Interesting Quotes

On the eve of the end of a very special era of people power I will bid a sad adieu. My work here is done. I’ll retire gracefully. It’s all good fun until someone loses an eye.

I apologise for not showing at the picket and PLATO knees-up. Personal circumstances made it impossible.

Thank you for all of the people who made the PLATO phenomenon possible and the many contributors and tireless workers including the irrepressible Webby. Marko, Greg, Richard, Cynthia, PPOV, ST, Fred, Fiona, Gail, Joy, SET, Dyso, RC, Camokazi, MiM, Brick Lane, Yvonne and the legion of crusty old curmudgeons and curmudgeonesses.

The mere fact that political and professional conditions and circumstances dictated that PLATO be created is a massive disappointment to me. We live and breathe a profession that holds dear the notion that people should develop a keen, questioning and enquiring mind and don’t simply accept the status quo; yet our education bureaucracy expects and insists on slavish and unquestioning compliance.

We promote those who will slavishly and unquestioningly comply with and promote whatever official version of reality hold reign, yet we’re surprised when these same “leaders” are unable to develop original or novel solutions to problems and challenges that beset us.

The only reason that I became involved in public discussion was the rise and rise of the outwardly imbecilic OBE push. That it lasted more than a couple of years before imploding under its own weight of implausibility rendered me speechless; something had to give.

The OBE farce saw intelligent and experienced educators being told to simply accept the unworkable dross that was OBE. When we asked for supporting evidence of its supposed superiority and pointed to numerous recorded failures of the model overseas and the scathing appraisal by recognised experts, we were told that we must do it because it was “mandated” and that acceptance of cost of living wage increases meant that we had agreed to “implement” it. This was the last straw.

What has PLATO achieved? Well a lot. We have managed to secure significant victories across several battlefields. We have mortally wounded OBE, made significant inroads into WACOT and the SSTUWA and have stirred the sleeping giant of teacher activism. We have focused the spotlight onto teachers and fostered the notion that classroom practitioners and specialists may just have the solution to education’s myriad problems. Most importantly, PLATO has shown us that many of us think the same way and that together, we can achieve great things.

What next? Well we have certainly proven the theory that the activism of committed classroom teachers can achieve significant victories and a return to fairness and sanity to the debate. We have shown that classroom teachers must rightfully take a far more active role in our representative, decision making and union bodies and not expect other to promote our cause. They won’t; they’re too busy promoting their own narrow, personal causes. As for the main players in PLATO; thank you very much. I will do what I can for the cause and hopefully we can secure control of the SSTUWA.

By rights the PLATO players should be lauded and thanked for ridding WA of the OBE scourge and reinvigorating hitherto moribund debate and giving teachers a voice and hope for a better future. Given their record of rewarding unquestioning and slavish compliance and their aversion to open debate and alternative points of view, it is probable that DET will still cling to its flawed management model. Who knows? I’d be very disappointed if DET chose to exact retribution against individual PLATO individuals. Given that PLATO will likely have control of the SSTUWA, this may be a counterproductive policy.

My 24 year old Russian bride has oft complained of me spending my early mornings banging away on the computer keyboard. She said that it would be better if I banged away on a far more mutually gratifying pursuit. I still don’t know what she’s talking about. Now that PLATO is folding perhaps she can explain to me exactly what she means.

Well the Animal Farm is being closed and I’ve still not been sent off in the knacker’s van. Life is good. Best of luck one and all.

Before PLATOWA, we thought we were alone and helpless in the face of educational garbage being foisted on us. PLATOWA showed us that we were not alone, and from that grew the realisation that we were not helpless.

Greg, Marko, Richard, and especially Web, you have done a fantastic job. Thank you.

To all those whom I met through PLATOWA, I learned much from you all. Thank you.

Keep up the good work. Fight the good fight.

Peter de L on the PLATO Forum, 25 April 2009

I too would like to join the list of posters who will miss this Plato Forum. I realize that it is time for a rest for this Forum. I don't think anyone really knows the cost this forum has had on the health, professional, family and social life of the founders and Webmaster. Education in this state was truly blessed when Greg and Marko met for coffee to discuss their concerns about OBE and the NCOS. I am sure they never imagined where this coffee meet would take them - the journey of Plato has been an incredible success. Richard joined them to be the other founding member of Platowa and Greg's son initially set up this site. We were further blessed to have the unbelievable expertise of our anonymous Webbie - this person has given so many hours of unpaid work for the good of education in WA. Plato should nominate him/her for an OBE or maybe a knighthood!

We have also been blessed with the many varied and talented contributors to this forum. Many of the contributor's names have already been mentioned. Boxer - you are an absolute gem - all the Platonians at yesterday's farewell meeting were brokenhearted that you did not attend. You are a very talented and gifted writer - and the suggestion that you are a D & T teacher, would make all the shedmen!! laugh with glee - now they have shown to the world the talents of shedmen!!I have always had the greatest respect for D & T staff and yet their subject area has suffered greatly from the OBE and NCOS disaster. Chris Curtis is another contributor who we all will miss - this forum united educators from across the state, between states and internationally - and the contributions from Chris demonstrates this unification aspect.

Also, teachers from primary, secondary, and tertiary levels all joined together for the good of education. We were blessed when Igor started posting on the forum - he along with the other professors and academics gave credence to Platowa.

If you did a study of the executive and also the contributors to the forum, you would discover they had vastly different political and religious views, but the unifying aspect, was they all wanted the best education for the students in WA. They also clearly demonstrated the importance of the role of classroom teachers - sadly classroom teachers have lost respect over the past 15-20 years and the purple circle, union executive and politicians should accept some of the responsibility for this loss of respect for teachers.

I know some Platonians are concerned that the above three groups of people are probably rejoicing and celebrating the end of this plato forum. However, the three groups should be aware that at any time this forum can commence again. Plato is still an incorporated body and will have AGM and other meetings as required.

My sincere thank you to Marko, Greg (and his son) Richard, Webbie and Cynthia for all that you have done over the years. I am sure your families will be pleased to see more of you. Web take good care of yourself - you are in our prayers - Greg enjoy more surfing and Marko, I hope you become the next President of the SSTUWA.

LONG LIVE THE LEGACY OF PLATOWA.

Secondary Teacher on the PLATO Forum, 25 April 2009

Part of the legacy of Plato will be the requirement for the need for evidence. In his interview with today’s West Weekend Magazine, comedian Tim Minchin comments about what he finds ugly. “Intellectual laziness; People who place ideology above evidence at the cost of others….I’m happy for people to have non-evidence belief systems but please keep them out of my government, hospitals and my children’s schools.” From Greg Williams’ opening gambit in the West Letters over four and a half years ago, when he challenged the Curriculum Council’s decision to pursue OBE, there has been a common thread from many letters by Plato supporters. “Show us the evidence.” Norma Jeffrey and her followers ignored both the demand for evidence and, even worse, ignored empirical evidence to the contrary. As a result of Plato, no longer will teachers blindly accept the latest, scatter-brained, half baked, so-called world’s best practice idea from non-teaching ideologues. As a teacher I salute what Plato has done. As a grandfather with children in WA schools, I am very grateful for what Plato has done! They must save a space on St Georges Terrace for one of those plaques to honour Web’s contribution to WA education.

[Commenting on the Balga Works parliamentary investigation] Giz Watson said: " .. we had great difficulty penetrating the walls that were put up by the Department of Education and Training and its personnel, who were at a very senior level. They were extremely obdurate in providing us with information".

Which is shorthand for saying that senior officers in DET were desperately covering their backsides lest their complicity and incompetence relating to Balga Works be laid bare.

As I've said before, how can Merv Hammond go from Principal of the Year to number one villain in a matter of years? Clearly there has been a lack of adequate supervision and accountability and evidence of significant senior level mismanagement in DET. Those responsible are presumably still in positions of power and influence. Their continued occupancy of senior positions must surely be under threat.

Perhaps ‘bang for buck’ and others needs to focus their attention on those higher up the DET food chain, rather than harassing classroom teachers legitimately going about their business and working within the EBA guidelines.

Given the APPALLING negotiation demonstrated by the SSTUWA during the 2007-08 EBA campaign, I question whether the SSTUWA should be the ‘benchmark’ group to conduct salary and conditions for teachers in general. Where I work, at a private school, I receive a higher salary and much better working conditions than SSTUWA members. In particular, my employer treats me with respect and acknowledges my contribution, while also ensuring my work environment is safe and conducive for the conduct of my daily work, and provides me with the resources I need to effectively educate my students.

The idea that anyone can devise a set of generic achievement statements for every subject which pretends to describe progress in a linear and equally spaced incremental way is complete garbage.

"As far as the DET - CC Purple Circle goes, it should be good riddance to bad rubbish."

I agree Steve. As it stands you have a relatively tight knit, interrelated, interconnected and interdependent purple circle who promote and support each others’ cause.

We have a former district office desk-jockey plucked from relative obscurity to become the DG, we have a person who has been a principal (albeit a conspicuous OBE championing principal) for a few years plucked from his school and plonked into an influential senior executive position and we have a bunch of cagey bluffers who have ridden to fame and glory on the back of OBE and in so doing, have ground committed and honest teachers underfoot.

In this incestuous and toxic environment, the likelihood of any “cleanskins” breaking into the purple circle is next to nil. This means that the patronage, promotion and preferences go to a small and well connected in-crowd. If you don’t suck up to them, slavishly parrot their pronouncements and play by their rules, you’re doomed.

Take OBE for example (oh please take it). Most of the main OBE players are in DET or CC power positions. After young Norma’s cringe-worthy performance on Liam Bartlett’s radio program (“it’d take all day to explain OBE Liam”) and her inauspicious leadership of the CC, she is warehoused in the premier’s department for a while and them plonked into a plum DET job to further her good work and avail us all of her undoubted expertise. In fact, she is doing such a great job that they’ve locked her in for another FIVE YEARS! This is the lady who convinced government to throw away another $19 MILLION to further PD the thicko teachers who still couldn’t get OBE.

The OBE push is going so well after TEN YEARS of trying, that they drop levels from upper school and now from lower school. Mind you, this is not admitting that the mother of levels, the Curriculum Framework is dodgy or unworkable, so we’ll continue to use the CF and somehow spirit up grades from this incoherent, indecipherable and unworkable abomination. And guess who are in charge of the creating grades from the CF alchemy? That’s right, the OBE true believers.

There should be a complete spill of top jobs and dismissals, truncated contracts, examinations of the legality of contracts and if need be, golden handshakes aplenty. Even though they don’t deserve them, golden handshakes would actually save DET millions in the long term providing we ensure that the organisation is once again run by competent educators and administrators. As it is, we are throwing good money after bad trying to prop up an unworkable OBE system in a bid to save the skins of its well rewarded promoters. A condition of any golden handshakes should be that the recipients never again grace the halls of Silver City.

To leave vestiges of the old order in power positions will pretty much guarantee that their clandestine and corrosive influence will remain, thereby scuttling the opportunity of a fresh start.

Tony Terry, Neil Hunt or Peter Browne for DG? Well at least you know they’re honest and you know their hearts are in the right place.

I've heard that the overdue independent review of the shambolic OBE disaster is being characterised as PLATO's sabotage of a glorious OBE system, rather than an obvious sign of OBE and its disciples' abject failure and misguided folly.

They still don’t get it, or are vainly trying not to get it. What’s more, these OBE true believers are still in positions of significant influence and power. The purging of outcomes and levels will be a long and drawn-out process and teachers are well advised to stay on their guard against the stealthy retention and promotion of the loathed levels and outcomes.

I was jubilated to read of yesterday's announcement that OBE levels were to be scrapped. Hopefully this will also include some of the vague and nonsensical questions in tests I have seen.

Assuming this is a genuine offer of reform, and for what it's worth, I would like to pass on my sincerest congratulations to ALL those who have stood up and publicly fought against this injustice.

In particular I would like to thank those within the education system (I, of whom, am not one). Who had seen OBE for what it was - an affront to all those who wished to maintain a high standard within their profession. Those who took their chances, stood up, and fought. Not for better pay, or conditions, but for the education of our children. Thanks to Mark, Steve and I am sure countless others. Next year, I will be looking forward to a meaningful report.

Some recent post have been quite vitriolic in their criticism of the OBE proponents - and justifiably so. There have been calls to NOT "forgive and forget," but to totally cleanse the education system of these individuals. However, given these are harsh economic times and seeing their talents obviously are wasted in education, I would suggest the following alternatives;

1) Today's West Australian quoted the shadow education Minister Michelle Roberts as saying "It's all very well saying you're removing the levels but what are they replacing it with?" Apparently there is still plenty of room for the clueless as a politician in the Labour Party.

2) Advertising executives make alot of money trying to promote a silk purse out of a sows ear.

3) For those who may prefer a more "hands on" approach - may I suggest mushroom farming.

Once again - thanks.

Illiterus Maximus on the PLATO Forum, 27 February 2009

There are two types of experiments we can do on kids.

One asks whether they learn through a particular pedagogical approach. If they do, which inevitably they will because any approach is better than nothing at all, it is heralded as the great new "fad du jour" (a term someone coined on this forum). This is OBE style "action research".

The other experiment asks if one approach is better than another, as determined by the relative assessment results achieved through each approach. This is EBE.

EBE brings to the fore the role of ethics in education and whether this generation of kids we have experimented upon with should have gotten a better deal than being subjected to fads for their entire school life without any concern as to whether this was best for them.

Romulus on the PLATO Forum, 20 February 2009

The worst of it is that these jumped up pseudos, quacks and staff-room biscuit thieves know less than anything about the once noble, complex and beautiful subject of English and that is why even when pressed, they are entirely incapable of teaching it. They don't even know what it is.

I have always thought we get paid accordingly...what I mean is that it's perceived we have 12 weeks of holidays so we get paid with this is mind. If I was to be on site to work for 8 of those 12 weeks, I would expect to be paid more, yes! In saying that, though. I basically worked from 8-7 today. We do work on our holidays.

Yesterday, someone that hardly knows me said with the accompanying eye rolling, "Oh you're still on holidays". I said "Yes I am because like all teachers I am a lazy bitch and do bugger all. Why don't you take up teaching too? Then you could be a lazy bitch with me instead of just an ignorant one". I'm not usually so rude but after a year of working my arse of last year and campaigning hard for the pay rise, I didn't need some smart arse comment about how little teachers work.

"I can just about see the point in asking them to write about the techniques used in a documentary or a film but sometimes that seems to overlap significantly with media studies, too."

Barbara, my observation of the modus operandi of the OBE ideologues strongly suggests that they simply are not fully versed in their subject area; hence they skew the "curriculum" towards something they ARE comfortable with; non specific and pointless pontificating and dribble.

They avoid mentioning specific content or subject specific skills and techniques and prefer to bang on about learning journeys, learning styles, learning to learn and student centred learning. This is why we see primary trained teachers having significant input into secondary specialist curriculum; something they about which they have little idea and no specific training.

All of this can sound plausible until you begin to see the pattern developing; the OBE stalwarts simply don't have a comprehensive understanding of what should be learned; what's important; and what's unimportant.

If the teachers don't know what the pertinent learning elements of a subject are (and seemingly the pro OBE lobby don't); how the heck are students know what they are supposed to be "discovering"?

A perfect example of the OBE warriors bending the agenda to suit their own shortcomings and lack of actual knowledge was the cringe worthy Making Consistent Judgements (MCJ) sessions. Now if there’s a misnomer if ever there was one. During these sessions of tortured acronyms we were introduced to a new acronym; CAR (curriculum. assessment and reporting). In one fell swoop all of the significant questions and misgivings about consistently determining how to assign a level were ignored and the OBE warriors were quickly onto the reporting stage. It was as if the main sticking point and Achilles’ heel of the OBE fantasy; accurately interpreting and applying levels, had been magically solved.

Some carefully orchestrated “information sessions”, some “guided” group discussions with OBE plants on each table, suppressed questioning opportunities thanks to the veritable post it notes where questions were posed but never answered , a glossy lever arch learning diary and snow job completed.

This was a perfect example of gormless and inadequate “curriculum leaders” twisting the agenda to suit their own significant shortcomings and the practice continues. These courageous and visionary “curriculum leaders” have now assumed very powerful and influential positions within DET, and the thing they fear most lest their threadbare competence be exposed; is the experienced and knowledgeable subject specialist and classroom practitioner. That is why these competent and proven experts are marginalised, ignored and derided.

The pathetic CoS offerings and their random, unfair and inane “exams” are the final culmination of the inevitable dumbing down and generalised pointlessness of the curriculum wrought by non-specialist bluffers and con artists. Put simply, they know no better and are intent on ensuring that those who do; the subject specialist and proven classroom practitioners, are completely silenced, disenfranchised and disempowered lest they expose the incompetence of the entrenched OBE lobby.

PLATO Contributor on the PLATO Forum, 13 January 2009 [also see following post in reply]

Spot on PLATO Contributor. But it's even worse than you think.

In 2003, I rang Geoff Gallop on 6PR. I asked him how a TER was going to be calculated from levels. He assured me it could be done but he didn't know how so he would get someone in charge to contact me. That person was Adele Bradley. She produced a document showing how single digit levels could be turned into 4 digit TERs with greater accuracy than the current method. The fact that there was considerable doubt about the first number did not deter her, neither did her complete lack of understanding of significant figures.

In other words PLATO Contributor, not only were/are non-subject specialist teachers in charge of subjects, but completely untrained staff were in charge of the implementation. Their bravado, confidence and determination were admirable, but they were naive in the extreme. They had fallen for the Norma Jeffrey philosophy that everything is bullshit so whoever shouts the loudest gets their way.

"I don't want to hear about Bernouill's Law! I don't care about wing shape! Just get this plane into the air!"

Let's not forget that the CC tried to get Andrich to change his report before releasing it. When he refused, they shelved it for a year. During that year, they convinced the government to spend an extra $19 million on PD for levelling in the full knowledge that their own privately commissioned expert report said they should scrap levels. Even now, after Norma Jeffrey has been removed form the CC, the current CEO, Dave Wood, states that removing levels from the CsoS would 'upset certain people even though it might please plato.' So removing levels has nothing to do with educational validity and everything to do with upsetting people.

We live in a political bubble where scientific methodology, empirical evidence, validity, accountability, integrity, honesty, consistency and truth count for nothing. It is all about who you are, how you got your position, who you appointed under you who owe you favours, how you are politically connected and how big a bully you are. Students' education? What's that? The smart kids do well anyway. That's all we need. Enough to look after me when I'm sick. And the teachers? Ha! They don't matter at all. If they want to be promoted, they will have to kiss my OBE arse. We've got the unions and the administrators on our side, what can teachers do to us? Teacher shortage? Big deal! The smart kids teach themselves, the rest is just babysitting anyway. Forget about it. And politicians? A minor annoyance. They come and go and if they announce something we don't like, we simply don't do it. Never forget, I run education, nobody else. Nothing gets done around here without MY say-so. Now run along...

These are the new rules to scientific methodology:

1. Ignore all data which does not support the hypothesis.

2. Change results if they aren't what you want.

3. Tell the other members of your group that your big sister, the ex-Head Girl, will beat them up if they disagree with you.

4. Control groups are unnecessary. They just confuse the issue.

5. If other groups get different results, they are wrong. That is just their opinion and only your opinion counts.

6. Don't allow new evidence to change your mind. Your hypothesis is all that matters. If others disagree, that is their problem.

Dr Constable, how can I teach young Science students the rules if your departments keep breaking them?

Marko Vojkovic on the PLATO Forum, 27 December 2008 [two posts]

The ongoing OBE shemozzle is symptomatic of the education sector. I honestly can't see any glimmer of hope that things are going to get better. Educational change in WA is based on zealotry, ignorance, indifference and self-serving compliance. OBE true believers are still progressing up the greasy pole and hold positions of significant power and influence. This is not likely to change.

I know that primary teachers are pulling their hair out trying to make sense of OBE; as are high school teachers. The imbecility and unworkability of OBE and the sheer frustration of spending hundreds of fruitless hours on meaningless drivel is enough to drive one to drink or early retirement.

The tragedy is that even the most deluded and insular educrats and administrators must know the truth; yet rather than breaking ranks and saying that OBE is a tragic and destructive joke; they instead choose to maintain the charade that everything’s fine. To add insult to injury; the well placed and richly rewarded OBE spruikers know they’ll never have to make the junk work but are happy to force classroom teachers through this hell.

Liz seems content to let sleeping OBE dogs lie, the CC says everything’s fine and that they’ll continue to ignore teacher concerns; and Shazza recently stated that the deplorable national testing student results have nothing to do with OBE. The union sees no need to challenge the OBE mantra, so where does it leave classroom teacher?

I fear that we will continue to be trapped in this weird Escher – like world, going around in soul destroying circles and still getting nowhere.

Line Management model for schools

Here's a few points to get you thinking about the fundamental that needs changing in education.

If your workers are lazy, incompetent, untrustworthy and unmotivated (eg unskilled villagers working in an foreign corporation's factory making shoes) then you need to closely monitor and control their every move to increase the likelihood their output being of an acceptable quality and quantity. So the workers are accountable to and in the charge of leading hands. In turn, the leading hands take their instructions from and are accountable to foremen and so on up the line, just like the military. It's worth noting that all country's military are organised this way because they all have to get people to do things they ordinarily wouldn't...like charge at machine guns or implement OBE.

This system is widely used because it also has other advantages. The lowest level of worker has little or no power, credibility or influence and by bombarding them with many tasks you deprive them of the time and energy to reflect upon what they are doing, what it means and where it will lead. Like who asks class teachers with over 20 years of day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute practical teaching experience to comment about new developments in education? It's always those at the top of the food chain like CEOs, presidents and principals who are asked because most people are still conditioned to believe "authority".

DET has deliberately implemented line management and I think you can all see how that is incompatible with an experienced, competent, trustworthy, responsible and caring workforce. Such a workforce performs best when left to get on with its work. It's where the "less is more" phenomenon can be seen. The less monitoring and control, the more that is achieved and with much better morale. For example, elite military units are given a specific objective and appropriate resourcing and intelligence. Then they plan their own mission and carry it out.

It is no coincidence that Finland consistently performs at the top of the literacy and numeracy comparisons. It does not have large scale testing, nor does it monitor and control its teachers closely. The Finns take the approach that after selecting suitable candidates for teaching and training them well, they should leave them alone to get on with teaching. Radical for WA, eh?

Instead of line management, a flatter organisation with great power in each teacher is used by the Finns. They are content to let their teachers test when and what and how they consider appropriate for their students...and they don't have to justify it. The Finns don't talk about how they trust and respect their teachers, they just do it. Their results speak louder than words.

Another thing about line management, it provides the climate for the pursuit of power and hence exacerbates bullying in the workplace.

Living with levels is analogous to living with cancer.

You might "get used to it", but that neither remedies the situation nor negates the need for major surgery.

No amount of training in a faulty strategy will make that strategy effective.

"UK Maizie" on the PLATO Forum, 6 November 2008

Having been a private pilot many years ago, I really appreciate those "mean" flight instructors who had a fit if you didn't catch an impending stall, flew final approach 10 knots too fast, or overlooked a rising oil pressure.

I'm positive that one instructor's screaming at me ultimately saved my life [and the lives of my passengers] when an engine failed under instrument flight conditions.

If I ever need CPR, I hope it's not from a discovery learning person... ditto brain surgery...

Webby, I really don't see how your instructor’s teaching style relates to the new world that our students are forced to embrace. All of that instructor-centred badgering, forced learning of theory and concepts, and repetitive drilling of techniques, skills and processes has limited application to new world conditions. I mean, some of the planes you may be required to fly in the future haven’t been invented or built yet and the laws of physics and aerodynamics may not apply to those planes.

Rather than simply accepting that the instructor knew best, you had every right to attempt to solve the flight challenge as you saw fit. You see, it’s not so much actually flying that it is important; it’s more about your journey of discovery. Rather than dictating exactly how to achieve safe flight, your instructor should have been a guide by your side and a facilitator of self discovery. OK, you (and the instructor) may have had only one chance to try and fail, but that’s hardly the point.

Your example of “qualified flying instructor knows best” is typical of an outdated pedagogical hegemony. It is indicative of the ingrained mindset of some change-resistant old teachers and if students are to be prepared for a brave new world, this thinking should be avoided at all costs.

IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES!

A hypothetical 3rd year engineering student after national curriculum/OBE. Minimising content makes things so much easier to explain don’t you think?

Question: Explain how a combustion engine works.

Response:

The whole thing makes the car go. You put petrol and and it burns with air. The stuff goes inside the big thing at the front of the car by suction. Another thing at the front of the car has some lines running from it a bit like the ones that go from your mobile phone charger to your mobile or from your PS2 to the flatscreen. They make the air and petrol burn and that makes these other things in the big thing go up and down and turn a long thing that goes from the front to the back of the really big thing. That long thing sort of goes through to a thing something like a box. Then this somehow makes the round things on the back of the car turn and the car goes.

Behaviour is the elephant in the room. We have discussed it at length on this forum. The Minister will face the same problems with MSB as with curriculum: entrenched outdated attitudes in the bureaucracies. Too many high ranking officials with flawed ideological approaches to educational problems. They will seem flexible and then maintain the status quo. Why? Because they have set themselves up as the behaviour gurus yet they don't want to have anything to do with the kids themselves. They will run a mile from any decision which means they have to do something about the problem themselves. If teachers can remove the problems from their classrooms and say "You deal with them", well, their lives just became infinitely more difficult despite their CVs saying that they are experts in that field.

They are the ones who wrote fantastic essays at Uni about student behaviour, the causes, the socioeconomic roots of it, the disadvantage inherent in a phallocentric hierarchical meritocracy... man... and the latest research from the Institute for Reality Therapy in Southern California (Glasser) yet their classes ran as fluently as a fart in a tornado. DET is a nice little niche for these people.

Today our high schools have in part become vocational training centers for the academically challenged,the psychologically disturbed, and those not interested in academic achievement.

... I have been investigated by the DET 3 times once including the Commonwealth Police, I have been told by my Principal that my name is mud and I will never be promoted, I have been told by Lois Joll and Leslie Street to park my car in such a way as passers by could not see my plato sticker, I have been summonsed to DET on 2 occasions by Chris Cook who tried, with Fred Deshen, to re-educate me about levels, I have been dragged out of my class by an angry Dave Wood because of something I said on plato, Greg's name was read out in Parliament by the Minister linking him with anti-semetic ideas, she named his school and said if she was a parent she would have concerns with him teaching her children, Paul Albert read the same post out on ABC radio labelling plato as some sort of extremist group and many brave platonians were told off for surveying other teachers at PD days as to the readiness of the courses. So forgive me if I get a bit personal at times. These people want to waltz away from the crime scene as if nothing happened like it was just a big misunderstanding and we should all just move on. Sorry, not me. If we do not learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. There must be consequences for these people to set an example for others. Teachers need closure. Head must roll.

The treatment meted out to Marko and others who are prominent in PLATO is reprehensible. On one hand we have committed, intelligent and ethical classroom teachers like Marko who have the fortitude and courage to question the destructive and expensive fads like OBE; and the institutional forces of the CC and DET that are marshalled to silence, discredit and intimidate him and others.

On the other side of the ledger we have ruthless opportunists who will say and do whatever it takes to climb the greasy pole and have the backing of the establishment and are rewarded with six figure salaries. These people are either, cunning and manipulative souls or misguided fools (unlikely) who actually believed that the reviled OBE was the way forward. Regardless of whether these people are cretins or con-artists, there is no place for them in senior CC and DET management positions.

The whole misguided OBE debacle has been a case study in institutional pig-headedness and intransigence combined with organised bullying, misinformation and stage-managed “information sessions”. The promotional system was skewed to promote those stupid or shrewd enough to swear allegiance to OBE and the resultant glut of lightweight spin-merchants in administrative positions is telling.

It is essential that PLATO maintains the spotlight on former OBE spruikers and warriors to ensure that they don’t all perform amazing Keely’s and simply reinvent themselves. As for Liz, I don’t envy her task of reforming education in WA. The well placed OBE diehards will be difficult to weed out of the management fabric.

In the meantime, all PLATO supporters can do is to take every opportunity to remind these opportunists about their former undying devotion to OBE and their giddy rise to the top on the back of this three-legged camel; and how this rise was achieved by trampling on hard working and honest classroom teachers.

PLATO Contributor on the PLATO Forum, 7 Octobert 2008

In my experience, most PDs are the equivalent of AFL players being lectured on the finer points of the game by some pissy, front-bar footy “expert”.

Only teachers' inherent politeness and enduring ability to endlessly suffer fools stops these PD fakirs being tarred and feathered and sent packing.

“Professional Development” is one area that requires serious examination. The gaggle of sundry snake oil salesmen and plausible bullshit-artists who earn a dishonest crust by peddling their populist motherhood statements and opinion and conjecture dressed-up as fact, should be put on ice; and their flimsy “edutainment” fare carefully evaluated.

The present PD industry is an expensive waste of limited time and resources and is generally an insult to hard-working and experienced teachers. We deserve much better.

Health ministers don't tell doctors how best to perform surgery, but too many education ministers think they can tell us how to teach.

Is anyone advising this idiot, or is he just making it up as he goes along? Let's look at reality- only school in Smallwatown doesn't meet standards so principal and teachers are sacked, school is closed. Nearest school is 200kms away. What happens then, Kev?

Poorcrappy Primary School on wrong side of the tracks doesn't meet standards, principal and teachers are sacked, school is closed. Students sent to Nicenearby Primary School where they drag down the standards, principal and teachers are sacked, school is closed. Where to from there?

It would be nice if reality could enter the political debates about education.

Primary POV on the PLATO Forum, 29 August 2008

I became a maths teacher because I love teaching maths.

I was never interested in riot control or social work. Consequently, I teach in a high fee independent school.

Even if the public sector matched my school on wages (which it doesn't), I would still consider it an employer of last resort...

There is no shortage of teachers in Australia. There is a shortage of people who are willing to put up with the kind of treatment that they get in schools.

Kate on the PLATO Forum, 5 August 2008

I, and others, have said on here, that the strength of the private system is directly proportional to the strength of the public system. When private schools don't have to work hard to attract and retain students to/in their schools, standards start to slip. Any decay in the public system is only a few short steps away from a similar problem in the private.

Powerbrokers in education who neglect the public system are damaging all systems and probably most schools in the long run. Short sightedness here will have terrible long-term consequences IMO.

Greg Williams on the PLATO Forum, 5 August 2008

How did education get so off track? Could I offer an opinion?

There are 3 main players in education: the government, the bureaucracy and the union. None of these in themselves have any real input into the primary responsibility of education which is to teach children the skills to survive and become productive members of society. They are essentially parasitic feeding off the efforts of the practitioners at the chalkface who actually do the teaching.

If any two of these bodies band together, the third is effectively neutralised. In the past, the union and the bureaucracy were independent apolitical institutions who existed to serve and protect those who did the actual teaching. They were run by hard working educators with extensive and recent chalkface experience. They provided independent and expert advice to the politicians safe in the knowledge that their advice would not be scorned if it didn't match what the pollies wanted.

This was not good enough for the politicians. Their attempts to socially engineer through education were thwarted by a world class system protected by its effectiveness. So they used their power to politicise the public service so those in charge became beholden to their political masters. The expert advice was replaced with self-preservation and everything was compromised.

The union became weak as the odd man out and the leaders started playing the same political games as the others.

Coinciding with this corruption of a first rate system was the eruption of education departments at tertiary institutions. Their ideas until then had been just that, ideas. Something to discuss in the staffroom before going back to real teaching. But they had no real impact on the delivery of the educational service because the system was protected by the experienced educators who filtered these ideas before implementing them.

By concentrating all power in the politicians, the system became vulnerable to ideological attack by ambitious academics with personal agendas. The system was held hostage by flavour of the month fads sold to politicians who wanted to appear visionary and innovative. The same philosophy infested the bureaucracies where promotion now depended on compliance rather than accountability. The protector of teachers, the union, also feel victim to the same blind adherence to current philosophy. In other words, we were stuffed.

The OBE fiasco highlights the state of play and is symptomatic of a system in decline. The fact that nobody in any of these institutions could see that the proposed changes to upper school education were a really bad idea proves that a fox can get into the chook pen without anybody noticing.

There are many other implications of this unholy nexus between the 3 bodies. One of which is elimination of the annoyance of an educated and free-thinking workforce who dare to stand up and point out the Emperor's nakedness. Their solution to this is to slowly erode salaries and the status of the classroom teacher.

If education is to recover from this trough, the independent advice from the bureaucracy and the political neutrality of our union must be restored. But having gained all that power, I can't see any politician voluntarily relinquishing it. This is why plato is so important.

DET has unlimited time, money and snake-handlers to cobble up convoluted and complicated deals; and paid senior union officials have been too stupid, too lazy or too compromised to question these take it, or leave it deals.

That teachers always end up worse off and the profession becomes even less attractive is not simply an unfortunate accident. It is because DET creates complicated offers that apply to some and not to others, incorporate all sorts of rubbery figures and creative accounting and pay teachers a bit more for traded-off conditions or longer working hours and claim that this somehow constitutes a wage rise. They trade on public animosity towards teachers and employ the “what about the kiddies?” guilt trick at every opportunity.

If teachers dare to maintain or improve wages and conditions they are portrayed as uncaring, mercenary and greedy bastards by politicians, our employers and the press. If teachers refuse to volunteer unpaid labour after hours they are portrayed as unfeeling and selfish mongrels trying to damage kids’ education. The fact that, under the present circumstances, teachers didn’t feel like volunteering unpaid labour for the recent Country Week and were publicly criticised, is a perfect example of this bizarre thinking.

The only way for teachers to be protected from the predatory excesses of the employer (read government) is to have an independent, competent, committed and ever-vigilant union working to protect us and extract the best possible outcome for fee-paying members. They should employ content experts and hold the employer to account at every turn. This they clearly don’t do.

For a union President to “agree in principal” (sic) to a deal that she doesn’t purportedly know the details to and publicly proclaim that it’s a fantastic deal and use union resources to foist this agreement onto teachers is not only unbelievable; it’s unforgivable! The sooner this compromised rabble is ousted the better!

Given the lack of a competent and independent union senior hierarchy, it is up to every teacher to view the present deal with utmost suspicion and go through every detail. Inferences and understandings are not acceptable. The word “flexibility” should send shivers up one’s spine as it is open to all sorts of interpretation; and you can be damned sure that the employer will enforce every element of the final agreement and interpret everything to their advantage.

Chuck this shonky agreement out and make sure that Raggedy and company are left in no doubt how teachers feel. Raggedy’s advice to accept this sub-standard deal is nothing more than a crude and cynical con.

The overwhelming conclusions to be drawn... are:

1. The union executive has been compromised, incompetent or stupid for decades and has allowed or has been complicit in the progressive worsening of teachers’ wages and conditions.

2. For decades senior DET officers have been unaware or simply unconcerned by the increasingly poor state of schools and the worsening teacher shortage.

3. Senior DET officers have been in denial about the true state of schools, the teaching profession and “education reform” in the state, and have surrounded themselves with like-minded and equally gormless and uninformed individuals and yes-men.

4. Senior DET officers lack the necessary skills, experience and intellect and are simply incapable of managing education in the state.

5. Senior DET officers are simply political appointees whose actions are governed by short-term, reactive political expediency and looking after number one, rather than the long-term viability and competent management of education in the state.

6. There has been a bi-partisan agreement to shaft state schools and privatise education.

7. Some or all of the above.

Any informed and impartial observer could have seen the downward spiral of education in the state over the last 30 years. As both political parties have drifted towards middle politics; education is seen simply a glib and cynical politicking tool at election time. One only need observe the insincere and opportunistic mouthings of Alan Carpenter whilst shadow education minister, and his metamorphosis into a hard-arsed, teacher head-kicker, once in power.

The aging of the teacher population, the under-resourced and crumbling infrastructure, witless and unworkable “curriculum” and progressively worsening wages and conditions has taken decades to achieve through poor policy decisions, government neglect, indifference, deceit, and in the present situation; outright hostility..

The current government’s response to the present education disaster is to forge ahead with discredited and unworkable “curriculum reform” and wage a debilitating and punitive campaign against teachers to further worsen wages and conditions. Incredulously, the union senior executive is encouraging us to accept the latest insulting offer and siding with the uncaring government to suggest that it’s a great deal!

If my pessimistic appraisal rings true, we have a situation where we have an education system in shambles, a feckless union leadership, an incompetent senior DET management and an uncaring and ruthless government who have repeatedly shown that they are prepared to drive education into the dirt for imagined political advantage or some ego driven obsession.

Where’s the silver lining?

That our educational leaders and government ministers from both sides endorsed the nonsense we have suffered in the last decade WITHOUT a shred of evidence that it would ever work, without a sniff of a trial of any of it, and without a single evaluation of the efficacy of what has been inflicted upon teachers, beggars belief. It's a pity the people who signed off on this can't be hung drawn and quartered, but already many of them have been pensioned off, or moved to lavish surroundings in another job or another portfolio, with zero accountability for the damage they have done.

Greg Williams on the PLATO Forum, 29 June 2008

[DET director-general Sharyn O’Neill’s] comment about the ban on courses compromising student learning is akin to saying a ban on introducing cane toads would be counterproductive for the Australian environment.

The SSTUWA directive is doing everyone a favour and they should be publically congratulated by teachers, DET and the CC..

Teachers and students have a years respite from the CoS dross and as a result less teachers may resign at the end of this year thereby alleviating the increasing teacher shortage. This is good for teachers and the DET hierarchy.

The hapless CC clowns have ANOTHER 12 months to try to get the totally unnecessary CoS right; and with any luck, they may never have to do it because the reckless OBE experiment may be wound up. This is good for the CC as they clearly haven’t a clue how to effectively implement unnecessary change and if the CoS do get canned, they’ll be able to claim that they were just on the cusp of success (after 10 plus years).

All round, a very happy outcome for all. Now we just need to apply a retrospective ban on Aviation, Engineering, Media Studies and English.

How stupid can this man be?

Quote: "Unveiling the new awards today, Mr McGowan said the Carpenter Government was building on the State’s booming economy to deliver a world-class education system for the future."

Has he not yet understood that he should be using the benefits of this 'booming economy' to pay teachers appropriately to ensure that there ARE teachers in the future?

Quote "The new awards provide $375,000 in prize money for the State’s best teachers, principals, school support staff, TAFEWA lecturers and schools,” he said.

Oh whoopee doo! More money being thrown down the loo! Stop your insulting little prize giving for an elite minority just so that you can use it for some PR grandstanding and bite into the real issue : teacher shortages because of insultingly low salaries.

Quote: “We have one of the best education systems in the world and it is important that we recognise the achievements of those people who are at the forefront of our success."

No, Mr McGoo. We HAD a very good education system but OBE, mismanagement, DET deafness, pathetic pay and lack of appropriate support systems have undermined it so that the rats have been deserting the sinking ship for some time now. (Been out to Gilmore recently, McGoo?)

Yet another ridiculous suggestion from our Minister. He still doesn't get it. He could make the Dip Ed course 3 hours long and still nobody would want to become a teacher. The pay is non competitive and not worth the reduction in life expectency due to stress. You don't make the destination any more attractive by shortening the trip.

There's a shortage of doctors and nurses Minister. Let's make these professions into a 3 month conversion course and see how the public like it.

This suggestion by the Minister is an insult to the teaching profession and reaches a new level of hypocrisy. On the one hand we are constantly reminded of our professional obligations and on the other we are told that our qualifications can be pulled out of a cereal box.

Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said behaviour management was the single most significant issue within public schools.

He said such issues could be directly related to the fact that there weren't enough staff to manage students.

He said the WA Government's behaviour management strategies were cosmetic and its much-lauded three behaviour centres had only enrolled 49 students since their inception last year.

The real issues are in classes every day ... where teachers are spat at, sworn at and physically abused,'' he said.

I am wondering if education in WA has gone past the point of no return. We have significant staffing shortages, dysfunctional schools and a “leadership” cadre, seeming unable or unwilling to make any positive changes to reverse the calamity.

To see how we have reached this deplorable situation it may be worthwhile to examine history and try to work out where the wheels fell off.

If we look back 30 years or so we see an attractive profession that paid well, had fair working conditions, had mobility; and a promotional system that rewarded experience and proven capacity. Teaching was an attractive and respected profession where intelligent people entered it with the intention of making it a life-long career.

We had subject superintendents who knew all of their staff, visited them regularly, had an in-depth knowledge of their subject area and ensured that it wasn’t damaged by unwise decisions. They took a keen interest in their charges and ensured that both the individual and the organisation were cared for. We had centrally funded and coordinated support services where maintenance, replacement of equipment, etc was coordinated.

We had reasonable housing provision in country areas and an understandable and relatively fair transfer system. The Director General spoke up for teachers and went in to bat for the profession.

We had an understandable syllabus, supported by the in-house syllabus branch, where subject experts created quality curriculum materials and teaching resources. Distance education was there for the kids who were unable to attend school due to their far-flung regional isolation.

We have a poorly paid profession that does not in the main; attract quality applicants. The majority of graduates entering the profession don’t see it as a lifelong career and jump ship as soon as an opportunity presents itself. The unattractive working conditions, salary and status make teaching a job of last resort.

Subject superintendents have been replaced by know-nothing “managers”, the DG is now a political appointee government mouthpiece. Promotion is given to the compliant and shrewd bullshit-artist.

The syllabus has been trashed, the in-house syllabus branch; chockers with subject experts, has been abolished. Head office has handballed a piddling amount of money to schools and harried principals and registrars are left to manage all infrastructure, maintenance and capital improvements.

Regional housing is well below par; the transfer system has collapsed, and if one is stupid enough to go to say, Port Hedland; the chances of making it back to the city are slim.

Distance education is now used to teach students in schools in regional centres. In the past these children would have had living and breathing teachers in front of them.

The introduction of OBE, worsening student behaviour, ever-decreasing real wages and governments that patently couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about teachers has driven many of the high quality, experienced, committed, career teachers out of the profession. The latest wage stand-off with a cashed-up government is for many, the final straw.

What have we left? A dysfunctional management system, poor wages, a junk “curriculum” and demoralised teachers looking to escape the carnage.

What is the present government and DET brains trust doing about it? Well they’re playing hardball on wages and looking to worsen teaching conditions in the next EBA, they’re refusing or terminating secondment positions for teachers and it looks like they’re refusing leave. They have steadfastly continued with OBE and continue to treat teachers with contempt.

Ya just gotta love the “reforms” and marvel how education has been completely transformed over the last 3 decades.

The overwhelmingly sad and least fulfilling element of my teaching experience is the total lack of PD that includes even a vestige of reliable research backing the latest idea being pushed.

In the main; rather than a coherent argument being put that maybe A is better than B because of C,D and E; all we get is one-sided indoctrination sessions more akin to a Jonestown speech, AMWAY convention or televangelist sermon. The closest we ever come to scientific justification for the latest crackpot scheme is the hoary old “research proves” chestnut.

If one dares question the veracity of the statements or lack of verifiable evidence based validation of the latest claims, one is more or less group pressured and pitied for not grasping the obvious. Many of the school-based “PDs”

I have had the misfortune to attend are little more than lightweight “edutainment” sessions where the often ex-teacher, peddles some populist twaddle, motherhood statements, educational myths and unsupported theories.

Toss in the mandatory statements about how fantastic teachers are and possibly some new-age health and wellbeing theories and you have the basis for a well-rounded “professional development” session and a lucrative career alternative out of teaching.

I’ve recently experienced a session from one of the more successful ex-teacher exponents of the craft; and almost to a person, everyone came out smiling and uplifted despite being; in my opinion, the unwitting victims of a well-practised and cynical bullshit session that offered little more than insincere back-slapping, populist claims and motherhood statements.

What is quite saddening and inexplicable is the seemingly gormless and unquestioning acceptance by the majority of the audience and the reticence to ask hard questions of the latest snake oil salesperson. Perhaps the majority of teachers just sit there glassy-eyed and don’t bother to make waves simply because it’s futile and too much trouble to do otherwise; or perhaps they swallow the educational fakery lock, stock and barrel.

One thing’s for sure, if one does ask any probing questions (provide you’re ever given the chance), it’s highly likely that you’ll get some withering glances from admin and clear body language that any questioning of the latest edict or unsupported fad is not welcome. Heaven help any aspirant to higher office that doesn’t at least mention the raft of crackpot theories and sundry bullshit artists doing the rounds.

To not recognise and support the latest lightweight scheme is to allegedly expose a lack of knowledge of the latest cutting-edge educational “research”, indicates that you are a change resistant dinosaur who is unwilling to accept new ideas and probably a reluctant non-team player. The fact that recycled and unproved“urban myth” theories are peddled by the PD “industry” and seemingly blindly accepted by administrators and teachers is not only unproductive, but it also haemorrhages scarce funds from otherwise proven and useful educational initiatives.

Is this glum view of “professional development” in education shared by others, or am I simply a cynical, change resistant dinosaur who is not open to new ideas and the exciting possibilities of courageous and creative educational initiatives like OBE, COS, coloured hats, multiple intelligences, specific learning styles, coloured paper to make boys learn better, jabbing yourself in the eyes to reduce stress, self-directed student-centred learning, etc ?

Me: But my Deputy says she sent in the form a long time ago. Didn't you receive it?
DET: I'll check. Yes it is here dated ... (5 weeks ago)
Me: So why hasn't my pay been adjusted?
DET: The Deputy didn't put the job code on the fax.
Me: Did you ring her and tell her that?
DET: No.
Me: Why not?
DET Not our job to do that.
Me: But you know the code.
DET: Yes.
Me: So why didn't you put it on the form?
DET: Not our job.
Me: But you knew my pay wouldn't be adjusted properly.
DET: Yes.
Me: And you didn't think to do anything about it?
DET: Not our job.
Me: So could you put the code on it now please?
DET: No.
Me: Why....no, don't tell me. Not your job.
DET: Correct. Your Deputy will have to fill out another form and fax it in to us.
Me: And what's your name?
DET: Sorry we can't give out details like that.

Every student to have an Individual Learning Plan, based on health and development assessments and benchmark results, to be updated twice a year for every year of schooling, up to Year 10.

School Matters, 2 March 2008: 'Federal commitments in education: Literacy and Numeracy'

Unfortunately there has been, and still is, a stranglehold on educational management and policy by a small, incestuous band of inadequate, deluded, yet ambitious no-hopers. The same names pop up under different guises and the cosy, self serving selection arrangements means that a relatively small, like minded group swap roles between the Leadership Centre, DET, CC, WACOT, professional associations (namely ETA), WestOne, the different principals’ associations and SSTUWA.

The majority of these well placed chosen ones haven’t been inside a classroom for decades and if you disagree with their peculiar view of education or don’t have a strong advocate within the purple circle, the chances of ever breaking in and introducing a new perspective is pretty much nil.

When I speak to people in authority about plato, they shake their heads and say it's all sorts of things, none of which are positive. The odd angry post by a frustrated teacher or government stooge and they recoil in horror. They simply couldn't be associated with anything like that.

Meanwhile they preside over a system that is failing thousands of kids every year due to ideological fanaticism, political expediency and economic rationalism.

They remind me of society's elite who castigate a young boy for having a wee in the bushes when their companies and institutions pump millions of tons of raw sewerage and industrial pollution into the environment every day.

When I read threads like this one on plato, I am proud to be a member. Real teachers, real solutions, real caring for the kids in need.

I don't post that often, but am an avid reader and fan of PLATO. It is so easy to forget / take for granted the incredible achievements of this group. It has single handedly revealed to all the horrible mess that OBE was causing and has precipitated a strong drive for a new and better system Perhaps it will be the national curriculum, but whatever form it takes, you can bet that from here on it will be scrutinized and teachers will demand more say in how it proceeds. I take my hat off to Webby, Marko, Greg and the regulars who have maintained the rage...

Rob Thompson on the PLATO Forum, 20 March 2008

The fact that a loose association of teachers and volunteer technical experts are able to develop and maintain an incredibly effective web site and bring about significant educational reform and political pressure, all on an almost zero budget should be a source of enduring and acute embarrassment and shame to the SSTUWA.

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...

It is inconceivable that you take no responsibility for the decline in your ranks. You, when you were minister for education, believed the ill-conceived OBE was to be the direction of the future...

Despite repeated concerns from experienced teachers you ignored all warning signs and are reaping the results of a decision made by a workforce that has weighed up the pros and cons and decided with its feet.

You, Mr. Premier, have acted in an irresponsible manner and continue to do so. Your arrogance and disdain for a complete sector of the WA community should act as a clear sign to other groups about how you manage conflict and resolve issues.

Your fear of the monster you have created is obvious. Teachers have been pushed to the wall. Thursday's action has simply stirred the sleeping giant and you can expect so much more if you continue to ignore the concerns of teachers.

If there is nothing plausible to our argument, release the Twomey report and prove it.

Greg Williams, president of teachers' group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, said common sense was returning to the decisions being made by the Curriculum Council.

Mr Williams said the requirement to meet 13 outcomes had not meant students were getting a broad education. "You could get most of them (the outcomes) from cooking," he said.

Whatever the Government says, there are still a lot of teachers out there whose salary is not much different from average weekly earnings. They should have a pay increase and it should be a decent one, one which would match everyone's protestations of the professionalism of teachers...

The union for its part is, as usual, taken for granted by a Labor Government which has often - especially at election time - treated them as useful fools. The union hung back for too long on a number of key issues, not least outcomes-based education, the WA College of Teaching debacle and the competence of Ljiljanna Ravlich as education minister. Its loss of influence is almost total and many of its members don't much see the point of belonging any more.

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...

from Tony Rutherford Op Ed: Rudd take on education may succeed
The West Australian, 5 March 2008

Queensland education minister's summation of Mark McGowan's desperate bid to recruit Queensland teachers:
Why would you want to leave the Sunshine State to go and teach in the desert?
[from ABC News, 22 February 2008]

As a (primary school) teacher, you are NEVER far away from the job ... its always at the back of your mind - how to present this or that, reminding yourself to check the science / maths / art equipment to make sure you'll have what's needed, etc.. Make sure your anecdotals are up to date; record your reflections on the wallycot website to justify why you should retain your licence to teach; deal with a difficult parent who insists their child is an angel; locate the deputy (somewhere in the school?) to check when the science stock is due in; find out why Mary hasn't returned her library book; collect and prepare materials, marking keys, audio-visuals for the 35 plus lessons you will be teaching during the week; record (stored in the brain as you get more experience) the 6 different levels of questions needed to bring each learner on from "where they are at" academically; sort out Marvin and Angus' fight from yesterday (oh, and remember to keep an accurate record of what occurred, as the parents might come and complain later ...), remember to ask Johnny's mother to bring in his absentee note from last fortnight; make sure no-one holds you up when you are trying to get to duty; take a toilet break - no - leave that out, no time for that during the day; toilets are too far away, anyway...; hope developing a cast-iron bladder won't lead to having to use 'Tena Lady' when you reach 55; remember to pay for the laminating you had done last month; put up last week's art work - oh, go and retrieve the step ladder first; uh-ho, go and CHASE UP who had the step-ladder last ...; find out what happened to Suzy's lunch yesterday - her mother insists another child stole it, and wants a full report this afternoon; remember to collect the parent notes from the staff room (AND give them to the students) sorry, take them back - put kids initials on them first, so that when you pick the note up from the lawn outside after school, you'll know who to give it to; re-book an appt with the deputy, to re-book an appointment with the school psych for that student who still isn't progressing; remind Max to get off the bike when he is on school grounds - ask Max to help you pick up all your paper work he just knocked out of your hands; remember not to use 'bad language' at Max even though this is the seventh time has he been caught riding on school grounds; ...

We are back to Grades in Year 11 and 12 courses. Levels are now history (like the Dark Ages) in the final years of school. Unfortunately, Levels are lingering in other years, although they are transformed, through alchemy or an algorithm, into grades for reports.

SET on the PLATO Forum, 7 February 200

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.

from Op Ed: Teacher pay flunks the fairness test
The Age, 21 January 2008

English is made up of stories, not outcomes.

SET on the PLATO Forum, 13 January 2008

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.

from Piers Akerman Op Ed: Education peril in 'fonic' debate
The Sunday Times, 13 January 2008

Discipline has been flagged as one of the major problems confronting SSTU members in all surveys.

Many schools are not coping with this issue and the union has made strong demands in its recent Log of Claims.

Naturally, DET has ignored these. In these schools the level of poor behaviour is an Occupational and Safety Issue .It illustrates how the policy drawn up by the department and the union is ignored. Obviously, if these schools cannot provide a safe environment for their staff what hope have they got of doing it for their students. A number of schools are not satisfying basic objectives in the School Plan.

What are the consequences for doing this after conducting the annual review?
There are none... so the problem continues as no one is held responsible.
You will never read on someone's C.V that they were unable to initiate a proper B.M.S regardless of the funding provided!

Ms O'Neil needs to put in place some real accountability processes that allow all teachers to participate in the review of what happens in school.

... The danger is that this disparity [in TEE results] is used to justify social engineering (enter the OBE acolytes) - so that the TEE itself, for example, is seen as being the problem. It isn't. It's a symptom...

I also think it's very important for the grounds to be beautiful (and am in favour of significant salary increases for groundsmen to make this happen). Unfortunately, when little Gemima heads off to PLC, her whole physical living environment is more beautiful than little Tom's in Nameless SHS - and I think it's easier for Gemima to feel more nurtured as a result. If we value schools, how come so many of them are so ugly?

Since we know that the differences in performance aren't based on class-based differences in IQ , it's a fair bet that students in the leafy greens are working harder at their studies than those elsewhere. Those who aren't working so hard at their studies may not know what it takes. Others may have low expectations. They may be working very hard, but not as students. Whatever, they will only perform well if they internalise the idea that an excellent education matters - if they are prepared to become supplicants at the altar of knowledge, in other words. And this must happen in the earliest years. It's usually too late by Year Eight!

Of course, when some little wretch wants to spit on that altar of knowledge, it's also vitally important that they be made excommunicate!

[Eric Ripper and Mark McGowan] played politics without any concern for teachers, the status of teachers, teacher workloads and teacher salaries,” said Mr Keely. Now, we face a teacher shortage where up to 15,000 children will not have a proper, regular classroom teacher at the start of next year – and up to 30,000 more could find themselves being taught science and maths by teachers qualified to teach English or Phys Ed.,” he added.
from Teachers Overwhelmingly Reject Pay Offer
SSTUWA Media Statement, 21 December 2007

Mr McGowan claimed that the union committee privately endorsed the latest enterprise bargaining agreement proposal, but its support had been destabilised by the newly elected committee, which will take over next month... Mr McGowan said the union committee had been keen to bed down the EBA before they handed over the reins to the new executive body in January, even though the current EBA did not expire until March... Although the ones who supported it didn't do so publicly, they were quite appreciative privately [McGowan said].
from Union divisions may scuttle pay offer
The West Australian, 20 December 2007

There are a whole lot of teachers teaching in areas that they're not qualified to teach, to cover staff shortages. All WACOT does is register you to teach. They could register a primary school teacher, and in theory they could be landed in a class at high school. The priority has got to be the quality of the education that kids end up with.
PLATO President Greg Williams, in Not fit to teach
The Sunday Times, 16 December 2007

Reports of outcome-based education's death are greatly exaggerated... The hated levels of achievement have been rooted out of Years 11 and 12 and replaced by percentages and grades. But they are still very much in force in lower secondary and primary school. OBE, as we know it, may be terminally ill. But its death certificate won't be signed for some time.
from Bethany Hiatt Comment: Teaching ideal not quite history
The West Australian, 15 December 2007

After nine years as a directionless shambles, schooling in Western Australia has been given an important boost with the reintroduction of school syllabuses for kindergarten to Year 10... [But] If the syllabuses are not mandatory, subject heads in schools not committed to curriculum rigour will cherry-pick the approaches they favour, such as an over-emphasis on films, websites and magazines in English, and ignore the specification that contemporary and classical novels, poetry and drama be studied in Years 8 to 10.
from Classics, not comics: New syllabuses are better than none
The Australian Editorial, 14 December 2007

Australia's top students are failing to keep pace with their international peers, with the latest OECD tests of high school pupils showing a drop in reading and maths skills... the decline [was] caused by a fall among the highest-performing students... the main decline in maths scores occurred among girls and in the states of Western Australia and South Australia.
from Brightest pupils falling behind world
The Australian, 5 December 2007

The disturbing evidence that has emerged from the latest results of the OECD Program for International Student Assessment is not of socio-economic inequity. Rather, it shows Australian schools are dumbing down their high achievers, particularly girls... The sooner Ms Gillard has a showdown with the black armband activists and the unionists, the easier it will be to start making the changes which are necessary to raise Australia's educational levels to the top of the OECD instead of creating a culture of mediocrity that discourages high achievers.
from Dumbing Down
The Australian Editorial, 5 December 2007

There have been at least 20 complaints about the Year 12 exams - just two days after they ended. On Friday, Curriculum Council chief executive David Wood confirmed most complaints were about the new outcomes-based education engineering studies, and media production and analysis courses.
from Year 12 Exam Complaints
The Sunday Times, 25 November 2007

Yet amid all these promises, investment in our most important educational resource has largely been forgotten: teachers. These are the people who have self-funded photocopying accounts with Officeworks, because their work photocopying budget ran out. The ones using their own money to pay for whiteboard markers and paper. The ones whose evenings are filled with meetings, and whose weekends are filled with marking.

from Op Ed: An education revolution begins with good teachers
The Sunday Age, 18 November 2007

Research shows again and again that the main variable in student performance is the quality of the teacher standing at the front of the classroom. Not family background, not a private school, not a smaller class, not technology - the teacher.

Students with high-performing teachers progress at three times the rate of students with low-performing teachers. Three times.

The report concluded that three things mattered most across all systems, primarily teacher quality. "The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers," it says.

But the striking thing about the controversy is the Government’s chosen method of handling it. Instead of negotiating a sensible compromise, which would have delayed serious action until after elections had been held, the Government has waded in with threats and bullying. This is, it has to be said, par for the course.

Its determination to close its ears to the legitimate concerns of teachers — again, the OBE issue is the best case in point — is now so ingrained that no other managerial technique seems to be contemplated.

from Tony Rutherford Op Ed WACOT fails teachers’ interests
The West Australian, 3 October 2007

The threat by the Education Department that teachers who are refusing to pay the $70 registration fee to the WA College of Teaching will be sacked was one of those puffed-up boasts that makes you question the sanity of those behind it...

This school year started with front-page stories about staff shortages and the situation has just got worse as the year rolled on with the discontent among teachers over a host of issues — including the intransigent OBE wrangle which is now a millstone around the Carpenter Government’s neck — growing to alarming levels.

Any sensible analysis of where the power lies in this current equation would put it resolutely in the teachers’ corner. Going through with the sacking threat toys with the unthinkable act of shutting schools.

from Paul Murray Op Ed School lessons lost on teachers’ silly bullies
The West Australian, 2 October 2007

The Education Department has engaged in yet another hamfisted exercise that serves to underscore its reputation of being a dreadful employer. It treats employees like rubbish, and then bemoans its inability to attract and hold good teachers.

from The West Australian Editorial Teacher threat reflects bad management
29 September 2007

"For the government to force this issue is the height of stupidity and arrogance. The fact that they are willing to bring on this disaster in the middle of a teacher supply crisis demonstrates their contempt for teachers and their estimation that teachers have no backbone and will simply back down."

It also shows that they will inflict any amount of mayhem on schools and punishment on teachers rather than admit that they are wrong.

I was speechless when Greg W told me that this was the govt plan - and if you know me you will know that even at the end of an exhausting term that takes some doing. This govt will let schools close rather than acknowledge that WACOT has been a disaster and that tells us a great deal about this Minister and his Premier and their views on how to handle any dispute. They will never admit that they are wrong and they don't care who pays the cost of their face-saving maneouvres!

[DET Director-General Sharon O'Neill said]: "We will reduce the squeeze on teachers by getting rid of those things that have complicated and cluttered their work".

That’s the job of the unions and if he’s not careful he is going to have a demarcation dispute on his hands.

As soon as they get out of the meetings regarding BMIS, CMIS, CIP, the management of relief teachers, Aging workforce working party, transfer review working party and the working party to establish the consultative group to recommend the membership of the committee to review the number of working parties, Mike and Anne might have something to say. However, they will have to hold an executive meeting first to make sure that Dave is OK about this.

Otto, the raving PLATO poster, on the PLATO Forum

An interesting comment on OBE from David Homer, a past President of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE);

OBE iterations of English curriculum are characterised by dubious developmental progressions (strands, levels, bands), opaque language, and participation in dialogues which inhibit curricular change and development.

Quoted from "Circling Around 'Cultural Heritage and the English Curriculum in 2007", English in Australia, Volume 42 Number 2, 2007, p23.

In the calculation it is necessary to multiply four by eight. Three students, nearly a quarter [of the third year UWA mathematics class], couldn't do this correctly...

A pig which came by a profound insight into the porcine conditions would have difficulty passing it on to its fellows because all it could say is "oink". And some of my students are not a whole lot better off than the pig...

So in seven years the level of competence has collapsed dramatically. This coincides with the introduction of Outcomes-Based Education in the schools in Western Australia...

It has been mentioned that the proposed election already should have been held as WACOT was established in September 2004. An attempt was made last year to do that, but there was a school of thought that the then Minister for Education and Training was not happy to have an election because people from PLATO, or People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, would nominate for positions. Of course, that would have been unpalatable to the then minister.

The picture that emerges is of a self-absorbed bureaucracy that is driven largely by ideology and self-interest rather than a commitment to the interests of the public that pays the salaries. That is consistent with repeated criticism by this newspaper that the department is not only incompetent but also out of touch with public expectations of schools and indifferent to the needs of students and teachers.

For a start, he should uproot the remnants of OBE from the system and throw them away with the destructive ideology that denies both achievement and failure and devalues academic rigour and the pursuit of excellence. That would show that there was substance behind his words and a commitment to the hard work of culture change in the department.

from McGowan lays down law, but culture change is the real test
The West Australian Editorial, 16 June 2007

Education Minister Mark McGowan has given senior education bureaucrats a stinging rebuke and ordered a wide-ranging review of the department.

He blamed them for “many multimillion-dollar problems” caused by poor planning and attacked them for ignoring his policies.

Mr McGowan said people “in the chain of command” distorted his instructions this year to simplify outcomes-based education assessments to suit their own vision of education so what happened in schools bore little resemblance to his intention. “This simply compounds dissatisfaction and reinforces the impression that the department doesn’t listen,” he said.

May God have mercy on the souls of the dills that thought this rubbish up because I feel like most of us will never forgive them!

The department [of education], with the way it treats teachers and its incompetence, not only fails to recruit enough teachers but is instrumental in driving practising teachers into retirement or other jobs. Its high-handed management of the outcomes-based education disaster is just one example of this.

from Editorial: McGowan must make inept bureaucracy accountable, The West Australian, 25 May 2007

The new TEE replacement CoS are deferred until 2009, at least, and the tried and true [old Year 11 and 12 TEE] D and E courses are back in business.

But wait: The Curriculum Council unaccredited all of those D and E courses, nearly a year ago. Then it accredited the new CoS, you know, the ones that aren’t now going to be taught for nearly two years.

I suppose that the CC will now re-accredit the D and E courses, and perhaps do a provisional deferred pending awaiting re-accreditation temporary accreditation for the dud OBE replacements?

Potential disaster or not, the issues surrounding OBE's ideological framework and implementation deficits have divided the educational community and destabilised education in Western Australia for well over a decade. Evidence suggests education authorities would be unwise to wait any longer before making a careful audit of OBE's bona fides, examining other paradigms for the provision of compulsory education, and then taking the bold step of choosing the model which offers the greatest empirical evidence of success.

from "Outcomes based education? Rethinking the provision of compulsory education in Western Australia",
by Richard G. Berlach & Keith McNaught, The University of Notre Dame Australia, Issues In Educational Research, Vol 17, 2007
http://www.iier.org.au/iier17/berlach.html

The passion to rid the Curriculum of this unworkable pedagogical poo is still growing, but there is much work still to do.

This whole unworkable stuffed-up OBE experiment has ruined education for a whole generation of young people, has confused and alienated their parents and has disillusioned and embittered most of the teaching population of the state. No, that is not an overstatement. As things begin to unfold more over the next year and teacher shortages really start to hurt, please remember that OBE has been one of the main factors that has turned schooling in this state into a chaotic and hopeless mess.

Forget about LOTE, Technology and Enterprise, SOSE, global warming and saving the whales and let the little blighters develop [literacy and numeracy] skills to save themselves.

Until the curriculum problems are overcome, (including issues with pedagogical approaches, course content, assessment, reporting and levelling) good candidates will not be attracted to teaching, and experienced practitioners will continue to leave in droves.

WACOT has been functioning for three years and has said absolutely nothing in regard to the appalling, untested, unproven and non-trialled upper-school courses that have been foisted on teachers, and the numerous sham processes that have been used to silence teacher disapproval.

WACOT’s lack of support for English teachers as they have struggled to come to terms with the shambled implementation of the English course of study is a total disgrace.

Education bureaucrats are forcing hundreds of teachers to wait weeks for their job applications to be processed, even though WA public schools are gripped by a growing teacher shortage. Education Minister Mark McGowan revealed this week that 345 teachers were still waiting to be accredited before they could teach in State schools.

A mutiny is brewing among State school principals over WA's controversial outcomes-based education system, with a group of them yesterday calling on their professional association to quiz members on whether new OBE courses should be delayed.

from "Principals join forces to consider OBE delay", The West Australian, 4 April 2007

The State's controversial outcomes-based education system came under fresh fire yesterday when the head of the Curriculum Council labelled the much-maligned "levels" as useless for assessing students and it emerged that a new university course says levels are a fundamentally flawed way of marking pupils. A University of WA post-graduate course on educational assessment, measurement and evaluation that started this year identifies the OBE levels system as an inadequate way of gauging schoolchildren's progress.

from "OBE 'levels' caned by experts", The West Australian, 2 April 2007

The use of outcomes and levels does not achieve comparability across schools and courses, lacks credibility as a method, and unnecessarily drains resources.

Comment by Marko Vojkovic: And the Andrich report used statistics that had been gathered over 6 years and analysed, reanalysed, checked and rechecked by some of the most qualified and scrupulous experts in the state. The findings are clear and unequivocal: levels are invalid as a means of assessing individual pieces of work, creating a summative assessment over a period of time, ranking students with any degree of accuracy or comparability and report student achievement to parents.

Up against this we have a bunch of NOBODIES with ZERO qualifications FORCING this rubbish on teachers and students out of sheer blood-mindedness. And that is good enough for WACOT, the professional association created to raise the status of teaching! What a joke.

That the OBE is useless, at best, has been confirmed... [Education Minister Mark McGowan] should assert his authority over the bureaucracy, stop the patch-up process, insist that the department stop mucking about and fulfil its fundamental responsibilities and purge schools of all vestiges of OBE.

This inefficient and ineffective organisation [WACOT] is once again currently billing all of WA's teachers for this annual membership fee, for which we receive newsletters full of hot air and little else.

Alan Carpenter killed off the effective Centre for Excellence in Teaching within weeks of becoming education minister and promised that it would be replaced by this College of Teaching.

I can tell you that the Centre for Excellence did more in a month to promote teaching and provide good professional development than WACOT has done in the whole of its sad existence.

Their [WACOT] front office could not even give me a straight answer recently to the question: how long does it take to register a teacher? WACOT is a sad joke and teachers are asked to pay for it.

There is much truth in the statement: "Teachers make every other profession".

In the present climate, there is also much truth in this statement: "Teaching makes every other profession appear attractive".

DET is preparing to cut down musical old growth forest, and replace it with spray-on lawn.

"DSCH", post on PLATO Forum, 18 March 2007

It is interesting that OBE claims to be focussed on what kids know and can do. Very positive thinking. As teachers, perhaps we are more focussed on what kids don't know and can't do, like address the issues in a simple question and write a coherent sentence in reply, or even know what is relevant in addressing the question. Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening: I wonder if the average kid in year 8 or 9 can do ANY of these with any degree of competence.

All school changes should be researched, tested and independently evaluated before they are implemented across the State, according to WA education expert [and Curriculum Council Chair Professor] Bill Louden.

The West Australian, 7 March 2007

I think WACOT needs to update the "Becoming a Board Member" link on their website.
New text to read: "You should be under the age of 40, else you may well be retired before we finally hold the election."

The biggest single factor in teacher dissatisfaction is coping with outrageous behaviour without adequate support from within or without. It is closely followed by the unhelpful imposition of corporate structure and bureaucratic management processes and the imposition of very sectional and dysfunctional social engineering experiments that sabotage real teaching by diminishing syllabus and going for mediocrity; the lowest common academic denominator!

Why have expensive university trained teachers at all? A quick ECU diploma of education facilitation (2 years or 5 Weetbix tokens) and we can solve the teacher shortage with any Joe Blow who can google at half the cost. I think it has been suggested before that this is the frightening end result of OBE.

Ultimately, OBE will have to be purged from the school system as a failed experiment in social engineering. That is a challenge for Mr McGowan in the face of resistance by elements of the education bureaucracy.

The West Australian Editorial, 20 February 2007

Judging by the antics on display during the first parliamentary week of the year, if it’s true that we get the politicians we deserve, we must have been very, very naughty.

M. F. Horton, Alice Springs, NT, Letter to the Editor of The Australian, 12 February 2007

A liberal/humanist view of education is impartial and disinterested and, as argued by Matthew Arnold, is concerned with:

…the pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits.

Compare this to the type of educational jargon much loved by advocates of OBE. A view of education where:

…to meet the challenges of life in a complex, information-rich and constantly changing world, teacher-facilitators need to empower knowledge navigators to deconstruct multi-modal texts. Autonomous learners need to experience rich, ‘real-world’ collaborative projects based on the principles of equity and social justice. Schools must develop autonomous and connected life-long learners based on essential learnings that contribute to the catalyst principles of flexibility and inclusivity.

Dr Kevin Donnelly, at the official launch of his book Dumbing Down, 8 February 2007

There are compelling indications of institutionalised incompetence in the Department of Education and Training... It is simply unacceptable that education bureaucrats should be scrambling about in the days before schools are to open to try to find teachers for classrooms...

But, in education at least, there clearly has been mismanagement and inadequate planning. Mr McGowan has the job in front of him to pull the department into line and to insist on competence in establishing and meeting the staffing needs of schools. With proper planning, there is no need for last-minute panic as schools are about to open.

More importantly, Mr McGowan should instil in the department a culture of accountability and competence, which is sadly lacking. That would be a step towards restoring public confidence in the State school system.

The backflip on the policy that dares not speak its name — Outcomes Based Education — is extraordinary given the Premier’s redoubtable defence of it for so long during last year.

Dumping these changes on teachers two weeks from the start of the school year, as they are preparing their courses, is intolerable arrogance.

The time and money spent on wasted professional development days last year is intolerable inefficiency.

It is just not tenable for Mr Carpenter to have cast this newspaper as the snake in the grass for the entire OBE debate and then accept the reptile’s venom as the antidote.

Yes, Premier, lots of us are stupid. But not that stupid, dumbo.

Tony Rutherford Op Ed, The West Australian, 27 January 2007

PLATO is no longer the enemy. We are being listened to. Politicians and CEOs are not ashamed to be associated with us. The efforts to discredit PLATO have well and truly failed. We are finally being taken seriously. Teachers now have a voice.

Why would people want to go into a profession [teaching] where they're treated like shit? Where they're treated as though no matter what they do, everything's their fault. If there's high unemployment, if kids are rioting at the beaches, schools are the problem.

Professor Sue Willis, President of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, in The Sunday Melbourne Age, 21/1/2007

What's to be done? Unlike the educrats who argue that concerns about standards are a media beat-up, the first thing to do is to admit there is a problem. Next, we need to benchmark the state and territory approaches to curriculum against world's-best practice and what research tells us supports teachers and students in the classroom. As opposed to our outcomes-based education, with fads such as whole language, fuzzy maths and a feel-good approach to assessment, stronger performing overseas systems have a syllabus approach to curriculum.

A syllabus approach gives teachers academically rigorous, clear and succinct road maps of what to teach. The curriculum is year level specific, there is regular testing and feedback to students, and there is greater time on-task in the classroom, with more formal, whole-class teaching...

As a result of outcomes-based education, teachers are drowned in hundreds of vague and superficial outcome statements that they have to monitor and evaluate. While the curriculum is central in any attempt to raise standards, teachers are equally important and more needs to be done to support them in their work.

While it is easy to snicker at the outrages of Western Australia's curriculum boffins, it must never be forgotten that ultimately lives and careers are at stake. The one in five Year 7 students found to be functionally illiterate will, if corrective measures are not taken quickly, help form a low-skilled underclass with few employment prospects – all due to an educational fad...

Editorial, The Australian, "Victims of fashion: If you can read this, don't thank outcomes-based education", 10 January 2007

Whenever a parent takes a child out of the public system, because they feel their child will get a better education elsewhere, then something is wrong.

Igor Bray [Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in Physics and Energy Studies, Murdoch University]

[On levelling]: Worse, your child could miss out on the university course of her choice with a TER of 78.56, while a friend gets in with a mark of 78.57. In my opinion, this is a criminal misuse of invalid assessment, which can arbitrarily destroy a student's intended career...

In conclusion, all of the available evidence says that OBE is a very poor and widely discredited method of teaching and learning, that the proposed assessment with levels is utterly meaningless but can arbitrarily deprive students of a university place, and that virtually every education department that has implemented OBE or something similar is abandoning it.

Mr McGowan now has the opportunity to rectify the mess made by his predecessor. 'Getting it right' is much more important than political or bureaucratic face-saving.

Ljiljanna Ravlich took refuge from the results of her own incompetence in a sad and ludicrous fortress of stubborn and taciturn martyrdom, in which all legitimate criticism became indistinguishable from persecution.

Tony Rutherford Op Ed, The West Australian, 3 January 2007

I have been a mathematics teacher for 25 years. I have three university degrees in mathematics and education so I am fairly well equipped to assist my 12-year-old daughter in her studies of mathematics, but I struggle to do so.

There is no Year 7 mathematics syllabus to which I can refer. She has no text book (because there is no syllabus, authors don't write text books). She is rarely asked to engage in drill and practice of her basics for homework; homework, in the main, is "complete the worksheet", which requires her to fill in the missing number. These worksheets give no provision for demonstration of understanding or working through essential algorithms. In short, I just don't know where to start to be of assistance to my daughter.

Greg Williams, Letter to the Editor of The West Australian, 2 January 2007

Ljiljanna Ravlich dominated the headlines as she battled teachers, parents, academics and The West Australian over outcomes-based education.

Her "let-them-eat-cake" attitude right up to the moment the Premier was forced to take control before the whole thing headed over a cliff endeared her to an enthralled public.

A wonderful cameo at year's end as the only person in the education department unaware that the CCC was crawling all over the place sealed the gong for the new minister for stuff that you'll never hear about.

It would be fair to say that there were sighs of profound relief among people across WA’s education community at the news that, at last, Ljiljanna Ravlich had been shifted out of their lives. The perpetually besieged minister who never quite got a handle on the key Education and Training portfolio moves on to a collection of lesser responsibilities, presumably to fill another set of bureaucrats with acute apprehension.

That Ms Ravlich was allowed to stay in the portfolio so long, though key bureaucrats fell in a series of amazing political and educational disasters, made the Government look as if it were intent on self-harm.

Of course, it’s been generally expected for weeks that Ms Ravlich would be demoted from the key portfolio, basically because she made a hash of it.

Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said the Premier should move Ms Ravlich immediately. He said the education sector had been crippled by disenchantment and lack of confidence. "Wherever she goes she will take with her a baggage of incompetence and that's a shame for her next portfolio," Mr Collier said.

As if the continuing slow-motion catastrophe of outcomes-based education, and its botched implementation, were not enough there has been the spectacle of its utter failure to provide a safe environment for its pupils. We find that teachers are now regularly bullied and assaulted by their pupils and, far from coincidentally, that university undergraduates no longer find education an attractive career option. The physical infrastructure of schools is literally crumbling away. Rigid salaries make a mockery of dedication. Standards are often appalling.

The complaisant time-servers of the State School Teachers' Union have finally called for the Minister's resignation, or sacking.

Tony Rutherford Op Ed, The West Australian, 22 November 2006

Greg Williams, president of teachers’ lobby group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, said the 10 PLATO members who were running on a joint ticket were devastated [at the cancellation of the WACOT election].

"All that WACOT had to do in its first two years of existence was register 40,000 teachers correctly and conduct the election,” he said.

Patrick F Whalen, Letter to the Editor of The West Australian, 2 November 2006

First, we had the continuing OBE fiasco, when the Premier had to take over from the Minister. Then we had the Halls Creek "coup" where the Minister dumped a popular and successful principal. Now we have the "sexgate" scandal, with the same Minister claiming ignorance. Ljiljanna Ravlich has now earned her spot in the politicians' hall of shame. She must go.

Patrick F Whalen, Letter to the Editor of The West Australian, 23 October 2006

Fall on your sword, Ms Ravlich

It's way past time to fall on your sword, Ms Ravlich, not take the head of the fall-guy to preserve your own precarious position. You are out of your depth. Please find something else to destroy. The students of our State are too precious to endure your incompetence any longer.

G R Simpson, Letter to the Editor of The West Australian, 19 October 2006

The State school system under Ms Ravlich has developed a reputation for intolerance of dissent and for crushing ideas that are out of line with the prevailing ideology. Teachers speak privately about the bullying methods used to try to make them succumb to the outcomes-based education regime.

It was obvious that there was something fundamentally wrong and despicable in the education bureaucracy when it sought to gag teachers by warning them that criticism of the new system at professional development sessions could lead to disciplinary action, including the sack. Ms Ravlich was a party to this act of attempted intimidation and oppression...

Alan Carpenter's tolerance must have some limit. Even the Premier must now see that this is not just a dud minister, but one who is destroying the reputation of and public confidence in the WA education system. Surely it is time to move her on.

Editorial in The West Australian, 14 October 2006

The proposed statistical treatment of levels to derive a TER score is academic snake-oil.

"BMG"

If an outcome cannot be unambiguously stated then it cannot be reliably measured. This is surely self-evident.

Jeff Harding

After reading our Education Minister's latest fatuous remarks, this time on the value of letting Google do the learning, I await, in fear and trepidation, her valuable tips on how to engage students so they will want to learn."

Let's take a look at what these three states [Queensland, South Australian and West Australian] are defending..."

To enable "students (to) develop the ability to critically analyse social structures that unjustly disadvantages some individuals or groups'' and "investigate events concerning societies and environments by applying socio-cultural and socio-critical inquiries'' emphasising "social justice, ecological and economic sustainability and peace''.

This is the values-laden sludge that apparently now passes as history in our schools. Under this sort of tutelage Captain Cook will inevitably turn out to be a white racist colonial oppressor. That's if he gets a mention at all.

The truth is the Queensland, SA and WA governments are simply too scared to antagonise the left-wing teachers' unions they rely on for support.

History is victim to outcomes-based educational philosophy that involves a shift away from content taught to what students can achieve. It is fine in theory, disastrous in practice.

From The Weekend Australian [19 August 2006] Op Ed piece: Our history in disrepair, by Paul Kelly

it assumes that there is a definite and consistent arithmetic incremental increase in the degree of sophistication between levels for an aspect of one outcome for a CoS, and that this consistent arithmetic incremental increase exists for every other aspect for that same outcome, and that each aspect for all outcomes for that CoS have the same consistent arithmetic incremental increase, AND that every other CoS is internally arithmetically incremental consistent as well as comparable and consistent with every other CoS. However, this proposition needs to be the case for the reliable calculation of a student's TER.

I would defy anyone to suggest that the above position exists for any of the accredited Phase 1 and 2 CsoS.

So, the logical conclusion is that the system is indefensible! The lawyers are already lining up.

"Woofer"

Any retention of Levels is unnecessary, misleading and a complete waste of time and effort. Practising bad education and bad assessment is too big a price to pay for ministerial face-saving.

I suggest we all do what I intend to continue doing, i.e. get on with the job I was trained really well to do 20 years ago, and that's help the children in my care have a happy, fruitful, positive, involved, interesting and rewarding year whilst in my class, and ignore all this [levelling] B.S. until it goes away.

These pathetic courses written by incompetent bureaucrats at the Curriculum Council are the problem. They lack the most basic elements of an educational course such as a syllabus, decent examinations and marking guides. Delay, to fix these miserably inadequate courses, or better still dispense with them all together.

In light of the amount of money spent, the lies told, the breathtaking incompetence, the sickening paternalism, the stupid intransigence, and now the hapless backsliding: any risk of an inquiry into the CC?

Union Forum down for maintenance as usual.
English Teachers' Association Forum remains silent through lack of interest on having fake discussions on the success of OBE.
PLATO passes 100,000 milestone.
Conclusions?

OBE does not improve student outcomes, only good teachers do that.

Sad English Teacher

It is not gobbledegook to everyone but it is gobbledegook to the teachers, it's gobbledegook to the students and it's gobbledegook to the parents. These three groups are the only ones that matter when it comes to outcomes-based education.

Greg Williams in The Australian, 21 April 2006

I’m a primary teacher and I share with you the same concern to see OBE out completely and I’m prepared to express my concern anywhere. OBE is seen as an abomination by the vast majority of primary teachers but many are really afraid to make a public statement about their opposition for fear of damaging their job prospects for the future. The culture of bullying, ridicule, intimidation and the threat of retribution has had a few more years to become entrenched in primary schools than in secondary schools. Sadly, this culture is now becoming endemic throughout the system.

The only thing we can be sure of is that any CoS slammed together at such short notice is going to be full of errors, inconsistencies and, due to the lack of consultation, lacking in consideration for the wider teaching community.

OBE is a dead cat that is lying in the middle of the road. If we leave it for another 12 months, there will be no miraculous resurrection. It will just smell worse than ever.

…this whole thing (the Teachers' Union sell-out) has become (if possible) an even greater disgrace. There is no honesty or integrity in translating %'s to levels. I can't find a space to function in all this compromise and chaos. It is wrong and it is dishonest. How can we grow integrity and honesty in our students if we are unable to practice it at the most basic level in our classrooms?

But in too many schools in too many countries, the structure of the education system has undermined the leadership role of teachers. These systems have set up policymakers as “the leaders”, principals as “the managers” charged with putting the policies in place, and teachers as “the implementers” of the policies. This model assumes that the policymakers know everything and have it right; the principals only need to be watchful and make sure the policies are carried out; and the teachers should simply follow orders.

Despite all claims to the contrary, this way of thinking about education has never worked and cannot work.

OBE is like a vampire. If it's pinned down in broad daylight and prevented from slipping back into the shadows, it will eventually die, albeit with a great deal of theatrical carrying-on by those who profit handsomely from it. The psychological and experimental nature of OBE can not be hidden anymore. Every day in public schools across America, children are being used in experiments to develop new instructional methods, new psycho-educational curricula or new "classroom management" techniques. If parents will unite and object fiercely to the mandatory use of their children as experimental human guinea pigs, there is hope for our children and our country.

Never before in the field of education have so many expended so much energy to fight something of so little value.

I am starting to resent the repeated assertion that teachers are not ready. It is the courses that are not ready and the final structure which is incomplete. I urge all platonians and teachers alike to correct people who say we are not ready. This infers that we are somehow to blame, that we haven't been pulling our weight. The problems are with the unworkable syllabus documents, the ridiculous outcome statements and the ad hoc assessment procedure.

Marko Vojkovic on the PLATO Forum

The Education Minister is still in RPH having major surgery in an attempt to remove her foot from her mouth.

After 12 hours of surgery and traction, apparently her thigh is now clear of her teeth. A second team of doctors were called in, but after reviewing the procedure, decided it was futile, so the next of kin called in a team of dentists, physiotherapists, dieticians and hospital cleaners to take over, saying that as they all work in hospitals too, there's no reason they shouldn't take over the job the surgeons refused to do.

If a trainee teacher developed such a course for her university "curriculum development" assignment, she would flunk.

Retired Assoc Professor Steve Kessell describes how the new courses of study violate all of the tenets of proper curriculum development
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We wholeheartedly endorse the principle of OBE, and the practice of adopting Outcomes that set quantifiable standards in academic skills and subjects whose accomplishment by students can be verified through objective testing.

We roundly condemn what OBE has become in practice – setting standards that are not academic in nature and cannot be verified through objective testing. Outcomes which are so soft and fuzzy that student understanding and proficiency cannot be verified are intolerable. How do you test a student's values and beliefs, and what, or whose values, set the standard? At best, these Outcomes distract from more important knowledge and skills. At worst, some of them intrude on the sanctity of vulnerable adolescent minds.

We do not have and desperately need schools based upon the first kind of Outcome; we cannot risk the future of our children, our nation, and our world on the second kind.

Carpenter, via his Minister, has an undertaking on the table that no CoS would proceed unless it was ready by the last day of term 1. He did not and could not deliver. The issues that are unresolved are major.

They include the lack of syllabus and the lack of precise statements involving Outcomes, leading to a wide variety of content according to the whim and experience of individual teachers and to a massive variation in standards.

There is widespread rejection of the shape and substance of individual CsoS, by teachers and University staff and the community of parents, students and the general public to the point that right across Australia what is being proposed is seen as a wry joke on students and their future. In trying to impose the Drama Studies template across all courses the Maths and Sciences in particular (and most other subject areas) have been trivialised and distorted into some stupid sociology of political correctness and in doing so have lost touch with what they are about.

Sample Exams are at best half done and make little sense because there is no marking guide and the whole shape and substance of the papers remain undefined. That deadline wasn't met! Teachers are not ready, the textbooks can't be written in time. Curriculum Council doesn't have answers to the questions being asked and the whole substance of OBE has lost credibility in the community. Nobody seriously believes it is all on track for 2007.

Primary school teachers are hard working professionals who, from my experience, tend to be less industrially militant or 'aware' than their secondary counterparts. They are often just so busy that they just get on with the job rather than having too much time to reflect and look at the big picture of where things are heading. Kids are demanding and the younger they are, usually the more urgent and immediate their needs are.

But I think it is high time that primary teachers stood up and shouted loud and clear that they have had enough! It is not the money issue (even though it is pretty insulting sometimes) but the lack of clear structure, syllabi and assessment clarity. Don't just roll over and keep being passive. Stand up and rage!

The timing is important. Primary school teachers and principals need to add their voices loudly and clearly to the OBE debate so that it is not just perceived as being a senior secondary issue.

A DRAMA teacher who does not play a musical instrument and believes turntables and computers are musical instruments is the co-ordinator of Western Australia's new music course. State Curriculum Council arts framework officer Christine Adams said yesterday that music-producing machines such as turntables and computers were equal to the piano or violin. "Sales of turntables are way outstripping sales of guitars," Ms Adams said. "In this course, the status of all instruments is equal and the turntable is one of them."

"Turntable music 'equal' to violins", The Australian Newspaper, 25 May 2006

THE new music course to be introduced in Western Australia next year is "the most tragic and misguided approach to teaching music" that the dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music has ever seen.

Kim Walker, who has worked in the US and Europe and is one of the world's most celebrated bassoonists, likened the course to expecting athletes to win Olympic gold without any training.

"This is tantamount to asking a painter to describe colours, but never touch the paints, the clay, the experience, mix or blend textures and shades," Professor Walker said.

I am disappointed that much of the media criticism (of OBE) has gone unanswered. This has not been for lack of effort on the part of the Department. IT HAS BEEN DIFFICULT TO PRESENT A VIEW THAT IS POSITIVE ABOUT OUR CURRENT APPROACHES.

Paul Albert, Director General, Dept of Education and Training

Let's get beyond outcomes fetishism. The present form of outcomes has probably outlived its usefulness. Indeed it is difficult to find a jurisdiction outside Australasia which has persevered with the peculiar approach to outcomes which we have adopted.

Bruce Wilson (2002), ‘Curriculum – is less more? Paper delivered at the Curriculum Corporation Conference 2002, Canberra

Firstly, there is no curriculum. Teachers are expected to develop their own to illustrate the listed outcomes. This will invite a least common denominator, one size fits all, approach. Learning about the sociology of the cosmetic industry is not real chemistry, discussing whether air bags should be mandatory is not real physics, and movie posters are not real literature. Students continuing on to university, TAFE or the workforce will be disadvantaged seriously. A “culturally-sensitive curriculum” borders on nonsense. Some cultures have no numbers larger than 20, and at least one recognises only “one, two and many”. Shall we teach mathematics on this basis?

Secondly, the “levels” proposed to measure student achievement are meaningless, edu-babble drivel. If you take a Level 5 descriptor, and add words such as “regularly, independently and fully”, you now have a Level 6 descriptor. Level 6 will get your daughter into university, but Level 5 won’t. No matter how conscientious the teacher, her subjective view of how regularly, independently and fully your daughter (one of her 120 students) performs can mean university acceptance or denial. This is totally unfair to the parent, the student and the teacher.

The minister and the curriculum council are disingenuous when they compare the proposed WA OBE courses to those in NSW. In NSW, every course has a detailed syllabus – the one for their equivalent of “maths, chance and data” is 83 pages long. The WA equivalent in 3 pages of notes for teachers – beyond that, teachers are expected to “wing it” as they go ! Furthermore, NSW uses traditional grades, not the Mickey-Mouse levels proposed here. There really is no comparison.

Retired Associate Professor Steve Kessell [Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University] in The Sunday Times 21/5/06

Parents, don't fall for the lies that the government, DET and CEO are trying to put forward about the fairness, equity and objectivity about OBE. It will NOT measure what your child has learned with any degree of reliability or relevance. It will not be valid, because there will be no agreement about what should be learned in the first place. It will not be equitable because all students of all abilities will theoretically be lumped together to do the same assessments and exams and the lowest common denominator will always end up ruling and there will not be valid ranking or discriminating of abilities and skills.

We are the experts who have to turn philosophical dreaming into classroom realities. So we have to take action to protect ourselves from policy makers who ride the waves of change only to float away when the waves crash on the students and the teachers.

Michael Findlay, Geography and S+E Teacher (2005)

The following quotes are a combination the thoughts and ideas of five mathematics, two science, four humanities, three T&E, two PE and two English colleagues. None can be named, but maybe can be called "a group of 19 (anonymous) concerned staff in the independent school system";. All will back these points and add some more if the politicians carry out a survey with confidentiality and protection of sources assured. They are like everybody in the government system "gagged", not to criticize OBE openly without risking their job security, from their own overarching governing politicians:

"WA has been hijacked by like-minded educational philosophy "experts", steering the education system in a direction that will eventually lead to isolation from the rest of the world in specialist education areas like engineering, mathematics and specialized sciences. These education specialists have very little experience in subjects with substance and they use their education philosophy jargon powerbase language to respond to all criticism, invalidating any input from the real experts in the field of specialist subjects. The real experts don';t have leverage in decision making regarding the state education system. They are to busy doing their work, and don't have time to play overarching power games"

"Colin Barnett has been removed from power by the WA voters. How come his ideological OBE philosophy regarding education isn't recognized by the current educational minister as another water canal ambitious project, with no hope of succeeding in the real world? The funding of implementing OBE has equally been under estimated and the millions of dollars invested have only resulted in an all time low morale amongst staff that has to be retrained to implement something that they do not even believe in."

"If you are really interested in what teachers think, offer them immunity and let newspaper journalists have confidential interviews with 1000 Mathematics and Science teachers across the state. I will bet my bottom dollar that not 5% of staff will support the system if interviewed in this way. Are all these teachers stupid, untrained and unaware or is it the other way around?"

"OBE invalidates the training and experience of all existing teachers who have developed strategies, programs and successful practices over decades of teaching. Education is a very delicate profession, where the respect for and credibility of teaching staff need to be protected by the education authorities in order for young people and their parents to believe in the system. OBE undermines the very core of teacher credibility, by spreading total confusion thus undermining teacher confidence. No student ever follows confused adults."

"Teachers working conditions and salaries have fallen behind in recent years. The problem of not enough money to improve conditions can instantly be resolved by channeling the millions spent to implement an unworkable brainwave and thereafter to reverse it (less than 10 years from now, guaranteed) in a useful way for this purpose."

"WA is already behind in most educational practices, now also lagging in realizing what the rest of the world have proven in numerous countries and systems to be a total disaster is not such a good idea for us."

"An ungovernable education system caused by OBE can't be easily fixed. Politicians need to wake up before this crazy idea destroys a whole generation of young Australians."

"Any teacher who can teach Mathematics, Science or any specialist subject by using OBE isn't a subject specialist any longer, caused by too much time spent in reading the philosophy journals of OBE. If you are into OBE, you simply can't remain a subject specialist! Are we satisfied with loosing more good people to be replaced by con-artists and education philosophers?"

"An ungovernable education system caused by OBE can't be easily fixed. Politicians need to wake up before this crazy idea destroys a whole generation of young Australians."

From a recipient of the above:

"Where in the world is the District Director????"