Monday 2 March

Tuesday 3 March

Wednesday 4 March

Thursday 5 March

Friday 6 March

Saturday – Sunday, 7 – 8 March

Monday 2 March

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Books role in English course 'important'
    by Kate Campbell
    
    "The importance of books in teaching English should not be diminished, WA Education Minister Liz COnstable said yesterday.
    
    "In its submission to the National English Curriculum Framing Paper, the Australian Association for the Teaching of English says its teachers wanted advertising, film, ratio, TV shows, news and current affairs and song lyrics to be considered essential rather than "add-ons".
    
    "Dr Constable, who had not read the submission, said: "Books and literature should always have an important part to play in the education of our students, both in terms of their understanding of concepts and language and also their understanding of our culture.
    
    "Their importance should not be diminished. That is not to say that other forms of media are not important. There needs to be a good balance."
    
    "The chairman of anti-OBE group PLATO, Marko Vojkovic, said that the association's idea would "dumb down" the subject and its arguments were symptomatic of the "ongoing battle" between the two types of English courses.
    
    "Some teachers and professional bodies wanted to turn literature subjects into media courses." [emphasis added]
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Manifesto misses the essence of language, literature
      
      "English is a language and the school curriculum should of course teach students broadly about usage in areas other than just literature ("Teachers bid to downgrade literature”, 28/2-1/3). Grammar, punctuation, tone, register, the social and cultural aspects of the language are important, along with the ways the language is and can be used. Literature is a part of this.
      
      "One of the problems with the NSW English teachers’ manifesto is that they don’t seem to understand what an academic discipline or a teaching subject is. English is primarily a language. Matters such as racism and sexism are not the focus of English education, although they may well be discussed in terms of language and usage.
      
      "Anyone who reads literature, both the classics and the products of our own times, will know that reading is not “political” in the sense offered by the NSW teachers’ association. Advertisements are designed to sell, graffiti to provoke, texting to communicate simple messages. Literature works on an altogether more complex level of language.
      
      "Literature represents human life in its breadth and depth, and offers self-understanding, especially in times of crisis."
      
      Assoc. Professor Peter Morgan, Convenor, European Studies, University of WA
      
      
      
    • "The Australian Association for the Teaching of English’s submission to the National Curriculum Board contains some death-defying leaps of logic. If the study of literature is inherently a political action it is a wild leap from there to the study being very dubiously arts-related and having aesthetic value. The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. It is often asserted that the study of Shakespeare in England and British India was motivated by a desire to inculcate respect for a view of Britain as a major (colonial) power. But a desire to achieve an objective is far from ensuring the actual achievement. Shakespeare was read by intelligent students as both a supporter and a subverter of those values, and those students often went on to argue and act for changes of government as did African students in the British colonies in the 20th century. Shakespeare deals with ideas; a television advertisement for an iPod does not."
      
      Ken Goodwin, Honorary professor of English, University of Queensland, Brookfield, Qld
      
      
      
    • "The perverse phenomenon of English teachers denying literature a central place in the curriculum is akin to pigs flying—a fiction, in other words. The Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE) certainly sees literature as being essential to a national English curriculum.
      
      "The claim that AATE is seeking to downgrade the importance of literature in the national curriculum rests on a highly selective reading of our submission to the National Curriculum Board (NCB). It overlooks our declaration that literature has a key historic place in English and such an unequivocal statement as Australian literature must have a place in a national English curriculum.
      
      "Nowhere does our response state that students should be studying such things as signage and text messages, as your report suggests is our position, let alone at the expense of literature.
      
      "While our response does deal with definitional issues, as required by the NCB consultation, it does not pass negative judgement on the place and value of literature."
      
      Mark Howie, President, Australian Association for the Teaching of English, Kensington Gardens, SA
      
      
      
    • "Educators should look no further than the local paper to see how monumentally unsuccessful their teaching methods have become. The complete lack of knowledge of spelling, use of apostrophes and punctuation in current use should send them scurrying back to their grammar books and stress the need for all children to be taught the building blocks of language rather than this continual dumbing down of the curriculum."
      
      Fran Clayton, Cairns, Qld
      
      
      
    • "It's a pity the complex process of teaching children literacy competency is yet again being dragged down into a divisive phonics or whole language approach. Returning to the pure phonics approach of 50 years ago, which left thousands of young people unable to read and write is not a solution.
      
      "The current approach of teaching phonics, combined with the use of contextual cues (including picture cues), syntactic and whole word cues has to be the most sensible and effective approach, since it takes into account that literacy is multi-skilled and that children learn in different ways."
      
      Sue Braint, Ashburton, Vic
      
      
      
    • "The English Teachers Association of NSW (ETA) was most surprised to see such extensive commentary ("Time to value English”, Opinion, 28/2-1/3) on our purported position as it had not yet been published or even finalised. We were still incorporating responses from our membership. The editorial was based on an initial draft of members’ responses sent out for further consultation. Surely the ETA’s transparent approach at least deserves the decency and courtesy of accurate reporting by the media.
      
      "The ETA’s position is, and always has been, that literature should be a core element of English, that the close study of language is essential for good writing and that English should be a compulsory study in all years of schooling."
      
      Eva Gold, Executive Officer, English Teachers’ Association NSW, Leichhardt, NSW
      
      
      
  • Independent schools seek funds boost
    
    The non-government school sector has sought to inject some independence into the education debate, reminding Queensland political leaders not to overlook it during the campaign.
    
    
    
  • Unis slow to open doors to the poor
    
    The Group of Eight research universities are tough institutions for disadvantaged students to get into, but they are not, according to a surprising new study, the toughest of the lot: that dubious honour goes to the University of Canberra.
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • The Monday Education Section has been updated and contains nine new articles, including:
    
    
    • Op Ed
      To improve teaching standards, first improve teachers
      
      Finding a way out of the literacy and numeracy black hole in Victorian schools is not straightforward. Some will argue that teachers are at fault... According to Baden Eunson, a Monash lecturer and convenor of the new course [in basic literacy skills], about 90 per cent of first year graduates cannot identify parts of speech.
      
      Worth a look
      
      
      
    • President Obama's Other Revolution
      
      The new president is promising to transform America's schools and colleges .
      
      Also worth a look
      
      
      
    • Trades face 'class' divide
      
      Middle-class teenagers will continue to shun trades and other industry-based courses unless Australia radically alters how it provides such education, according to one of Australia's leading job-training educators.
      
      
      
    • Stormy weather of the soul
      
      The poetry for which Robert Frost (1874-1963) was revered - concerning the relationship between his internalised state of mind, heart and soul and the outer world of nature in a small-town and farming setting - seems well suited to the VCE English context theme of "The Imaginative Landscape".
      
      
      
    • "Extras" put pressure on parents
      
      Parents are under constant pressure to pay for extras.
      
      
      
  • Editorial
    State will win by treating students better
    
    "With the commodities and manufacturing sectors on the slide, what will prop up earnings for the national and state economies? Universities have opened again for business, but the sector's importance may be lost on anyone who is not fully aware of the $12.5 billion industry that has grown up around providing higher education services to international students. Australia is the fifth-largest provider of such services, the nation's third-biggest export earner. Reassuringly, foreign student numbers appear to have held up reasonably well as a weakening dollar helps offset the impact of the global economic crisis.
    
    "Victoria hosts a large proportion of these students, but competition to attract them is increasing. That lends weight to calls to treat them better, not simply as cash cows. At the extreme end of the scale, students have been victims of racial attacks, which must be pursued vigorously as hate crimes. Yet even the state has been less generous than it should be in maintaining Victoria as an educational destination of choice. Support services such as language training and welfare are inadequate. The students are also disadvantaged financially on top of their high course fees — they pay the full non-Medicare price of any health care and twice as much for public transport as the local student concession rate.
    
    "The Age endorses calls by Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis and student groups to extend concessions to all full-time students. The costs are negligible against the benefits of securing Victoria's reputation as the place to be educated. Beyond immediate export earnings, the state will benefit long into the future from the incalculable value of the global links — personal, cultural, intellectual, political and commercial — created by the presence of so many foreign students."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    Related Editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Wired to learn as technology turns teacher
    
    The 3D virtual world Second Life and podcasts are changing the way education is delivered, writes Yasmine Fathy.
    
    In the past few years higher education has seen massive change. Most students access materials online and interact with other students in discussion boards. Virtual worlds, mobiles, iPhones, wikis and blogs are all becoming the norm at university.
    
    
    • An education in itself: revisiting uni life 30 years on
      
      
    
    

Tuesday 3 March

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Examiners scathing of poor TEE literacy
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "Exam markers have delivered a scathing assessment of declining Year 12 literacy across a wide range of subjects, saying too many students are unable to structure coherent written answers.
      
    "Widespread concerns about falling standards in reading, writing and grammar in last year’s TEE are outlined in examiners’ reports to the Curriculum Council.
      
    "History chief examiner David Black said there was a general feeling among markers that the overall standard of answers was falling and that too many students wrote prepared passages rather than answering questions specifically. “In some cases candidates effectively write their own question to suit the preparation they have apparently undertaken,” he said.
      
    "The average score for the history exam was 56.7 per cent, down on the previous year’s average of 58.7 per cent.
      
    "In Applied Information Technology, a new course examined for the first time last year, markers complained of “the lack of literacy and the simplistic nature evident in many candidates’ answers”.
      
    "Biology chief examiner Michael Calver said in his report a common complaint from markers was that students struggled to interpret questions correctly.
      
    "Commenting on the paper’s final question, he said it was unfortunate that too many students drew inspiration from Jurassic Park rather than their understanding of biology.
      
    "For example, one student wrote: “The dinosaurs weren’t nice and because they were scary predators, they had no one to snuggle up to, to keep warm. Death by loneliness.”
      
    "However, Professor Calver said most students were well prepared for the paper.
      
    "This was reflected in the overall average mark of 63.45 per cent, significantly higher than the previous year’s 57.55 per cent.
      
    "Markers of English papers identified as a major weakness an inability to structure an argument, though they noted that written expression was generally of a high standard.
      
    "Chief examiner Alex Solosy said the requirement that forced students to make reference to texts they had read imposed unnecessary constraints.
      
    “This condition often invites forced and contrived ‘links’ between texts at a superficial level,” she wrote.
      
    "Applicable mathematics chief examiner Stephen Phillip said markers commented on the “disappointing standard” of written explanations.
      
    “Too often, responses were incoherent, inconsistent or copied from notes with no relation to the context of the question,” he said."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Structure and logic the keys to understanding
      
      "The English Teachers Association of NSW must live in an abstract world of its own, unconnected with the mainstream of Australian life in which the rest of us work every day to sustain this country’s economy.
      
      "I can only speak for my own profession, engineering, when I say that written (and spoken) English is one of the three fundamental means of conveying one’s ideas and thoughts to others, along with mathematics and engineering drawing.
      
      "For conducting everyday contractual and technical correspondence, drawing up specifications and conditions of contract and preparing reports, all of which potentially involve vast amounts of money and substantial legal liability, correct spelling, syntax and punctuation and an excellent command of English vocabulary are of capital importance.
      
      "These skills can be acquired only by a rigorous study of the structure and logic of spoken and written English, as found in the models created by its literary masters."
      
      Bohdan Generowicz, Dianella, WA
      
      
      
    • "Your editorial ("Time to value English, 28/2 -1/3) is correct in criticising the notion of equity in designing an English curriculum.
      
      "Equity, as you say, resides in offering all students the highest quality of teaching of the highest quality of texts in a wide range of media, but the task becomes complex at secondary school level, when underlying assumptions must be addressed.
      
      "First, the notion of quality: Postmodernist theories have encouraged the lazy belief that all forms of expression are equally valid simply because they have been made. This translates into too much shoddy work in the classroom and the depleted use of quality texts.
      
      "Second, there is the argument on whether students should be offered what they know rather than what they could know.
      
      "The argument applies in Australia when, for example, we struggle to decide in which language Aboriginal children should be taught or when we want to include the culture of children from non-English speaking backgrounds.
      
      "Third, students in upper secondary school have differing abilities and needs. Streaming the courses is essential, and this need not affect quality.
      
      "Fourth, the belief that teachers can teach anything. If rigour and a depth of knowledge are going to be insisted upon in the teaching of English, governments should ensure that teachers are properly trained."
      
      Barbara Baker, Grange, Qld
      
      
      
    • "Has this professional association of teachers had one too many cappuccinos during their no doubt regular talk-fests? I doubt our teenagers or the ones to come (my children will be among them) need any formal education in texting or the less than subtle art of advertising.
      
      "While we often moaned at yet another Shakespeare or Austen to study, the richness of those texts and other literature should not be forsaken to “multimodal forms” (another cappuccino-induced term)."
      
      Rachael Falk, Bowral, NSW
      
      
      
    • "i coodnt blve wot i wos rdng 2day. teechrs gree wiv me inglish is a wast v me time. bks is dum. So-oooooo tru. me n me mats texss al th tim an we no wot we meen."
      
      Mollie Tucker, Epping, Vic
      
      
      
    • "English teachers associations ... an unrepresentative swill.
      
      "They should surely register as political organisations and make clear what and who they are.
      
      "As for their representatives having automatic places on syllabus committees and the like, it’s time education departments gave them the boot and treated them for what they are — an unrepresentative swill comprised of quaint but dangerous zealots."
      
      Tom Whitford, Changshu Sheng Zhong, China
      
      
      
    • "It is ironic that so much of the submission by the Australian English Teachers Association, which rejects the importance of literature in the English curriculum of schools, is itself gobbledegook.
      
      "It is clear that the authors never mastered the lessons of literature themselves. In contrast, in a few simply written, succinct paragraphs, your editorial ("Time to value English”, 28/2-1/3) destroys their claims."
      
      John H Chambers, Brisbane, Qld
      
      
      
    • "Your editorial (28/2-1/3) leads us to believe that “most Australians” think that English in schools is to teach students “to read and write properly and understand literature”. Presumably anything else must be wrong. The methodology you to t— direct instruction — has it that anything can be taught to anyone. The editorial, political and ideologically driven, claims, for example, to be speaking on behalf of the disadvantaged. Yet to read any text from a left-wing or feminist or racial or class point of view, it claims, is wrong. Teachers of English value the beauty of language and its use. But that is not the only reason for studying literature. Students can take pleasure in images, joy in the rhythms of language and the twists and turns of the plot and the feelings aroused in fine description but in the end there are also messages about the realities of life which cannot be denied by those who would restrict what students might think."
      
      John Woodrow, Belair, SA
      
      
      
  • Machete-wielding teens go on school rampage [lead National story]
    
    Three teenage boys armed with a machete and a tomahawk allegedly went on a rampage in a western Sydney school today. The teenagers, aged from 15 to 17, allegedly ran into Trinity Catholic College in Auburn this morning, smashing windows, noticeboards and a car while screaming the name of a male student.
    
    
    
  • Labor is 'destroying' NT intervention
    
    Former indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough has accused Kevin Rudd of abandoning the radical Northern Territory intervention in Aboriginal communities and destroying it step by step.
    
    Related story in The Age
    
    
    
    • Editorial
      A job not yet finished
      
      Stamping out child abuse is central to the NT intervention
      
      
      
  • Lifted laptops pop up with cry for help
    
    Owners must report their laptop missing by logging on to a website, which sends a message to the model: a red and yellow "lost or stolen" banner pops up on its screen when it is started. Under the latest version of the software, users can also send a spoken message... "Get your hands off me, I have been stolen," the laptop shouted.
    
    

    
    

• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Rhee Says Consultant's Report Shows Pay Plan Is Sustainable
    
    D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has said a financial consultant's report shows that her plan to pay teachers as much as [US]$135,000 a year in salaries and bonuses can be sustained with District dollars after a promised five-year, $100 million contribution by private foundations is spent.
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • Thousands of teachers 'at risk'
    
    Thousands of teaching careers are being destroyed by heavy handed child protection procedures, teachers' unions and an MP have claimed.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • The winnowing out of happiness
    
    Former education secretary Shirley Williams says intense control from central government is hurting schools
    
    
    
  • Do career-changers make good teacher
    
    Those who have never taught rarely appreciate the range of skills needed in the classroom, says Peter Mortimore
    
    

Wednesday 4 March

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Education system must get literacy skills right

    "Declining standards of literacy have been in evidence for a long time. The latest example is a scathing assessment by examiners of the levels of literacy displayed in last year’s tertiary entrance examinations.
    
    "Exam markers had concerns about falling standards in reading, writing and argument. Chief TEE geography marker Alan May, for example, said the results from last year’s exam were “worryingly poor”. Markers had reported many students were unable to analyse and interpret information, struggled to compose sentences and paragraphs and had poor handwriting.
    
    "All these skills are vital not only to academic success but to the business of everyday life. We live in an information age and being able to understand and communicated that information, much of it increasingly complex, is an essential part of living in a modern society.
    
    "A limited mastery of communication skills will mean a life lf limited options. Our education system needs to be equipped to deliver those skills and realistic forms of assessment to make sure they are being absorbed.
    
    "Capable English teachers are obviously an essential part of the process. So it is disturbing that their professional association in WA believes that many of them lack basic literacy skills such as an understanding of grammar that they will need to teach a new national curriculum.
    
    "Framers of the curriculum want a renewed focus on grammar, spelling and punctuation across all stages of schooling but the English Teachers’ Association of WA says that reduced university entrance scores are leading to more teachers with lower literacy skills.
    
    "Adding to the problem, some teachers and professional bodies want to turn literature subjects into media courses. Soft options are not going to help reverse the decline in the standards of literacy. WA did poorly in national testing of grammar and punctuation last year. The worst results were in Years 7 and 9, with WA ranking seventh among the States and Territories.
    
    "Education Department director-general Sharyn O’Neill has admitted that employers are reporting that some school leavers struggle with simple tasks such as writing a letter – a result, she said of “overcrowded and diffused” curriculums which left less time for the teaching of fundamentals.
    
    "There has already been too much experimentation with education rather than a concentration on the basics, as shown by the flawed piece of social engineering that comprises outcomes-based education.
    
    "It is a relief that the State Government has decided to abolish the contentious and confusing “levels” at the heart of OBE in which students are marked on their individual performances rather than being compared with other students.
    
    "The system of levels caused complaints from teachers required to implement it. Students and parents were left without a clear indication of what progress was being made.
    
    "Labor abolished levels for Year 11 and 12 in 2007 but their use continued in many primary and lower secondary schools despite strong criticism that they were too broad to measure student progress accurately and showed little distinction between high and low achievers.
    
    "The Government should now act on its election pledge and deliver an independent audit of the OBE framework so another system can be put in place." [emphasis added]
    
    From The West Australian
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • It’s an insult to students

      "It is regrettable that the ongoing battle between two English courses is still pursued. Sadly the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, the very body which should wholeheartedly support English literature, wishes to combine both types of English courses.
      
      "Marko Vojkovic (Books role in English course ‘important’, 2/3) is justified in his use of the term “dumb down”.
      
      "Parents of intelligent children should be alarmed. Why should students be insulted by the offer of dumbed-down courses?
      
      "This new course will probably be skewed heavily towards media study. One wonders what percentage of English teachers favours the change. How many of them lack confidence or, dare I say it, competence when required to teach English literature?
      
      "I expect the next point in this debate will be the resurrection of the old canard about elitism. Surely a teacher should endeavour to stretch students, raise them to elite levels rather than send them on fruitless searches for profundities in the “lyrics” of pop or rap songs? Strangely, hundreds of poems from the dreaded canon have been set to music, even Schubert set some Shakespeare. Why not use these songs for the “song lyric” section of the course?
      
      "Book, of course, are dangerous. Libraries must be burnt, except for technical books."
      
      H. Kane, East Fremantle
      
      

    • Nothing new
      
      "In the light of Zoltan Kovacs’ recent excellent series of articles, if it is of any comfort to today’s teachers, your exposure to silver city psychosis is nothing new. Hands up any old chalkies out there from the 1970s who remember such gems and “Guidelines” and “CPM”.
      
      "No, I did not stay in the profession very long. After 12 years I returned to the outside world, where I joyfully discovered that a manually manoeuvred digging implement was still referred to as a “spade”.
      
      Ian Campbell, Armadale

      
      
      

• The Australian
  
  
• Maths in crisis as teachers go private
  by Andrew Trounson
  
  "Advanced mathematics is disappearing from public school classrooms, leaving students able to learn only basic maths, because the few qualified teachers are being snapped up by the private sector.
  
  "The shortage of maths teachers will become more acute as fewer students continue maths at university, undermining the nation's skills base in engineering, the sciences and technology, scientists warn.
  
  "The inequitable access to quality mathematics education is a national disgrace," the National Committee for the Mathematical Sciences says in a report calling for a national strategy to boost the discipline.
  
  "An estimated 40 per cent of senior school mathematics teachers do not have a maths major, the minimum needed to teach the subject to senior years, the committee believes. That is up from 30 per cent in 1999.
  
  "At the same time, university enrolments for maths majors fell almost 14 per cent between 2001 and 2007.
  
  "The committee is part of the Australian Academy of Science. Its chairman, Hyam Rubinstein, said state schools could not compete with the private sector for qualified maths teachers.
  
  "Students not having access to (higher level maths) in government schools is really disadvantaging them in a number of important areas of study," Professor Rubinstein said.
  
  "It is just going to make the skills shortage worse because, even with the economic downturn, we need to replace our engineers who are all ageing, and we aren't going to be able to do that if people aren't doing mathematics at school."
  
  "The number of Year 12 students studying advanced maths has fallen 20 per cent, from 25,000 in 1995 to 20,000 in 2007. The proportion of Year 12 students studying senior maths has now fallen from 14 per cent to 10 per cent, with the proportion taking intermediate maths down from 27 per cent to 21 per cent. In contrast, the proportion studying elementary maths has risen from 37 per cent to 48 per cent. [emphasis added]
  
  "Mathematical Association of Victoria head Simon Pryor said: "Year 7 and Year 8 are critical years, especially if you are going to get kids to love mathematics."
  
  "Mr Pryor said principals, hit by limited resources, were being forced to staff maths classes with teachers lacking maths qualifications.
  
  "This year, Mr Pryor took a call from a young teacher at a Victorian state school who last studied maths at school in Year 12. He was desperate for coaching after discovering he had been given a full load teaching maths to Years 10 and 11.
  
  "While it is not new for the association to get cries for help from teachers with little maths training, Mr Pryor said he was surprised that senior school students were being taught by teachers lacking maths training.
  
  "A senior mathematics teacher, who preferred not to be named, said unqualified maths teachers inevitably could only teach practical maths. As a result students were missing out on the higher, abstract maths required to go on to university study.
  
  "The National Committee for the Mathematical Sciences is calling for a national system of mathematics teacher registration. It wants school systems to be able to offer "golden handshakes" to attract mathematicians into teaching. It also wants schools to offer tenure to new maths teachers. [emphasis added]
  
  "It recommends a widening of the federal Government's HECS discount scheme for science graduates entering teaching to include other degrees that also include maths, such as computer science and engineering.
  
  "It also wants the Government to crack down on universities and ensure government money specifically targeted for maths and statistics departments is not spent elsewhere within the universities."
  
  From The Australian at link [see related story from ABC News, below]
  
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Subject of shame: we suck at sums
    by Justine Ferrari
    
    "Two twentysomething mothers standing in line at the museum struggle to work out the cost of tickets for their three children. The sum? Three nines.
    
    "Unable to come up with the answer, they summon their husbands. They, too, are stumped. It's left to the cash register to calculate.
    
    "It's not a biting piece of social satire from Summer Heights High but a real example of the state of maths teaching in schools.
    
    "The automatic recall of simple sums of a generation ago is lost today, as teachers are told to shun rote learning because kids find it boring and it doesn't aid understanding.
    
    "But the automatic recall of how to write the letter T or the product of six and seven frees up the mind to work on more complicated tasks.
    
    "In a subject such as maths, mastering basic skills and knowledge is especially important. Maths courses are sequential, with new knowledge accumulating each year.
    
    "That maths teaching is dying in schools became starkly apparent with the release of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study last year.
    
    "The study of mathematical knowledge of Years 4 and 8 children found Australian students had slipped in ranking behind countries we like to mock for lesser education standards, such as Britain and the US, and even the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.
    
    "A national review of maths teaching conducted for all the states and territories last year concluded that students were taught maths at the most superficial level, with teachers rushing to pass on basic skills and shying away from complex ideas.
    
    "Part of the problem lies in our failure to instil the basics from the start, and part lies in our low expectations. It's as if we, as anation, believe the mantra uttered by large numbers of school kids, past and present, that we suck at maths."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
• Western Australia takes aim at its fat cats [lead WA story]
  
  Western Australian Under-Treasurer Tim Marney has urged business leaders to dob in public service fat cats who waste taxpayer funds, as the Barnett Government tries to rein in spending.

Here's An Idea !
How about starting with Silver City and the Curriculum Council? How many hundreds of millions wasted on OBE and levelling? Web



• Letters to the Editor
  
  
  • Whole language teaching gives children bad habits
    
    "The learning-to-read years (age six to nine) establish reading habits both good and bad.
    
    "If you teach children to read to the end of the sentence and then guess unknown words from the meaning of the other words in the sentence, you will have established a strategy that fails in seven out of eight sentences.
    
    "If you teach children to word-guess by paying attention to some letters and guessing the rest, then you must expect “house” to be misguessed as “horse”, for instance.
    
    "In our study of almost 1000 failing nine-year-olds, 85 per cent showed evidence of this style of error; 74 per cent of failing readers still displayed those error patterns at age 12.
    
    "Responsibility for these error patterns rests with teacher trainers and professional associations like the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, both driven by flawed philosophies, such as whole language, rather than evidence-based research."
    
    Byron Harrison, VAS Research, Hobart, Tas
    
    
    
  • "I agree with Bohdan Generowicz (Letters, 3/3) that structure and logic are important benefits derived from studying the literary masterpieces of English.
    
    "Part of the problem is that there is an ideology, ensconced in English teachers associations since the 1970s, that denigrates so-called “male logic” and much of the English literary tradition on the grounds that it is the work of dead white males.
    
    "The Australian’s pursuit of the culture wars on the educational front, which those who have politicised the study of English wish to declare a right-wing fiction now that their stance is under public scrutiny, is doing students and teachers a great service."
    
    John Kelly, Tranmere, SA
    
    
    
  • "When I went to high school in the 1960s, cinema, television and multimedia were not part of English but it is appropriate that they be included in a 21st century curriculum.
    
    "The range of texts considered legitimate has expanded since then but the amount of lesson time available has remained the same.
    
    "When this is taken into account, it seems that at least part of your editorial ("Time to value English”, 28-2/1-3) was supporting the so-called downgrading of literature that it later sought to attack in an associated front page story ("Teachers bid to downgrade literature”, 28-2/1-3)."
    
    Garry Collins, President, English Teachers Association of Queensland, Stafford Heights, Qld
    
    
    
    
• Higher Education
  
  
  • Gillard reveals massive shake-up of higher education funding for places [late online update]
    
    In what would be the biggest structural shake-up of the university sector since the Dawkins reforms of the late 1980s, the federal Government is planning to link funding for tertiary places to student demand.The reform, aimed at significantly boosting participation rates in higher education, would scrap the current practice where the Government allocates commonwealth-supported places.
    
    
    
• Larkins to warn on cost pressure
  
  High costs and structural pressures are likely to drive more universities to specialise and force smaller ones to amalgamate, according to Universities Australia chairman and Monash vice-chancellor Richard Larkins.
  
  
  
• Spike to help unis weather crisis
  
  Increased acceptance of university places and buoyant overseas student numbers look set to sustain the university sector through the economic downturn.
  
  
  
• Fiscal crisis may prove mother of reinvention
  
  The global financial crisis presents the higher education system with a unique opportunity to remodel its relationship to both government and society; to advance, in short, its leadership aspirations writes Luke Slattery.
  
  
  
• Expats, come home, boomers' time is up
  
  Universities need to reach out to expatriate academics to tempt them home as part of a national effort to boost the supply of academics ahead of the baby boomer generation's retirement.
  
  
  
  
• ABC News
  
  
  • Maths becoming a dying art
    
    "Today is World Maths Day but mathematics, it seems, is a dying art.
    
    "University enrolments are falling, as is the number of high school teachers with a maths major.
    
    "The Australian Mathematical Society says many Australian school children are coming out of schools without knowing how to do a calculation with a pencil and paper.
    
    "Today, there is an effort to revive some of the interest in maths with a quarter of a million Australian school students taking part in a global maths competition.
    
    "The president of the Australian Mathematical Society, Nalini Joshi, believes maths is in dire straits.
    
    "I think that there are still many talented students who are very interested in it, but we are not offering them the opportunities to pursue it at high school," she said.
    
    "Professor Joshi says the decline of the subject is due to a lack of teachers in the field, rather than a lack of enthusiasm from students.
    
    "We don't have the numbers in the qualified mathematics teacher category any more; we have experienced teachers who are looking at retirement in large numbers in the next few years," she said.
    
    "And the cohort of teachers coming through is where the worry is. There are many people there who are great teachers but they are not as confident as we would like them to be at the advanced levels."
    
    "She says there needs to be more support and acknowledgment of maths teachers to encourage people to the profession.
    
    "[Acknowledgment] needs to be at the Federal Government level, with, for example, setting up of a prize for mathematics teaching; that would be acknowledgment that this is an important part of our nation building enterprise," she said.
    
    "And there needs to be developmental support that's available to teachers of mathematics at high school."
    
    "Professor Joshi also says that despite the teacher shortage, some maths teachers have trouble getting a placement.
    
    "I think there needs to be a study done into that," she said.
    
    "I think that where the shortages are, are in places which need to have... guaranteed placements, so anybody who comes along with an investment to make should be encouraged to make that step with, perhaps, higher pay.
    
    "A lot of the problems are happening in areas that are rural, remote, or where there are further problems, so that the teachers are attracted into those areas and are given the support to do so."
    
    Student skills
    
    "Professor Joshi also says students are becoming too reliant on calculators to solve problems instead of working them out manually.
    
    "Being able to do a calculation actually teaches you to think logically and if you are relying on a piece of technology to do that for you, you're giving up that skill," she said.
    
    "But Professor Joshi does not think children should be banned from using calculators at all, but should use them in conjunction with their own skills.
    
    "At the primary level, the essential skills on how to do arithmetic, how to do long division... all of those should be reinforced through the students' own calculations on paper, and then you can use calculators to add to that if you wish," she said.
    
    "But when many students come through into the high school setting they haven't actually got those skills [so] they automatically pick up the calculator."

    Adapted from an interview with Anna Hipsley on ABC News Radio.
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    

  • Kids 'bored out of brains' in modern schools
    by Kim Lyell
    
    "International experts at an education conference in Queensland say the need for a radical overhaul of the way children are taught in schools throughout the Western World has never been greater.
    
    "They say a 19th Century system is not equipping students to be the problem solvers needed in the 21st Century to tackle issues such as climate change.
    
    "The director of the innovation unit for the public service in the United Kingdom, Valerie Hannon, is among speakers at the Independent Schools Queensland conference in Brisbane this week.
    
    "She says the global economic downturn will make it more difficult to make the changes required in education, but makes them even more important.
    
    "Unless we change the way teachers organise how kids learn, kids will be 'bored out of their brains' too often, because the poverty of their learning environment doesn't fit all that well with the way they're wired up through a whole range of media in the rest of their lives," she said.
    
    "She says the downturn has created a "perfect storm" for education, facing reduced budgets and greater need.
    
    "If we're not careful, all we'll get is a decline in services, and impoverished services, when in fact the answer is a radical change in the way we do business."
    
    "Professor Erica McWilliam, leader of a creative work force program at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence based at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), also works for the National Institute of Education in Singapore.
    
    "She says literacy and numeracy will continue to be important in the late age of print, but contemporary technology reduces the reliance of carrying around a "head full of facts". [emphasis added]
    
    "She would like to see every student equipped with information communication technology, but she says ICT alone is not all that is required to make sure students "learn and earn" in the 21st Century.
    
    'Need for challenges'
    
    "In the last couple of decades the system has been focused on making students happy, instead of challenging them with powerful, rigorous and creative thinking," Professor McWilliam said.
    
    "Low threat-low challenge is not going to be of any help to these young people.
    
    "I think we've worried a bit that perhaps it might be beyond them.
    
    "I think there are times when we should be helping them to fail with dignity, and I wonder sometimes whether we've confused our teaching work with a form of therapy where we have lost an understanding of how much they should jump for." [emphasis added]
    
    "Ms Hannon says in the UK, independent schools often have the resources and flexibility to be more innovative than government-controlled schools.
    
    "However, that does not guarantee they are leading the change.
    
    "There is a kind of force within the system that parents expect to see the kids have the same sort of education they had."
    
    "There's a kind of innate conservatism, you might say."
    
    "Both speakers say the future of education in both the public and private sector lies in building partnerships with the corporate sector.
    
    "If we can work with corporates to reinvest and use our schools for test-beds for development of the next generation of technologies, then there is something in it for everyone," Professor McWilliam said."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    

  • Teachers will leave Qld if conditions don't improve, union says
    
    The Queensland Government is being warned it will lose motivated junior teachers from the public system if pay and conditions are not improved.
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • Youth to be hit hard by downturn
    
    Federal and state governments are trying to improve young people's pathways into work or study amid predictions that the number of school-leavers not in a job or tertiary education will rise by 10 per cent by July next year.
    
    
    • Apprentices hit hard as sackings, downtime on rise
      
      
      
  • Funds elusive for indigenous pupils [late addition from 3 March]
    
    Principals have accused the State Government of stalling a critical plan to lift the underperformance of thousands of indigenous students in Victorian schools.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Academics disappear from the vision for universities
      
      "You report that the Federal Government's plan to overhaul universities is threatened by "a shortage of senior academics" ("Not enough academics to fulfil uni plan", February 28-March 1). But the report of the Bradley review makes it clear that all levels of the academic workforce are in decline, as about 900 staff leave or retire each year.
      
      "The remedy, says Janice Reid, vice-chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, is for the Government to make an academic career more attractive. Reading between the lines of the Bradley report, it is clear where its unattractiveness lies.
      
      "The report notes that student-staff ratios are "unacceptably high", 40-50 per cent of the workforce are casuals and staff have "excessive workloads and high levels of workplace stress". Yet only about 2 per cent of its length and none of its research projects is devoted to workforce matters. Academic staff are not mentioned in its "vision for the future", "strategic goals" or its 47 recommendations. The one suggestion for attracting staff is to train more people for a "higher degree by research", and hope some become academics.
      
      "The synopsis of more than 350 submissions to the review states that "a major theme" was "excessive or inefficient regulation", yet the report is replete with proposals for more auditing, accreditation, monitoring, quality assurance, reviewing and coherent descriptors, all of which sound ominously like more regulation.
      
      "The core of a university is its staff and students - all others are peripheral. Yet the review focused on the students and the peripherals. Once aware of the true state of affairs in universities, no sensible young person would become an Australian academic until Professor Reid's advice has been taken.
      
      "There should be an independent review of Australian academe and its decline. Let us learn, for example, the benefits or otherwise of the great increase in remote bureaucratic control that has engulfed university work in the past two decades."
      
      Adrian Gibbs, Yarralumla (ACT)
      
      
      

Thursday 5 March

• The Australian
  
  
  • Radical plan to lift graduates
    by Andrew Trounson
    
    "The Rudd Government will remove caps on the number of university places and allow student demand to drive an ambitious target to raise the number of qualified graduates entering the workforce.
    
    "In flagging the most radical shakeup of the university sector since the Dawkins reforms of thelate 1980s, Education Minister Julia Gillard yesterday committed to abolishing the cap on commonwealth-supported places by 2012.
    
    "Ms Gillard emphasised that the new system, which broadly follows the Bradley review into higher education, would not involve students being given vouchers to cash in; rather, universities would be funded according to how many students they attracted. Under the government target, 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds will hold a bachelor or higher degree by 2025, up from 32 per cent.
    
    "To guard against course standards falling as universities expand, a new national regulator will be established to accredit providers and ensure quality.
    
    "The proposed reforms have raised concerns that the new "student-centred, demand-driven" system could hurt regional campuses, create too many graduates in unneeded skills areas and force universities to cut unpopular but perhaps worthwhile courses.
    
    "The Government is expected to announce a range of measures to counter potential imbalances when it provides funding details at the time of the May budget, including funding for the higher cost of rural provision. It has ruled out removing the cap on HECS fees charged by universities.
    
    "In a speech to be delivered in Sydney today, Ms Gillard is expected to outline the future for an expanded vocational education and training sector.
    
    "Many of the students the Government is aiming to get into university will probably be "second-chance" students who do not get into university on their school scores and have to study at TAFEs.
    
    "Funding that meets the demands made by students, coupled with exacting targets, rigorous quality assurance, full transparency and an emphasis on equity, is the only way Australia can meet the knowledge and skills challenges confronting us," Ms Gillard told the Universities Australia conference in Canberra yesterday.
    
    "Ms Gillard's reform agenda broadly endorses the vision set out by Denise Bradley in her review released in December, which came with about $7billion of recommendations.
    
    "The Government has added five years to the Bradley participation target, extending it from 2020 to 2025. It is holding off announcing spending measures until the May budget.
    
    "Ms Gillard warned that the economic crisis would limit the capacity of the Government to increase funding in the near term.
    
    "Budgetary constraints will affect the immediacy of our response. We can't implement it all today or tomorrow," she said.
    
    "From 2010, the Government will raise the cap on over-enrolments at universities from 5 per cent to 10 per cent to allow universities to prepare for the change. Once the cap is removed, universities will be funded according to how many students they attract."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    Similar stories in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald; also see Analysis piece in The Age
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    
    Great offer, but where's the money coming from?
    by Luke Slattery
    
    "Julia Gillard has unveiled a carefully crafted manifesto intended to drive a higher education overhaul of heroic proportions, making good the Rudd Government's commitment to an education revolution.
    
    "The Government wants 40 per cent of people between 25 and 34 to have bachelor degrees or higher by 2025. That equates to an extra 550,000 graduates, or 20 new universities. Higher education will become almost universal for school-leavers.
    
    "When the Hawke government unleashed its higher education reforms in the late 1980s, it transformed the universities from elite to mass institutions. But there was a cost: a system shaped by ministerial decree, and micro-managed by the federal bureaucracy.
    
    "Gillard has signalled an end to the era of centralised control, as part of a shift to a student-centred system in which universities will need to be more responsive to student demand. Popular courses and universities will thrive, while those in low demand may just wither away.
    
    "This will be managed by "compacts" -- or mission statements -- negotiated between Canberra and the universities. Meanwhile, a new national regulatory and quality agency will ensure all universities meet the expected standards.
    
    "It is not clear how this agency will operate, as our universities are defined by minimum standards. Central Queensland University is as welcome to the appellation as the University of Melbourne, but a qualitative gulf separates them.
    
    "How do you maintain quality, let alone excellence, in a deregulated mass system? This is a big question for the Government.
    
    "From Gillard's vision should emerge a more flexible, open and diverse university system. It may come to resemble less a branch of the public service than an industry lightly regulated by government and left to get on with the business it knows best: teaching and training students.
    
    "This is a subtle but profound change, for it reimagines the relationship between government, universities and society.
    
    "As much as they will welcome the significant participation targets and governance reforms, the universities still want to know if there will be more money. They heard the Government's proposal of marriage yesterday, and blushed with appreciation. But soon they'll want to see the diamond."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Decades of ideology in schools adds up to nothing
      
      "May I suggest some answers to the maths crisis in Australian schools ("Maths in crisis as teachers go private”, 4/3)? Employing anyone over 50. Getting rid of calculators and teaching, by rote, mathematical tables. Calculators make for lazy brains and give the student no notion of the answer he is looking for. If the calculator fails, so does the student.
      
      "One could also apply this to teaching English. No one under 50 has any notion of grammar and punctuation.
      
      "Simple rules instilled early are never forgotten. We don’t try and learn music by constantly working out the note to be played, we practise until it becomes automatic."
      
      A.M. Chatterton, Gawler, SA
      
      
      
    • "One surmises that, in an increasingly litigious era, there are class actions waiting to be launched once the students of the past three decades, and some of their parents, realise how much they have been duped by facilitators pretending to be teachers, and edubabbling masquerading as schooling.
      
      "One also wonders how many of these edubabblers in academe have ever mastered a (real) skill such as those in high-level sport or music performance? Success demands hours of routine, and yes, repetitive practice, particularly before reaching adulthood, so that the grip on the violin bow or the bat is unconscious. In the same way, as Justine Ferrari writes, “the automatic recall of how to write the letter T or the product of six and seven frees up the mind to work on more complicated tasks” ("Subject of shame: we suck at sums”, 4/3).
      
      "The words of mathematician Euclid to Ptolemy I Soter, more than 23 centuries ago, remain as true now as then: “There is no royal road to geometry.”
      
      Leonard Colquhoun, Invermay, Tas
      
      
      
    • "So our state education systems have failed the maths test too. Our children have no command of their own language and only a few have any command of a second language. They have little or no knowledge of geography, history or economics. Given that we live in a post-industrial, globalised, knowledge economy, we are heading for slave status where clever (rich) countries will use Australia as a farm and a quarry.
      
      "The state systems have for decades been concerned almost exclusively with an ideological agenda: social justice, equity and inclusivity. This preoccupation has had, as a corollary, the dumbing-down of the curriculum in which the answer to any question in almost any subject involves race, class and gender.
      
      "Julia Gillard’s announcement that we shall have 40 per cent of students at university by 2025 won’t mean zip if they can’t spell or do their sums."
      
      Jim Wilson, Beaumont, SA
      
      
      
      
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Maths teachers fear changes
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "WA maths teachers are worried that the implementation of the proposed national curriculum is being rushed and will put too much pressure on teachers.
    
    "In its response to the draft maths curriculum, the mathematical Association of WA also raised concerns about all students being expected to study the same topics up to Year 10, despite their different abilities.
    
    "Teachers had concerns that implementation timelines were too tight, the association said in its submission which was released yesterday. It called for a phased introduction of the curriculum, which is to start in schools from 2011.
    
    “The pace with which change has been occurring at both a state and national level is too great for our teachers to feel truly comfortable with the planned rapid implementation,” it said. “This is particularly so as the proposed national changes will closely follow the introduction of the new WA senior school courses.”
    
    "Maths teachers also questioned the capacity of authors to provide new textbooks in time. The submission said the assumption that teachers could use the set curriculum to meet the needs of all students by using “engaging experiences” was idealistic and, for many teachers, unrealistic.
    
    "Most high schools start offering different maths curriculums to students by Year 9, and sometimes at Year 8. Some primary schools also stream pupils according to their ability.
    
    "But the draft national maths curriculum suggests that students would not be offered a “differentiated curriculum” until they are in Year 10.
    
    “Many teachers feel that this is too late and should be started at Year 9 to ensure all students are catered for,” the submission said.
    
    “If the curriculum does not inherently cater for individual differences in students learning at both ends of the continuum than many teachers will be unable to fill this gap, particularly as the range of students achievement expands as students progress through school.”
    
    "Teachers were also concerned at the lack of representation from WA or from classroom teachers on advisory groups contributing to the curriculum’s development.
    
    “There is only one practicing teacher who is a member of the current group and there has been no WA representation through this format,” the submission said.
    
    "MAWA president Michelle Ostberg said the draft curriculum appeared to be moving in the right direction and was in line with WA’s curriculum.
    
    “But we’ll need to wait for the detail to really get a true handle on what the situation is,” she said."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Another reform lost
      
      "Many conscientious teachers who became committed to making “levels” work, enhancing learning and making the school more serviceable to a wider section of the population, once again fell let down as another attempt to tackle school reform is jettisoned (OBE levels set to be scrapped, 27/2).
      
      "The levels approach endeavoured to tackle the very necessary long-overdue “sacred cow” – teaching reform which still remains impervious to change. While many other industries have been completely restructured, achieving considerable improvement and productivity, teaching has largely remained the same.
      
      "Even though most teachers reject the image of passive students patiently having their vessels filled, and though they are familiar with a variety of teaching modes, the reality reveals the dominance of telling, lecturing, questioning the class and monitoring their set work. The inquiring, questioning, probing, hypothesizing kind of intellectual endeavours often associated with learning are not usually found in the classroom. When it is found the “unusual” teacher is exhibited as exemplary. What we say to be common turns out to be quite uncommon.
      
      "And yet OECD studies continually reveal the widening gap between Australia’s high and low-performing students. This gap is wider than in other high-performing countries like Finland and Canada. Not only are we falling behind comparable countries but developing India is showing what an be done to enhance equity. Social background continues to play more a part in educational achievement in Australia than it does in other high-performing nations like Canada.
      
      "Entrenched myths and prejudices regarding the distribution of ability to learn contribute strongly to the differentiation of students’ access to the array of knowledge schools provide. The schools’ general failure to provide for, let alone capitalize on, different kinds of intelligence and styles of learning results in clearly prejudicial practices.
      
      "The internal organization of schools, partly reflecting these myths and prejudices, and partly designed to make the schools’ job easier, usually serves to create sharp differences in the educational opportunities enjoyed by students.
      
      "As one’s attention moves towards the negative end of these conditions and circumstances of schooling, and as one confronts increasing evidence of inequities, one simultaneously encounters a growing proportion of minority and economically deprived children and youth.
      
      "By operating schools that allow the inequity to exist we are losing the talents, participation and full potential of a whole lot of young people to our community. Ironically, we are investing in prisons and crime preventions, too often for the same students for which the schools held low expectations and provided weak educational opportunities. If we are going to improve our schools for the 21st century we have to deal in a substantive way with the inequity of educational opportunity we find in each school.
      
      "We need to look at devolution and innovation to help narrow the gap between students and create high-quality, high-equity schools."
      
      Michael Detuik, Perth
      
      
      
      
• The Age
  
  
  • Analysis
    As many questions as answers
    by Farrah Tomazin
    
    "Julia Gillard's long-awaited response to her own review of higher education raises as many questions as it gives answers.
    
    "How will the Government pay for its changes amid the economic downturn? To what extent can universities realistically improve student participation and completion, particularly among poorer groups? How will yesterday's announcements affect some institutions in an increasingly competitive market?
    
    "One thing we do know, however, is this: from 2012 the Government will embark on a significant overhaul of university funding, shifting away from the current system — in which the Commonwealth centrally allocates places — to one based on student demand.
    
    "All students will get a Commonwealth entitlement to the course of their choice, with the money following the student — not the institution. And a new regulatory body will establish targets for tertiary participation, performance and accreditation.
    
    "While some argue this model will give universities greater flexibility to decide the courses they offer and the number of students they admit, opponents of deregulation say it could result in students flocking to the more prestigious universities, while smaller campuses fall by the wayside.
    
    "But the point of the new system is that higher education providers who lift standards and focus on the needs of students — thereby attracting more bums on seats — are likely to succeed. Those that don't, in the long term, probably won't.
    
    "The Government insists the new national regulator will ensure quality course offerings for students, and the possible retention of courses critical to the nation's economy. Much of this, like the details and funding, is yet to be seen."
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Student loses part of $80,000 payout
    
    The State Government has successfully appealed against some aspects of a court decision that awarded a year 11 student with disabilities more than $80,000 in compensation. But the primary finding of discrimination against 17-year-old Rebekah Turner remains.
    
    
    
  • Claims 'too simplistic'
    
    Claims that children are safer at school than at home during a fire are too simplistic, according to a school principal.
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • Maths teachers 'taught to teach'
    
    "Maths teachers in England are being sent booklets with advice on how to teach their subject after a report identified weaknesses.
    
    "School inspectors Ofsted has warned that about half of schools need to improve the quality of maths teaching.
    
    "The booklets aim to improve teaching by "shifting it away from a narrow emphasis on skills".
    
    "Maths results at primary and secondary level are improving, but ministers recognise more needs to be done.
    
    "Ofsted's report on maths teaching, published at the end of last year, said too much of it was "taught to the test" and that this did not equip pupils for their futures.
    
    "The new booklets - one written for primary schools and one for secondaries - are designed to help improve pupils' understanding of maths and how it is applied in everyday life.
    
    "Ofsted says that more pupils should be achieving higher grades in the subject.
    
    "Strategies to improve test and examination performance, coupled with teaching that focuses heavily on preparation for the qualifications, does not equip pupils for their futures," says the booklet destined for secondary schools.
    
    "It goes on to describe features of good and satisfactory teaching.
    
    "In successful teaching, the booklet says, "Teachers monitor all pupils' understanding throughout the lesson, recognising quickly when pupils already understand the work or what their misconceptions might be, for example, circulating to check all have started correctly, to spot errors and extend thinking."
    
    Problem solving
    
    "But the National Union of Teachers did not welcome the booklet.
    
    "Its head of education, John Bangs, said, "Teachers don't need Ofsted breathing down their necks about what they should or shouldn't do."
    
    "Christine Gilbert, Ofsted's chief inspector of schools, said it was vital to equip children with confidence in a subject which was so relevant to their adult lives.
    
    "I hope these booklets will help teachers ensure that every child gets the best possible mathematics teaching."
    
    "In a report at the end of 2008, Ofsted said results were improving in both primary and secondary schools, but that understanding of the subject was not.
    
    "It said that secondary schools in particular were less effective in developing pupils' understanding of applying maths to new situations or solving problems.
    
    "The government has said it is putting £140m into maths teaching in schools to raise standards, and said there was "no reason" why tests should result in a narrow focus or uninspiring lessons."
    
    From BBC News at link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Year 12 research subject set to go
    
    "A trial is about to start of what will become a compulsory new subject for South Australian Year 12 students.
    
    "It is hoped the research project will boost their job prospects, as students study a topic of their choice in depth.
    
    "Government and independent schools will be involved in the trial and the subject will become part all Year 12 studies in 2011.
    
    "SA Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith hopes the project will improve students' investigative and analytical skills.
    
    "It helps contribute to the sort of employability skills that business say they want, which is to have young people use their own inventiveness, to have them respond to needs," she said.
    
    "For young people who have a passion there's no better way of engaging them in education than allowing them to direct their energies into something that interests them.
    
    "For instance, they might do a research project on the design of a lawn mower and how to improve its grass-catching skills."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The Independent
  
  
  • Top grammar school will abandon GCSEs
    
    "A leading private school is to drop GCSEs because the courses are not challenging enough. Manchester Grammar School will switch to the International GCSE (IGCSE) from September.
    
    "The school's high master, Christopher Ray, said the "controlled assessments" of the Government's exams were "cumbersome" and would prevent "inspirational teaching for the most able pupils". The £9,000-a-year boys' school already offers IGCSEs in mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics.
    
    "The Government has reformed the GCSEs, so that they will be mainly modular and allow pupils to retake chunks of a course to improve results. Coursework will be dropped in favour of in-class projects. The IGCSE is predominately assessed in an end-of-year exam."
    
    From The Independent at link
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Research, teaching funds paid for services
    
    Voluntary student unionism must be overturned immediately to free up money diverted from teaching and research, the chief executive of Universities Australia has said.
    
    

Friday 6 March

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Ministers split over Balga Works victims
    by Jessica Strutt
    
    "Two senior State Government ministers are split over the treatment of victims of a bungled $2 million taxpayer-funded program for disadvantaged youth.
    
    "Training Minister Peter Collier, who in Opposition exposed problems with the Balga Works program, told an Upper House committee yesterday he did not believe the Department of Education and Training had done enough to support victims, particularly former employees.
    
    "Mr Collier said he would have liked department officers to have met former employees of the program to offer them assistance.
    
    "But he told the committee that Education Minister Liz Constable had been "reluctant" to allow a meeting to occur. He told the inquiry he had spoken to Dr Constable and department director-general Sharyn O'Neill about his concern.
    
    "Dr Constable, who did not appear before the committee, said last night in a statement: "Based on detailed advice received from the department, it was inappropriate to be involved in such a meeting."
    
    "Ms O'Neill told the committee she wanted to apologise to those affected by her department's handling of the matter and gave an undertaking that the department would contact victims and offer them counselling. [They'd probably prefer their missing paycheques! Web]
    
    "A damning report by the committee last year blamed the department for the failure of the program, which operated out of Balga Senior High School between 2005 and 2006.
    
    "It recommended the Government pay compensation to all former employees, which has not occurred.
    
    "Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock told the committee why his office dropped corruption charges against former principal of the year Merv Hammond over his involvement in the program. He said one reason was that the evidence of key DPP witness John Garnaut would have weakened the case.
    
    "Mr Cock said Mr Garnaut had told prosecutors that he believed Mr Hammond circumvented bureaucratic processes to establish the program for the "greater good" and because of his passion for the school.
    
    "Mr Garnaut was Mr Hammond's superior as district director of the Swan District Education Office at the time the program operated.
    
    "Mr Cock said there were questions over whether it was in the public interest to have a three-week trial for a matter that had no real likelihood of a custodial conviction."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• The Age
  
  
  • Editorial
    A proper education revolution won't come cheap
    
    The proof of the plan will be in funding and other missing details.
    
    "Two years after Kevin Rudd first promised to make an "education revolution" Labor's top priority, his Government has begun to move beyond rhetoric by announcing the biggest changes in higher education in two decades. In the Government's first response to the Bradley review of higher education, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has outlined ambitious plans to lift both standards and the proportion of Australians with a degree.
    
    "The Government's goal is for 40 per cent of people aged 25 to 34 to hold a degree by 2025, five years later than the Bradley review suggested. To this end, the key change is the removal of caps on the numbers of students who can enrol in any course. Commonwealth payments to the universities, weighted according to the course, will be based on student numbers. At present, course places are allocated and funded centrally, but universities can over-enrol students up to 5 per cent above their allocation. Ms Gillard said the cap would increase to 10 per cent next year and be removed by 2012. This is a timely reform.
    
    "In a welcome break from decades of ministerial complacency about this nation's performance in education, Ms Gillard said Australia had lost touch with other nations that had sharply increased public funding while Canberra's spending had declined. Too few people from poor backgrounds were enrolled in higher education, completion rates were too low and student-to-staff ratios had soared. Yesterday, Ms Gillard revealed plans to lift standards and retention rates in the TAFE system, the poor cousin of higher education. Stronger links between universities and vocational training can help meet the need for skilled workers.
    
    "Having long urged governments to invest more in education to secure Australia's prosperity on the foundations of a high-wage, highly skilled workforce, The Age hopes Ms Gillard's plan marks a turning point. But she has yet to put flesh on the policy bones, starting with the critical issue of the money needed to make up existing multibillion-dollar shortfalls in university funding as well as pay for an extra 300,000 university entrants and 200,000 more graduates by 2025. Student-to-staff ratios must not be increased further. [emphasis added]
    
    "The Bradley recommendations were costed at $5.7 billion over four years. The costs, and the impact of global recession on the plan, will only be revealed in the budget in May. It appears, though, that a demand-driven market model will make it harder for universities to predict course numbers and funding. It also increases uncertainty about the fate of less prestigious suburban and regional institutions, which offer the only access to university for many less wealthy students. While Ms Gillard said subjects and universities deemed to be in the national interest will be propped up, it is unlikely this model will deliver equity on its own.
    
    "The roots of the problem lie in a school system that delivers grossly unequal outcomes. Students from state schools are strikingly underrepresented at universities because private schools achieve significantly higher entry rankings: the average ENTER at independent schools is in the low 80s, more than 20 points higher than the state school average and about 15 points higher than the Catholic school average. Very few students with an ENTER around the Victorian state school average in the low 60s can expect to get a university place. The result is that the socio-economic divide continues into universities: students from the top 25 per cent of postcodes ranked by income and education get 37 per cent of places; the bottom 25 per cent get 15 per cent of places and only 11 per cent of places in the elite Group of Eight universities. [emphasis added]
    
    "While it is likely that ENTER rankings will play less of a role in university entry in a demand-driven model, it is not clear exactly how selections will operate. Ideally, students who have been disadvantaged by their background and schooling, not by lack of ability, would make up the bulk of the extra intake as the Government aims to lift the proportion of graduates from 32 per cent to 40 per cent of young people. Their educational neglect represents one of Australia's great lost opportunities to build a better, more productive and prosperous society.
    
    "Educational equity, and the wealth and wellbeing it generates, can only be achieved with the top-to-bottom revolution in all tiers of education that Mr Rudd first promised in January 2007. Decades of neglect and funding decline have created an immense challenge for federal and state education policy for many years to come. The costs will run into the billions, but the long-term costs of inaction are even greater." [emphasis added]
    
    From The Age at link
    
    
    
  • Gillard looks to TAFES for shake-up
    by Dan Harrison, Canberra
    
    "TAFE colleges will be subject to national regulations and quality standards under an overhaul designed to provide the skills needed for economic recovery.
    
    "A day after outlining a shake-up of universities, Education Minister Julia Gillard set out her visionfor vocational education.
    
    "She wants to make it easier for students to move between training and higher education, encourage universities and TAFE colleges to share facilities and co-ordinate courses, and demand greater transparency in areas such as retention, exit standards and graduate outcomes.
    
    "The Government will also consider extending demand-driven funding to TAFEs, similar to the scheme it will introduce for universities from next year..."
    
    Full story in The Age at link; similar story in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Dumbing by degrees
      
      "The proposed funding plan for universities (The Age, 5/3) again shows how far out of touch politicians are with education. An ambitious target of 40 per cent of young people having a bachelor's degree prompts the question — in what?
      
      "The cost to taxpayers to keep lecture theatre seats warm is huge. And the traditionally highly academic courses — sciences, mathematics, engineering, histories and languages come to mind — will still not attract sufficient high-quality applicants because the courses are intellectually challenging, financial rewards are inadequate and opportunities for employment are scarce.
      
      "Those outside the teaching profession see the human brain as a sponge — the longer it sits and absorbs, the brighter it will be. This is an absolute fallacy. There are concepts that our brightest need to be exposed to that much of the 40 per cent will not comprehend. As a consequence, courses will require further dumbing down if success rates are to be maintained. Perhaps teachers should have been consulted?" [emphasis added]
      
      Barry Clarke, Mont Albert
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Editorial
    Universities head for critical mass
    
    As revolutions go, the Government's education revolution has been slow and rather indistinct until now.
    
    
    
  • Birth of a national system
    
    Employer frustration with inconsistencies between the states in delivering vocational education and training, and a belief they have been blocking reform, provided the impetus for national regulation of the system.
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Balance top-heavy unis
      
      "Julia Gillard's announcement, like the Bradley report, fails to address a major flaw in the university system ("Gillard planning to raise the bar a degree higher", March 5). This is the hiring of academics primarily on the basis of their research potential, with little or no consideration of their ability as classroom teachers - nominally 40 per cent of their workload. [emphasis added]
      
      "The policy of "all for research, nothing for teaching" also encourages a staff profile top-heavy with senior lecturers and professors, with fewer and fewer lecturers to teach beginning undergraduate subjects.
      
      "University funding is made up of a fixed amount per student, and an amount for research that increases as more is performed. Naturally, a university will seek to maximise the variable source. The new policy will do nothing to redress this."
      
      Joseph Buch, Newtown
      
      
      
      
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Students will need resources
      
      "Julia Gillard’s plan to get more students into universities is great in principle but in practice it will lead to a reduction in educational standards unless many more academic staff are trained and recruited ("Radical plan to increase graduates”, 5/3).
      
      "Even a minimal level of good performance in university requires good teaching and other resources for students, a low student-teacher ratio and dedicated academics who can help and encourage every student.
      
      "Excellent performance in university requires a love of learning and scholarship.
      
      "Who will foster and develop these values in thousands of extra students?
      
      "Australia should have more graduates, but not at the expense of quality."
      
      Brad Ruting, Castle Hill, NSW
      
      Perhaps certain universities will recruit students who have done no TEE and train them to be lecturers?  Web

 

Saturday – Sunday, 7 – 8 March

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Child sex abuse laws see jump in reports
    by Dawn Gibson
    
    "Claims of child sex abuse have almost doubled in the two months since the State Government introduced mandatory reporting laws, prompting fears that children in the most danger could be overlooked amid the avalanche of paperwork.
    
    "A total of 445 notifications of suspected child sex abuse were received by the Department for Child Protection in January and February, up from 250 in the same period last year.
    
    "The spike coincides with the introduction on January 1 of legislation which made it compulsory for a range of professionals, including teachers, police and all health workers, to formally report such cases.
    
    "About half of the most recent notifications were made by professionals required to report.
    
    "Child Protection Minister Robyn McSweeney said the increase was in line with Government expectations when it introduced mandatory reporting.
    
    "She said she intended to expand it to cover all forms of child abuse, including physical abuse and neglect.
    
    "The Government had spent $68 million to ensure professionals across a range of departments were prepared for the new system. Also, 80 new DCP staff had been recruited to respond to the increase in reports.
    
    "But critics claim the concept has failed in many countries because it overloads child protection authorities with notifications, many of them on fairly trivial matters.
    
    "The NSW Government announced this week that is would water down its mandatory reporting provisions to ensure that only children considered at risk of “significant harm” would have to be reported to community services and more minor cases would be dealt with by other government departments.
    
    "An inquiry into the NSW system last year found it was on the verge of collapse because child protection officers were being swamped by about 300,000 reports of at-risk children a year.
    
    "State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne said she believed the initial figures from WA indicated similar problems could develop here.
    
    "She said many teachers feared a backlash if they overlooked a potential abuse case, so were more likely to report the most minor of issues, even if there was little real likelihood a child was at risk.
    
    "The new system had increased the pressure on teachers and eaten into time that could be spent preparing lesson plans.
    
    "She urged the Government to review the system at six months to determine if it was working.
    
    "There is no doubt that we need a system in place to ensure children in these terrible situations are protected and teachers have a role in that,” Ms Gisborne said. “But I think we should have ongoing monitoring.” [emphasis added]
    
    "Police Deputy Commissioner Chris Dawson said the new laws had increased substantially the workload for the police sex crime division but it had been bolstered with extra investigators and analysts to cope with the extra cases.
    
    "He indicated it was too early to tell if the system was working."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    
  • Apprentices set for long stand-down
    
    Employers are putting apprenticeships on hold in record numbers, leaving many trainees without pay amid further signs the economic slowdown is biting.
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • TAFE jobs plan
    
    "Western Australia's TAFE colleges have developed a plan to help retrenched workers improve their job prospects.
    
    "The Training Minister Peter Collier says each TAFE college will provide a dedicated point of contact for its recognition of prior learning service.
    
    "The service allows people to use their existing skills towards obtaining a formal qualification.
    
    "Mr Collier says in the current economic climate it is essential that people have the chance to gain formal qualifications, upskill or change careers.
    
    "He says as the job market becomes tighter, having a formal qualification may make all the difference."
    
    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
• The Weekend Australian
  
  
  • When going gets tough, get teaching
    by Milanda Rout
    
    "If Australia slides into recession, Connie and Peter Watson will be among the last to feel it.
    
    "As teachers in the public school system for decades, the couple not only love their profession, they know it provides a safe haven from what Kevin Rudd described this week as the financial "cyclone" about to hit our shores.
    
    "And they are not alone.
    
    "As the world descends into financial crisis, increasing numbers of school-leavers and early victims of the job crunch in other industries are cramming into education courses to seek a new, safer career.
    
    "This is no more apparent than in the former boom state of Western Australia, where anecdotal evidence suggests a significant rise in the number of applicants to teaching courses since the global slump in demand for resources brought the mining super-cycle to an abrupt halt.
    
    "As a teacher, you not only ride out bad times, you don't even notice them," Ms Watson told The Weekend Australian.
    
    "You trade off a higher wage in the short term but you have solid employment and a predictable income."
    
    "The teacher of 40 years, who is now principal of Fitzroy North Primary School in Melbourne's inner north, said she had recently hired several mature-aged graduate teachers who had come from the private sector.
    
    "They have decided they would really like to teach and the security of teaching appeals to them after the ups and downs of the private sector," she said. "I am sure one of the strong appeals is the security of the job and the fact that people will always be needed."
    
    "The Watsons are living proof that, as long as you keep your job, a global downturn can provide a personal boon.
    
    "Amid grim financial news, disposable income in most Australian households has been boosted by falling interest rates and petrol prices, tax cuts and stimulus payments.
    
    "Ms Watson said she and her husband had spent as usual throughout the slowdown. "Being a teacher, you are never wealthy but you are going to be comfortable," she said.
    
    "The Australian Council for Educational Research's Steve Dinham said it was an established global trend for people to turn to teaching when times got tough. He said anecdotal evidence indicated a strong increase in applications for teaching courses in West Australian universities, a pattern likely to be replicated in other states. 
    
    "Professor Dinham said the new teaching aspirants were people made redundant from other jobs and school-leavers looking for a secure occupation. He predicted this trend would be confirmed by the intake for next year's teaching courses across Australia.
    
    "As redundancies start to rise and the economy starts to slow, I would expect to see an increase in applications," Professor Dinham said.
    
    "In Western Australia, where the mining industry has started to stall ... they have noticed it this year."
    
    "Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Mary Bluett said she had noticed a rise in the number of mature-aged students changing careers and studying teaching. "There has been an increase in the ENTER score (the entry requirement for the courses) and increased demand over time," she said.
    
    "Ms Watson said job security was not the only reason she became a teacher all those years ago.
    
    "She grew up in a family of teachers and always thought she would spend her working life at the blackboard. A fascination with literacy led to her becoming a primary school teacher. She later taught literacy at university before becoming a principal.
    
    "I would not keep doing it just for the security of the job -- it's the difference you make in the world," Ms Watson said.
    
    "Being paid for it is just fantastic."
    
    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    
  • School lessons from the Bronx
    
    David Nason goes into the New York school that is providing inspiration for how Australian kids should be taught.

    Here is an extract from his report, which you can read in full in The Weekend Australian Magazine [not available online]:

    • AUDIO: David Nason reports on the Bronx Lab School

    "It is 30 minutes before school lunch break on a bitterly cold New York day when Fernando, a big lump of a kid with an easy smile, is given the floor in Christine Bernard’s 12th-grade English class.
    
    "Under discussion are two books from the senior year reading list: Franz Kafka’s 1915 classic The Metamorphosis, about a travelling salesman who turns into a bug and becomes a burden on his family; and Irving Wallace’s The Man, a 760-page novel written in 1964 about a black US senator who becomes president and faces impeachment.
    
    "At the Bronx Lab School the books have resonated powerfully with Fernando and his African-American and Hispanic classmates. Most come from the surrounding north Bronx neighbourhood, a hard, unforgiving district where poverty is deeply entrenched and the themes explored by Kafka and Wallace – family, race, prejudice, money, violence, survival – are part of everyday life, as they were at the school that previously occupied this building.
    
    "Not so long ago the classroom we’re sitting in was part of Evander Childs High School, a mini-metropolis of 3000 students known as one of the most dangerous educational institutions in the US. In 2002-03 police recorded 227 violent incidents here, many of them involving weapons or dangerous instruments. The citywide average that year was 15 incidents.
    
    "In those days, Evander’s imposing six-storey building was the stereotypical blackboard jungle – menacing, anarchic and afflicted by endemic truancy. Principals rarely stayed longer than a year and the graduation rate hovered around 20 per cent.
    
    "For years Evander did little more than spit out kids barely able to read or write, consigning most of them to lives of boredom, poverty, poor health and, in too many cases, chronic conflict with the justice system.
    
    "In 2003, New York’s reformist schools chancellor Joel Klein decided enough was enough and Evander was closed. Now, six smaller schools, each with about 450 students, operate from the century-old building it once occupied.
    
    "Of these, the Bronx Lab School is the standout. When Klein wants people to see the best-case example of his reform agenda at work, he directs them here.
    
    "Klein’s core belief is that kids from poor backgrounds can achieve at the same level as those from more privileged circumstances, provided they go to safe, well-managed schools and are taught by good teachers who have a go. It’s a view shared by federal Education Minister Julia Gillard.
    
    "Last year, Gillard brought Klein to Australia for the country’s largely cynical education community to hear his theories first-hand. The reception was mixed. Klein is a believer in standardised testing as the best measure of student performance, a notion that doesn’t go down well in academia. And he makes no secret of his desire to get rid of lousy teachers, which alarms teacher unions.
    
    "But when it comes to the Bronx Lab School’s dynamic young principal, Marc Sternberg, there is little ground for dispute. Under Sternberg’s leadership, Bronx Lab last year graduated 95 per cent of its senior year class, with every one of those graduates getting a college acceptance."

    From The Weekend Australian at link
    
    
    

• The Sunday Times
  
  
  • Schools go into debt
    by Paul Lampathakis

  "Cash-strapped WA Catholic schools are being forced into debt to pay their teachers.

  "After months of speculation, WA director of Catholic education Ron Dullard confirmed some schools would take loans to fund a 6 per cent pay rise for their teachers.

  "And the State Government has given $9 million to help with the shortfall, which is about $15 million across the Catholic school system, even after the Government cash injection..."

  Full story in The Sunday Times
  
  
  

  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Help out teachers

    'WA State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne has to fight a little harder for the welfare of teachers ("School fight horror", TST, March 1).

    "It is not good enough to surrender to this aberrant situation just because private schools were also affected; the bottom line is that teachers, pupils and school staff are being assaulted far more than before.

    "The fact that only a small percentage of students are involved doesn't make it acceptable."

    Mario Rapanaro, Dianella
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • Shake-up could put some unis, courses at risk
    
    The Federal Government's plan to fund universities based on how many students they attract could place some institutions or courses at risk, according to a survey of the nation's vice-chancellors.
    
    
    
    
• The New York Times
  
  
  • Taking Sides on New York’s School Chancellor
    by Elissa Gootman
    
    Is Joel Klein about to get the boot? Web
    
    "Whether Albany extends the landmark law that handed New York City’s mayor control of its public schools may depend less on theoretical questions — or even on the Bloomberg administration’s education record — than on how Chancellor Joel I. Klein has wielded the unprecedented power.
    
    "In some circles, Mr. Klein is revered: as a star prosecutor turned crusader for the underclass, a fearless innovator willing to take on the powerful teachers’ union. Australia’s education minister flew him in for six days in November, and Arne Duncan swept into Brooklyn on one of his first school visits as education secretary, calling him “someone I’ve learned a tremendous amount from.”
    
    "But among some of the state lawmakers who will determine the fate of the nation’s largest school system, Mr. Klein is reviled: as an arrogant outsider obsessed with accountability, a tone-deaf suit unwilling to consider parents’ views in what one politician called “a silencing of the lambs.” A recent Assembly Education Committee hearing was punctuated by pointed refrains about his priorities and management style..."
    
    Full story in The New York Times at link
    
    
    
    
• BBC News
  
  
  • Big rise in head teacher sackings
    
    The number of senior secondary leaders sacked each year has increased five-fold, with at least 150 dismissed in England last year, research suggests.
    
    
    
  • Call for first aid in curriculum
    
    First aid should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum, St John Ambulance has urged ministers. [Well, it's more useful than much of the garbage that's been stuffed in. Web]
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • Stimulus Funds to Reach Schools Within Weeks
    
    Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced yesterday that nearly $44 billion in federal stimulus aid to schools will be available to states in the next 30 to 45 days -- soon enough, education officials hope, to prevent hundreds of thousands of layoffs nationwide and program cuts that would hit home in schools across the Washington region.

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This page last updated 9 March, 2009 10:09 PM