state and federal governments, which have sought to improve the education system, in part, by lifting the quality of teachers.
    
    "A spokeswoman for Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said federal and state governments were working on reforms that would target critical points in teachers' careers. The reforms would include national accreditation and improvements in courses for student teachers, new pathways and rewards for top teachers and improved workforce mobility.
    
    "Union president Angelo Gavrielatos warned the Government to avoid quick-fix solutions.
    
    "To successfully attract quality new teachers to the public education system, we need to better prepare and support them so they can make a long-term contribution to the education of our children," he said.
    
    "The survey of the nation's newest teachers was released yesterday. It also found:
    
    ■ One in 10 teachers says discrimination, particularly on the grounds of race or sexuality, is affecting their decision to stay in the profession.
    
    ■ One in three teachers is being asked to teach in areas for which they are not properly qualified.
    
    ■ Workload is the biggest concern for new teachers (69 per cent), followed closely by behaviour management (66 per cent) and pay (63 per cent).
    
    ■ More than half those surveyed did not expect to stay in their job for more than 10 years, despite a large proportion having changed their careers to work as teachers.
    
    "English and humanities teacher Simone Barlow is brutally frank about her early days as a teacher. "I had no idea," said Ms Barlow, whose first day in a classroom was at a school for students with special needs in Melbourne's north.
    
    "I was a casual relief teacher and I was literally thrown in and told: here's a class list, here are your students, this is the rough program, now teach them English for an hour. I felt very under-prepared."
    
    "Two years on, Ms Barlow, 27, works full time at Williamstown High School. While she loves her job, she agrees it can be daunting for new teachers, partly because of the training they get.
    
    "The focus at university is often on content, but it's how to deliver that content which is really important," she said. "Dealing with students, learning how to defuse potentially bad situations, or even coping with parents or other members of staff is not covered, and I think it should be." [emphasis added]
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
    
• National Curriculum Board
  
  
  • Call for Expressions of Interest
    
    The first phase of national curriculum writing begins in April 2009 with English, mathematics, history and the sciences.
    
    The National Curriculum Board is seeking expressions of interest for curriculum writers for English, mathematics, history, the sciences, and advisory panel members for stages of schooling and equity and diversity panels.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • School doors shut in fear of Black Saturday repeat
    
    More than 400 Victorian schools and childcare centres will remain closed today as the state braces for what could be another day of intense fire activity with forecast hot temperatures and shifting winds.
    
    Detailed story in The Age
    
    
    
  • Gillard defends $1m fat cat seminars
    
    Julia Gillard has defended her department spending almost $1 million on three "happiness" conferences for public servants and teachers last month.
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • An obscene waste of money on American psychobabble
      
      "Our government departments are apparently unaware of the global financial crisis ("$1 million junket to keep fat cats happy”, 26/2). The spending of $642,000 by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations on a week-long happiness workshop for public servants is an obscene waste of money. I guess it isn’t their money, so they at least don’t feel any great anxiety about spending it.
      
      "American psychobabble has probably caused more unhappiness than anything else in our modern age. It has encouraged introspection, self-indulgence and self-absorbed thinking. Being happy occurs as a side effect of getting your own life in order and by worrying less.
      
      "These public servants would have done better to go and spend time with their kids, coach a kids’ sporting team or become a community volunteer. Get into the real world and stop draining our dwindling public finances. Senator Kim Carr’s defence of the expenditure suggests he is totally out of touch."
      
      Stewart Jackson, Ingham, Qld
      
      plus three more Letters at that link
      
      
      
    • Truants too often ignored
      
      "While I agree with Noel Pearson on the urgency of improving school attendance by indigenous children ("Pearson slams Rudd over schools”, 26/2), my sympathies are with Julia Gillard and all those charged with finding workable solutions to the problem.
      
      "Even in the NSW mid-north coast town of Taree, hardly a remote district, there is a disturbing number of school-aged indigenous children wandering the shopping centre of the town on any school day, perhaps even more on pension day. There could be any number of reasons for this: lack of parental encouragement, peer pressure, boring teachers, inappropriate curriculums; the list goes on.
      
      "However, I’m not sure it is solely a government responsibility. Why isn’t there some help from the community? These kids are presently being ignored.
      
      "Surely shopkeepers, security personnel, council workers, local citizens, etc, who happen to come across them in the streets could accost them and encourage them to attend school or at least report them to a truancy official."
      
      Bill Forbes, Wingham, NSW
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Overseas students pass record number
    
    Record numbers of international students enrolled in Australian institutions last year, with the total breaching half a million for the first time.
    
    
    
  • Feature
    Outback youth wait for moment in sun
    
    Billions of dollars in Rudd Government promises are yet to make an impact here on the banks of the Darling River in western NSW.
    
    
    
    
• Answers.com
  
  
  • Outcome-based education
    

    ... Real world examples. "If these basic ends/means elements of OBE sound simple and straightforward, they are, and there are many examples from the "real world" to illustrate them. They include skill and technical training of all kinds (that sometimes reaches back hundreds of years to the craft guilds of the Middle Ages in Europe); ski schools; Boy Scouts' merit and honor badges; pilot and transportation licenses of all kinds; first-aid training; almost all military and athletic training; and virtually all licensure programs in the practical arts.
    
    "What is the essence of each of these examples? In some cases successful performance is a matter of life and death, but in all cases two factors stand out: (1) A clear criterion of success or standard of performance (the intended end) guides both instructors and learners; and (2) there is variability in the time and number of opportunities (critical means) that learners might take to achieve the standard. Having learners successfully demonstrate the outcome is what counts the most in these models. In OBE language, successful learning or performance (the end) is the constant, and the time required to attain it is flexible.
    
    The education system reversal. "But in virtually all formal educational systems across the globe, just the opposite configuration of these two defining conditions prevails. There, time is the constant, and learning or performance is the variable. Consequently, defining exactly what is and is not OBE on the education scene is extremely problematic in formal education because the two factors that most fundamentally define OBE are not only not present, they are actually reversed.
    
    "As William Spady described it in both 1994 and 1998, the world's education systems are time based: that is, they are defined by, organized around, focused on, and managed according to the calendar and clock, not outcomes. Virtually everything that happens within them is forced to exist within fixed, predefined blocks of time, no matter how much actually needs to be accomplished by either instructors or learners. When an official time block ends, so does the learner's opportunity to pursue the outcomes and improve performance on them.
    
    "From this perspective, introducing outcomes into a time-based system is like trying to force soft, large, round pegs into rigid, small, square holes. To date, the holes have emerged the overwhelming winners. Across the globe time has remained the given and the constant, even though outcomes have increasingly been emphasized as the reason the time blocks exist.
    
    "The other set of rigid square means - holes into which outcomes are being forced - is the curriculum, and it too has prevailed as a dominant force in this implementation dynamic. Although some countries and states have adopted frameworks of outcomes that reach across or go beyond existing curriculum areas - frameworks that contain complex kinds of performance abilities, which link to eventual career and life performances - the over-whelming approach to OBE across the globe has been one of developing outcome frameworks for the major subject areas in the existing curriculum. The latter are variously called program outcomes, specific outcomes, learning area outcomes, curricular outcomes, and standards. In this approach, the curriculum's content structures are the givens, and outcomes are derived from them, resulting in a "tailwags-dog" approach. As a result the system's means are used to determine its ends, even though the term outcome-based implies just the opposite..."
    
    From Answers.com at link and well worth a look !
    
    
    

• The Guardian
  
  
  • Video: Out of sight, out of mind: Teaching and mental health
    
    School staff, including former president of the NUT John Illingworth, talk openly and honestly about their mental health problems amid claims that one in three teachers will be affected at some point during their career.
    
    
    
    
    
• The Times
  
  
  • SchoolGate Blog
    Can we please have less politics in our GCSE's: a plea from a 16 year old

 

Saturday – Sunday, 28 February – 1 March

• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • Teachers bid to downgrade literature in national curriculum
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "English teachers are seeking to downgrade the importance of literature in the national curriculum to allow the study of an expanded range of texts covering visual and multimodal forms "as essential works in their own right".
    
    "The professional association purporting to represent the view of the nation's English teachers also calls for the national curriculum to recognise a whole-language method for teaching reading rather than exclusively emphasising phonics and the letter-sound relationships as the initial step.
    
    "In its submission to the National Curriculum Board's framing paper on the English curriculum, the Australian Association for the Teaching of English declares studying literature is "inherently a political action" in creating the type of people society values.
    
    "The submission disputes the National Curriculum Board's definition of school English as the three elements of language, literature and literacy.
    
    "Meaning-making in, and through, language, across a range of forms, media and expressions, should be the core organiser of the curriculum," it says.
    
    "There is a need to state (that) English is the study of language, its central focus being the different processes through which meaning is made and received through different textual expressions - literary and otherwise."
    
    "It calls for the end of traditional literature as a discrete element, and for other types of English texts - which would include advertising, TV shows, signage, text messages and websites - to be viewed as essential rather than "add ons" to accompany the understanding of literary texts.
    
    "The place and role of non-literary texts in a national English curriculum needs to be rethought in terms that do not see the value of such texts as being predominantly in their potential to enhance the study of literature," it says.
    
    "The expansion of the range of texts used in English ... will necessarily mean a significant reconfiguration of the subject, including a relative reduction in the number of literary works, as the term is traditionally conceived, studied."
    
    "The AATE challenges the curriculum's view that studying literature is "a form of arts-related and arts-enriched learning experience" related to aesthetic value, saying it is only "true to a point".
    
    "Rather, studying literature is "inherently a political action in that it is also about 'nation' building through the dissemination of a 'national' culture".
    
    "Studying literature also has historically had an ethical function, contributing to the shaping of a certain sort of person that societies have found desirable," it says.
    
    "It is difficult to imagine, for example, that the enduring value of works such as Animal Farm and To Kill a Mockingbird, both widely taught in schools, rests on their aesthetic qualities."
    
    "The English framing document for the national curriculum released in October is unequivocal in mandating the explicit teaching of the basic structures ofthe English language from grammar, spelling and punctuation to phonics in the first years of school.
    
    "Explicit teaching of decoding, spelling and other aspects of the basic codes of written English will be an important and routine aspect," the curriculum says.
    
    "But the AATE submission says the emphasis on phonics "comes at the expense of the focus on a balanced reading program", which is the term now applied to whole language methods of teaching reading.
    
    "It calls for explicit reference to be made to "all three cueing systems" used to make sense of the written word. [emphasis added]
    
    "Under the Three Cueing Systems model for teaching reading, the sounding of letters is the least important skill, with children first asked to use semantics, and guess the word based on the context including using pictures and then use the sentence syntax to work out the meaning.
    
    "Then children use the syntax or where the word sits in the sentence to try to work out the meaning. The third and least important cue under this model is sounding out the letters. In a separate submission, the English Teachers Association of NSW argues the national curriculum threatens to "deprofessionalise" English teachers for limiting its aims to developing literacy skills and knowledge about literature.
    
    "The ETA argues for the definition of school English to be expanded to include cultural studies, critical literacy (a sociological model analysing gender, race and class in literature to expose inherent prejudices and agendas) and personal growth of students."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    The full AATE submission [19 page .pdf]
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    Time to value English
    
    The Rudd Government must hold fast to education reform
    
    "How wrong can you be? Like most Australians, we thought the point of English classes at school was to teach children to read and write properly and to understand literature. Alas, we stand corrected. As Justine Ferrari reports today, the organisation representing Australia's English teachers' association, in responding to the national English curriculum, recommends that "meaning making in and through language, across a range of forms, media and expressions, should be the core organiser of the curriculum."
    
    "Quite. Read it again - it gets muddier every time.
    
    "In our view, and undoubtedly that of most parents and students, the national curriculum did a good job defining literature clearly as "plays, novels and poems ... cinema, television and multimedia ... poetry, picture books, multimodal texts, short stories and drama, and a variety of nonfiction forms such as biography."
    
    "The English Teachers Association of NSW, alas, sneered at the definitions as "nebulous". Instead, they suggested "the term culturally valued texts as a definition of literature."
    
    "Culturally valued by whom? Teenagers at the lower end of the class who prefer Big Brother to Oscar Wilde? Or, more likely, progressive teachers who find it easier to play films than take students through the themes and characters of Pride and Prejudice?
    
    "The NSW teachers want the national curriculum to be about "other models of English such as personal growth, cultural studies and critical literacy as that is how teachers understand and have operated within the subject". The best English teachers are happy to focus on their subject, but those who want to be social engineers and cultural warriors dominate these teachers' associations, which are becoming irrelevant.
    
    "Teaching grammar, which promises to be a vital improvement in the national curriculum, was dismissed by the NSW teachers as having "no influence on either the accuracy or quality of written language development for 5 to 16-year-olds". As grammar has not been taught widely to Australian students in a generation, that claim is dubious in the extreme.
    
    "The papers also push hard for assessment that is "inclusive of the full range of students" and for teachers to be given wide scope to select materials to be studied in the interests of "equity".
    
    "However worthy the teachers believe this approach to be, it is precisely students from disadvantaged and non-English-speaking homes who have most to lose from such a defeatist system. Many disadvantaged students, and some from affluent homes, do not have access to good books and are not encouraged to read by parents.
    
    "English teachers who truly value their professionalism would encourage a rigorous curriculum, taught with expertise, that provides all students with the best possible written and verbal communication skills and an appreciation of literature. This is the best way to set disadvantaged students up for life.
    
    "The Rudd Government must ignore the push to impose the worst of current state-based systems on to the national curriculum.
    
    "Only a strong curriculum, with a corresponding overhaul of teachers' training in universities, will restore English to the status it deserves."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Op Ed
    ‘Edspeak’ cops a caning as teachers play bingo
    by Zoltan Kovacs
    
    "If you think that politically correct silliness has gone about as far as it can, consider the following. A reader sent in an article about a new school in England that isn’t called a school because of the “very negative connotations” of the word for many parents.
    
    "The governors of Watercliffe Meadow primary school in Sheffield were determined not to use the word and decided it would be named “A place for learning” instead.
    
    "The article, carried in the UK Telegraph news group last month, quoted head teacher Linda Kingdon as saying they wanted to “create a new type of learning experience”, a place for family learning to which all could go. They wanted to “de-institutionalise” the place and bring it closer to “real life”. There were no whistles, bells of locked doors there.
    
    "Perhaps we should count our blessings. At least our education bureaucrats and theorizers are still prepared to call a school a school (though some have been known to prefer “learning facilitators” or “enablers of successful students” to teachers).
    
    "Nevertheless, there are unmistakable signs that classroom teachers are fed up with what many of them call “edspeak”, the stilted, jargon-ridden language they are obliged to endure from the education bureaucracy.
    
    "One is the emergence of what they call wank word bingo, a version of which fell off the back of a library trolley. A sample from it is printed here (not transcribed). The idea is that players cross off words or expressions used by speakers at professional development courses. The first to cross off a line of five wins.
    
    "At first sight, this may seem to be no more than a bit of foolishness. However, it is also a pointer to a big gap between teachers and their bosses, to a corrosive element of disaffection with the administration of the public school system.
    
    "Judging by the emails sent to this column, many teachers believe they are browbeaten by supposed official experts, who assume superior knowledge but do not have to front up to classrooms to put their ideas to a practical test. Given the outcomes-based education experience over the years, that belief should not be surprising.
    
    "A characteristic of “edspeak” is the use of unfamiliar or obscure words for common ideas or practices to camouflage reality and reinforce a pretence of original thinking.
    
    "The game featured goes beyond the “dichotomies”, “cognitive processes” and so on of customary “edspeak” to borrow from the jargon of the business – for example “bottom line” and “best practice”. This suggests that speakers have adopted what they see as the language of supposed practical efficiency. However, is there any efficiency in talking when no-one is listening?"

    zoltan.kovacs@wanews.com.au
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Classroom chairs see a bigger bottom, line
    by Kim MacDonald
    
    "The Education Department is set to supersize its school chairs, as children get too tall and fat for seats that were introduced only 20 years ago.
    
    "The new chairs will be 4cm wider, 3cm deeper and 1.5cm higher than the biggest school chair available now.
    
    "Department spokesman James Thom said talks were under way with the Department of Treasury and Finance and chair supplier Sebel, and it was anticipated the larger chairs would be available this year.
    
    "The chairs would be offered to primary and high schools for students who were tall or overweight.
    
    “In addition to the general growth of Australian children, the larger number of students staying in school until 17 has prompted this change,” Mr Thom said.
    
    "A Sebel spokeswoman said the chairs were being produced for schools in Britain and the company expected more demand in Australia.
    
    "University of WA sports science expert Tim Ackland, who has been monitoring the size of children for decades said lifestyle factors such as a fall in activity levels were partly behind the rise in obesity.
    
    "The number of overweight and obese children aged seven to 15 years almost doubled in the decade to 1995, accounting for just over 20 percent, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
    
    "In 2007, the same institute found the proportion had risen to nearly 26 per cent, based on a survey of children aged nine to 16 years.
    
    "A University of Adelaide study of 5000 adolescents found teenagers were now about 2cm taller than children of the same age a decade ago.
    
    "Professor Ackland said improving nutrition meant each generation was better able to reach its physical potential and added to average height, with some primary school children now reaching 180cm."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Sunday Times
  
  
  • WA teachers quit as school violence on the rise
    by Paul Lampathakis
    
    "The number of assaults among WA school students has increased by 23 per cent.
    
    "The Sunday Times can reveal also that more than four teachers, students or staff were assaulted by students in public schools each school day last year.
    
    "In 2008 there were 543 student-against staff assaults and 336 student-against-student incidents.
    
    "This compared with 511 and 273 respectively the previous year.
    
    "Teachers have told The Sunday Times horror stories about getting punched by students for merely telling them off in the classroom.
    
    "Teachers had also been hurt trying to break up brawls and many said they wanted to leave the profession because of horrific student behaviour.
    
    "WA State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne said teachers endured behaviour ranging from verbal threats and pushing and shoving to physical violence and threats with dangerous instruments.
    
    "Ms Gisborne said the increasing trend in schools reflected a rise in violence and bullying in the community and she believed private schools were also affected.
    
    "She said there should be zero tolerance for such incidents because they stopped teachers from creating an effective teaching and learning environment, caused teachers and students stress and worsened teacher shortages by driving them away from the job.
    
    "But Education Department deputy director-general of schools Margery Evans said a very small percentage of students were involved and the majority of the assaults were relatively minor incidents. [So "minor assaults" are OK, Margery? Fortunately the Minister doesn't agree. Web]
    
    "Public schools take a strong stance against violent behaviour and have developed individual behaviour management plans for students who were particularly disruptive,'' Ms Evans said.
    
    "When compared with the total figure of nearly 250,000 students in WA public schools, the number of students involved in challenging or violent behaviour was very low.''
    
    "Ms Evans said each of the 779 government schools had to demonstrate behaviour-management planning.
    
    "By and large schools dealt very well with student discipline,'' she said.
    
    "In 2007 three trial behaviour management centres were set up, where secondary students who were consistently disruptive or violent were removed from schools and linked to a tailored educational program.
    
    "Education Minister Liz Constable said any assault was of concern, and behaviour improvement was a priority for her.
    
    "She said the Government had committed $19 million to employ more psychologists and chaplains in WA schools. This was the "starting point'' to a comprehensive behaviour improvement program.
    
    "The figures come as more reports of school "fight clubs'' emerged this week, including new vision of student fights at North Albany Senior High School posted on the video website YouTube.
    
    "Education Department director-general Sharyn O'Neill said on Friday that a video sent to a Perth TV station this week showing students boxing in a classroom as a teacher looked on was of a teacher using after-class boxing sessions to encourage "male bonding'' at Kelmscott Senior High School.
    
    "She said the teacher had been counselled."
    
    From The Sunday Times at link
    
    
    
    • 'Fight club' footage was 'male bonding' - Education boss
      
      "Fight club'' footage from a Perth high school was a teacher encouraging "male bonding'', says the WA Education Department boss.
      
      
      
      
• ABC News
  
  
  • Linguists fear Indigenous language extinctions
    
    A linguist working to preserve threatened languages in a Northern Territory town has criticised the Territory Government for its policy of forcing Aboriginal language schools to teach in English.
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • Brown sets targets for science
    
    "Prime Minister Gordon Brown has set targets to increase the number of pupils in secondary school in England taking science subjects.
    
    "In the next five years, Mr Brown wants to double the number of pupils taking "triple science", which includes biology, chemistry and physics.
    
    "He also wants to have access to science as single subjects in 90% of schools.
    
    "Mr Brown, speaking at Oxford University, says he wants to "ring-fence" science during the recession.
    
    "The prime minister emphasised the economic importance of protecting the investment in science.
    
    Teacher training
    
    "Some say that now is not the time to invest, but the bottom line is that the downturn is no time to slow down our investment in science. We will not allow science to become a victim of the recession," said Mr Brown.
    
    "There were also promises to offer "personalised support from education consultants" for graduates made redundant from science and technology companies who are considering re-training as maths or science teachers.
    
    "Mr Brown set out targets to increase the number of pupils taking the triple science option, at present taken by 8.5% of students. By 2014, he said he wanted to double this figure, representing an extra 100,000 pupils.
    
    "There was also a target to increase the number of pupils taking A-level maths, from 56,000 to 80,000 in the next five years.
    
    "The Conservatives' Schools Secretary, Michael Gove, rejected the promises.
    
    "The government's latest promises are completely meaningless given Labour's appalling record on science.
    
    "The reality is that thanks to their reforms the number of children taking only one science GCSE has doubled in the last year alone, and there are whole areas of the country where not a single child sits three sciences at GCSE."
    
    Specialist teachers
    
    "Mike Harris of the Institute of Directors said there was an important economic need to provide specialist science and maths teachers in schools to help nurture the subject and to protect the supply of graduates in these fields.
    
    "The uncomfortable reality is that despite reservoirs of good will, considerable industry engagement and positive government intervention, the number of graduates in the key Stem [science, technology, engineering and maths] disciplines has at best remained pretty flat in recent years. This must be turned around, and quickly."
    
    "There have been warnings about the difficulty in recruiting specialist science teachers.
    
    "Last summer, a report from the University of Buckingham found that almost one in four secondary schools in England no longer has any specialist physics teachers.
    
    "On the wider issues associated with the "knowledge economy", Mr Brown stressed that he would maintain the increased momentum in expenditure he outlined as Chancellor in the 2004, in his 10-year Science and Innovation Investment Framework.
    
    "This should see public spend in the science base of the UK rise to £6.3bn by 2010/2011."
    
    From BBC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Ask an expert
      
      "It's not only recent teaching graduates that have recollections of poor teacher training (The Age, 27/2). More than 20 years into the job, I can recall endless lectures and workshops from mostly forgettable academics who we dubbed refugees from the classroom.
      
      "While the subject-based components of my degree were generally an excellent grounding for mastery of the content I teach, the teacher training part was too long on theory and severely lacking in practice. Despite doing more than the required number of classes during my school placements, I still found the first years in the job almost overwhelming to the point of giving it away.
      
      "Rather than a few days or weeks here and there, what is needed are extended placements with experienced teacher-mentors that include all aspects of school, including parent-teacher interviews. The experts are out there in the schools now — they need to be properly utilised. To get this to happen, the teachers would have to have some time-release to help their charges and be directly remunerated by the universities for their expertise."
      
      Ralph Judd, North Blackburn
      
      
      
      
• The New York Times
  
  
  • About His Deposit ...
    
    Parents ask if private education provides value for money

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This page last updated 8 March, 2009 11:26 PM