Schools

The Prime Minister’s decision to throw Peter Garrett, the education minister, a lifeline in the form of Brendan O’Connor to manage the school funding review, chaired by David Gonski, proves how sensitive and potentially politically damaging the issue is.

Non-government schools enrolments have surged over the last 15 or so years with much of the increase occurring in low fee paying non-denominational schools in marginal seats that are crucial in any election campaign.

During the 2004 election campaign Mark Latham’s hit list of wealthy private schools proved an electoral liability and when education minister, the now Prime Minister Julia Gillard, assured non-government schools and their parents that schools would not suffer financially as a result of the review.

Continue reading "Hey! Gillard! Leave them schools alone" »

The principal of a school in Sydney’s west is the Grinch who stole Christmas. Imagine the confusion on the faces of the three-year-olds at their End of Year Singalong for parents at the Inner Sydney Montessori School.

God forbid that they could be called Christmas carols! Instead of being allowed to sing, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” their rosebud lips were twisted into wishing everyone a “Happy Holidays”.

They became confused. Eyes welled up. Parents were furious. The song sheet had been expunged of all reference to the birth of Christ.

Continue reading "What’s wrong with a little Christmas spirit?" »

Given today’s national day of action being called by non-government school critics like the Australian Education Union, a recent publication on school funding by Sydney’s Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) merits close attention.

Especially as it’s not often that a free enterprise and free economy think tank like the CIS supports a cultural-left view of public policy.

Normally, one expects that while the left opposes market forces and favours increased government control, the other will advocate minimal government and freedom of choice. Not to so when it comes to debates about school funding.

Continue reading "Stop treating private schools like rich snooty cousins" »

Gutters bursting at the seams after a 15 minute downpour. Leaking gas taps in the science labs. Classroom heaters failing in the winter, air conditioners not existing in the summer.

My parents forked out their taxpayer dollars, plus $60 a year in textbook fees and an optional $100 on top of that so I could go to a public high school in Western Sydney. It was the same school my mum had attended when it was shiny(ish) and new in the late ’60s.

The problem was when I went there not only had nothing really changed, nothing had really been maintained.

Continue reading "After the BER, why are schools still broken?" »

The Gillard Government has taken the middle road in making changes to the national school chaplaincy program; $222 million has been committed to extend the program until 2014. But now schools can elect to have non-religious person fill the role as a secular worker and still use the $20,000 grant scheme.

Chaplains have really become budget student counsellors under the program. Since 2006, it has been rolled out to 2681 schools, 28 per cent are public schools. While the school applies for a chaplain to DEEWR, the funding is administered to a third party employer, in most cases a Christian organisation like Access Ministries who then engage a person to be a chaplain at the school. 

Chaplains have a set of guidelines from the Government which prohibit proselytising, which they adhere to by signing a code of conduct. 

Continue reading "Why the Christian right don’t like Gillard" »

Forget about the 3 Rs. In schools these days it’s all about the 3Cs: Consumerism, Capitalism, and Coles.

Store managers are giving prizes to Sydney schoolkids for singing the “prices are down” jingle wearing company t-shirts, surrounded by advertising banners, at school assemblies.

What next? A scholarship to the McDonald’s University for writing a dissertation on how burgers qualify for the Heart Foundation tick?

Continue reading "Aisle be damned if I’ll cop this not so super marketing" »

My sister enrolled her son in primary school this week, and wrote ‘No’ on the enrolment form next to ‘Scripture’, boldly letting her share of the $165 million tax dollars used to fund the National School Chaplaincy Program gurgle godlessly down the plug’ole. Atheists are so wacky.

As nobody had volunteered to run non-religious ethics classes at this particular school, my sister was advised to perhaps just sign her son up for the general scripture classes, because “the little ones get upset when they’re pulled out of class”.

As opposed, of course, to how they feel when they’re being taught about eternal damnation, and the implication that Mummy and Daddy will spend it sipping sulphur in Hell’s hottest nite spot (which isn’t actually Minsky’s, very surprisingly).

Continue reading "School kids should walk the dog, not walk with God" »

When 14 year old Philip attempted to commit suicide with a drug overdose, it was not a surprise to some teachers and students, but it was still a shock to most.

He’d been rather quiet and serious of late, but was a bit like that anyway. One teacher said later that he had thought, after one particularly sullen period, of suggesting a talk with someone but never found a chance.

Suzie’s distress was more obvious. She had been seen crying with her friends on several occasions, but still seemed to be keeping up with work and participating. No one was aware that at home her mother was seriously ill with cancer.

Continue reading "Most school chaplains are dangerously unqualified" »

It is exciting to contemplate the future of schooling in Australia because in so doing we are reflecting on both the future of our children and our nation.

Right now, there are opportunities for us as educators, as we contemplate the future of schooling together. If we can embrace positively this demand for transparency and accountability, we can restore a sense of honour to our profession that should have always existed.

In part this will mean coming to grips with the enduring presence of transparency and accountability mechanisms such as NAPLAN diagnostic tests and MySchool websites.

Continue reading "Exciting times ahead for teachers and students" »

Vitriolic claims that private schools are elitist ignore the fact that public schools can be even more exclusive.

The Wheeler Centre, the Melbourne-based cultural body established to promote debate and literary dialogue, held a public debate last week on the topic ‘Public funding of private schools in unconscionable’.  I had the pleasure of being one of the speakers for the negative, along with the ex-Howard Government minister Amanda Vanstone and a Year 12 student from Scotch College, Andrew Elder.

During the debate the issues raised received a fair hearing and the standard of argument was balanced and objective.  There was one exception; the Australian crime novelist Shane Maloney who used the occasion, once again, to gratuitously vilify and stereotype Catholic and independent schools.

Continue reading "Exclusive public schools vs. egalitarian private schools" »

It is 222 years since the French Revolution established the principle of the separation of church and state. It is three months since Cyclone Yasi and the Queensland floods ripped $9 billion from our national economy.

In Australia we have an ostensibly secular and progressive government, which also claims to be fiscally prudent. It’s just blown $220 million on a program which is offensive to the principle of state independence from religious influence.

The reason: having avowed her atheism, Julia Gillard is now desperate to appease the Christian lobby. As such, one of the biggest new spending measures in what was unconvincingly billed as a tough-minded post-disaster budget will see chaplains running about in 3500 public schools, filling kids’ heads with what many people regard as fantastic nonsense.

Continue reading "Let us pray that school chaplains are given the chop" »

What is the National School Chaplaincy Program?

The National School Chaplaincy Program was introduced by the Howard Government and expanded by $222 million under Julia Gillard in yesterday’s 2011 federal budget.  The program allows for schools to apply for a grant of up to $20,000 per year to employ a religiously affiliated “chaplain” to provide students with emotional and spiritual guidance.

What is “spiritual guidance”?

“Spiritual guidance” is a vague and largely invented “discipline” that only exists to ensure the employment of its teachers.

Continue reading "God in the classroom: School chaplaincy FAQs" »

Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?

I know, it’s actually the “principle of state neutrality” but let’s not split hairs right now.

Our schools are even more tainted than those in your country – the U S of A – where the teaching of creationism as science in public schools is deemed unconstitutional.

Continue reading "Dear God: Get the hell out of our schools!" »

One wonders whether David Gonski, appointed by Julia Gillard when Minister for Education to head the Commonwealth Government’s school funding review, is familiar with the saying, ‘let Caesar’s wife be above suspicion?’  Even though Pompeia had committed no crime, suspicion that she had been unfaithful was enough to cause Caesar to act.

If Gonski is aware of such a warning, then it is difficult to understand why he gave the speech he did at the Australian Education Union’s AGM. 

A speech from which the teacher union President, Angelo Gavrielatos, quotes at some length suggesting that the AEU and Gonski are in agreement when it comes to funding issues.

Continue reading "Gillard setting private schools up for a fall" »

Something about the Warne/Hurley tryst got right up Peter Costello’s nose last week.

In a rant that first bagged Warne and then slagged the self interest of elite sportsmen, the former Australian Treasurer ultimately suggested that parents should fear AFL-run sports clinics.

“Any right-thinking parent would quake with fear to hear that footballers were coming to their daughter’s school to give a little bit of inspiration,” he wrote.

Now, in the past I’ve been quick to skewer wayward sports stars. But to tar all AFL footballers with a single brush is akin to suggesting all politicians are rednecks because a few on the Right like to parrot the policies of One Nation.

Continue reading "Don’t tar and feather all AFL players" »

Public money should not be spent on promoting religion.

We don’t need religious school chaplains. State schools should be well and truly secular. Religion is a choice, not an educational need. Taxpayers should not foot the bill for others to indulge their beliefs.

Except in Indonesia.

Continue reading "We should fund Islamic schools for our own good" »

The starting point for a national curriculum has to be that it improves upon each of the eight state-based curricula – some of which have been roundly criticised for many years, in fact for decades by some commentators, as being mediocre, too focussed on skills at the expense of knowledge and failing to generate excellence among Australia’s school students.

One has to ask the question – would we bother to invest in a national curriculum if it doesn’t meet that test?  The answer to that in my opinion is no.  As Education Minister, I would not sign up to a national curriculum that does nothing to improve upon what already exists.  It is not worth doing if it simply embeds under a national umbrella the failures that have been identified over many years at the state and territory level.

Unfortunately, the proposed history discipline is found wanting.  It is not something that I would be prepared to accept as Education Minister.  If elected at the next federal election, it would be my intention to initiate a review of at least the history discipline in the national curriculum to ensure that it achieves the all important goal of filling young minds with the knowledge of why Australia is like it is today.  In other words, how did our society develop and from what well spring did we come?

Continue reading "Teaching history with no regard for civilisation" »

Education, especially school funding, is not only a barbecue stopper; it is also a vote changer.

Just ask Mark Latham about the impact of the hit list of so-called privileged schools he championed when he was leader of the ALP.

No wonder that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, on taking over as leaders, rejected the politics of envy and argued in favour of school choice.

Continue reading "Hey Julia, you built the halls, now fix the schools" »

Prime Minister Julia Gillard faces a number of unresolved problems in 2011. These include the continuing backwash of the school buildings and ceiling insulation, more opposition over the mining tax, and the carbon price.

Hanging over her head is the Green takeover of the balance of power in the Senate in July.

None of these would engender a mood of a happy new year. What she needs is a win – a policy which will have widespread public support. She may have found one: removing the cold hand of central bureaucratic domination from State public schools.

Continue reading "Has Gillard (finally) struck on a winning policy?" »

Tonight, the City of Sydney will squeeze into its glad rags and put on the pyrotechnic razzle dazzle that has become the standard way to see in the New Year.

As always, event organisers have promised this year it’ll be bigger, bolder and with added bang for our $5 million bucks. 

In recent years, they city’s grandiose flair for making stuff explode and decorating the Harbour Bridge has given Sydney a cocky strut.

Continue reading "Sydney sparkles to hide the rot beneath" »

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" »

What is the point of a “non-judgemental” ethics centre? It’s a serious question.

In my naiveté, I had always assumed that the whole point of ethics was to arrive at some sort of judgement about what is right and what is wrong. But take a look at the secular St James Ethics Centre’s website and it would appear I was wrong.

The St James Ethics Centre - headed by Dr Simon Longstaff – bills itself as offering a “non-judgemental forum” to explore ethical issues.
It won’t investigate unethical behaviour. It won’t help you make an ethical financial investment. But the biggest problem is that a “non-judgemental” approach lowers the stakes. It means your standard of ethics can only be judged by whether you are being true to yourself or not.

Continue reading "Who’s teaching the ethics teachers getting their ethics?" »

Given Victoria’s November election and the Greens Party’s policy on sexual orientation and gender identity this week’s controversy about a girls’ school banning a student from taking her lesbian partner to the school social is timely.

If the Greens Party wins the balance of power in the upcoming state election and is able to implement its policy then there is every chance that Catholic schools will be forced to employ gay/lesbian teachers and promote the benefits of alternative sexuality and gender lifestyles to students.

Government and other faith-based schools will also be made to teach a curriculum that positively discriminates in favour of gays, lesbians, transgender and intersex persons.

Continue reading "Lesbian prom ban: religious schools can set standards" »

NSW is on the brink of introducing ethics teaching into classrooms across the country, but no-one, not even the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, has any notion as to what we will be teaching our children.

The problem with modern day ethics is the lack of unified standards for deciding what is right or wrong.

Worse than this, many educators seek to frame the debate in terms of relativism, which provides the perfect platform for communities and countries to sacrifice basic human rights in the name of concepts such as religion, culture and philosophy.

Continue reading "If we’re going to teach ethics in schools, let’s do it properly" »

I’m lucky that only two of my work colleagues have school age children attending a Public School.

So only about four times a year will they accost me at my desk with boxes of Freddo Frogs and other assorted chocolates. 

And only four times a year will I have to tell them to piss off because I’m not buying.

Continue reading "Fundraising chocolate will be the death of me" »

On face value, Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s decision to extend the current non-government school funding model for an additional year looks like a plus for Catholic and independent schools. 

The socioeconomic status (SES) model is due to expire at the end of 2012 and maintaining it for one more year will give some satisfaction to non-government school parents.

In fact, Gillard’s decision on school funding is just another example of desperation politics and of a government lacking conviction.  It’s apparent that the Prime Minister will do anything to win the election and that she is only concerned with short-term political gain.

Continue reading "Can Julia Gillard be believed on school funding?" »

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" »

There’s nothing new in the Australian Education Union’s campaign against the Liberal Party and it’s attack on Tony Abbott.  During the Howard government years (1996-2007) the AEU donated millions of dollars and ran marginal seats campaigns at every election to destroy the conservatives and to get the ALP elected.

The AEU is affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions and at the 1995 national teacher unions’ conference, the then federal Minister for Employment, Education and Training, Simon Crean, was quoted as saying: “In 1993 the support of the unions was crucial to the ALP’s return to Government”.

There’s also nothing new about the union’s argument that Catholic and independent schools do not deserve funding and that only state school students deserve taxpayer support.

Continue reading "Smashing the myths about private school funding" »

Where to send your child to school? With my two young sons approaching primary age and a multitude of themed kids’ birthday parties to attend in the lead up, this is the most common topic of conversation amongst all the parents.

Some parents are anxious about it, others take it more in their stride but they’re all talking about it.

At first I wasn’t too interested, in fact, I avoided the conversations. I thought them unnecessary. Yes I want a good school for my kids but it’s not the end of the world if it’s not perfect first time. Growing up I spent many years travelling the globe with my parents, and as such, I attended a vast array of primary and secondary schools. I can honestly say that at no point in my life have I felt that the regular changing of schools impacted adversely on my education. It was exciting, varied and helped to broaden my interests.

Continue reading "My problem with the NAPLAN tests" »

Go on , be a good Christian, sign the petition to stop parental choice about ethics classes for kids in public schools.

That’s the message of Christian and Catholic lobbyists in NSW at the moment (I separate the two because I wouldn’t want to offend all those evangelical Christians in Sydney who don’t believe Catholics are real Christians).

Just last Sunday a family member asked what the story was about ethics in schools because an announcement had been made in the morning service about signing the petition.

Continue reading "Churches need an ethics lesson of their own" »

UPDATE 2.30pm: The WorkCover Authority just provided a statement to The Punch saying the Be Aware Take Care campaign will cost NSW taxpayers $2.3 million.

“The aim of the information program is to ensure people know about the many hazards on or around a construction site that could pose a serious safety risk,” the statement said.

If you were watching the Masterchef premier in NSW last night, and it’s safe to say more than a couple of you were, you would have seen an advertisement featuring the Federal Government’s Building the Education Revolution.

The ad is filled with neat little kids in public school uniforms standing in front of beautiful new under-construction school halls. The voice over says: “Right now you might notice changes at your local schools. To build a better future for our children the Commonwealth and State governments are investing more than $6 billion into NSW government and non-government schools. Around 15,000 workers are undertaking building and construction on more than 3000 schools across the state.”

An election ad paid for by the ALP right? No, a “safety awareness” campaign from the NSW WorkCover Authority. You can see the ad here, at the Be Aware, Take Care website, which helpfully fills you in on all the fabulous construction programs underway.

Continue reading "Are state taxpayers funding federal re-election ads" »

The trouble with Labor’s health plan is that it is not a plan.

The fact is that Mr Rudd’s health offer to the states is just a series of isolated funding announcements, unsubstantiated, unconnected, and incomplete.

The trade off for giving up 30% of the GST, the growth tax that is mandated to the states, is yet another series of grants dependant on the whim of the Federal government, and does not translate into sound policy to deliver better care for individuals.

Continue reading "Rudd’s really after the GST" »

The first term of the Rudd Government is entering its end game and events in our nation’s playgrounds will have a huge bearing on whether it climaxes with high distinctions for the PM or a serious schoolyard brawl

The Prime Minister is right to claim swift action in avoiding the Global Financial Crisis was a major achievement in his first term, but now the focus is shifting to the way the government spent our way out of trouble.

In just about every school there are signs proudly declaring ‘Building an Education Revolution’ initiatives and as these projects are completed voters will be able to conduct their own cost-benefit analysis.

Continue reading "Rudd better start cutting spending as well as ribbons" »

The Liberals continue to peddle misinformation about the Building the Education Revolution building program. To hear them talk, schools are having slipshod buildings they don’t want foist upon them.

But out in the real world, state of the art school libraries, halls and gyms are opening all around the country. The most comprehensive school modernisation effort in the country’s history is taking place in bricks and mortar.

Since the introduction of the economic stimulus package, I have heard a lot about the benefits of the building program. But it wasn’t until I recently attended the opening of a new facility in Adelaide’s outer suburbs just what a difference these facilities will make.

Continue reading "Ridiculing school buildings? You need to get out more" »

The most dispiriting intellectual spectacle of the past decade would have to be the so-called “history wars”, where academics, politicians and commentators on the extreme left and right battled for domination in telling the story of modern Australia.

The history wars were essentially an exercise both in understatement and overstatement. The right-wingers tried to pretend that Australian history was nothing other than a happy story involving the orderly and humane progression of European civilisation on these shores, where no indigenous children were ever stolen, no families ever broken up, and whatever dislocation or hardship Aborigines experienced was at worst an accident, brought about by the purest of motives.

The left-wingers retaliated by branding the conservatives as liars, and telling a version of Australian history which reads like a long string of human rights abuses, with repeated acts of savagery against a wholly peaceful indigenous populace.

Continue reading "Taking off the white blindfold and black armband" »

It’s Dominique Goode’s first day of school. She’s wearing a pretty fuchsia dress and her brown hair is in a bun decorated with a sparkly butterfly clip. She walks into her kindergarten class with twenty six new students, one line of boys and one line of girls. Inside, Dominique puts on a bright orange name tag.

“Hands up if you can see Miss Goode’s name tag around her neck?” she asks the children who sit cross legged on the floor before her. All the hands shoot up.

Today is Miss Goode’s first day as a teacher as well as her students’ first day of formal education. She graduated from university last year and this is day one at Sacred Heart Primary School in Villawood in Sydney’s West.

Continue reading "Dominique Goode’s first day of school" »

The launch of the MySchool website has resulted in some of the most contentious debate about education in our country in a long time. It seems everyone has an opinion, with teachers, parents and policymakers all putting forward their perspectives on what is arguably the government’s first major step in identifying the discrepancies in the quality of education provided between schools. 

Putting aside the pros and cons of this method of measurement of a school’s success, the one thing there is no argument about is the site’s success in igniting discussion at every level of society about education in Australia.

We have known for many years that too many students are leaving school without the skills needed to participate in the 21st century (characterised as the knowledge era). This is in part because, as Sir Ken Robinson, a leading education advisor from the UK, observed in his visit to Australia last year, our current education systems are stuck in the industrial era and are in many cases inhibiting rather than nurturing the talents students need to succeed.

Continue reading "MySchool should help us reinvent education" »

Deciding to take a peek at the My School website was a little like tuning in to Big Brother – I knew what I was about to see might alarm me, but I couldn’t help being drawn in for a little look.

And given the huge number of hits on the site over the last few weeks, there is no doubt that education – and the quality of education – is a huge issue, although I did wonder if they were all guilt ridden mothers like me who spend too much time on the net. 

Just like Big Brother, My School has proven a high rater on the shock factor. I saw schools extolled by Ministers as models of inspiration and hard work look like they’re failing.

Continue reading "My School is a stunt if it’s not backed by funding" »

In the mid 1990s the teachers credit union Satisfac came up with a kindly and seemingly innocent idea to celebrate the excellent work of its teacher members.

The credit union, which historically had served teachers but like many other institutions now has a wide customer base, decided that to recognise the role of the teaching profession in its own development it would establish an annual awards event called The Best Teacher Awards.

But when the awards were initially proposed the reaction from the teachers union was one of outrage and dismay. Satisfac was told in no uncertain terms to shelve the idea, with the union arguing it was the height of impertinence for a credit union – or anyone else for that matter – to declare that some teachers were better than others.

Continue reading "My School brawl exposes unions’ culture of mediocrity" »

Australian school principals say that they need to have more control over what happens in their schools as a natural extension of school performance being transparent for all to see on the new MySchool website. 

They are dead right, and the Coalition continues to hold to the belief that local school principals and parents (through the school’s governing council) know more about what is best for the school than faceless bureaucrats in Education Departments – number crunchers whose interaction with students is non-existent.

The strange thing about the debate on principal autonomy is that the Minister, Julia Gillard, says she’s in favour of it too – even though every action she has taken as Education Minister gives a lie to this claim.

Continue reading "Labor ties school principals up in knots" »

A funny thing happened on the way from the last week’s Principals Forum with Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard. 

Listening to subsequent media reports describing the National Conversation as a ‘firestorm’ and a ‘showdown’, I began to wonder whether I’d been at a different forum.

My role was as moderator. I did consider wearing a flak jacket.

Continue reading "Teachers are in the mood for seeing league tables" »

This is an emotional week. It started with the National Prayer Breakfast in the Great Hall of Parliament House where the keynote address was from Gemma Sisia, the founder and continuing driver of the school of St Jude in Arusha in Tanzania.

It was inspirational. A rigorous selection process of children who are 5, 6 or 7 (not 4 ½ or 8) as Mrs Sisia emphasised, are selected on the basis of intellectual ability, work ethic and poverty. If they get in they get 14 years of free education. The aim is to produce a professional class of doctors, engineers, and architects etc, who will lead the Tanzaman nation. That is they will stay in Tanzania and help their own people.

Mrs Sisia, an Australian, who now obviously lives and works in Tanzania seeks financial support from all over the world with her last big donor being American.

Continue reading "Australians who need compassion" »

I love going to schools, especially primary schools where children are eager to talk of their hopes and dreams for the future. I’m always presented with a rich tapestry of ambition, a divergence of views and that laconical smirk or quick wit that so defines the Australian sense of humour.

However I’m also confronted with hopelessness and despair, with children from unhappy homes, children with challenging behavior and in some cases children having been subject to abuse and harm. One school in my electorate with 800 children has approximately 25% of these children assessed as at risk.

My wife, who was a high school teacher before we started our family, made the comment recently that her last class of 30 students only had six students who still lived with their Mum and Dad. Without commenting on the societal impacts of family breakdown, I think it is fair to say that children are adversely affected by such events.

Continue reading "Is ideology threatening a crucial service in schools?" »

As a union organiser for teachers, Gary Zadkovich found himself counselling emotional public school principals forced to sack bad teachers. Years later he remains vehement bad, or ``under-performing’‘, teachers in public schools must be identified, and removed if they cannot lift their standards.

This could require professional support for up to 10 per cent of teachers. Those who fail to improve would be dismissed.

An industry description of under-performers as either ``can’t do or won’t do’’ could well apply to his union, the NSW Teachers Federation, with its image as an oppositional force to educational change. Under intense political pressure for national school league tables, Zadkovich has emerged as a public education advocate also prepared to publicly refute the Federation’s image as a defender of every teacher at any cost.

Continue reading "Teachers unionist who wants to sack bad teachers" »

By all accounts Jai Morcom was your average Aussie high school kid. The 15-year-old student had a good circle of friends who describe him as a peaceful and happy young man.

Last Friday, Jai found himself at the centre of what sounded like a fairly routine schoolyard squabble, a fight over who was allowed to sit at a lunch table.

The result of this squabble was anything but routine. Jai Morcom is dead. He was bashed so savagely – possibly because he was trying to break up the fight – that he died of massive head injuries on Saturday morning.

Continue reading "Should Jai’s death force a rethink of bullying strategy?" »

The silent epidemic - bullying - is being confronted with screams for help. Incidents of cyber bullying, workplace bullying and violence are being reported like never before.

The emerging pattern of teenage suicides, evidently linked to cyber bullying, marks a new-age epidemic that must be stopped.

In 2003, Melbourne medical experts described bullying as the silent epidemic. But now, it’s loud and clear how bullying is impacting on our generation living in cyberspace. And it’s not just in cyberspace where bullying is rife. It’s in the playground, the workplace and on the streets.

Continue reading "Screams for help - the silent bullying epidemic" »

There’s a school of political thought that goes something along the lines of, if you say something loud enough and long enough it’ll stick in people’s heads – true or not.

It’s a calculated tactic embraced most fervently by practitioners of conservative politics, which probably reached its nadir in U.S. style attack ads such as the Swift Boat Veterans.

Mind you, this week’s efforts to smear Barack Obama as a granny-killer over his health care reforms and depict him as a socialist Joker are giving the Swift Boat Vets a run for their money.

Continue reading "Trying to stick non-designer labels on the government" »

Much has been written about the Rudd Government’s commitment to introduce a new era of transparency into our schools. As important as bricks and mortar or computers are, the Education Revolution is about more than infrastructure.

If some are to be believed the educational sky will fall in should the Government, and more importantly parents, be given simple information about the performance of schools in their neighbourhood and around the nation.

Some on the other hand, particularly in the NSW Parliament, is nothing more than base political manoeuvring. It has certainly seen some bizarre political marriages of convenience.

Continue reading "Parents deserve more information about schools" »

Kevin Rudd needs more Pink Floyd.  The Floyd’s classic lyrics from The Wall album denigrate the standard of teachers and curriculum as “just another brick in the wall”.

I’m sure David Gilmour, Roger Waters and other band members would be amazed to learn that thirty years later Australia is attempting an Education Revolution based wholly on bricks in the wall.  Okay, maybe I oversimplify it.  It’s not just bricks, there’s a range of other building products going into Kevin and Julia’s fabulously named ‘Building the Education Revolution’ program.

Now I don’t mean to overload on dark sarcasm.  But isn’t an education revolution far more than bricks and mortar?  How about first class curriculum?  Higher teacher standards?  Modern learning tools?  Smaller class sizes?  Advancing both the vocational and the academic?

Or, how about a controversial three C’s for our education system – competition, choice and control?  These factors, which can empower families, parents and students while encouraging excellence from teachers and schools, seem to be sorely lacking in any current revolutionary discussions.

Continue reading "Viva the voucher based education revolution" »

Thank goodness Julia Gillard and Verity Firth don’t coach the Wallabies. If they did they would be looking to the minnows of world rugby – Canada or Samoa – for ideas on how to improve Australia’s rugby performance rather than a powerhouse like New Zealand.

This is exactly the approach they have taken to our education system. Their big new idea has been the introduction of League Tables, basically the crude ranking of individual schools on basic testing.

Continue reading "Why conservatives don’t support school league tables" »