School

A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not providing her with the necessary tuition and support to get into a law course at an elite university, and so they should.

The girl in question, a pouting, willowy petal by the name of Rose Ashton-Weir, boarded at Geelong Grammar in 2008 and 2009 and was clearly neglected to the point of indifference. The school is Prince Charles’s alma mater, and is Victoria’s most expensive secondary institution with annual fees topping $30k, yet evidence was tabled in court yesterday that Ms Ashton-Weir was never once given a silver spoon with which to imbibe her daily Bircher muesli.

Further, the school patently failed the young lady by refusing to provide an immaculate gravel pathway lined with lovingly-tended hedges stretching all the way from the doors of its Geelong campus to the nearest sandstone university law school. Quite rightly, the family is outraged.

Continue reading "They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments" »

A few weeks back we got the note home from school that every parent fears: “Please come in for a chat about your child’s behaviour in class.” Jack is a gorgeous eight-year-old: kind, funny, affectionate and busy.

He asks great questions like “Do ladies wake up pregnant, or do they get pregnant in the morning?” (Our answer for that one was “Both”.)

Problem is, he’s not really a natural scholar (takes after his Dad). And instead of doing his work this year, he’s been busily making a name for himself as the class clown. It was one of those all-too-frequent moments when you realise parenting should also be known as “muddling-through-with-absolutely-no-idea-what-you’re-doing”.

Continue reading "So, this parenting thing. Anyone mastered it yet?" »

Do Australian schools reinforce disadvantage and fail to promote equity in education? Cultural-left critics, like the Australian Education Union, teacher academics like Melbourne University’s Jack Keating and, most recently, the Gonski Report on school funding all argue “yes”.

The belief is that instead of providing a ladder of opportunity and overcoming disadvantage, Australia’s schools, especially non-government schools and selective high schools, reinforce inequity and injustice by favouring already privileged and affluent students at the expense of those less fortunate.

According to critics, only the wealthy can afford a good education while poorer students forced to attend government schools are destined to failure. As a result, critics argue, governments must stop funding Catholic and independent schools, selective high schools (where entry is based on merit and ability) must be closed and all students must be forced to attend the same state-managed and controlled government schools.

Continue reading "Dogmatic private school haters will never, ever learn" »

I recently visited the Primary School I attended in rural Victoria. The old school, first built in 1870, has been replaced by a new structure on the outskirts of the town. The modern buildings, with their light, open work spaces and landscaped surrounds, offer an attractive learning environment. The old brick school that I attended now serves as a community centre.

There was one surprise at the new facility: a large covered area to house the many bicycles that the students ride to school. In my time, most pupils either walked or rode to school. Only the kids from the surrounding farms were driven, and even some of them rode their bikes into town.

These days, very few children ride to school, with over 60 per cent being driven, and another 20 per cent using public transport. Many schools don’t have a bike shed. According to a survey released by the Health Foundation and the Cycling Promotion Fund this week, 46 per cent of children travel less than ten minutes to get to school.

Continue reading "It’s time we spoke up about kids riding to school" »

In most social circles being into poetry has about the same social cache as having an STD.

Small children are introduced to poetry early in the guise of nursery rhymes and they can’t get enough of it. The lilt and the quirk of the language in these rhymes pleases them automatically and profoundly. 

But then something happens, and by the time a kid is a teenager they may as well stick a “kick me” sign on their own back if they want to carry around a book of poetry. And adults that are interested in poetry will find that even “top notch” bookstores usually have more titles on cake decoration than of verse. Where and why does poetry lose its fan base?

Continue reading "Poetry is NOT dorky, high school just ruins it" »

The last few weeks have seen the annual surge of stories talking about the dangers facing young adults celebrating the end of their compulsory schooling.

Most of the headlines have been taken up with reports on the tragic fatal electrocution of a young man in Bali. However, coming close behind have been a glut of current affairs pieces, garnished with a menacing techno soundtrack, detailing the many and varied ways Australia’s sons and daughters can either have their lives ruined or cut short during Schoolies.

Predictably, parents across the nation have made public their fear and reluctance to allow their offspring to go let off a little steam, far away from the stress that has been their constant companion for the last couple of years.

Continue reading "A teacher speaks: chalk schoolies up to experience" »

On very rare occasions, having an incompetent rabble on the Treasury benches can be a blessing in disguise.

Those of you with long memories will recall that in the early days of the Rudd Government, the then Education Minister Julia Gillard promised that by 2011, Australia would have a national curriculum for Maths, Science, English and History.

Shortly thereafter it became obvious they weren’t going to make it and so the deadline was pushed back to 2012, then to 2013 and now it seems we’ll be lucky to see it before 2014.

Continue reading "History is not a political science" »

Picture a psychologist’s office. Inside, there’s a 16-year-old girl. She’s sobbing. No, her parents haven’t divorced and her BF hasn’t unfriended her. She’s crying about the dress she wants to wear to her school formal. Her parents won’t buy it. Why? Because it costs $3000.

True story. It was relayed to me by one of Australia’s finest psychologists and, no, he didn’t counsel with, “Come on, Princess. Get a grip,” which would have been my response.

Sure, it’s more than 20 years since I went to my school formal in an approximation of Cyndi Lauper’s finest get-up (I may or may not have worn rags in my hair). And, yes, I appreciate that events have become a little more sophisticated than my big night, the highlight of which was sneaking out to drink wine pinched from the kitchen by a roadie from the band – ironically called The Snatch.

Continue reading "Cinderella syndrome is way out of hand" »

It was all over in 30 minutes. Bowls were washed, toasters put away and the lids of the honey jars screwed back on. But the feeling was hard to beat.

Just like every other weekday morning between 8-8:30am, at least 25 kids from the Alexandria Park School in Sydney’s Inner West eat breakfast around a communal table and head off to class with full bellies; a peaceful and warm start to the day.

Lucky kids would do all of this in the comfort of their own homes. But for an increasing number of others, mum and dad are just not earning enough to feed them the most important meal of the day.

Continue reading "In this breakfast club, Weet-Bix saves the day" »

One of the major criticisms of Catholic and independent schools advanced by those arguing that government funding should be cut is that choice and diversity in education lead to inequality.

Critics like the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the Canberra-based Save Our Schools pressure group argue that non-government schools should not be funded as, supposedly, they are elitist and privileged and because they promote an education system where state school students from low socioeconomic communities are further disadvantaged.

As argued by the AEU President, Angelo Gavriolatos, “At the heart of the equity problem is the increasing concentration of students from wealthy families in private schools and those from low SES (socioeconomic status) families in public schools – a segregation that is the direct result of the market reforms of successive governments”.

Continue reading "The more school options, the better it is for all of us" »

Barely a week goes by without yet another controversy about the funding of schools, most recently over high-fee school profits and school assets.

High-fee schools in particular aren’t excited by the prospect of increased scrutiny of either on the My School website.

But such scrutiny might be delayed for some time and this might ease their discomfort: In the time it takes to get the information correct they’ll be able to flex their considerable lobbying muscles to make sure it doesn’t happen. 

Continue reading "School funding review faces an uphill battle" »

Last week’s decision by the Independent Education Union of Australia to split from the Australian Council of Trade Unions because the ACTU supports the Green’s stance against non-government schools is the correct one.

On reading the Greens’ education policy document, there is no doubt that Catholic and independent schools are in the firing line.  While the Liberal-National Coalition is committed to properly funding such schools and respects their right to manage themselves, the Greens are dedicated to cutting funding and destroying the autonomy such schools currently enjoy.

Given that the Gillard-led government is beholden to the Greens for its continued survival, and the equivocal nature of its commitment to properly funding non-government schools, then there is every chance that those opposed to Catholic and independent schools will get their way. 

Continue reading "Green with class envy and bent on change" »

When my daughter told me she felt stressed one Saturday morning, I did a double take. She’s 10. She sleeps with a stuffed bear and has drumsticks and dirty socks strewn across her bedroom floor.

In my eyes, she’s still a child. Yet here she was, “stressed”. I asked her what it felt like (“Like I can’t really enjoy myself”) and why (“Because I have to write a speech and then do all this maths homework”).

I wrapped my arms around her and declared it a homework-free day. Instead, we went to the park. Later, we baked her favourite cake and read The Encyclopaedia of Immaturity together, in which we learnt how to make vegie-proof tongue covers and take photos that look as if your head’s fallen off.

Continue reading "Childhood isn’t preparation for life, it is life" »

It would be funny if it wasn’t so predictable. The original opponents of My School - the Greens, State teachers unions, public education spruikers and the like - who at first campaigned against publishing schools performance data claiming it would lead to the stigmatisation of selected schools, have now done a complete reversal.

Now, their line is that My School confirms what they have said all along - that private schools are overfunded, and that federal funding of independent schools is grossly unfair. From being condemned at first, My School has morphed into a Trojan Horse for tired old positions on independent school privilege and State school disadvantage.

Typically though, what the State education spruikers conveniently ignore is that My School offers as many insights about the fairness of public funding of State owned schools as it does about the traditional public versus private debate.

Continue reading "My School lifts the lid on state school funding mess" »

On a recent trip the US I read journalist Dave Cullen’s book about the Columbine massacre. With a spate of highly-publicised suicides there apparently linked to bullying, and a subsequent rash of legislation in various states designed to “combat” the phenomenon, Columbine is a timely publication with much relevance to our own national debate on the subject.

In his book, Cullen demolishes one of the central and most persistent myths of the Columbine massacre: that a pair of misfits with artistic and intellectual tendencies were hounded by meathead jocks until they finally snapped. Instead he paints a chilling portrait of a malignant relationship between a psychopathic narcissist and his angry and malleable best friend.

Yes, the Columbine kids were picked on, argues Cullen, but not as badly as many others and they certainly displayed no ideological biases when it came to blowing away their classmates.

Continue reading "Bullying myths: Who are the real victims?" »

Last week’s news of the death of anti-anorexia billboard model, Isabelle Caro, came one day after I gobbled Portia de Rossi’s graphic memoir about her battle with anorexia in almost one sitting. 

An Unbearable Lightness intrigued and terrified me.  De Rossi’s obsessive calorie counting, exhaustive exercise and waifish results seemed strangely juxtaposed with the delicious gluttony I’d experienced over Christmas - nine weeks after the birth of my third child – weighing my heaviest.

Female body image is a complex beast. It wrestles at some point with most of us - regardless of the skin we’re in. 

Continue reading "Not so much a killer body as a body that kills" »

In the battle between the nerds and the bullies, a seven-year-old girl is striking back.

Katie wears glasses and likes Star Wars.

At the start of the school term, she was excited about bringing her new Star Wars backpack and matching drink bottle to show her friends. 

Continue reading "Schoolyard Star Wars: nerds versus bullies" »

Jung Chang’s Wild Swans and James Joyce’s Dubliners don’t make my list of “books that changed my life” but as required reading for my grade twelve English class and therefore the sole focus of my attention for an entire year, let’s just say they’ve stuck in my mind.

If I ever want to remember what it felt like to devote an entire year to reading a couple of books, I only have to grab them down from the bookshelf and flick through the curled up pages and read the number of Post-it-notes still stuck to the spine or the lead pencil scrawled in the margins; a testimony to the days, weeks and months spent poring over the content, the characters, the plot line, the history and in the case of Wild Swans, the extensive family tree printed on the inside cover.

Yes, both books eventually did my head in. Yes, I often questioned their impact on my future life, the one that was sooo hard to see from my bedroom desk. But I’m glad I read them.

Continue reading "Don’t ditch literature in your final year" »

Are there four syllables in the English language to strike fear into the hearts of men and women across Australia than – high school reunion. Hell, that’s five syllables. There you go – I was no good at either English or maths. And I just know everyone I went to school with knows it.

Panic grips you in the days before the reunion. Just what the hell have I been doing with my life? How can I spin it so I appear successful/rich/happy? I call this the Romy and Michele Method (after the movie Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion starring Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow who decide to make up a life for themselves at their reunion as the inventors of Post-it Notes.

Or maybe the high school reunion is a perfect chance for a cheap group therapy session and calls for four hours of brutal honesty. Why pay a shrink several thousand dollars when for fifty bucks you can, over ten beers and some bad finger food, cut to the chase, strip back your life to its foundations and expose just what you have become and who you really are. And all this with the people who deep down know you the best – your old school friends (and enemies).

Continue reading "Romy and Michele and Duncan’s School Reunion" »

You aren’t allowed to smack your partner, so why should you be allowed to smack your child?

It also makes no sense to me to declare war on thugs in the street and yet still allow parents to hit their kids.

This is particularly the case when it’s done with a blunt wooden object rather than just a hand.

Continue reading "Wooden spooning is assault, no back chat" »

Recently, a private boys’ school in Queensland took the progressive step of incorporating emotional intelligence into its syllabus. Bravo. 

In Western society, we have for too long adopted a blinkered approach towards education, focusing heavily on the development of cognitive skills, such as writing, reading and counting, and not those associated with a child’s emotional development.

Research and early childhood literature has shown that children who possess well-developed emotional and mental skills, have a greater likelihood of being successful later on in life. 

Continue reading "Putting self-esteem on the school syllabus" »