Monday 5 March

Tuesday 6 March

Wednesday 7 March

Thursday 8 March

Friday 9 March

Saturday – Sunday, 10 – 11 March

Monday 5 March

• The Australian
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Concern over education should rise above politics
    by Dennis Glover
    
    Labor is right to share the conservatives' lament about the state of disciplines such as history and literature
    
    "Education promises to be a significant issue at this year's federal election, with Kevin Rudd and his team wanting an education revolution, and John Howard and the Coalition proposing what amounts to an education counter-revolution. How should we make sense of it?
    
    "Rudd and Labor are basing their thinking on the concept of human capital, which holds that investing in education increases social equity and economic productivity. This is the new social-democratic economic agenda sweeping the world; expect to hear a lot more of it from people such as Britain's Gordon Brown, and Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and perhaps Al Gore in the US.

    "Howard and the Coalition, taking their cue from conservative educationalists such as Kevin Donnelly, are arguing that the problem isn't falling investment but declining quality caused by the capture of our university teaching faculties and state education bureaucracies by left-wing, postmodernist, union-card-carrying educators. The Coalition is right to emphasise standards. You don't have to be a fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs to be horrified about the state of disciplines such as history and literature; prominent liberal-progressives such as Peter Craven are just as outraged as conservatives such as historian Geoffrey Blainey.

    "Cleverly, Rudd has let teachers unions know that there will be no blank cheques for public schools without improvements to teaching standards, and he has announced plans for a national curriculum with an emphasis on traditional disciplines and academic rigour.

    "It appears the Left generally is reassessing its approach to education. Even Hollywood has picked up on it: educational quality is a left-wing cause, too. On ABC television's The West Wing, fictional radical congressman Matt Santos won the Democratic presidential primary by convincing teachers unions to accept his plan to raise teaching standards.

    "But while Donnelly and the Coalition are right to demand more academic rigour in our schools, are they right about the cause of declining standards? I believe not.

    "Fundamentally, Donnelly and the Coalition's arguments are not about education but politics. At the simplest level, they are an attempt to shift the focus of parental discontent off areas of (Coalition) federal responsibility and put it on to areas of (Labor) state responsibility. But the tactic is part of a broader and familiar political strategy. In the same way that they accused former Opposition leader Mark Latham of making schools policy an extension of the class war, Donnelly and the Coalition are trying to make it an extension of the culture wars. By accusing education bureaucrats, postmodernist philosophers and academic union leaders of destroying our public schools, the Right is trying to frame education as another populist "people v elites" debate.

    "As a result, the original and totally justifiable conservative concern about the decline of the liberal humanities in our schools has been transformed into an illiberal ideology, complete with its own ugly prefabricated sound bites and jargon.

    "We've heard it all before: how our schools are becoming "relativist wastelands", full of "new age fads", where children are taught "that text messages have the same value as Shakespeare's plays", and so on.

    "As so often happens in debates of this kind, Donnelly and his followers have allowed themselves to become photographic negatives of the ideological extremism they oppose, letting ideology back into our schools.

    "Sadly, this tired debate overlooks two much more obvious explanations of the decline in standards in our schools: excessive emphasis on vocational education and rising class sizes in our universities.

    "As a professional writer, I'm regularly asked to redraft unreadable corporate publications, but I have yet to see one quoting Jacques Derrida. Almost invariably the culprits are recent graduates employing the sort of nonsensical jargon they've picked up in vocational courses at secondary school and university. Even worse, their thin knowledge of history, literature and logic prevents them from constructing interesting and compelling arguments.

    "The real cause of declining standards is that too many children are being encouraged to take up vocational subjects too early, giving them too shallow an education. And too many of those who make it to university are hampered by disproportionate staff-student ratios that make it all but impossible for their tutors to address obvious weaknesses.

    "The Howard Government can hardly complain about such problems, having spent much of the past decade - especially the past fortnight - arguing that tertiary entrance barriers and university funding are the elite obsessions of Labor and its academic-union allies.

    "What we need, federal Vocational and Further Education Minister Andrew Robb continues to argue, is yet more vocational education.

    "Which brings us to a contradiction at the heart of Donnelly and the Coalition's argument: you can't be the champion of an academically rigorous liberal-humanist education while pursuing a populist, anti-intellectual electoral strategy that rubbishes the pursuit of knowledge and learning as elitist. And it's beginning to backfire on the Coalition. The conservative ploy of pitting so-called values against elitism and investment has started to sound backward-looking, while Labor's ploy of linking standards to economic productivity is sounding futuristic.

    "The challenge is to get right the balance between vocational and academic issues and to increase investment and standards.

    "The party that does so should win the education vote."

    Dennis Glover, a Labor Party speech writer, is the author of Orwell's Australia: From Cold War to Culture War (Scribe Press, 2004).
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    

  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Turn back clock on literacy
      
      "Christopher Pearson asks whether current school teachers can replicate the higher levels of literacy and numeracy achieved by state school students prior to 1970 ("Door opens on learning’s rewards”, Inquirer, 3-4/3). I suspect not.
      
      "As a primary teacher in the ‘60s I expected every child in the class to read the same novel, spell the same words and solve the same mathematical problems. That was when we had the bulk of the day to teach the basics (no social education, team sports, foreign languages, excursions or extra-curricular activities), when individual learning programs were unheard of and when discipline was tight. We assumed that most children had stable family lives with one non-working parent providing the nurturing and we knew we had parents’ support and respect. To turn back the educational clock and achieve those literacy and numeracy outcomes you would also need to turn back the social clock."
      
      Lesley Russell, Netherby, SA
      
      
      

    • "I take issue with Christopher Pearson’s teacher-bashing viewpoint. Nowhere in his article does Pearson acknowledge the good work that so many teachers do regardless of whether they teach in the “anti-intellectual parody” that is, according to him, the Catholic system, or as part of “the paid-up philistinism” of independent schools or in a “dead-beat” state school. The responsibilities and expectations that teachers have to shoulder are becoming greater all the time. It would be good to have more articles like the one written by Justine Ferrari in the same edition ("Door opens on learning’s rewards”, 3-4/3). Teachers and schools do still make a profound difference to many lives."
      
      Judith Eagle, Kingston, Tas
      
      

      
      
• The Melourne Age
  
  
  • 'Out of date' science in classrooms
    by Chee Chee Leung
    
    "A "significant" proportion of science teachers may be out of touch with their field, a Federal Government-commissioned analysis of science education in Australia says.

    "In a document obtained by The Age, the study authors warn that an ageing teaching workforce combined with advancements in technology could seriously affect teaching quality.

    "It is probable that a significant proportion of science teachers may be out of touch with contemporary science and also lack the skills to change their teaching to meet new challenges," the paper said.

    "This lack of current knowledge was apparent even in secondary school science teachers who held university qualifications in science.

    "Many teachers have narrow and specialised degrees, which leaves them with limited content knowledge to teach general science and their knowledge dates rapidly."

    "The issues paper, published last October, was written by Canberra University's Professor Denis Goodrum and Professor Leonie Rennie of Curtin University of Technology.

    "The science education academics have sought submissions on the document, which will be used to help prepare an Australian School Science Education Framework for the federal Education Department this year.

    "The paper says insufficient science training means primary school teachers are frequently lacking confidence to teach the subject, while staff shortages have forced schools to use teachers with limited science knowledge to teach science.

    "It also describes the course outlines as "content-heavy and alienating". "Many students find the school science curriculum … unimportant, disengaging, and irrelevant to their life interests and priorities."

    "Standards in Australian schools are a key issue in this year's federal election. The Government has proposed performance-based pay — traditionally opposed by teacher unions — as one way to boost teaching and learning standards.

    "The science issues paper recommends higher salaries that recognise the experience of scientists who have switched to teaching, and more money for teachers to take part in professional development.

    "Professor John Rice, president of the Australian Council of Deans of Science, said unless professional learning was better funded and teachers were required to take part, "you're always going to have the workforce going out of date".

    "The Australian Science Teachers Association and the Australian Education Union said improving support for science teachers would also help keep students in classrooms.

    "If you are going to do your best to make it engaging, exciting and motivating for students, you not only need a knowledge base, but a passion for the subject itself," said the union's Victorian president, Mary Bluett.

    "The Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers warned that skill shortages in areas such as engineering would worsen without an increase in enrolments in school and tertiary science courses."
    
    From The Melbourne Age at link
    
    Nearly identical story (same author) in The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    

  • 'Monday Education Section' – not yet updated on their website
    
    Schools 'slip behind' in basics
    by Caroline Milburn
    
    The State Government is pushing for big changes to English and maths teaching.
    
    "Schools will have to sharpen their focus on literacy and numeracy teaching under a renewed push by the Bracks Government to improve student results.

    "The $892 million proposal to lift maths, reading and writing skills - which partly depends on Commonwealth funding - will be presented by Premier Steve Bracks at next month's Council of Australian Governments meeting.

    "The Premier's 10-year plan concedes that the overall performance of Victorian students in literacy lags the world's best.

    "It proposes big changes to teacher training, career structure and classroom lessons in a bid to lift student literacy and numeracy rates by 25 per cent over the period.

    "Schools will have specialist literacy and numeracy co-ordinators, who will work with teachers and principals to develop, implement and monitor teaching strategies across the curriculum - not only in maths and English.

    "The literacy revamp includes a stronger focus on phonics and phonemic awareness in the teaching of reading, an area that education researchers had previously criticised the government for neglecting. [emphasis added]

    "Schools with poor student results will get extra help to lift their performance.

    "The Literacy Improvement Team program will be bolstered to include more literacy mentors for teachers in struggling schools and the addition of numeracy mentors to work with teachers in classrooms.

    "The intensive mentor scheme is modelled on a highly regarded mentoring scheme used in Western Australian schools, Getting It Right - Literacy and Numeracy Strategy. WA teachers said it had a much bigger impact on improving their students results than any other professional development program.

    "The 50-page discussion paper - Victoria's Plan to Improve Literacy and Numeracy Outcomes - said teacher pay, rewards and career structure should be overhauled within a year to make the profession more attractive to job seekers.

    "Greater flexibility and incentives were also needed to reward teachers for excellence and provide entry and re-entry points into the profession.

    "Attracting and retaining the best teachers requires a career framework that attracts the top students in their fields, supports and encourages teachers to teach in subject shortage areas, and encourages ongoing professional development," the Premier's report said.

    "It called for more federal money to improve teacher training courses at university, with more time devoted to teaching literacy and numeracy strategies and school-based training.

    "Other changes proposed to boost student results include:

    · After-hours homework centres to be established in schools in disadvantaged areas.

    · Hiring teacher assistants in all government secondary schools to help with administrative chores.

    · Establish parent liaison officers in schools.

    "Mary Bluett, state president of the Australian Education Union, said the reforms would be welcomed by teachers - especially the proposal to improve the quality of teacher training courses at tertiary level. "There's a sense from our members that the courses are too crowded and there's not enough depth in some key areas, particularly in primary teaching," Ms Bluett said.

    "She said teachers would support the introduction of specialist co-ordinators to enhance teaching practices, provided that staff were given time to be released from class to work with the co-ordinators."

    Link: www.dpc.vic.gov.au
    
    From The Melbourne Age
    
    
    

  • Op Ed
    Danger stalks Canberra in the blackboard jungle
    by Richard Teese
    
    "Curriculum is the very emblem of the constitutional power of the states in education. To decide what children shall study is an exercise in sovereignty grander even than the 7000 schools that the states and territories have built across the country or the 150,000 teachers they put on their payrolls.

    "Curriculum makes the citizen and fixes the intellectual horizons of the nation. The pride we take in our children comes from the values and ideas maturing in them, thanks to the "course" they run, or in Latin, the "curriculum" we set.

    "So the bidding war that has broken out among federal politicians over a national curriculum marks another turning point in constitutional relations, another humiliation of the states, whose grandeur as makers of citizens is now under threat. The calmness of the premiers in the face of this threat could be read as schoolboy contempt for a minister modelled on a school prefect. But more likely it is the wry smile of age-old adversaries who see opportunity in this federal greed.

    "Neither Government nor Opposition seems to realise that if Canberra takes the curriculum, it must take the challenges of student learning that come with it, for if national standards in curriculum are to mean anything, there must also be national standards in the resources for student learning.

    "If all Australian children, wherever they live and wherever they go to school, are to be set on the same broad course of values and ideas that will make them good men and women, government must remove the impediments thrown in their way by poverty, poor nutrition, ill health, ignorance, social distance, and poor or zero child care, to say nothing of conditions in schools.

    "Curriculum is a political imposition whose moral authority rests on making adequate provision.

    "To move to national standards means moving the whole of the nation and leaving no one behind.

    "How can this happen when there are wide differences in resource standards? Spending on government primary schools across the states (and excluding the territories) ranges from a low of $7808 a child to a high of $9418. The range is even greater for children in secondary schools - nearly $2000 a head. The resource base from which a child will seek to access a national curriculum thus varies greatly. This breaches the requirement of universal adequacy of provision..."
    
    Richard Teese is professor and director of the Centre for Post-Compulsory Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Melbourne.
    
    Full story in The Melbourne Age at link
    
    
    

• The West Australian
  
  
  • WA public schools hold $138 million in the bank (page 7)
    by Keryn McKinnon
    
    "WA public schools have amassed $138 million in Government grants and fundraising money with is sitting in their bank accounts instead of being spent on services and facilities.
    
    "They include 12 high schools with bank balances of more than $1 million each. Between them, the million-dollar schools hold more than $17 million, of which $13 million is held in reserve and not tied to specific projects..."
    
    "The figures prompted WA's main parent group and the Opposition to call for greater scrutiny and accountability of how schools spend their taxpayer-funded grants.
    
    "I am sure that the parent bodies in those (million-dollar) schools would have no problems whatsoever identifying areas of the school which would benefit enormously through spending of those funds," Opposition education spokesman Peter Collier said yesterday.
    
    "Rob Fry, president of the WA Council of State School Organisations, said he was worried about the inequities between schools with big bank accounts and those with less which were struggling to maintain and upgrade ageing facilities..."
    
    "Education Minister Mark McGowan said schools were awarded a budget according to their needs and circumstances and the funds were spent in accordance with those needs.
    
    "Schools have a great deal of autonomy over their budgets and are expected to plan for the future in consultation with school councils and finance committees," he said."
    
    Full story in The West Australian
    
    
    
  • Many science teachers out of touch, lack skills, study finds
    
    See detailed stories in The Melbourne Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • U.S. Prosperity Will Demand Radical Action, 2 Groups Say
    
    Business group and think tank come together because they say U.S. schools are failing and putting the nation's competitiveness in the global economy at risk
    
    
    
  • A Concentrated Approach to Exams
    Rockville School's Efforts Raise Questions of Test-Prep Ethics
    by Daniel de Vise
    
    "The principal of Earle B. Wood Middle School in Rockville gathered teachers and handed out a list of all the black, Hispanic, special-education and limited-English-speaking students who would take the Maryland School Assessment, the measure of success or failure under the federal No Child Left Behind mandate.

    "Principal Renee Foose told teachers to cross off the names of students who had virtually no chance of passing and those certain to pass. Those who remained, children on the cusp between success and failure, would receive 45 minutes of intensive test preparation four days a week, until further notice.

    "Under President Bush's education initiative, hundreds of middle-class suburban schools like Wood, with a history of solid test scores, are at risk of academic failure. They must address nagging achievement gaps that cut along racial and socioeconomic lines or face the penalties and possible "restructuring" that the federal law prescribes..."
    
    Full story in The Washington Post at link
    
    
    
    
• The Adelaide Advertiser
  

• One in four skip school
  
  About a quarter of students at some of the state's biggest high schools don't turn up on any given day, according to Education Department attendance records. The department revealed thousands of students attend schools where the average student misses a day of school each week, or two entire school years by the time they reach Year 10.

 

Tuesday 6 March

• The Melbourne Age
  
  
  • Bracks faces new teacher charge
    
    Premier Steve Bracks' education credentials have come under renewed pressure as new figures show the percentage of Victorian teachers on short-term contracts is almost as high as it was under the Kennett Liberal government.
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • Bleak future for young
      
      "I read with alarm Christopher Pearson’s article “Our forsaken schools” (Inquirer 3-4/3) and his solution to “take over deadbeat schools, lock, stock and barrel and run them more or less non-selectively on a state subsidy”.

      "The Government and the Opposition both want education reformed and while there are many benefits for a national curriculum, the upcoming “everything old is new again” traditional syllabus will eradicate the teaching of critical thinking skills by experienced teachers in favour of the “worker ant” philosophy. This is where the mass poor fed on a diet of mass media will feed the rich and multinationals as they become the new controllers of our brave new world.

      "Despite Education Minister Julie Bishop’s fairytale forecast for “good teachers” that will get the pay they deserve, we will find schools in charge of their own budgets will not be able to afford such luxuries. The leaders that espouse a brave new world where the market will run itself were the lucky beneficiaries of free education and health systems and the future is bleak for our young Australians."
      
      Ildika Koppen, Kenmore, Qld
      
      
      

• The Independent
  
  
  • Nursery children 'lack communication skills'
    
    Children are arriving for full-time primary school lessons weak in language, literacy and communication because teachers are spending too little time on the three Rs in the early years of their education, according to a report by inspectors published today.
    
    
    
    
• The Guardian
  
  
  • Academic questions success of specialist schools
    
    The academic achievement of specialist schools has been "seriously overestimated" by the government, an academic claimed this week.
    
    
    
    
• USA Today
  
  
  • Math plus creativity equals learning that lasts
    
    [Another "algebra must be fun..." Plus using parabolic mirrors to cook marshmallows.  Web]
    
    CLEVELAND — Luajean Bryan's algebra class is graphing polynomials on an X and Y axis. Pretty standard stuff, except they're drawing the equations in shaving cream that Bryan has sprayed on their desktops. "Why should elementary kids get to have all the fun?" Bryan asks. "Now, clear your slates and draw a six-power equation with all real roots."

 

Wednesday 7 March

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Try school changes beforehand: Louden (page 41)
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "All school changes should be researched, tested and independently evaluated before they are implemented across the State, according to WA education expert Bill Louden.

    "Education Minister Mark McGowan yesterday released the final report from a Statewide literacy and numeracy review task force chaired by the University of WA education dean, three months after it was sent to his office.
    
    "The review was set up a year ago to find ways to help children who struggle to meet minimum literacy and numeracy benchmarks.
    
    "Professor Louden called on the Department of Education and Training to adopt more systematic decision-making based on evidence when introducing new education changes.

    "There's a strong sense among teachers and families that there's a lot of pressure for change and it would be better managed if people were to more carefully go through the trialling, evaluation and adoption process before things are rolled out in large programs," he said yesterday.

    "Professor Louden said that also applied to WA's introduction of outcomes-based education and controversial upper-school changes.

    "Everywhere, people should be clearer about whether the proposed change is actually going to meet the objectives before they get fully into it," he said.

    "He said that did not necessarily mean that Education Department changes had not been successful, but they should have been independently evaluated by "someone other than the people who wrote it." [emphasis added]
    
    "Rob Fry, president of the parents' body, the WA Council of State School Organisations, agreed. "We don't want hit-and-miss things, we want it done in a more strategic, focused way," he said.
    
    "WA Primary Principals Association president Colin Pettit said system-wide change had to be well planned.
    
    "He said OBE had been well researched [where????] but its implementation should have included more consultation with staff and parents.
    
    "The Louden review reflects community consultation from 10 public forums held across the State after the task force's preliminary report was released in September last year.
    
    "The report also recommends increasing the number of kindergarten and pre-primary places in low-achieving schools and appointing co-ordinators to forge links between parents and those schools.
    
    "People at the forums backed plans to test children's oral language skills in pre-primary to identify those likely to develop reading problems.
    
    "But they did not support another task force recommendation to increase the amount of time that children spent in kindergarten from 11 to 25 hours a week.
    
    "Mr McGowan said more needed to be done to improve literacy and numeracy in the early school years.
    
    "I will be working on ways in which to progressively implement the recommendations," he said."
    
    From The West Australian
    
    
    

  • School cleaners, gardeners to strike unless pay claims met [online update at 2:00 pm]
    
    Students face the prospect of sitting in filthy classrooms and having rubbish pile up around their schools after Education Department cleaners, gardeners and assistants decided to take industrial action this morning.
    
    
    
    

  • Shake-up urged to help juggle work and family (page 11)
    
    See more datiled report in The Sydney Daily Telegraph
    

    
    
    
    
• The New York State Mathematics Exams: Years 3 – 8
  

  Sample Page: Year 8 Exam

Complete Set of Exams:

http://nysedregents.org/testing/mathei/06exams/home.htm



• The Australian
  
  
• [Western Australian] Syllabuses go back to course content
  by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
  
  "School syllabuses that explicitly detail the knowledge and skills children should be taught in reading, writing and mathematics will be introduced in Western Australia under the recommendations of the state's literacy and numeracy review.
  
  "The final report by the taskforce, released yesterday, also calls for a minimum time to be allocated to teaching literacy and numeracy and testing children in the second optional year of school, called pre-primary, and in Year 1, the first compulsory year.

  "But the report backed away from one of its preliminary recommendations, to more than double the number of kindergarten hours provided from 11 to 25 hours a week, because of a lack of support in the community.

  "In Western Australia, the first two years of school are optional. Children can attend kindergarten at four and pre-primary at five, while six-year-olds must attend Year 1.

  "The taskforce, headed by Bill Louden, dean of the graduate school of education at the University of Western Australia and chairman of the Curriculum Council, called for explicit syllabuses for kindergarten to Year 7.

  "The syllabuses should include "explicit statements of essential knowledge, skills and understanding to be developed in each phase of schooling".

  "In reading and writing, the content to be covered includes awareness of sounds in words, phonics, reading, writing, viewing, spelling and grammar.

  "In maths, the syllabus would detail what should be learnt in mental and written maths, using calculators, number, measurement, chance and data, patterns, space and problem solving. [emphasis added]

  "The West Australian Government was forced to back down on controversial changes to its curriculum for years 11 and 12 after criticism that they focused too much on outcomes and provided insufficient detail of the content to be taught.

  "As a result, Education Minister Mark McGowan announced in January that a new curriculum for years 11 and 12 would include "rigorous course content".
  
  From The Australian at link
  
  
  

• Australian Literary Review
  Polemic fails its own test
  by Stuart Macintyre
  
  As a long-time policy insider, Kevin Donnelly is reluctant to explain his role in shaping the education system he excoriates.
  
  Review of: Dumbing Down: Outcomes-based and Politically Correct – The Impact of the Culture Wars on Our Schools, by Kevin Donnelly, Hardie Grant, 230pp, $24.95
  
  "A little over a decade ago I was involved in a commonwealth inquiry into the teaching of civics. I had a keen interest in this neglected subject and prime minister Paul Keating asked me to chair a committee that would recommend how it might be revived.

  "In my innocence, I supposed the principal task would be to devise a curriculum, so that we would take advice on the current arrangements, identify the gaps and deficiencies and then design appropriate lessons for Australian schools.

  "Not at all, warned the two other members of the committee.

  "Ken Boston, then director of the NSW education department, and Susan Pascoe, director of research for the Catholic Office of Education in Melbourne, gently inducted me into the complexities of our exercise.

  "First, each of the states and territories had its own curriculum frameworks for primary and secondary education. Some offered lessons in civics, though at different year levels. Some included it in a portmanteau subject called studies of society and environment. Some embedded it across the curriculum.

  "Moreover, each system of education had its own method of defining the curriculum and translating it into classroom practice, as well as its own form of assessment and mechanism for reporting results.

  "These different arrangements had extensive ramifications and were defended tenaciously against intruders. It had taken considerable negotiation for the states and territories to reach agreement in the late 1980s on a set of national statements and profiles that at least identified "key learning areas", which set out the learning outcomes, expected levels of performance and reporting methods.

  "The national statements and profiles would provide the basis for our own work. By identifying components of civics within the learning outcomes of some key learning areas, we were able to suggest how curriculum materials might be developed to support the teaching of civics and how teachers might be assisted to use them.

  "But to do that we needed to persuade the education authorities that such attention to civics education was desirable.

  "Thus for several months of 1994 I travelled often with Boston and Pascoe for extensive consultations in the six state capitals, Darwin and Canberra. If I was beginning to grasp the complexity of school education, these discussions with ministers, directors of education, curriculum officers, teacher associations and parents' councils advanced my own education.

  "One consultation in particular stands out in my memory. It was in Melbourne, with the Victorian director of education, Geoff Spring, who brought several senior officers. We met in the conference room at the Commonwealth Building in Treasury Place. Malcolm Fraser had sometimes used it for cabinet meetings while he was prime minister, so there was a long, handsome table and large chairs in the clunky style favoured by 1970s designers.

  "Spring and his colleagues arranged themselves in order of seniority down one side of the table. A slightly younger man occupied the other side. He arrived separately, and there was a distinct lack of cordiality between him and them.

  "This was Kevin Donnelly, who attended in his capacity as adviser to Don Hayward, education minister in Jeff Kennett's administration. Since Spring seemed quite capable of implementing the Kennett government's draconian policies to close public schools and reduce the number of teachers, it was hard to know why a ministerial adviser was needed.

  "After all, the premier had put all departmental heads on individual contracts, with him as their direct employer, and in 1993 he had promulgated an edict that teachers were not to make public comment on educational subjects without official permission.

  "So what precisely was Donnelly's role? It was hard to tell from his contribution to the discussion on civics, which was restricted to generalities. After we broke up, someone from the other side of the table muttered darkly that he was always invigilating the work of the department. Hence his nickname, Rasputin.

  "My subsequent encounters with Donnelly came several years later, when David Kemp revived the federal Government's civics program and invited me to serve on an advisory committee as the curriculum materials were prepared. Working alongside a group of able fellow enthusiasts under the leadership of John Hirst proved a rewarding experience, but there was a disconcerting oddity.

  "All the members of the committee served in a voluntary capacity (with travel expenses and a per diem allowance) but sitting in all of the meetings was Donnelly, who had been retained as a consultant for a substantial sum.

  "It was not that he was hostile. On the contrary, he was as supportive of civics as any of us, even if his suggestions were sometimes naive and tendentious.

  "In principle he was retained to assist our work by offering specialist expertise but he didn't do much of that and indeed caused concern on one occasion when he suggested his consultancy firm might be given a contract to do some research. As the Opposition was at this time pursuing the details of his government contracts through the Senate estimates committee, we passed over this suggestion.

  "Donnelly subsequently worked as chief of staff to the minister for workplace relations, during which time he published Why Our Schools are Failing.

  "More recently, he has become a regular contributor to The Australian on the scandalous abandonment of educational standards, and now in Dumbing Down he points the finger at those responsible for this scandal.

  "It seems odd that someone with such influence in the corridors of power should absolve himself of any responsibility for the present state of our schools, just as odd that he should say so little about his own role.

  "Dumbing Down is a book of slipshod argument, poor scholarship and meretricious presentation. It seems as if the author seeks to demonstrate the ills he alleges. The first page, "About the Author", begins with a solecism as it recites his qualifications: "BArts". The first paragraph concludes with a non sequitur. Donnelly suggests that school history has been reduced to "studying the local community, Princess Diana and whatever else might be considered immediately relevant". The footnote (its numerical superscript is misplaced before the punctuation) tells us that the Victorian curriculum document describes history as "the study of the past from ancient civilisations to today's news".

  "The book alleges that students now complete their schooling and come to university unable to construct an essay. Dumbing Down reveals an inability to construct a sentence. Its author almost invariably begins his with dependent clauses, often left dangling and frequently lacking syntax.

  "He uses nouns (education) as adjectives; adjectives as adverbs (dozens of sentences begin with "Similar to"), plurals as singulars ("a particular criteria') and has a fatal weakness for neologisms ("adversely impacted on") and infelicities ("very different to"). He denounces "edubabble" but addresses, targets, impacts, details and generally verbs nouns with a singular insensitivity to language.

  "He mixes metaphors (so that his ladder of opportunity becomes a springboard). He quotes mathematicians insisting on the importance of algorithms but then writes himself of algorisms. He esteems the Judaeo-Christian tradition but cannot spell it ("Judeo/Christian") and repeatedly confuses the hyphen with the slash ("liberal/humanist") -- though his transformation of Anglo-Celtic into Anglo/Celtic unwittingly captures the false unity of this collocation.

  "The book's starting point is that standards in Australian schools are low and falling. The evidence here is partly anecdotal and partly based on an inaccurate reading of international comparisons. The anecdotes are alarmist and in several instances simply wrong: the decision of my own university to introduce broader undergraduate degrees had nothing to do with a lack of basic skills among our entrants. Nor do the standard international studies of student achievement support Donnelly's claims that Australia trails well behind other countries.

  "A lament for falling educational standards is hardly new. When I was finishing secondary school my father despaired at my handwriting; I in turn grumbled at my daughters' ignorance of Latin etymologies, at least until my mother showed them my own school report for Leaving Certificate Latin.

  "But since Donnelly's diagnosis of an acute malaise in Australian schools rests on the proposition that they are dumbing down education, the paucity of his evidence for falling standards is remarkable.

  "His examples of dumbing down are restricted to three subjects: English, history and mathematics. Any reader of this newspaper will be familiar with the horror stories of Year 12 English: the displacement of great works of literature by reality television and text messages; the subjection of the remaining canonical works to deconstructionist theories that treat them merely as "sociocultural constructs" and convict them of sexism and racism. Donnelly rehearses these charges and calls for restoration of the classics.

  "In history he relates a sad decline into relativism and political correctness within the amorphous rubric of studies of society and environment, and calls for the reinstatement of history as a stand-alone subject with a cleartimeline and an appreciation of Australia's national development based on the Western heritage.

  "His treatment of mathematics is much slighter, but again describes a retreat into student-centred progressivism at the expense of rigour.

  "None of this is new. Historians, mathematicians and even some of my university colleagues in literary studies have all raised concerns over the state of our disciplines, as have our international counterparts. All of us want more space in the increasingly crowded school curriculum. All feel the pressure on academic subjects as schools now retain the majority of their students through to Year 12 and cater for the greatly enlarged cohort with an increasing variety of vocational subjects.

  "If Australia stands out in its school curriculum, it is perhaps in the extraordinary choice that is offered to students in the upper secondary levels.

  "Apart from a compulsory study of English, we allow Year 12 students to choose from a remarkable range of studies, except that many schools do not offer a language. We permit (indeed, through prerequisites for entry into university courses, we encourage) a narrow specialisation that distorts the provision of subjects in the earlier years.

  "This is compounded by the distortion of university enrolments by funding arrangements and career patterns.

  "Fifty years ago the top Year 12 students in mathematics went into the science faculties and careers in the physical sciences; now they are more likely to be found in applied fields where the HECS cost is no greater, the facilities better and the salaries higher. Faculties of education suffer acutely from a lack of prestige and when the commonwealth government responded by reducing the HECS cost of teacher training, the universities passed on the loss of income, to their further detriment.

  "None of these circumstances enters into Donnelly's account. His explanation is simple. In the 1960s and '70s the cultural warriors of the Left decided that the quickest way to change society was to take the long march through the education system. They imposed their nihilistic values on the schools, replacing proper curriculums with political correctness, systematic teaching with student discovery, content with process, rigorous assessment with spurious standards, equality of opportunity with a spurious equality of outcomes.

  "Donnelly's portmanteau term for these progressive heresies is outcomes-based education, a cardinal sin he repeatedly denounces (here and in his newspaper articles) but never explains.

  "Briefly summarised, outcomes-based education represented a shift from the input-based assumptions that had guided the evaluation of educational performance. It altered the emphasis from teaching to learning. Instead of relying on the quality of curriculum design and the lesson plans, it sought to capture how well the students learned.

  "The suggestion that outcomes-based education licensed an abandonment of educational standards is false: on the contrary, it was an application of evidence-based methodology to the measurement of standards.

  "Who were these betrayers of education? A miscellany of overseas influences -- Louis Althusser, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Pierre Bourdieu, John Dewey, Terry Eagleton, Paul Freire, A.S. Neal -- is trotted out, along with local progressives such as Bob Connell, Bill Hannan and Doug White.

  "But the blame for outcomes-based education is attributed to a handful of powerful "educrats", largely immune to public scrutiny and accountability, among whom we find Barry McGaw, Geoff Masters, Geoff Spring, Bruce Wilson -- and Ken Boston and Susan Pascoe.

  "Curiously, my collaboration with them revealed no inkling of their leftism. Boston would hardly have been recruited to head the British Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, and McGaw to lead the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's directorate of education, if they were not recognised for their commitment to lifting standards.

  "In the interstices of this alarmist polemic there are glimpses of an appreciation that other forces are at work in educational policy than a left-wing conspiracy.

  "Donnelly notes that the emphasis of outcomes-based education on measuring outcomes and making schools responsible for them "has also attracted the support of those on the right", especially in the business world.

  "He sees that many of the changes in our educational systems stem from an instrumental approach to skills and insists that education should be valued for its own sake. He laments that a preoccupation with globalisation should be at the expense of traditional disciplines. And he is mistrustful of a uniform, "one-size-fits-all", state-controlled curriculum.

  "Little of this finds expression in Donnelly's journalism, which is obsessive and partisan. As the Prime Minister's denunciation of "fads" and "incomprehensible sludge" when he launched the book indicate, Donnelly's jeremiads suit the federal Government for which he so recently worked and that seeks to impose its control over Australian schools.

  "What today passes for the national debate on education rests on two circumstances, one longstanding and the other recent.

  "The first is the fiscal imbalance that sees the states responsible for the management and much of the cost of schools but dependent on funding from an increasingly intrusive commonwealth. The second is the presence of a Coalition Government in Canberra and Labor governments in all the states and territories.

  "Under these circumstances, a federal minister for education is expected to keep up a barrage of criticism of poor educational standards, feather-bedded unions, lax management, duplication and inefficiency in the state sector. Among other benefits, this distracts attention from the marked disparity of commonwealth provision for public and private schools.

  "Allegations of dumbing down and political correctness provide the fuel for this campaign. The commonwealth always takes the high ground, no matter how low it stoops. Hence former federal education minister Brendan Nelson could insist that government schools must teach values, then give a practical lesson on blackmail when he made federal funding dependent on schools flying the Australian flag.

  "Against this exploitation of the culture wars, the Labor Party is now indicating that it will respond with an emphasis on skills, training and investment in human capital.

  "There is no doubt that Australia's public expenditure on education is low (this is one of the squandered opportunities for making effective use of the public revenue generated by the minerals boom) and should be increased.

  "The danger is that Labor will repeat the mistakes of the Dawkins era and return to a new instrumentalism. On this I am with Donnelly: education is for life as well as work.

  "In the meantime we must expect to hear more of his stories of Shakespeare abandoned for Big Brother, after which journalists ring around for amenable academic horror and talkback radio hosts demand that high culture be protected.

  "So it should, but not every class can respond to Hamlet and no class can read all of Shakespeare's plays. We cannot expect that school lessons will encompass all the great works of literature or provide a comprehensive understanding of history.

  "Rather, we should hope that the school years lay the foundation for an appreciation of literature and history, along with other foundational disciplines, that will remain and grow long after school.

  "But for the present we have something different, an oversimplified, alarmist and opportunist caricature of education.

  "That is really dumb."

  From The Australian's 'Australian Literary Review' at link
  
  

  • Readers' Comments on the review [post and/or read] at link, including:
    
    
• M Stephens of Indooroopilly (07 March at 08:01 AM)

  "We are all tired of the almost daily columns of Kevin Donnelly’s repetition of fallacies, generalisations and snide denigration of the Public School system. Thank you Stuart MacIntyre for giving the whole issue its political perspective and Donnelly’s personal and political stakes in it."
  
  

• Peter Ridd of Townsville (07 March at 01:14 PM)

  "This is a typical response from an educationist. It goes on and on and only gets to the point by about halfway through, i.e. after it has finished with an attempt at a character assassination and some cheap shots about grammar.

  "I was particularly interested in the comment
  
  “The suggestion that outcomes-based education licensed an abandonment of educational standards is false: on the contrary, it was an application of evidence-based methodology to the measurement of standards."
  
  "Does this explain why Singapore, a country that certainly does not use OBE, completely outclasses us in maths education, and why university lecturers like myself can see concrete evidence that our students are less prepared than they were 15 years ago?
  
  "But I forgot, because Macintyre’s grandfather perhaps incorrectly lamented the reduction in the quaility of education, grumpy old men like me and Donnelly who do the same thing, must also be barking up the wrong tree.
  It just might be that the education system really is in a bad state and that educationists are the problem, not the solution."
  
  

• Geoffrey Luck of Mittagong NSW (07 March at 02:28 PM)

  "Stuart Macintyre’s attack on Kevin Donnelly just shows how difficult it will be to bring about the reform in education this country so desperately needs. Passing off his article as a book review, it moves from niggling proof-reading to personal denigration to defence of the political re-structuring of the education industry over the last four decades. His sympathies are revealed in his praise for the Labor Party’s undetailed election promises which he contrasts with Donnelly’s so-called “exploitation of the culture wars.” He admits expenditure on education is low, but significantly blames it on squandering the minerals boom revenues (presumably a Federal culpability) rather than state squandering of G.S.T. and stamp duty revenue windfalls.
  
  "Macintyre laments that the school curriculum is increasingly crowded, but avoids facing the realities. Curriculum bureaucrats and teachers’ unions have enthusiastically crowded the school week with social engineering responsibilities such as sex education and easy escapes from classroom rigour with their excursions and “projects”. We saw this coming as long ago as 1969 in London when we argued strongly but vainly at a parents’ meeting against introducing sex education in the Harrow Weald primary school. Then there’s the damage done by experimental teaching methods, especially in spelling and reading, so enthusiastically ambraced in the “progressivist” education faculties of universities. One of our sons never learned to spell as a result of this laboratory fetish in London; another suffered even more when Chatswood High School in Sydney became the test bed for experimental reading/spelling techniques devised in the post-modernist hothouse of Macquarie University’s Education Faculty.
  
  "Parents know instinctively that the state education bureaucracy, which seems to exist as a protected cottage industry for its inmates, is failing their children. Where they can afford it, they remove their sons and daughters from the corroding influence of the politically distorted state system (at least in NSW). Stuart Macintyre may believe education is now focused on learning but fails to explain how that can be accomplished without good teaching. Kevin Donnelly may simplify, he may exaggerate, but he’s absolutely in tune with the times and a much needed bunker-buster bomb for the fortress educationists."
  
  

• J Travers of Adelaide (07 March at 02:34 PM)

  "An excellent and long overdue article. More please, Stuart Macintyre, perhaps an expansion on your reference to the well advanced plan for a national curriculum that was demolished by a couple of Liberal state governments in the early ‘90s.

  "After tedious repetitions of Donnelley’s one-villain argument about what has destroyed Australian education (trendy lefties) it is refreshing to have an all too brief listing of some of the real-world complexities and changing circumstances that schools and universities have to address.

  "While there is plenty of room for improvement, Australian school education performs in the top range according to reputable international testing.

  "The sad thing about Donnelley’s criticism is that it is so extreme that it does not encourage debate but rather pushes people into ideological corners where they snipe at each other."
  
  

• Peter Wilson of Kew, Victoria (07 March at 04:02 PM)

  "I have taught in eight schools across three states in only eight years. I challenge Stuart MacIntyre to actually front a class room in 2007, for a full year. Face the imputence, truancy and carefree attitude of kids in an age of internet porn, drugs, global warming and disrespect for anyone older than twenty; and see if his self-indulgent article about how good he is at grammar really makes a difference.

  "Donelly has only got it half right.

  "Dissent in schools is what is murdering them. I am grateful to Donelly for his revelationary book - his facts on the long march openly declared by the lefties despite some of their puppets having no idea it seems are quite stark - and can now find reason behind the madness of the dumbed down curriculum I have been forced to teach.

  "It is to the detriment of the entire class when I try to teach the basics of the simplest algebra to year 8s, when only half of them know their basic times tables. I have to dumb myself down to simply keep the class afloat. It compromises my intellectual integrity and ultimately robs the children of even a tolerable education.

  "Now I know the history behind it all, and can even hunt down those who are behind it. MacIntyre’s personal attack on Donelly was a waste of good copy space. I thought Donelly’s book was quite pertinent to our times and my profession.

  "I think only those of us at the blackboard are entitled to judge the work of either gentlemen. I fail as a teacher purely because the only significant changes to curriculum in the last 30 years have not targetted the social degradation of children, but has been namby-pambying about in Objectives-Based Education. Whether I spell that with hyphens or slashes makes my point of just how eschewed the whole debate has gone.

  "OBE is a doddle. Ask anyone who hasn’t written it but has to teach it."

 

• Cut & paste: The ideological tide is turning in the culture wars

  Historian and ABC director Keith Windschuttle, at a recent Quadrant dinner, on the end of intellectual cowardice
  
  "George Orwell finished his manuscript for Animal Farm in March 1944. He offered it to three publishers who all knocked it back. The first two were both leftwing firms who rejected the book because they were offended by its implicit critique of Joseph Stalin at a time when he was Britain's wartime ally and enjoyed god-like status on the Left. The third publisher was T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber who rejected it because he simply missed the whole point that Animal Farm was a satire on the Russian Revolution. Orwell was pretty depressed by all this so he borrowed pound stg. 200 to publish the book himself.
  
  "He wrote a bitter preface to go with the private edition. "In this country", he wrote, "intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face." In the end, the private edition was shelved. Secker &Warburg agreed to publish the manuscript, though it dropped the new preface.

  "Orwell was right about intellectual cowardice. Publishers and editors who claim to prize free speech have been among the worst offenders when it comes to stifling unfashionable opinion. This was true not only in 1944 but was especially rife throughout the Western world in the 1980s and '90s when almost any criticism of the leftist ideological triumvirate of gender, race and class could not be expressed in print.

  "In more recent years, of course, there has been a turnaround, with some writers on the conservative side of politics becoming widely and conspicuously published in the daily press, though they are still just as conspicuously absent from the broadcasts of our ABC.

  "In Australia, the turning point was clearly 1998 when Paddy McGuinness was appointed editor of Quadrant, after which opinions about a whole range of issues that had previously been taboo in mainstream publishing got an airing at last. Later, ChrisMitchell's elevation to the editorship of The Australian was another milestone in the process."
  
  From The Australian at link
  
  

• The Higher Education Supplement has 15 stories today, including:
  
  
  • Courses made to measure
    
    Forensic science may be in danger of losing its most popular fad course status as universities sniff the political winds to start courses in the topical fields of nuclear science, climate change, water and computer gaming.
    
    
    
  • The experience of knowledge

    The primacy of reason in human discourse is under threat from the politicising of religion writes Geoff Gallop
    
    One of the most refreshing developments in contemporary intellectual life is the re-emergence of militant atheism. Authors such as Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) argue that not some but all religions are fundamentalist. All human discourse is said to be corrupted when it moves beyond that which can be sustained by reason and experience. "Religion," says Harris, "is the only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defence of their strongly held beliefs."
    
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • More uni places, but fewer want them as the bottom line bites
    by Harriet Alexander, Higher Education Reporter
    
    "Fewer people are applying for university places than three years ago and fewer are expected to accept their offers, even though it is easier than ever to qualify.

    "Universities offered undergraduate places to a record number of students this year, but fewer candidates were vying for more places than in 2004.

    "The National Union of Students said young people were discouraged from going to university because increasingly they had to work part-time on top of studying.

    "It's getting harder and harder for students," said the union's president, Michael Nguyen. "In terms of making choices about whether they can study full-time, students have to work out whether they can finance themselves."

    "A Monash University demographer, Bob Birrell, said paid work was more attractive than studying. "The Coalition has made it much more onerous to start a degree … because they've increased the HECS debt and they've made it harder to get access to the higher education youth allowance," Professor Birrell said.

    "This year more than 240,000 students competed for 213,256 university places, compared with nearly 248,000 students for 186,000 places in 2004.

    "The Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, said the drop in applicants was due to the range of options available to young people. Some were taking high-paying jobs in the resources sector or going into trades, as encouraged by the Federal Government.

    "The drop in applicants was steepest among mature-age students in the mining state of Western Australia, where demand for university places has fallen 10 per cent in a year and more than a third since 2004.

    "The decrease in applications has helped close the gap between demand for university places and the number of Commonwealth-supported places available.

    "The Australian Vice Chancellors Committee said the Government had increased the number of funded university places to the point that universities were able to fully satisfy student demand.

    "But Professor Birrell said data on the number of offers was meaningless if it did not also show how many students accepted the offers.

    "Only 55 per cent of NSW students who received a university offer last year accepted it, according to figures from the vice chancellors committee. 2007 figures are not expected until May."

    From The Sydney Morning Herald at link
    
    But in South Australia demand is up: article in The Adelaide Advertiser
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Daily Telegraph
  
  
  • 10-hour school day
    by Sue Dunlevy
    
    "Schools should open an extra four hours a day, from 8am to 6pm, to help working parents, a landmark report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission recommends.
    
    "The report on a three-year public debate about how to strike a balance between work and family says school hours no longer suit modern society where both parents often work.

    "The commission says it is time state and territory governments "introduce a scheme of financial incentives for primary and secondary schools to introduce outside school hours activities with the aim of enabling all schools to be able to offer education and care to school-aged children under the age of 16 between 8am to 6pm".

    "More than 227,000 children use outside school-hour childcare and demand for this type of care has risen 33 per cent in the three years to June 2005.

    "Prime Minister John Howard has said he favours schools staying open longer to help working parents.

    "Unless parents are employed at school themselves, even part-time working arrangements rarely align with school hours which are generally from 9am to 3pm,' the HREOC report says.

    "There is no after-school care available for children aged over 12 and the report is urging the Government to fund community groups who can offer age-appropriate activities for these children..."
    
    Full story in The Sydney Daily Telegraph at link [See following Editorial on this article.]
    
    

  • Editorial
    Working towards balance
    
    "For generations of Australians, the traditional school day roughly spans from 9am to 3.30pm, and that traditional arrangement has suited us pretty well.

    "Structured to give youngsters a six-hour stretch of learning, and couple of hours at the end of the day for an after-school snack and a romp in the backyard, the routine school day was meant to fit into the prevailing social structures of work and family, and so it did.

    "But things have changed over time. In many families, the reality of two parents in paid employment is not a matter of choice but of economic necessity. At the same, the expectation that women should be able to pursue professional careers as well as raise families is now an accepted principle of social equity.

    "And government policy should be reflective of that social evolution.

    "So recommendations from the Human Right and Equal Opportunity Commission for a changes to school hours to align with working families' schedules would appear to be a sensible step in the right direction.

    "Staggered school hours and well-run after school programs would be a boon for parents struggling to juggle complicated work commitments and family duties.

    "The commission's report on its three-year investigation into work and family represents a genuine effort to negotiate a suitable balance between the two.

    "The report goes on to call for a "Family and Carers' Rights Act" – to be enforced by the commission, naturally – to expand parental rights at work. HREOC also wants more money for maternity leave payments, more opportunity for part-time work, a national "Daddy, go home on time" day, twice as much carers leave for parents and a complete overhaul of present child subsidies and welfare payments.

    "All completely worthy, of course. But it should [sic] spelled out as well – being a parent does not absolve one from the reasonable expectation to carry one's load at work.

    "Let's have "balance" by all means – but parenting is a matter of choice, and it involves some sacrifices.

    "Always has, always will. Ask your grandmother."
    
    From The Sydney Daily Telegraph at link
    
    

  • Principals fail Iemma
    
    School principals have lambasted the Iemma Government for its performance in education, handing it a report card littered with failure.
    
    
    

• The Melbourne Age

  Note: The "Monday Education Supplement" had only two articles this week, neither of which were transcribed here.
  
  

• Music gets new beat in schools
  by Bridie Smith
  
  "A music advisory group will be established by the Federal Government after a report called for a national music curriculum and better training for music teachers.

  "The move follows a review's findings that some curriculum materials were 20 years out of date.

  "Without an excellent curriculum we're not going to increase the status of music education," said a report on the review of school music education. The Government sought the review in 2004.

  "The report, Making the Progression: Report of the National Music Workshop, was released yesterday by Education Minister Julie Bishop. It recommends that:

  • The status of school music education be lifted.
    
    
  • A national model for music curriculum be established for kindergarten to year 10.
    
    
  • The development of a national music education resource, teacher training and professional development.
    
    

"Ms Bishop said funding had been approved for more than 400 projects providing music facilities and equipment in schools."

From The Melbourne Age at link



• Repeat-exam procedure passes test
  by Adam Morton
  
  "Hundreds of failed Deakin University students were offered free summer tuition and a second chance to sit an exam after a campaign by overseas students.

  "The university confirmed that 265 students were allowed to sit a supplementary exam for second-year subject International Financial Reporting last month after two protests and a petition by a group of overseas students.

  "It led to 133 students who initially failed the course being given a pass, lifting the overall pass rate for the subject from 40 to 63 per cent.

  "Staff raised concerns that academic integrity was being sacrificed to keep lucrative fee-paying overseas students happy. [emphasis added]

  "But the university said it acted after realising the subject had an unusually high failure rate.

  "Business and law faculty dean Philip Clarke said the university decided that the fairest response was to offer those who failed the subject free summer tuition and a second exam in the normal summer exam period.

  "This approach was adopted to give the students every opportunity to complete the subject successfully while … ensuring that the academic integrity of our degree is maintained," Professor Clarke said..."

  "Colin Long, National Tertiary Education Union branch president, said he was not familiar with the case but was concerned that financial pressure was affecting the way universities taught and treated students.

  "The fear of losing the international student market is driving a lot of what universities are doing in terms of teaching and … academic standards in general," he said.

  "Overseas student fees bring about $2 billion into universities each year." [emphasis added]
  
  From The Melbourne Age at link

 

• Start-school bonus slow on uptake
  
  Some parents still have not received a controversial State Government "cash bonus" designed to help their children start school.
  
  
  
  
• The Melbourne Herald Sun
  
  
  • Parents in pain at school nurse fees
    
    Parents around Melbourne are being hit for extra cash to fund first aid at their children's state schools.
    
    [See following Editorial on this article.]
    
    
    
  • Editorial
    School levies
    
    "Victoria's commitment to free schooling for all children is part of the 1872 Education Act.

    "Yet this core pledge of a fair go for every child is being undermined.

    "Yesterday the Herald Sun reported that parents at a Box Hill South primary school are being charged $50 to entitle their child to receive first aid if sick or injured.

    "The "first aid levy" is on top of a $150 voluntary fee for sports equipment and information technology and a compulsory fee of $200 for books and stationery.

    "The school argues weakly that it needs the first aid levy because it doesn't get funding for a first aid officer and does not want to take money from the staffing budget to pay for it.

    "A growing number of Victorian state schools are charging levies euphemistically tagged as voluntary. This is inequitable.

    "Free means free. Schools have a moral obligation to use their money to honour this 135-year-old principle."
    
    From The Melbourne Herald Sun at link
    

 

Thursday 8 March

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Markers blast Year 12 literacy (page 3)
    by Bethany Hiatt

  
  

  Bad spelling in history exam included 'majorly, heroification, propergander, immagrant and Goth Whitlam'

  
  "Exam markers have delivered a scathing assessment of declining Year 12 literacy standards, prompting new warnings that the controversial outcomes-based education system is to blame.
  
  "TEE examiners' reports on last year's exams have detailed widespread concerns about falling standards in reading writing, spelling and grammar.
  
  "History chief examiner and marker Jan Bishop said in her report there had been "a noticeable decline in literacy and the use of language evidenced in responses to the 2006 paper".
  
  "She said many students used inappropriate expressions such as "sucks up" and "daggy housing". Other problems included using words inaccurately and bad spelling, such as 'majorly, heroification, propergander, immagrant and Goth Whitlam' (sic).
  
  "Mrs Bishop said markers had commented on the noticeable increase in the number of poor exam papers. Last year's average score of 57.8 per cent was the lowest recorded since the introduction of the new history syllabus in 1997.
  
  "The low mean score for 2006 was a surprise because many teachers had said that they thought the paper was fair and some had thought it was on the easy side," she wrote.
  
  "Biology chief examiner Michael Calver said markers commented that spelling, handwriting and grammar were "noticeably poorer" last year. "It does not help if a marker must read an answer aloud phonetically to grasp the meaning," he said.
  
  "The overall average of 52.45 per cent was significantly lower than the 2005 average of 62.53 per cent. He said he received a complaint that the paper required "too much reading" but it contained fewer words than the previous year.
  
  "Geography chief marker Alan May said that students struggled to interpret questions correctly and clearly express their knowledge and ideas.
  
  "However, even though nearly all Year 12 students also study English, chief marker Hugh Rayner did not criticise students' literacy skills. [OBE English must be such a great course !!   Web]
  
  "Marko Vojkovic, president of People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes (PLATO), and a TEE physics marker, attributed the literacy decline to the use of OBE in primary school, a lack of prescribed content to guide teachers and students' over-reliance on computers." [emphasis added]
  
  From The West Australian
  
  

  • School cleaners, gardeners to strike unless pay claims met [online update at 2:00 pm]
    by Sam Riley and Kim MacDonald
    
    "Students face the prospect of sitting in filthy classrooms and having rubbish pile up around their schools after Education Department cleaners, gardeners and assistants decided to take industrial action this morning.

    "The Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union members voted to stop emptying rubbish bins, cleaning classrooms and watering gardens from Wednesday next week during a stop work meeting at Perry Lakes this morning.

    "They have agreed to keep cleaning toilets.

    "The workers have taken the industrial action in an effort to force the State Government to accept their pay claim.

    "Union secretary Dave Kelly said the industrial action was the result of frustration over the Government's handling of the pay dispute.

    "Mr Kelly said the State Government had received the pay claim in September and had plenty of time to deal with the union's demands.

    "We just don't accept that they can't get around to dealing with this issue," he said.

    "They (the employees) haven't had a pay rise in the last 14 months, during which time the rest of the State has been enjoying an economic boom." ...
    
    Full story in The West Australian at link
    
    
    

  • School bars dog which can sense and warn of boy’s diabetic attacks (page 3)
    by Debbie Guest
    
    "A Perth school is refusing to let an 11-year-old diabetic boy take a specially trained dog to class that can warn of an impending attack which could put him in a coma.
    
    "Corey Charles and Kimberley Muirden, also 11, are the first people in WA to receive the whippet dogs through the charity organisation, PAWS for Diabetics.
    
    "Scientists are uncertain how the dogs’ potentially life-saving ability works but they apparently sense a change in a diabetic’s chemical make-up prior to a hypoglycaemic attack. When Corey’s dog Oscar senses the danger, he warns him by whimpering and nibbling his fingers.
    
    "But Corey’s school, Calista Primary, won’t let him take Oscar to class. That has forced his mother Tracey to keep him home since they got the dog last week from the Eastern States. “We’ve tried to explain to them why we want the dogs and a lot of non-diabetics don’t understand what we go through day to day,” Mrs Charles said.
    
    "The school is concerned about how Oscar will fit into a classroom environment and the possibility that other students will be allergic to him.
    
    "Mrs Charles said the Education Department was reviewing the ban but in the meantime she was considering a private school. Since last week, the dogs have warned Corey of five attacks and Kimberley of two.
    
    "Corey said Oscar has been a big help to his diabetes.
    
    “Yesterday, he kept annoying me and I thought he wanted some food,” he said. “He kept nibbling on my fingers and when I did a test I was having a hypo (hypoglycaemic attack).”
    
    "Corey was then able to restore his blood sugar levels with a glucose tablet and something to eat.
    
    "Co-founder of PAWS for Diabetics Lorraine Roulston said many dog breeds could predict the attacks.
    
    "To bond with their owner the dog initially must be constantly by their side, Ms Roulston said.
    
    "Kimberley has been taking his dog to class at St Stephen’s School, Carramar, and principal Phil Ridden says there have been no problems.
    
    "Diabetes WA advocacy officer Sandy Havlin said dogs can be used as a new tool to help people avoid attacks but they should discuss the issue with their diabetes specialist.
    
    "Princess Margaret Hospital endocrinologist Tim Jones said the idea of dogs preventing attacks had not been scientifically proved but anything to help people cope with diabetes is a good thing, as long as it is used with established treatments."
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • Public schools urged to improve image
    
    "Public schools are being urged to improve their image and marketing as a way of stemming the flow of students to the private system.

    "One in three Western Australian students attended a private school last year.

    "The West Australian Council of State School Organisations says some public schools have bad reputations because they do not promote their success within the local community.

    "Council President Robert Fry says one of the reasons private and independent school numbers are growing is because they highlight positive results.

    "If a school doesn't come out and say 'hey, hang on, these are the good things we're doing at this school' and market those successes, people are just going to think that it's not a good school to be at and they'll be looking at alternatives," Mr Fry said.

    "If you've got another school, maybe a private school down the road, publicising all their successes everyone including the kids will be saying 'that's where I want to be'.

    "If we don't do it properly and numbers dwindle we're always in the potential of losing it or it becomes a second rate school and then we have the problem of trying to support a school that is under staffed, under numbers and that can have a downhill spiralling effect."
    

    From ABC News Online at link
    
    
    
    
• The Australian
  
  
  • Method put before facts
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer
    
    "Teacher training courses value method above the factual knowledge of their students, so that environmental teachers think it more important to develop positive beliefs towards the environment than imparting facts.
    
    "An analysis of research into the content knowledge of social studies teachers in Queensland found they "rate skills more highly than intellectual engagement" with a discipline.

    "One study of environmental education among student primary school teachers found they were ecologically illiterate, with a weak knowledge of environmental facts, principles and concepts. But the student teachers were not concerned about their lack of knowledge, believing the core purpose of environmental education in primary schools was to engender positive beliefs and values about the environment.

    "Australian Academy of Social Sciences executive director John Beaton said the fashion to focus on the learning process rather than the need for a depth of knowledge served a curriculum paradigm rather than providing any educational value.

    "The fashion for teaching people how to learn as - opposed to teaching them something - has gone very badly out of balance," he said. "Substance is everything to students; they engage automatically when there's something to learn. Currently, we seek to win their hearts and minds with things that are neither informative, nor truly educational in any lasting fashion.

    "It's particularly a problem in the social sciences, where teachers don't command a body of knowledge."

    "The analysis by Mallihai Tambyah, senior lecturer in education at the Queensland University of Technology and presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference, examined research into the content knowledge of Queensland teachers of Studies of Society and Environment.

    "SOSE is an integrated subject for students in middle high school covering a number of social science disciplines, including history, geography, economics, sociology, politics, environmental studies, indigenous studies, civics and citizenship. It is taught in a number of Australian states, including Victoria and Queensland. The analysis found there was a risk that SOSE teachers were "happy to teach engaging issues and topics in the absence of any real understanding of the underlying conceptual complexity".
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Rudd faces challenge from unions
    by Steve Lewis and Sid Marris
    
    "A powerful bloc of Left unions will challenge Kevin Rudd to embrace an alternative economic vision at Labor's national conference, including banning free trade deals and public private partnerships..."
    
    "Doug Cameron, the leader of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, said the Left wanted to map out an alternative to the "dog eat dog" society, which he says has been encouraged by John Howard.

    "But the unions - including the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union; the Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union; the Community & Public Sector Union; and, the Australian Education Union - are also challenging the policy direction of the federal Opposition..."

    "Australian Education Union president Pat Byrne said her members were concerned by Labor's failure to "reassert the priority of public" schools, as it reaches out to middle Australia.

    "We are concerned at the lack of reference to public schools," she said..." [emphasis added]
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Call to put Asia back on the syllabus
    
    Australia's schools and universities must refocus on Asia as the world's economic power base shifts back to the East, or risk being cast adrift, James Wolfensohn has warned.
    
    
    
    
  • Childcare scandals prompt overhaul
    
    A string of devastating child-protection scandals in Western Australia last year has sparked a $100million overhaul of child services - the biggest in the state's history.
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
  • With 2009 Test Mandate, Push to Prepare Students
    by Nelson Hernandez
    
    Millions Spent on Graduation Exam Efforts
    
    "... Beginning with the Class of 2009, students will have to pass tests in algebra, biology, English and government to receive their diplomas. There are some alternative ways of passing the exams, known as the High School Assessments: Students can earn a minimum combined score on the HSAs or take more challenging substitute exams offered in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses. Certain students may qualify to take an alternative assessment, and the state is developing a program to provide another option for students who have difficulty with tests.
    
    "But the goal, Grasmick and local superintendents say, is to get as many students as possible to pass the tests, which they say represent about an eighth- or ninth-grade level of knowledge. They say it will bolster the value of a Maryland diploma and allow students from different jurisdictions to be compared.

    "With that in mind, school systems are spending millions of dollars, and thousands of hours of instructional time, getting students ready for the tests..."
    
    Full story in The Washington Post at link
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • New deal for working parents rejected
    
    The Federal Government has rejected the recommendations of an inquiry into the balance between work and family life, saying its industrial relations changes have already made it easier for people to negotiate family-friendly work arrangements.
    
    
    
    
• CNN