Myschool
My school is better than yours - it’s the seesawing debate that never ends when it comes to the class divide over state versus private education.
Rather than helping to resolve the argument, the launch of the revamped My School website on Friday – for the first time allowing parents to compare funding levels for individual schools – has drawn criticism from both state and private school supporters and has only deepened the row.
Dispelling the old bang for your bucks theory, the site found the most elite private schools have at their disposal at least twice the income of the average government school, but their students do not necessarily perform any better in national tests than their state school system cousins.
Continue reading "MySchool 2.0 revives the private vs. public debate" »
This wretched Government simply must increase the funding for private schools. The more children we can get into private education, the better we, as a nation, will become.
There has been quite the furore over the figures revealed by MySchool 2.0 – and commentators have rightly pointed out that this Labor Government is using the politics of envy to further its ideological warfare against the wealthy.
Two points about the MySchool data leap out at one:
1. Private school students do not necessarily perform better on the literacy and numeracy tests.
2. It doesn’t matter.
Continue reading "Australia’s schooling future is private" »
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Glenn says:
What an outrageous piece of ideological propaganda from a wanna-be champion of oligarchy, entrenched class division and plutocracy. This site ought to be ashamed for carrying such profoundly incorrect and misleading tripe. Rhetoric designed to do no more or less then convince the ignorant that to further disadvantage the children… Read more »
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Amanda Coleman (mother) says:
I initially thought the same as you, Phil, when reading this. After giving it a second glance, I sort of had to laugh to myself a little about the article. I agree with Silverdragon: I don’t think this is supposed to be serious in any way. My son is attending… Read more »
What is the best way to raise standards, especially amongst disadvantaged groups, and make sure that Australian students are achieving the best academic results?
The question is more than hypothetical, given the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results that show Australian 15 year olds going backwards in reading.
The 2009 results released last week show a 13 point drop compared to Australia’s performance in 2000.
Continue reading "Increasing opportunity for Australian schools" »
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Public school teacher says:
The real problem is that private schools can discipline students and set high standards. As a teacher in the government system we are continually not allowed to punish students for their behaviour. Education departments set such a high bar for suspension and then when you finally meet that, a parent… Read more »
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Northern Steve says:
Having worked in both private and public education, I don’t know that you can say that private schools necessarily attract better teachers. There are certainly large numbers of teachers in the public education system that would not think of working in private education simply because they believe in public education… Read more »
Non-government schools are angry over the way the My School website is about to make public their sources of funding and their socioeconomic profile.
The Shadow Minister for Education, Chris Pyne, has even suggested that the ALP Government and non-government school critics have a secret agenda to use the data to justify reducing funding. Pyne is correct.
During the recent federal election campaign the ALP appeared to support school choice when it promised, if re-elected, not to take money away from Catholic and independent schools. Gone were the days of Mark Latham’s hit-list of so-called wealthy, private schools and the old politics of class war.
Continue reading "Turning MySchool into a battlefield in a class war" »
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xyz says:
@Economist: “I’ll speculate based on their attacks on public education in the past that under Abbott we wouldn’t have public education. Prove me wrong.” I couldn’t agree more. Howard tried desperately to discredit the state school system and he succeeded…. a lot of ordinary Australians have now lost faith in… Read more »
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Dean says:
GregS My source Is List of Tables National Report on Schooling in Australia 2008 Additional statistics on Australian schooling. The URL is http://cms.curriculum.edu.au/anr2008/pdfs/anr2008_Statistics_16-8-10.pdf It is table 23 page 27. The fact remains that the private school sector saves the tax payer significant amount of money, and if it didn’t exist… Read more »
School league tables splashed across newspapers earlier this year, heralding an unprecedented era of education openness in this country, are on death watch.
A coalition of teachers unions, academics and public education advocates are well advanced with their mission to strangle through technological modifications any further league tables in 2011.
The tables ranking of individual schools for literacy and numeracy were the most sensational outcome the MySchool website, arguably Prime Minister’s greatest reform triumph as Education Minister.
Continue reading "MySchool wowsers trying to lock out parents" »
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Luke says:
kids have a poor attitude towards NAPLAN tests, they now spend about 3 years of their school life preparing for them - at the cost of other learning experiences or localised literacy and numeracy education (that has probably got a track record of being effective). NAPLAN nationalised testing means teachers… Read more »
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Northern Steve says:
Let’s talk about a ‘Year on Year’ improvement and how that can be gained. The headline percentage on the MySchool website is the percentage of students at or above national standards. The most effective way for a school to improve that mark, is to put all their effort into the… Read more »
I don’t know what my nine-year-old daughter wants to be when she grows up. She’s a sensitive, quiet kid who seems to spend a large portion of her time in a dreamland of her own creation. She’s not an academic terrier in the Hermione Granger mould like I was. She isn’t the bookworm I hoped she’d be, and a recent tussle with the seven times tables almost caused me to drop the supportive parent ball altogether.
So what will all this that mean for her in the current My Schoo , NAPLAN Australian Curriculum?
Being a child of Australian education circa 2010 I worry that she might never get the chance to discover her passion or talents if they lie beyond the scope of traditional education.
Continue reading "What does MySchool do for non-academic kids?" »
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gucci says:
iteracy and numeracy skills from a different facet of education. I know this to be a worthwhile process because I do it now! Individual Education Programs for each student is just around the corner, kids love to learn lets cut the red tape and listen to them. louis… Read more »
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Catherine says:
“It takes a village to raise a child”, a quote from a time ago. Whether we are parents, educators, employers, achademics, or the general public, we all apperar to have a stake in the methods used to raise children of the 21st century. Having a child myself, with a learning… Read more »
I used to work in this pub in Wollongong where come Census time some of the regulars would scarper for the hills. I also remember a bus stop near where I grew up bearing the graffiti: “NO AUSTRALIA CARD” for most of the mid 80s, so I get there are people who are a little skeptical (read paranoid) about the Government knowing their business.
But I just heard the Punch’s Mark Kenny at the Press Club ask Julia Gillard about the “Orwellian” nature of the proposed new ID number for Australian school students Phil Coorey flagged in the Herald this morning.
The Opposition quickly jumped on the plan, with Tony Abbott today saying: I think that people have names and I think that it ought to be possible to identify people’s performance based on their names, based on who they are.”
Continue reading "Why do people get so worked up over ID numbers?" »
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Davido says:
Wow DG never heard someone say they want to be treated like a number. Anyway…. Your last paragraph hits the point exactly. We the people should be in control of the country through the instrument of Government. People who blindly trust the democratic process are I would say - naive.… Read more »
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acker says:
Student ID will help the education department macro manage and perhaps remove the lower performing teachers, which is why the teachers union is screaming like stuck pigs. Read more »
The release of My School data as part of the Rudd Government’s ‘Education Revolution’ begs the question about a key issue in improving classroom performance – teacher standards and school-based professional culture.
We should pay teachers more and be seeking to attract more of our best young people into teaching. But we also need to address what is usually un-discussable industrially: poorly performing and unprofessional teachers in some schools.
When the Education Minister, Julia Gillard, reviews the data on classroom performance, more funding should not be the only response to target underperforming schools. Helping Principals shape high performance professional school culture will be just as important.
Continue reading "Why should teachers remain unaccountable?" »
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deb says:
First of all, I think that anyone who seeks teaching as a career should be held accountable for the students’ progress. There are many great teachers in the schools, but there are also many teachers in schools for the wrong reasons. There should be high expectations of teachers regardless of… Read more »
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Maria Rattray says:
I can’t say I have read all these responses, but I’d like to steer the debate away from teacher-slanging and accountability if I may, and perhaps open another perspective to the debate. . Let me preface this by pointing out that today’s classrooms are a far cry from those experienced… Read more »
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