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The
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What's
Happening on PLATO 2008 Western Australia State Election Vote NO on EBA 3 Vote
NO Posters and Fliers More posters and flyers are available at this link TEN GOOD REASONS TO VOTE NO TO THE AGREEMENT-IN-PRINCIPLE EBA 3 Details [75 page .pdf] A
Guide to How Good DET’S Offer Actually Is [1-page
A4 .pdf flier: also available as a Word
.doc] Don’t
implement courses that aren’t ready, says retired academic News
on The EBA
Opposition
vs. Government What
teachers expect and would like is a commitment that the minister understands
or accepts that they are underpaid...
Comparison
of teachers' and backbench politicians' salaries
Source:
DET Report WA
Teacher Demand and Supply Projections Another View  Click on the image to enlarge it A Quick Overview of the PLATO Website
PLATO:
Protecting Education |
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Recent Noteworthy Articles on Education A renowned world education expert who specialises in assessment has backed claims by a teachers’ group that the discredited outcomes-based education assessment system is inadequate for use from kindergarten to Year 10. The flawed piece of social engineering that is outcomes-based education refuses to disappear. WA’s contentious outcomes-based education system has re-emerged as an election issue with a leading education group demanding the Labor and Liberal parties abolish it from kindergarten to Year 10. The
teachers’ proposed pay deal has suffered another blow, with principals’
groups assaying school leaders would be among the losers in the agreement
struck with the State Government. High
school students are flocking to new subjects such as media production
and analysis, physical education studies and outdoor education instead
of the more traditional science and humanities subjects, according to
new figures. * * * * * The
Council’s accreditation of its own courses is a bit like letting
mining companies set their own environmental impact requirements [or
putting the fox in charge of the henhouse]. Excellent
Tony Rutherford Op Ed on the appalling state of WA public education: DET...
The caring employer... The
Top Education News Stories [so far] from 2008 |
PLATO's 2008 New Year's Resolutions
Click here for a selection of satirical materials on OBE [updated regularly]
[Our education news archive includes excerpts from: The West Australian, The Australian, The Sunday Times, PerthNow Online News, Perth Community Newspapers, The Geraldton Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sydney Sun-Herald, The Sydney Daily Telegraph, The Canberra Times, The Melbourne Age, The Melbourne Herald-Sun, The Brisbane Courier-Mail, The Brisbane Sunday Mail, The Adelaide Advertiser, The South Australia Sunday Mail, The Hobart Mercury, The Sunday Tasmanian, The Tasmania Examiner (Launceston), The Northern Territory News, The New Zealand Herald, The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand), The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Magazine, CNN, various US regional, state, and local newspapers, The International Herald Tribune, The Times (London), The Mail – Guardian – Observer (UK), The Independent (UK), The Telegraph (UK), The Durban Daily News (South Africa), The Port Elizabeth Herald (South Africa), Cape Argus (Cape Town, South Africa), Bernama.com (Malaysian National News Agency), Canada.com, and Australian, US and UK radio / TV coverage]
Thursday 28 August
Wednesday 27 August
Archive of Breaking News Stories [May 2006 – present]
RSS Education News Feeds
Links to online education journals
SSTUWA: Documents you need to see
Inaccurate information provided by the union
1. The view that the AIP provides our members with pay rises between 15.85% & 21.67% is not entirely accurate...
2. The information in EBA Update 68 (18-08-08) where it says that there are “improvements in carer and parental leave conditions” is wrong...
3. In relation to Graduate Teachers the “gains” are putting into the Agreement/Award what is already in existence from the beginning of this year by way of an over-award payment...
Final Summary of EBA 3
A must read! Web
Why There Is A Teacher Shortage In Western Australia
SSTUWA - Vote NO on EBA 3 "In Principle Agreement"
EBA 08 NO
- The Australian
- Editorial
The revolution we simply had to have
Rudd's reforms challenge the education establishment
"Kevin Rudd has been accused of being a Prime Minister without a narrative. Yesterday he responded by outlining an ambitious plot that offers plenty of drama and the chance of redemption. Mr Rudd presented the manifesto for an education revolution that will improve the quality of teaching, bring schools, teachers and principals to account and concentrate resources on the disadvantaged. There will be zero tolerance for poor performance. His revolution challenges the power of the education establishment and promises to shift the balance decisively from the provider to the consumer, putting the interests of parents and children ahead of state governments, bureaucrats and teaching unions. The Prime Minister predicts that there will be "argy bargy". That, we respectfully suggest, is an understatement.
"The changes Mr Rudd proposes are long overdue and reflect a groundswell of concern about a teaching industry predisposed to mediocrity. It is the kind of reform The Australian has long advocated. Mr Rudd's predecessor, John Howard, talked a good game on education and supported parents' rights to choose private schools, but successive education ministers, including Brendan Nelson and Julie Bishop, avoided serious reform of the public sector.
"Public schools have been protected from scrutiny by state governments. Education Minister Julia Gillard admitted in The Weekend Australian last week that parents had no guarantee their child's school met even the minimum educational standards. Teaching unions have resisted performance pay, favouring a flat remuneration scale offering teachers no reward for excellence and no sanction for failure.
"Mr Rudd's ambition is to restore the teaching profession's reputation as a noble calling that attracts the best and brightest. He will introduce national standards by which principals and teachers can be judged. Teaching and leadership excellence will be rewarded. The recruitment crisis exacerbated by the imminent retirement of the disproportionate number of teachers now in their late 50s or 60s will be addressed.
"In a further challenge to the teaching establishment, responsibility for hiring, firing and remuneration will be devolved to principals. Schools will be given a year to provide more information to parents and three years to report their performance, measured against other schools. As Mr Rudd acknowledges, some parents may vote with their feet, moving their children out of failing schools: "We make no apologies for that."
"State education bureaucrats would have hated what they heard yesterday. The Rudd revolution is a projection of commonwealth power into state territory, necessary because the states have failed to deliver an education system fit for the 21st century. Education departments have been hoodwinked into adopting faddish curriculums, accelerating the slide in numeracy and literacy and depriving students of basic skills in a rapidly-changing world. Mr Rudd must be prepared for resistance, although he holds the purse strings.
"He can expect resistance, too, from the regressive wing on his own side of politics, the same morally arrogant voices who argued against economic rationalism in the Hawke and Keating years, opposed last year's Northern Territory intervention and are now decrying the Labor Government's steps towards welfare reform. They are voices Mr Rudd appears to have the confidence to ignore.
"The Australian has been an un-apologetic critic of the Rudd Government's fridge-magnet politics fearing that stunts such as FuelWatch, GroceryChoice and the alcopops tax were distracting from real reform. Yesterday, we saw signs of a more assertive and progressive leader, one driven by conviction, not spin, the Mr Rudd we were anticipating when we endorsed his candidacy last November. He has set himself a challenging task. We wish him well."
From The Australian at link
- Standoff on Julia Gillard school reforms
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"Negotiations between the federal and state governments over school reforms are growing tense, with state education ministers complaining they are being cut out of the decision-making process.
"At a meeting of education ministers in Sydney last Friday, the states accused federal Education Minister Julia Gillard of following the policy agenda of the Howard government and of being controlled by the federal education department.
"One state minister told Ms Gillard her proposals looked like the Howard agenda and said she was following the advice of the same people in the department who advised her predecessors, Brendan Nelson and Julie Bishop.
"The meeting, described as "cooperative but direct", was held at the request of the states to discuss initiatives being developed through the Council of Australian Governments that remove state education ministers from the process. The Rudd Government's reforms are being developed at COAG by the productivity working group, chaired by Ms Gillard..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- Comment
Gillard speaking for parents, children
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"Julia Gillard is one of only two education ministers in the nation without children, and she is the only one speaking out for parents.
"Every parent has the right to know their child's school is as good as the one down the road.
"If a school fails to meet a minimum standard of quality, principals should be held accountable, teachers should be removed, the school should close. Every child deserves no less.
"At present in Australia, there is no way of guaranteeing to parents that their local school is doing all it should.
"Accountability is virtually non-existent and choosing schools, as Gillard said in The Australian last week, is based on guesswork, rumour and crossing your fingers.
"The Rudd Government is staring down state governments and teachers' unions afraid of being held accountable.
"In doing so, it is holding true to the Labor tradition that the disadvantaged are lifted up in society through education.
"Gillard and Kevin Rudd are unequivocal in their aim: every child in Australia, no matter where they live, how much money their parents earn, or what language they speak, is entitled to a good education.
"Every child is entitled to leave school able to read and write, to be given the opportunity to achieve the best they can at school and afterwards. Every school has a responsibility to give children that opportunity."It's that simple."
From The Australian at link
- Welcome move, but critics await detail
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"State governments, principals, business and teachers in independent schools yesterday supported the thrust of Kevin Rudd's commitment to make schools more transparent and accountable.
"State education ministers said school reports were already comparing their results with similar schools, and any move to recruit the best and brightest graduates into teaching was welcome.
"Ministers welcomed the negotiations, but said the detail of the Prime Minister's proposals was critical in winning support.
"But teachers unions gained an unlikely ally in their opposition to moves for schools to report student performance from the organisation representing the parents in government schools..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- PM ties school funds to results
Kevin Rudd will demand states take tough action against failing schools, sacking principals and teachers and even closing sub-standard schools, as a condition of a multi-billion-dollar education fund to ensure all students have a good education.
The Prime Minister's address to the National Press Club, entitled: Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution in Our Schools.
- Kevin takes on the bad cop role
by Dennis Shanahan, Political editor
"It's hard to believe that when dealing with the diplomatic Kevin Rudd and the hardline Julia Gillard on a joint negotiation, the good cop in the duo is the iron lady and not the Prime Minister.
"But that is what has emerged with the Rudd Government's education revolution.
"Rudd has proposed a series of school reforms aimed at helping disadvantaged children, lifting teaching standards and giving parents the power to judge the relative quality of their school - private, religious or state - and invested it with his own authority.
"Rudd has lined up the state governments and the teachers unions and told them he wanted action. He has called for parents to "vote with their feet" and move their children out of unsatisfactory schools. He has challenged state governments to close those not up to scratch.
"It's an extension of tough love for education and a dose of painful politics for the states.
"The substance of the proposals is excellent, equitable and long overdue. They are designed to help students, empower parents and encourage greater regard and recognition for the vocation of teaching..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- Paper to spell out student goals
by Lauren Wilson
"Primary school principals have called for a national curriculum that spells out exactly what students should be taught, even down to when students should be able to spell specific words.
"In a draft discussion paper, the Australian Primary Principals Association - which represents primary principals in state, Catholic and independent schools - say the national curriculum should focus on what is taught in schools rather than how teachers conduct their classrooms.
"The syllabus-style national curriculum being proposed by the APPA should not exceed 40pages, however, and should avoid unnecessary complications and overlaps.
"Many previous curriculum projects have taken no account of the demands on teachers working in primary classrooms with responsibility for a number of subjects," the paper says. "The national curriculum should assist in uncrowding the curriculum rather than making it worse."
"The paper proposes that a national curriculum should focus heavily on literacy and numeracy rather than other areas such as history and science, particularly in the first three levels of school.
"No history national curriculum should be developed for the first three years of schooling, and the science national curriculum should be very limited in scope in the first three years," it says..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- Truancy to be monitored in welfare move
School authorities will have the power to choose whether to dob in welfare recipients who fail to ensure their children attend lessons under new laws introduced in parliament yesterday.
- Program propels teachers to higher level
by Sian Powell
"As a teacher who has worked in Australian schools for 20 years, Joanna French welcomes the education revolution with open arms.
"Deputy principal of Clemton Park Public School, in Sydney's Earlwood, Ms French has already reached a level of seniority within the NSW education system.
"But she will now apply for professional accreditation under a NSW program at the new "professional leadership" level..."
Full story in The Australian at link
- Carpenter counters Barnett school plan
West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter yesterday attempted to outmanoeuvre the state Opposition over its prized education policy, announcing a $1.5 billion package that included an extra $310 million in school upgrades and maintenance.
- Overseas students held like terrorists
Nearly 300 overseas students have been thrown into detention centres in Sydney and Melbourne in the past three years after falling foul of Australia's immigration laws.
- Letters to the Editor
- First Byte
- "Clever of the Australian Education Union to reinforce the message in its full-page advertisement (27/8) by including a sentence which is both ungrammatical and misspells the word “fulfil”.
Peter Barclay, Glen Osmond, SA
- "I don’t think that the parents of the 40 per cent of children attending non-government schools would agree with the statement, embodied in the advertisement, that “only Australia’s public schools ensure every child has the opportunity to fulfill (sic) their potential”. Only the Australian Education Union believes that."
John Young, Epping, NSW
- "In his speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Kevin Rudd declared war on the provider capture of public education. The Coalition must support him in this."
Barry Wells, Cairns, Qld
- "Are we ever going to see a halt to the blame game played ad nauseam by Kevin Rudd and his disciples?"
Keith Ellem, Tarrawanna, NSW
Further updates will be available this evening.
- The West Australian
- Op Ed
Education campaigns fall short (page 21)
by Tony Rutherford
"This may well be one of the craziest elections ever foisted on a long-suffering electorate. Since the day the WA poll was called, apparently in something of a panic, it has been characterised by an unusual degree of absurdity, at least on the part of the Carpenter Government.
"The inevitable parallels between various government ministers and the Beijing Olympics — take your pick between gymnastics and high diving — have been frequent and justified. “Backflip with two somersaults and a double roll” — that sort of thing.
"The timing of the election itself has probably been the most athletic spectacle: Labor always strongly supported four-year fixed-term elections, it then called one nearly six months early and then announced that if elected at an early election it would prohibit early elections.
"There must be some kind of tin medal that can be awarded for this sort of performance. And with so many of the backflips, one wonders what sort of attitude to the voters is being displayed: do they really think that our memories are so short that we can’t keep track of an issue from one day to the next?
"My tentative theory, for what it’s worth, is that Labor actually has too much money, too many resources and too many clever advisers. The ideas just keep coming, just a bit too thick and fast. There’s no sense that they have an overall view of what the aim of their campaign is — apart, that is, from retaining power at all costs. The Liberals, on the other hand, are severely under-resourced, from every point of view, and have no real alternative but to plod along as best they can. Their proposals may be fewer, but at least they have so far been more or less consistent.
"This has given the Liberals a small advantage. Instead of proposing one bandaid after another, they have chosen to focus so far on a relatively small number of issues. And, unlike the Government, they have been able to acknowledge the presence of the proverbial elephant in the room: education.
"The polls have shown that education is one of the top issues for voters in this election. It is surprising that it is not the top issue. It should be. While health and law and order are important issues, issues on which the Government has a poor record, both in terms of delivering a good service and delivering on extravagant past promises, education is the one in which it has utterly failed. The record of its three ministers — Alan Carpenter, Ljiljanna Ravlich and Mark McGowan — is one of neglect and mismanagement.
"So far, despite some important unresolved issues, Labor has failed to come up with policy recommendations which would make any difference. The pay deal, cynically delayed until just before the election, is unresolved because of the election and there are signs that its mismanagement of the issue has caused deep distrust and resentment among teachers. Perhaps worst, the Government has not made the one simple promise that would make most difference to the way students are taught: it could and should have made a simple announcement that OBE was to be abolished, root and branch. That it has not yet done so shows that it has learnt nothing at all in the past seven years. OBE typifies all that is wrong with the system: the micro-management by bureaucrats, the persistence with progressive policies that make a difference only for the worse, the focus on inputs instead of outcomes.
"The Liberals have so far said some sensible things on education: about teachers’ pay, about school infrastructure and so on. But they, too, seem not to have seen the importance of OBE. This is a major disappointment, one which needs addressing. It’s difficult to imagine that any Liberal candidate has canvassed a teacher and not got the message, very plainly. So far, neither party has said anything which will actually reverse the decline in our public school system. Perhaps they are both a bit scared of major policy initiatives. [emphasis added]
"It is interesting to contrast this timidity with the recent flurry of news about the Federal minister, Julia Gillard. Completely belying much early scepticism (my own included), Ms Gillard now seems genuinely serious about getting on top of the education section of her considerable policy portfolio.
"She has recently, for instance, floated the idea that training should basically be funded by what amounts to a voucher, redeemable by trainees at the institution of their choice, public or private, school or TAFE. Even though it is a development, rather than a reversal, of the Howard government’s own funding scheme, it is useful and will make for a market which responds better to the needs of both trainees and their prospective employers. It should also prove to be less bureaucratic than the present system.
"Ms Gillard has also been advocating the release of much better information about school performance, much to the irritation of her State colleagues. And she has been on a few interesting visits lately during her travels: not least to see the head of New York’s public school system, Joel Klein, who has been trying to turn around one of America’s most dysfunctional school systems for some years now. Mr Klein is serious about his job. He even shuts down schools that don’t perform. By the standards of any senior State education bureaucrat in Australia, he is a radical. “The way you change things is by making information publicly available so that parents can raise hell and force change in the system. The job of the public school system is to educate kids, not simply move them through the process,” he said.
"The political problem here is that a Federal minister can force change on to the State systems by using Commonwealth funding in a polite form of blackmail. If that is so, the question is why the States don’t get their own act together. When a system is as bad as is ours in WA, you would think that someone would summon up the courage to act decisively.
"It will be interesting to see what the next 10 days will bring."
From The West Australian at link
- Labor pledges $1.5b for WA schools [online only] [Too bad there won't be any teachers to staff them... Web]
by Aleisha Preedy
"The Labor Government today pledged to spend $1.5 billion on building and replacing 36 schools across WA. Of that, $1 billion is to refurbish existing schools.
"Under the plan, Labor will spend more than $300 million refurbishing existing schools if re-elected on September 6.
"The announcement comes after the Liberal Party announced a $490 million package for new schools and to upgraded older schools.
"Premier Alan Carpenter said it was the biggest and most expensive school infrastructure project in the State’s history.
“School appearance and the quality of facilities is an important measure of standards in the eyes of the community and our planned investment will help realise Labor’s ambition of developing a world class education system,” he said.
“We have to keep pace with the demand for new schools in developing areas but this package reflects our continuing commitment to renew our older schools.”
"Mr Carpenter said he planned to negotiate Federal Government funds for a further 16 trade training centres in WA schools, 10 of which were promised for regional areas.
"As part of the package, the Pilbara mining town of Karratha will have the most expensive school ever built in WA at $77.5 million."
From The West Australian online at link
- Academics back ban on calculators (page 11)
by Bethany Hiatt
“Academic criticism of the growing reliance on calculators in schools gathered pace yesterday as the head of mathematics at the University of WA threw his weight behind calls to ban the devices from the TEE and reduce their use in primary schools.
“UWA mathematics and statistics head of school Les Jennings said many academics backed comments by Curtin University physics professor Igor Bray that students should use calculators in high school but they had no place in exams.
“He also agreed with Professor Bray’s claim that over-reliance on calculators in primary school caused “damage to young minds” because it prevented children from developing mental agility.
“Year 11 students who will start new maths courses next year must use computer algebraic system (CAS) calculators which are far more advanced than graphics calculators now used.
“A decision to also make one-third of the TEE maths calculator-free from 2010 was a step in the right direction, Professor Jennings said, but calculators should be banned from exams altogether to push students to make more use of their brains.
“The argument is that you can do bigger and better problems with a calculator, but unfortunately a calculator gets used on the itty-bitty problems as well, so you don’t get the exercising of the brain along the way, just the fingers,” he said.
“Professor Jennings said teachers still had not got the balance right between calculator use and mental maths, so first-year university students were not as competent in maths as previous students.
“UWA maths lecturer Mike Alder said standards had fallen. “What we’re worried about is that graphics calculators have removed the need for some kind of thoughts and they’re now going to bring in a new kind of calculator which can do algebra,” he said. “The kids’ algebra is already awful. I’ve seen an appalling degeneration over 25 years in simple technical competence.
“But Mathematical Association of WA president Michelle Ostberg said CAS calculators would help Year 11 and 12 students better grasp abstract concepts and would only be used by students who were university bound.
“She said technology use was part of everyday life. “As educators we would be negligent if we ignored this aspect in teaching and only prepared students for an artificial world which required knowledge of rote-learned written algorithms such as long division, “ she said.
“Ms Ostberg said WA students performed well on international testing and it was “ridiculous” to suggest that primary students were being taught to use calculators rather than basic numeracy skills.
“The mental agility to which Professor Bray refers was only ever evident in those students who had a natural ability in the area or who supplemented their school studies with a high degree of routine practice,” she said.
“Ms Ostberg said students were taught a range of strategies and to only use a calculator when it was more efficient to do so.
Ïn fact, students are becoming significantly better at using mental strategies and can perform these more effectively than most adults can performed their rote-learned paper and pencil approaches,” she said.”
From The West Australian
- Rudd to push for reporting on schools
AAP
"Schools will have federal funding tied to new league-style tables that will publicly compare their performance against rivals.
"The move, outlined by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, aims to ensure parents have the best chance of making informed decisions when choosing where to send their children.
"Every kid in the country deserves a decent start, it doesn't matter where they come from, every kid in the country," Mr Rudd said.
"At the National Press Club, Mr Rudd outlined a three-pillar policy for the reform of education in schools - the next step of Labor's so-called education revolution.
"Improving the quality of teaching and providing resources to disadvantaged school communities are the other central elements of the plan.
"But the coalition rejects it's a revolution, accusing Labor of another bout of the me-tooism that plagued last year's federal election.
"Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith said the government planned to improve teacher quality, teacher pay and transparency, which were all reforms the coalition had been pushing for years.
"Unfortunately, the Labor state governments and teachers unions blocked many of these crucial reforms at every turn," he said.
"Copying the Howard government's education policies is the easy part, but actually implementing them will be the real test."
"The most contentious element of the reform agenda will be a proposal to make individual school performance reporting a condition of the next national education agreement, which takes effect from 2009.
"Within a year, we want to see increased information available for Australian parents," Mr Rudd said.
"And within three years, a report that shows not just how their child is doing, but how their child's school is performing compared to similar schools."
"Under the strategy, schools continuing to underperform after an injection of funds would be expected to take radical steps to lift their game - such as sacking the principal or merging with another school.
"Mr Rudd admits his push to make schools more accountable will be unpopular, particularly with teacher unions.
"Some of the unions have been completely resistant, it's fair to say, and we expect a fair bit of argy-bargy ... but we don't intend to shirk from it," he said.
"However, he disputes the new scheme is the same as "simplistic" league tables that pit well-to-do private institutions against struggling public schools.
"Comparisons will be made between government and non-government schools with common characteristics and socio-economic profiles.
"The Australian Education Union (AEU) labelled the plan "SchoolWatch", akin to the government's policies to tackle rising fuel and grocery prices.
"Mr Rudd will put the policy to states and territories when they sit down with the commonwealth at the end of the year to nut out the next round of education funding.
"States will be asked to consider new standards to reward principals and the best teachers, part of a strategy to improve the overall quality of teaching.
"The government wants to recruit the best and brightest into the profession and address a system where teachers have to move out of the classroom to earn more than $75,000.
"Under its proposals, principals would be given more autonomy to make staffing and salary decisions at a local level.
"Mr Rudd acknowledged his ambitious plan would be costly but would not say how much.
"However, he indicated that an average-sized school which had been deemed disadvantaged would need an extra $500,000 a year to help underachieving students."
From The West Australian online at link [same AAP stories in other online newspapers]
- The Australian
- Educators refuse to chip in for ad campaign
by Paige Taylor
"The West Australian teachers union has refused to help the Carpenter Government get re-elected, declining to contribute to a union-movement advertising campaign starting today.
"Militant unionist Kevin Reynolds has also refused to contribute funds of the union he leads, the state Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, towards UnionsWA's 30-second television advertisements.
"The advertisements decry the state Liberals' record on industrial relations, claiming: "Under the last Liberal state government, it was working people who paid the price."
"State School Teachers Union president Anne Gisborne said the union's state executive could decide to pitch in for the cost of the campaign retrospectively when it next met on September 12, six days after the state election.
"But she said there were sensitivities after such a long and bitter pay dispute, and when about 15,000 members were still considering an offer from Education Minister Mark McGowan.
"She said the offer came with the best teachers' pay in Australia but many were unhappy with the attached conditions.
"While the mining section of the CFMEU has agreed to chip in for the advertisements, The Australian understands that Mr Reynolds refused to donate from the coffers of the construction division he heads.
"Mr Reynolds quit the ALP last year and is a strident critic of Premier Alan Carpenter, who has forced out of the party both Mr Reynolds's wife, Shelley Archer, and Mr Reynolds's friend Brian Burke.
"But UnionsWA has received an unexpected boost from the conservative police union, which has decided to join the body after being unaffiliated for about 40 years.
"West Australian Police Union president Mike Dean said his union was not aligned to any political party but he feared a Liberal state government could bring back individual contracts for police officers.
"These eroded pay and conditions for many junior and middle-ranked officers under the Court Liberal government in the 1990s, he said.
"I would be very, very concerned if they brought that back," he said.
"The police union's affiliation with UnionsWA is not complete and it has not been asked to help pay for the anti-Liberal advertisements, which will air on the three commercial television networks during the evening news and prime-time programs."
From The Australian at link
- Rudd budget to cost 1000 teacher jobs
by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
"Public schools face a funding cut in real terms from the federal Government equivalent to losing 1000 teachers in the next four years.
"An analysis of the Rudd Government's first budget by a former adviser to Jenny Macklin says commonwealth funding to government schools will fall almost 2 per cent over the next four years based on current arrangements, after rising about 10 per cent under John Howard.
"Funding for non-government schools is projected to slow but still increase slightly in real terms by more than 3 per cent.
"The report to be released today by the Australian Education Union is an analysis of the 2008 budget forecasts. It was written by Jim McMorrow, an honorary associate professor in education at Sydney University and former commissioner of the Commonwealth Schools Commission and deputy director-general of the NSW Education Department.
"Mr McMorrow was also adviser on schools policy to Ms Macklin before the election when she was the Opposition's education spokeswoman.
"The report comes as unions launch a national campaign attacking the federal Government's funding for public schools, including placing full-page advertising in newspapers, including The Australian today. The Rudd Government is about to enter negotiations with the states and territories for the next four-year schools funding agreement to start next year.
"One of the Government's key election promises was that no school would lose money under a federal Labor government..."
Full story in The Australian at link
Similar story in The Age
- System has to get with the times
by Stephen Matchett
"In a world where researchers have established a correlation between surgical skills and proficiency playing computer game Super Monkey Ball, Martin Westwell wonders why people bang on about back to basics in education, because the basics are not basic any more.
"From gaming platforms to online social networking, media technology was creating new environments that young people used to change the way they learned, the founding director of Flinders University's Centre for Science Education told the HES.
"Almost every back-to-basics policy in education is the result of a change in the world that the system (and often wider society) didn't understand or know how to deal with," Professor Westwell said.
"The challenge was to adjust education to suit the circumstances people at school already existed in, rather than futilely seeking to force new ways of learning into old-fashioned forms.
"There is an enormous amount of ambiguity out there," he said. "Older people are not engaged with technology like the young: while young people know all about gaming, their parents and teachers don't." Parents and teachers needed to learn about gaming and social networking to keep up with the way the children in their charge acquired and analysed information, he said.
"Professor Westwell joined Flinders from the University of Oxford, where he was deputy director of the Institute for the Future of the Mind. Initially interested in organic chemistry, he switched to neuroscience and its interface with education.
"Today that inevitably involves assessing the digital domains youth inhabit. In particular, his interest reaches far beyond the easy assumptions that games are educationally irrelevant. Rather, Professor Westwell argued that the technologies underpinning the wired world could shape young people's learning and their lives. Thus he pointed to the importance of executive brain function - the ability to sustain or appropriately adjust attention, switch strategies, eliminate errors and overcome impulses, all good gaming skills.
"Professor Westwell said a 10-year-old's executive function was a better indicator of earning potential at 30 than reading ability.
"The skills gamers acquired were not all considered beneficial. He pointed to Medal of Honour as a complex game presenting players with huge amounts of detail, but the capacity to recognise and respond to that did not equate to absorbing information from books, which required concentration on a set of symbols on a page that conveyed all the information.
"And there was no doubt that sanguine shoot 'em ups were dangerous, making young children, especially boys, more violent and fearful: "The research is settled on this," Professor Westwell said.
"The challenge for the education system was to change what was taught and how it was communicated, to suit circumstances that were new but here to stay.
"But to work out ways to do that, education systems had to inform and empower teachers.
"A real understanding of technological change involving the young is only visible when neuroscience and psychology are used with teachers' expertise," he argued. "Their relationship with kids is just as important as external connections.
"So we need mechanisms to make evidence available and engage teachers with it."
From The Australian at link
- Fees plan recipe for exclusion
La Trobe University vice-chancellor Paul Johnson has criticised Group of Eight proposals to deregulate fees and allow universities to raise tuition prices as an unnecessary recipe for social exclusion that is out of step with the federal Government's equity and access agenda.
- HECS-style loans extended to vocational students
Student loans and higher fees may become commonplace across higher level vocational courses after Canberra yesterday backed Victoria's training shake-up.
- Cave men weren't stupid - research
Neanderthals were not as stupid as they have been portrayed, according to new research today showing their stone tools were as good as those made by the early ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens.
- Letters to the Editor
- Truancy has hit epidemic proportions in our schools
"Nothing could demonstrate more vividly how out of touch many politicians really are than the sudden awakening that truancy is a fundamental and catastrophic problem in Australian education. Any teacher, canteen manager, local police officer, shop owner or retiree can tell you that attending school is near the bottom of the to-do list for hundreds of thousands of students and many of their parents around the nation, black, white or brindle. It has been for decades. It’s as Australian as meat pies.
"For a vastly underestimated number of Australians, successfully concluding a basic 12 years of schooling really doesn’t matter as much as time off for a birthday, to greet granny from the north, to buy an iPod, to take a holiday mid-term with mum or dad, or just to hang about at the shopping centre. It has reached epidemic proportions. And the children of the “battlers” are the most severely disadvantaged by it."
Garry Bickley, Elizabeth Downs, SA
- "Kevin Rudd is beginning to show signs of true leadership. I totally support his government’s proposal to suspend welfare payments to those Aboriginal parents whose children consistently fail to attend school. The connection between a good education and future employment prospects is well undertood, as is the fact that Aboriginal truancy runs as high as 90 per cent in some communities. Those parents who do not accept active responsibility for ensuring that their children attend school, in my view, are guilty of a form of child abuse. It is arguable that such serial offenders should be charged with this offence."
Michael Gamble, Belmont, Vic
- "I wonder if Julia Gillard has fully thought through her plan to punish welfare dependent families whose children are truants. What does she imagine is going to happen to the children once their already vulnerable parents are denied sustenance? And what of the truant children from wealthy families? Or is the Labor Government only intent on demonising the poor for cynical political gain."
Doron Samuell, Bellvue Hill, NSW
- "I’m highly amused by the move to deduct welfare payments from parents whose children are chronic truants and not at all surprised by the party-room revolt from the Labor Party. Nobody seriously wants to do anything about truancy. Any day of the week, the shopping centres are full of students who should be at school and nobody ever does anything about them.
"As a retired teacher, I remember schools cushioning serial truants with excuses such as “they’re doing it tough at home” etc, etc, ad nauseam. Killing them with kindness and denying them an education in the process."
Susan Leembruggen, East Maitland, NSW
- The Age
- Expert warns of public school funds decline
by Farrah Tomazin
"The Federal Government's education revolution will see public school funding continue to fall over the next three years and parents increasingly turn to the private system, according to a study by one of Labor's former chief education advisers.
"New research from University of Sydney expert Jim McMorrow has warned that public education funding will fall from its 1996 level of 43% of the federal schools budget to 33% by 2012, unless dramatic action is taken.
"While the report points out much of the problem is due to the funding arrangements inherited from the Howard government — namely the contentious socio-economic status funding model for private schools — it found Labor's first budget "markedly slowed the growth of education funding", from 10% a year under the Coalition, to 1% a year.
"Likening the projected three-year funding decline to losing 1000 teachers from government schools, Dr McMorrow calls for a "root and branch" review of funding between the state and federal governments, and an immediate investment of $1.5 billion to create a more equitable system for students.
"It is as if the machinery inherited in the Howard government's policies is driving the Rudd Government's agenda," said Dr McMorrow, Labor's former policy adviser to education shadow minister Jenny Macklin.
"If … action is not taken soon, the long-term decline in the Commonwealth's funding to public schools will continue to its inevitable progress towards the Commonwealth abrogating its responsibility for public schools."
"The report — commissioned by the Australian Education Union — also says:
* The drift of students from public to private schools will continue over the next three years, with students in independent and Catholic schools set to increase by 3.1% compared with an 0.1% fall in government school enrolments.
* That if increased federal funding for non-government schools in the May budget was expressed in terms of the capacity to pay teachers, the number of private school teachers would rise by 2630 by 2012.
* The report credits the Howard government for giving all schools much-needed upgrades, but shows that during its years in government, public schools gained an extra $2 billion, while private schools got $4.7 billion.
"Historically, the vast majority of funding for public schools has come from state governments, while Federal Government gives more to private schools.
"The report comes as Education Minister Julia Gillard prepares to negotiate a new four-year funding deal with the states, and also embarks on a review of the socio-economic status model, under which private schools are funded on the basis of the income, occupation and education of parents within the school's census district.
"Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos accused the Government of embracing a "corrupt, distorted and indefensible" private schools funding model.
"Ms Gillard said she was working with the states and territories to provide extra resources for schools. She said all schools would gain from initiatives such as the Government's $1.2 billion plan to boost computers in secondary schools, its $2.5 billion pledge to develop trade training centres in schools over the next 10 years, and its $577 million program to bolster literacy and numeracy."
From The Age at link
- Call to bring back the school nurse
by Nick Miller
"Typical schoolyard woes used to be bumps, colds, scrapes and scratches. But with diabetes, obesity, asthma and dangerous allergies increasingly common, the Australian Nursing Federation is calling for the return of school nurses to their traditional place in the education system.
"The latest published figures show a slight rise in the total number of nurses in Victorian schools — but a significant drop in the number in the public system.
"The benefits of having a permanent school nurse are extraordinary, but we are still seeing numbers drop away," said ANF federal secretary Ged Kearney.
"On the national level the Government is talking about reforming the health system and tackling childhood obesity — but nobody has thought of something as simple as a nurse in every primary and secondary school..."
Full story in The Age at link
All Alston cartoons are © The West Australian Newspaper
All media quotations, photographs and cartoons © their respective publishers
Archive of Breaking News Stories
| Information About PLATO |
PLATO supports, and has always supported, the practice of adopting outcomes that set quantifiable standards in academic skills and subjects, and whose accomplishment by students can be verified through objective testing.We absolutely condemn the setting of pseudo-standards that are vague, not academic or practical in nature, and therefore cannot be verified through objective testing.
We also condemn the installation of overclaimed and utterly unproved educational methods, whose only merits are their novelty and the evangelism by which powerful, bureaucratic non-practitioners seek to impose them.
PARENTS: Click here to find out what's wrong with outcomes-based education.
"Don’t implement courses that aren’t ready, says retired academic",
by Steve Kessell
Click here to download:
"Time to cane OBE and can levels:
New Education Minister Mark McGowan must abandon the myths peddled by his predecessor, says Steve Kessell"
[Op Ed piece, The West Australian, 4 January 2007]
Click here to download:
"Changes have not solved OBE problem:
Major issues remain despite Government compromises, Steve Kessell says"
[Op Ed piece, The West Australian, 14 July 2006]
Click here to download:
Here is a "must read" for concerned parents:
Excellent Expert Analysis of OBE's past and future in WA
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.htmlEducation 'heads for meltdown'
Article in The West Australian, 8 May 2007
New material is added to PLATOWA regularly.
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Check out the articles, commentaries and links on the menu (left-hand side of screen), or see our Site Map for a quick tour of the PLATO website.
For a wide selection of Bumper Stickers, click here or use the "Bumper Stickers" link on the menu.
Here is a summary of features of the various education models. Feel free to download the file and send it to your colleagues, parents, friends, and politicians.
Handouts for Parents and Teachers or use the "Handouts" link on the menu.
PLATO's New Year's Resolutions [1 January 2008]
Here are the quotes of the month:
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.Marko Vojkovic on the PLATO Forum, 2 August 2008
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.Boxer on the PLATO Forum, 2 August 2008
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