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The
Top Education News Stories from 2008
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Of particular note from 2008: Education Minister Liz Constable must avoid the folly of the previous government and take note of public resistance to the influence of OBE and the clear desire for a system which delivers the basics of a sound, well-rounded education. English teachers opposed to the vague outcomes-based education approach have criticised yesterday's Year 12 TEE English paper, saying students could have done the exam without having read a book during their course. The
Council’s accreditation of its own courses is a bit like letting
mining companies set their own environmental impact requirements [or
putting the fox in charge of the henhouse]. Excellent
Tony Rutherford Op Ed on the appalling state of WA public education: DET...
The caring employer... Jargon is not only an irritant but also can cause trouble: Just ask Keith Brown. He is in a long-running battle with the Department of Education and Training about how it selects teachers for promotion to Level Three status. Chairman Rudd's Education Revolution Advice to Education Minister Constable: A national centre should be established to identify the best teaching strategies and disseminate the information to teachers in the classroom. A former assistant director-general of WA education had attacked the proposed national maths curriculum labelling it a “one-size-fits-all-model” that would dumb down education. Fifteen years ago Australia was ranked well above the US. Then, at the same time the US got rid of its touchy-feely Outcomes Based Education, Australia welcomed it with open arms. Now we trail the US. Coincidence? I think not. The thing that is blindingly obvious to classroom practitioners, and this seems to escape the minds of those theoreticians locked away from the rigours of day-to-day teaching, is that there is no need to “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to curriculum development. All that is required is to look around the planet and see who is doing things best. Australian school students are being overtaken in international tests by countries traditionally scorned for their poor educational standards, including England, the US, Russia and the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Hundreds of WA children could be getting the wrong marks and comments on their school reports. Teachers say a computer system malfunction means grades and remarks for Years 8 to 10 students have been input against wrong names. Members of the State School Teacher’s Union of WA (SSTUWA) have voted to accept the salaries and conditions package negotiated between the Union and the Department of Education and Training. Education Minister Liz Constable must avoid the folly of the previous government and take note of public resistance to the influence of OBE and the clear desire for a system which delivers the basics of a sound, well-rounded education. Mr Klein is not the first ideologue with no education qualifications and simplistic get-tough theories to be put in charge of a large American school district. He may just be the worst. The Curriculum Council has confirmed it will not adopt all the changes to next year's English exam demanded by teachers. Widespread high-stakes standardised testing is sending the US education system spiralling to the bottom. WA's education chief has admitted that too many students were leaving school without knowing the basics of punctuation and grammar because the curriculum had distracted teacher from these key areas... [Education Minister Liz Constable] refused to say when she would set up an independent review of the curriculum framework, promised by former education shadow minister Peter Collier during the State election campaign. “The tasks .. that I've been working on are those commitments that were made by Colin Barnett,” she said. Plans to place non-teaching graduates into the nation's toughest schools are being pushed forward by the Federal Government... Graduates would undergo a rigorous selection process, then get up to six to eight weeks of accelerated training... The number of unqualified people who have applied to teach in WA schools has almost doubled in the past year in another indication that many schools are struggling to find enough trained teachers. I say it is now time for the Government to use common sense and start to take control of education from the ideologues that have been destroying it. To continue using a system which has been proven to be seriously flawed is nothing less than academic child abuse. New upper-school courses planned for next year may need to be delayed because the changes had been rushed and teachers were unprepared, a prominent teachers' lobby group warned yesterday. If there is one serious offence against English, it is that of using it in a manner that prevents it from doing its main job of conveying information effectively. The murky verbiage of outcomes-based education provided some dismaying examples of this. If English is to go into decline, it will be because people misuse it to obscure than to reveal meaning. In a damning indictment of the new curriculum, which is due to be rolled out next year, geography reference group chairman Norman Snell this week quit his roles on the reference group and assessment review and moderation panel, claiming the course was incoherent and lacked structure. Teachers and students have attacked WA’s first ever TEE paper in physical education studies for failing to examine big chunks of the course amid fears it was designed to cater for lower ability students under the discredited outcomes based education approach. The man appointed by the Federal Government to create Australia's first national curriculum has warned that schools will require more teachers and better training if it is to be successful. English teachers opposed to the vague outcomes-based education approach have criticised yesterday's Year 12 TEE English paper, saying students could have done the exam without having read a book during their course. State school teachers have squeezed even bigger pay rises out of the Liberal-Nationals Government than those offered by the Carpenter government, with most standing to reap increases of 20 per cent over three years. At least 124 school leavers without TEE qualification will be able to study teaching in 2009. There is no justification for pressuring schools to sign up to a national curriculum they haven't seen. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of such a curriculum, there is no benefit in the evident political rush to introduce it. A private school principal has described as "financial blackmail" a demand to sign up for an unfinished national curriculum or miss out on Federal funding. The Federal Government plans to make internet censorship compulsory, putting Australia in the same league as China, Iran and North Korea. We're going to make sure that frontline services do not diminish in police, education and health," [Barnett] said. The new National Curriculum Board has determined that 30 years of post-modernist claptrap will be brushed aside and teachers will now be required to pass on the fundamentals of the language at the start of a child’s education. New union proposed Enterprise Order Grammar will return to the classroom under the national English curriculum, along with punctuation, spelling, pronunciation and phonics, for all students from the first years of school. The release of the proposed national science curriculum yesterday has sparked warnings that supporters the controversial outcomes-based education system are winning control over the course's structure. Anti-OBE teachers' lobby group Plato said the paper outlining the broad structure of the science course from kindergarten to Year 12 was alarming because it called for a science curriculum that was not "knowledge heavy" of too dependent on "pencil and paper" testing. Mr Barnett today announced a $120 million package for teachers, promised by the Liberals during the election campaign, would provide an immediate six per cent pay rise backdated to September 5. Curriculum Council chief David Wood has unleashed a damning
indictment of the previous State government's attempts to impose the
controversial outcomes-based education system on Year 11 and 12 students,
admitting fundamental problems with the proposed reforms. New Education Minister Liz Constable has committed to an independent review of WA’s contentious outcomes-based education and to abolishing the “levels” at the heart of OBE assessment which have caused much anxiety for teachers and parents. [The head of the National Curriculum Board (NCB) Barry] McGaw says the new curriculum will move away from the outcomes-based approach to focus on content. The beleaguered Curriculum Council is facing another battle between warring English teachers over claims that it is failing to implement changes to the Year 11 and 12 English courses demanded by teachers last year. It's a Liberal – National Government for WA EBA-3 Soundly Rejected Should the major political parties scrap OBE? State school students will travel to other schools to study a range of Year 11 subjects for the first time next year, as principals struggle with the worsening teacher shortage. A good start would be to undertake to purge schools of outcomes-based education and the mickey mouse soft options that go with it. Perhaps worst, the Government has not made the one simple promise that would make most difference to the way students are taught: it could and should have made a simple announcement that OBE was to be abolished, root and branch. A renowned world education expert who specialises in assessment has backed claims by a teachers’ group that the discredited outcomes-based education assessment system is inadequate for use from kindergarten to Year 10. The flawed piece of social engineering that is outcomes-based education refuses to disappear. WA’s contentious outcomes-based education system has re-emerged as an election issue with a leading education group demanding the Labor and Liberal parties abolish it from kindergarten to Year 10. The
teachers’ proposed pay deal has suffered another blow, with principals’
groups assaying school leaders would be among the losers in the agreement
struck with the State Government. High
school students are flocking to new subjects such as media production
and analysis, physical education studies and outdoor education instead
of the more traditional science and humanities subjects, according to
new figures. After more than 50 years, empirical researchers of alphabetic languages have
reached agreement about what is required to teach children to read. The
chairman of the national literacy inquiry has accused university teacher
training faculties of "puddling around in postmodernist claptrap" and
ignoring the inquiry's main finding on how reading should be taught
in schools. Half
the nation's public school teachers would be eligible for an annual
salary of $100,000 under a contentious plan by the powerful education
union to revamp wages based on performance. The
teachers’ proposed pay deal was on the brink of collapse yesterday,
with almost half the union’s governing body breaking ranks to
reveal they do not support the agreement struck with the State Government
last week. Teachers
who emerged from a union forum last night claimed support was growing
for a “no” vote against the State Government’s latest
pay offer. Teachers at 22 schools are threatening wildcat strikes as opposition mounts against the pay deal between the State Government and the union announced this week. In what is shaping as a major embarrassment for the State Government, union activist and spokesman for education watchdog PLATO Marko Vojkovic said last nigh the deal was grossly inadequate and some teachers would take a pay cut. Mr Vojkovic said the Government's offer was nowhere near enough, and Perth Modern School union members had unanimously voted to consider strikes, as had 21 other school union branches. Extensive news coverage of the latest government pay offer Education Department Deputy Director-General of Schools Margery Evans said as of noon on Friday, there were 79 full-time and 25 part-time teaching vacancies. The Council’s accreditation of its own courses is a bit like letting mining companies set their own environmental impact requirements [or putting the fox in charge of the henhouse]. Excellent Tony Rutherford Op Ed on the appalling state of WA public education: More than $330,000 has been spent by the State Government on recruitment agencies since January to find just 32 teachers. Teachers and other school staff were assaulted or abused more than 600 times in WA State schools in the past year, fresh figures have revealed. Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood said all new courses, including history, biological sciences, physics and literature, would be the only approved courses and there were no alternatives. After reading the [Twomey] report, my first conclusion was that Mr McGowan must have failed comprehension in primary school. Badly behaved public students won't be suspended, but will be instead counselled after school[Education Minister Mark McGowan]. Standard of initial teacher education programs Extensive coverage of the Twomey Report Foul language, threats, schoolyard fights, appalling ignorance…handling a classroom is just an exercise in behaviour management, writes teacher Katherine Summers. A teachers' guide to grammar circulated by the English Teachers Association of Queensland is riddled with basic errors, leading an internationally respected linguistics professor to describe it as "the worst published material on English grammar" he has seen. Extensive media coverage of the union-imposed "sanctions" Teachers have been turned off coming to WA because the State Government’s migration website says there aren’t any jobs for them. Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said behaviour management was the single most significant issue within public schools. It could take as little as three months to qualify to become a teacher under a desperate plan to fast-track experienced professionals into schools to alleviate WA’s crippling teacher shortage. Concealing the true state of affairs merely relieves the pressure on the State public school systems to do better. The State Government’s highly flaunted bid to lure up to 1000 retired teachers back to the workforce to plug the shortage crisis has failed miserably since it was introduced 10 months ago, with just two teachers taking up the offer. The NSW Government yesterday unveiled its version of performance
pay for teachers, which is based on a scheme to recognise the best in
the profession. "Double
teachers' salaries": Business Council of Australia The
federal Government has effectively put the states and territories on
notice over the reporting of school and student performance, saying
they are hampering efforts to raise standards. Series
of articles on the maths teacher shortage crisis. The
National Curriculum Board will act as a clearing-house for education research,
informing teachers of the best methods to use in the classroom. With
a few sycophantic exceptions, teachers widely doubt the value of the professional
development they receive. At best it is a waste of time. At worst it is
a facile, patronising debacle where, to take one example from my experience,
grown adults learn to make a visual representation of their personal pedagogy
with paper, scissors and crayons. Ms
Gillard said the evidence seemed clear on the best way to teach reading,
with phonics and learning to sound out words giving students the foundation
skills. "There's a fair degree of clarity around what works in literacy
and numeracy teaching," she said. Victorian
public school teachers who were told they would become "the best
paid in Australia" in a new pay deal are vowing to reject the offer
after discovering that many would still get $13,000 less than their NSW
counterparts. More
than half of WA's State primary schools have classes with too many students,
leaked documents from the Department of Education and Training have revealed. It
would be interesting to know whether it has occurred to the top Education
Department bureaucrats that their sometimes anachronistically authoritarian
management style could contribute to the evidently worsening teacher shortage. State
schools could close for up to two days if teachers back the most extreme
form of industrial action being canvassed by their union. The
revolution will come in changing the thinking of teachers so they embrace
practices based on the evidence of what works and not the latest scatterbrain
idea dreamed up by some dusty academic who rarely enters a classroom,
much less teaches kids... The real
battleground facing Gillard will be in the education faculties in universities,
which are responsible for training new teachers and seemingly willing
to be captured by the latest ideology sweeping the world. Other
education-related items on the Federal Budget WA
Education Minister Mark McGowan has signalled that teachers will struggle
to get paid more than the offer they previously rejected. "Direct
instruction and explicit teaching is two to three times more effective
than inquiry-based learning or problem-based learning," [said
The Australian Council for Educational Research research director for
teaching, learning and leadership]. A
Budget of Contempt and Deceit Victoria's
powerful education union and the State Government are facing a backlash
from angry teachers who say they were "screwed over" in this
week's $2 billion wage deal. The
Rudd Government has cautioned unions against trying to spread big pay
rises for teachers and other public servants from state to state, as pressure
mounts to match wage standards in the private sector. Extensive
media coverage of WA's
teaching shortage is forcing more TEE students to study over the internet
as specialist teachers become increasingly scarce. A
Catholic school teacher who was sacked after claims he used force to discipline
an unruly student has won his case against the Bishop of Broome in the
WA Industrial Relations Commission... [which] awarded him nearly $83,000
in lost wages. Schoolteachers
deserve at least some level of sympathy from the community. Over the years,
the status of the profession has dwindled and its comparative level of
pay has dropped. Disruptive students and increasing workloads have added
to teachers' woes... But teachers, led by their unions, have a way of
diminishing their respect in the community. The State School Teachers
Union has banned its members from implementing the first national literacy
and numeracy tests... A
multi-million-dollar revision of new outcomes-based education courses
for Years 11 and 12 has failed to appease the concerns of critics, who
believe the revamped syllabuses are dumbed down and inadequate. Teachers
of core subjects who do not meet state qualifications in their chosen
fields will be replaced at 21 Prince George's County schools... Teachers
who are replaced can apply to teach in other subjects for which they are
qualified. Three
very good Letters
to the Editor on the Twomey Report. The
Bush administration's chief of education research says teachers too often
rely on "folk wisdom" instead of proven methods to help students
learn reading and math. Just as doctors consider data from drug trials
and clinical research when they treat patients, he wants educators to
think more scientifically in their quest for the right textbooks, technology,
teacher training and lesson plans to raise student achievement. Education
Minister Mark McGowan came under renewed pressure yesterday to release
a five-month-old report hailed as the solution to WA's alarming teacher
shortage after he revealed Cabinet had not yet considered the tax payer-funded
review. Education
Minister Mark McGowan has warned that the school system faces a shortage
of more than 2000 teachers within seven years and used the forecast to
attack a push by State schoolteachers for better conditions, saying it
would only exacerbate the problem. The
Dean of Education at the University of Western Australia says he is not
surprised at projections showing WA will be more than 2,000 teachers short
in the next seven years... "Right
across the country employers are going to need to pay teachers more. Pay's
not the reason why people join teaching but you can't expect people to
join the profession when they see it as poorly paid." [Prof Louden
said] Many
State school teachers are rebelling over a key aspect of outcomes-based
education, refusing to conform with the controversial "levels"
system when assessing students. Teachers
will launch a campaign against the Carpenter Government - to damage Labor's
chances of re-election. In about three weeks, hundreds of teachers will
doorknock and letter-drop in marginal seats to tell voters "the truth''
about the Government's lack of commitment to public education, says the
State School Teachers Union. Teachers
will be rewarded for their performance and skills under a national partnership
between the federal, state and territory governments designed to attract
and retain the best teachers in schools. Maxine
McKew wants to overhaul school holidays by having the nation's classrooms
open for business to provide vacation care and take the pressure off working
parents. Education
ministers will consider a national strategy to raise the status of teaching
to boost morale within the profession and make it more attractive as a
career choice for school leavers. Nearly
three teachers and other staff are assaulted by students each day in Western
Australian schools, with reported attacks jumping by 23 per cent on last
year. The
Federal Government will push the states to give parents unprecedented
information on how schools perform, in one of the first tests of co-operative
federalism in education. Teachers
have threatened to ban the implementation of more than 30 Year 11 courses
due to start next year if the State Government does not produce a satisfactory
pay offer by the end of June.
“Teachers
have been beaten from pillar to post for the last six years with constant
change . . . so people are leaving in droves. They feel undervalued, they
feel disempowered and as a direct result of that they are leaving the
profession.”: Shadow Education Minister Peter Collier Elementary
addition, subtraction, multiplication and division drills are not taught
in maths classes," Professor Hughes says. "Children are not
taught mental arithmetic. Typically at high-school age, they are still
counting on their fingers and thus cannot count beyond 10. Exercises set
for a week's work would represent one scant lesson's set of exercises
in a mainstream primary school. The
Northern Territory has known for more than a decade that indigenous students
are completing its Aboriginal schools (Learning Centres and Community
Education Centres) with the numeracy and literacy skills of five-year-olds.
Ten thousand illiterate, non-numerate teenagers and young men and women
in their 20s are unemployable because of the educational failures of the
last decade." Jobs go begging, trades people have to be brought in
from outside and the local young people wallow in boredom. Increasing
numbers of university students are forced to take catch-up classes in
maths because they graduated from high school without the skills needed
for degrees such as business and science. DET...
The caring employer... Aspiring
teachers should be tested to meet minimal standards in English literacy,
numeracy and science before they are registered. Kevin
Rudd simply hadn't done his homework when he promised to spend $1 billion
of taxpayers' money to provide every senior secondary student with a computer
at school. And it's too late to claim that the dog ate it. That poorly
researched vote-grabber now looks like costing somewhere around $4 billion. Kevin
Rudd's $1 billion pre-election pledge to ensure every high school student
had access to a computer was in tatters last night after Alan Carpenter
refused to implement the plan unless the Federal Government significantly
increased its share of the expected costs. Year
12 exams held last year in two new outcomes-based education courses were
seriously flawed because the Curriculum Council failed to adequately control
the process, a scathing independent review has found. In
October 2006, a survey of 1351 state, Catholic and independent school
teachers in all states and territories found strong support for an overhaul
of university teaching courses. Those surveyed had all graduated in the
previous three years, and a strong view emerged about the need for better
training in what and how to teach. Their comments included: "The
university is out of touch with real teaching" and "They were
more concerned with the academic aspect of the degree than the practical
hands-on experience that could have really made my transition into teaching
so much easier." Education
Minister Mark McGowan
continues his astounding pig-headedness
over the report by the Twomey taskforce into teacher shortages in WA.
The report was delivered to him last December, yet he refuses to release
it...
If the Minister's refusal to release the report is linked to the WA State
School Teachers Union campaign for better wages and conditions, he
is to be further condemned.
The Government is right to be concerned about the effect of pay rises
in the public sector but there is no justification in commissioning and
paying for a report and then refusing to release it for fear that its
contents may not accord with the Government's case. It
is becoming increasingly clear the reason Mr. McGowan is keeping the Twomey
report secret is because it is likely to recommend pay increases and better
conditions for teachers at the same time the Government is desperately
trying to keep a lid on the salary rises they are demanding. The
Opposition and the teachers' union has accused the Government of sitting
on the [Twomey] report because it is likely to recommend significant pay
rises and better conditions for the profession. The
State School Teachers Union (SSTU) says a survey which shows more than
50 per cent of people think the government has failed in the education
portfolio should be a wake up call. There
has also been a big increase in the level of dissatisfaction with the
Government's performance in Education, with 50 per cent describing it
as being either poor or very poor. State
schools will be given the freedom to choose their own principals from
next term, with parents given a greater say in the process, instead of
being assigned their leaders under a complex bureaucratic scheme. Edukashonal
negligence Parents
are facing the prospect of more teacher strikes, with the teachers’
union preparing to appeal against an order by the WA Industrial Relations
Commission which banned it from holding any further stop-work meetings. A range of articles on the proposed new funding model for public schools: 17–18 March 2008 Violent
and disruptive students will be kicked out of public schools more easily
under tough new rules that will take effect next term. Deputy
Prime Minister Julia Gillard wants to extend the model of funding private
schools on a socio-economic basis to public schools in a move to confront
disadvantage across both sectors. The
introduction of a national curriculum could change the way students from
kindergarten to Year 10 are assessed under WA's discredited outcomes-based
education system. The
State Government is ploughing $11 million into a pilot mentoring program
for first-year science and maths teachers in a bid to keep them in the
classroom. Another
plank of the discredited outcomes-based education system has been abandoned,
with a directive from the Curriculum Council yesterday that TEE students
must study at least one humanities subject and one maths or science subject
to graduate from high school. The
Government has, as usual, addressed the problem with its usual mixture
of bluster and disinformation. The Minister's insistence on using the
pay rates for senior teachers as a bench mark of his Government's generosity
is either ignorant or deliberately misleading - what proportion of teachers
does that category include? One in eight, say, or one in 10? We should
be told. TEE
results in new Year 12 outcomes-based education subjects last year were
significantly worse than the target score across all subjects because
the exams were too difficult, the Curriculum Council's own reports have
found. Ten
excellent Letters
to the Editor supporting the teachers' pay claim. More
than half of WA’s newly qualified teachers plan to leave the public
system within the next 10 years because of concerns over poor pay and
heavy workloads, a new survey has found. The
West Australian News Blog: If
the Education Department is to attract professionals to state schools,
it needs to offer an attractive career with competitive pay and conditions.
If we neglect our public schools, an exodus of teachers from the state
system will ultimately diminish the standard of education delivered. You
are the architect of this crisis, Mr Premier. Teaching is not an attractive
career for young people. Despite your obvious reservations about the strengths
of State schoolteachers, we have done something right. Continued fallout: 29 February press A range of stories on the 28 February Rally / Stop Work meeting. Teachers
across WA will strike tomorrow after an exhaustive meeting of the State
School Teachers Union this morning. The
State Schools Teachers' Union could face deregulation if it pushes ahead
with industrial action after the WA Industrial Relations Commission last
night ordered the union to call off its half-day strike planned for Thursday.
WA
Education Minister Mark McGowan has threatened to immediately freeze pay
negotiations with the teachers' union ahead of a planned half-day strike
on Thursday. The
State Schools Teachers Union in Western Australia has vowed to push ahead
with planned industrial action next week. Parents
have been warned to keep their children at home on Thursday as thousands
of State schoolteachers across WA walk off the job for half a day as part
of a campaign for higher pay. Just
seven interstate teachers have applied for jobs in WA State schools in
response to expensive advertising campaigns, new official figures show. West
Australian teachers will strike for half a day next week as part of a
push to become the nation's highest paid teachers. Public
school teachers across the state have been directed by their union to
stop work next week as part of their union's pay campaign.
The
results [using synthetic phonics] were immediate and dramatic. By June
- only five months after they started school - the students were reading
at the level of students the year above. Even more remarkably, every student
in the class learned to read. It
beggars belief that Australia's education establishment, like ageing flower
children in denial, still clings to "whole language" as its
sole method of teaching reading. The
issues regarding health and education aren't even about nurses' or teachers'
pay. They are about the old lady who spends a day on a trolley in a hospital
corridor and about the aspiring Year 12 student who has no maths teacher.
Where are our priorities? Teachers
lay the groundwork for economic prosperity by playing a crucial role in
developing the skills and intellectual capital needed to ensure society's
future productivity. Not paying them enough... undermines the state's
ability to build a high-quality public education system that can attract
and retain the best and brightest graduates. One
in four WA teachers has lost all interest in teaching and more than one
in three would prefer to be doing a different job, a leaked confidential
report has revealed. Education
Minister Mark McGowan engaged in some creative accounting last week when
he said that last year's shortfall had been reduced. The
Education Department was yesterday not able to guarantee that Year 12
students facing their TEE would not be taught by relief teachers while
the State Government struggled to fill the teacher shortage. "The
government is flush with funds and the minister should offer teachers
what they deserve, and that is a significant across-the-board salary increase,"
[Shadow Education Minister Peter Collier] said. Fresh
fears have been raised about new outcomes-based education courses to be
taught in schools from Monday after the Curriculum Council was forced
to order an independent audit of two flawed exams in courses offered to
Year 12s for the first time last year. Thousands
of WA children will start school next week without a regular teacher after
a mult-million dollar Government campaign failed to fix the State's chronic
teacher shortage. Victorian
state schools faced with teacher shortages are being forced to "wine
and dine" job applicants, use unqualified teachers or poach staff
from interstate in a bid to fill positions. Naturally,
teaching is about more than money, but good educators are entitled to
be properly rewarded for their work and their talents. A
slide
in the entry standards for students training to be teachers in Queensland
universities has prompted a threat from the Bligh Government to refuse
to recognise an education degree as an automatic qualification into the
state's school system. Education Minister Rod Welford accused some universities
of "desperation" by continuing to lower the academic bar school-leavers
have to clear to be accepted in to a teaching degree course. When
parents can't or won't do the life lessons for their children, it falls
to the school and the teacher to provide the social safety net for an
increasingly fragmented society. Teachers no longer simply teach. They
are also counsellors and coaches, friends and facilitators, mentors and
mediators. The school is often the one-stop shop for the remediation or
instruction that should come from home. Thousands
of WA children face major disruption when they return to school in two
weeks because of the teacher's pay dispute saga. Teachers will refuse
to participate in any voluntary out-of-school-hours activities they normally
supervise - unless paid - as of February 4. At
the outset of the Rudd Government's promised education revolution, Education
Minister Julia Gillard and her state counterparts should find useful pointers
in the national survey of teachers completed by the Australian Council
for Educational Research and the Australian College of Educators. Governments
should note that despite the hostility of unions, teachers in the classroom
overwhelmingly support merit-based pay linking salaries to competence
and extra qualifications. This, they believe, would help stem the exodus
from the profession. Educationalists
who cling to peculiar beliefs that cannot be supported by readily available
research must be challenged and removed from any positions they may hold
which might give them control over school curricula. Education
Minister Mark McGowan admitted yesterday he had no idea how many children
would be left without a teacher when school resumes next month. While
the teachers' union maintains that a shortfall of up to 600 teachers means
more than 15,000 State school students could be left stranded, Mr. McGowan's
office said it had no figures on the likely extent of the problem. Leading
Australian education experts continue to reject scientific evidence that
teaching phonics improves reading skills in children. A
new survey on life skills by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals
46 per cent of the population, or seven million people, would struggle
to understand the meaning of newspaper and magazine articles or documentation
such as maps and payslips. |
This page last updated 17 April, 2009 10:50 PM
