From Monday 17 December 2007 through Sunday 20 January 2008, PLATO's Breaking News coverage is on "Summer Holidays", and will be limited to MAJOR Western Australian education articles, editorials, Op Ed pieces and Letters to the Editor. Important national stories from The Australian [and if time permits, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald] will be included whenever possible. The home page will be updated only once a day, normally in the evening.

We anticipate that full coverage will resume on Monday 21 January 2008.

Monday 17 December

Tuesday 18 December

Wednesday 19 December

Thursday 20 December

Friday 21 December

Saturday – Sunday, 22 – 23 December

 

Monday 17 December

• ABC News
  
  
  • Minister urges teachers to accept 'huge' pay offer
    
    "The Education Minister Mark McGowan is urging the State School Teachers Union to accept a new pay deal, saying it is almost twice the amount accepted under the last offer.

    "Mr McGowan has rejected criticism the offer does not give teachers more time to prepare for classes, saying that problem cannot be remedied because of the teacher shortage.

    "He says, under the $685 million offer, the average city-based teacher would receive $85,000 a year. [emphasis added]

    "This is the best pay deal for teachers in the city, teachers in the country and teachers who go to difficult locations," he said.

    "Overall it's a huge pay offer to the teaching workforce."

    "I think there's been a lot of misinformation put out there about this."

    More time

    "Mike Keely from the union says his members want more time to fulfil administrative duties.

    "Workload is a huge issue across the workforce," he said.

    "The focus in primary school is to give teachers more time for preparation and planning."

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    • PLATO's Reply
      
      Would it be twice as large as last time because it cover fours years instead of two, Minister?
      
      According to the proposed pay scales, a Senior Teacher Level 2 would be paid $84,357 pa after 17 February 2011. Only Level 3 teachers would receive $85,000 of more in 2011. Minister, you are being dishonest.
      
      
      
      
• The West Australian
  
  
  • Miners, educators unite to improve Pilbara schooling and retain staff (page 11)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "Resource giants have joined forces with educators to boost the standard of schools in the Pilbara in a bid to attract and keep staff.
    
    "BHP Billiton Iron Ore, Rio Tinto Minerals and Fortescue Metals Group are uniting with local schools, TAFE, and community groups to form the Hedland Secondary Education Forum.
    
    "Forum chairman Peter Browne, a former Education Department director-general, said the team's main role was to change the perception among parents that Port Hedland could not provide a good education.

    "There is evidence that people tend to leave before their kids reach secondary," he said. "And there's anecdotal evidence that people will not go there if they've got secondary-aged kids, if they think that they're going to get better education in the metropolitan area.

    "Mr Browne said perception was a significant problem in rural education. The fact that Hedland Senior High was the school with the biggest teacher shortage in the State at the start of 2007 had fuelled parents' fears.

    "The forum would lobby for better resourcing for schools and build better links between schools and mining companies.

    "BHP Billiton Iron Ore has also committed $60,000 to investigate setting up a school to cater exclusively for university-bound students in the Pilbara, backed by Scotch College and Presbyterian Ladies College.

    "But Mr Browne said any private school would be successful only if there was a successful government sector. Anything that the private schools developed would share resources with the State school sector and TAFE.

    "The net result would be that a government and non-government school would both be enhances," he said.

    "Mr Browne said electronic delivery of lessons was the future of remote education.

    "Mr view is that it will, forever and a day, be very difficult to get secondary teachers in the subjects like maths and science," he said.

    "Through the work that BHP has done with Hedland SHS and the Schools of Isolated and Distance Education, we've pioneered a very sophisticated web-based delivery of a significant number of subjects to both Hedland and Newman SHS."

    "BHP Billiton Iron Ore spokesman Brian Watt said the biggest problem for resource companies was attracting and keeping employees. Better education options would make it easier to convince staff to make the move." [emphasis added]

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
• Monday Education Section [all 12 articles are on the Victorian ENTER (TEE) results]
  
  
  
• Op Ed
  Ageless Bard is still the hottest ticket in town
  
  When it comes to putting bums on seats, Shakespeare remains a class act.
  
  
  
• Letters to the Editor
  
  
  • Turning up the heat on minister

    "So State Education Minister Bronwyn Pike thinks air-conditioning in schools is an "optional extra" (The Age, 14/12).

    "She should spend time in my classrooms, perhaps the last two periods on Thursdays and Fridays after a string of days over 25 degrees. The conditions are worse than appalling.

    "I challenge her to have her office's air-handling systems altered to mirror the conditions in my rooms and to see how productive she and her staff become. She seems to think the problem only applies on hot days. This is nonsense.

    "Ms Pike should also have her fire sprinklers set to come on every time she leaves her office, to mirror what it is like to move around a school during a storm. It is an experience to try to teach kids when they are shivering with the cold and wet."

    Lex Borthwick, Burwood
    
    

  • The uni myth

    "RE the article on what students should do if their VCE results are not as rosy as they had hoped (The Age, 15/12), suggesting a switch of preference from Melbourne to La Trobe University after receiving an ENTER score of 94.05 is offensive. It invalidates the very real experience of those for whom university is not a viable option.

    "It perpetuates the notion that academic qualifications are prerequisite for success and fails to acknowledge the huge milestone that the successful completion of year 12 is for many. We would be wise to not confuse middle-class privilege with universal entitlement."

    Kathryn Daley, Altona Meadows
    
    
    

• The Australian
  

  • Google searches to beat net rival
    by Steve Creedy
    
    "Political spin-doctors will be hunting for another way of massaging the truth if a new service launched by the world's most popular search engine lives up to expectations.

    "Google is going head-to-head with the user-generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia by developing its own repository of knowledge.

    "The looming battle pits the world's busiest internet site, with 260 million users, against Wikipedia, which was visited by 107million people in October.

    "Dubbed the "knol" project after what Google calls a unit of knowledge, the new information source will encourage experts on a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it.

    "But unlike on Wikipedia, only the author of a "knol" page will be allowed to edit it. Other authors will have to set up competing pages under their own names. [emphasis added]

    "The Google system is designed to overcome a major criticism of Wikipedia: that it is open to abuse because it allows anybody to edit a page.

    "Widespread tinkering with Wikipedia was exposed this year after the release of a software tool capable of tracing people who edited pages on the encyclopedia. The offices of former prime minister John Howard and NSW Premier Morris Iemma were accused of tampering with entries.

    "The knol project, still in an invitation-only test phase, is likely to go public within months.

    "It follows Wikipedia's move on Google's patch with Search Wikia, an open-source search engine. Wikipedia could go live with an early test version of its search engine this week.

    "The company says the new search engine will avoid some of the privacy concerns levelled at Google by refusing to share data with advertisers or store users' search terms."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
• The Washington Post
  
  
• Calls Grow for a Broader Yardstick for Schools [late update from 16 December]
  
  For nearly six years, the federal government has defined school success mainly by how many students pass state reading and math tests. But a growing number of educators and lawmakers are pushing to give more weight to graduation rates, achievement in science and history and even physical education.

Tuesday 18 December

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Teachers expected to reject new pay offer (page 7)
    by Bethany Hiatt
    
    "Schools could be closed for a day at a time early next year as part of industrial action by teachers, who are this week expected to reject the State Government’s latest pay offer.

    "Teachers have until Friday to decide whether to accept the offer, but indications are that many schools have rejected it, leading union sources to believe the proposal will fail to win majority support.

    "The State School Teachers Union has warned staff to be ready to take industrial action early next year if they reject the offer, with rolling one-day strikes considered the most likely form of protest.

    "Union leaders said yesterday the action would probably involve the whole school shutting down for the day but different schools would adopt the action on different days.
    
    "Teachers have already been told by their union to refuse to do extra work outside normal hours if enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations are not settled by the start of the school year.
    
    "If negotiations sour, industrial action could escalate to rolling stoppages across education districts, with schools taking turns to close for a day.
    
    "The current union committee, which is in charge of negotiations until next month even though it lost office in October, has made no recommendation on whether teachers should take the offer.
    
    "But the new committee, which will hold 15 of 17 positions when it takes over in January, has called on teachers to reject the offer.
    
    "They say salary rises of 3 per cent next year followed by 4 per cent in 2009 and 2010 and 2 per cent in 2011 barely cover WA’s rate of inflation in a time of critical teacher shortage.
    
    "Evan Thompson, a spokesman for the new committee, said early indications were that many teachers were unhappy with the proposed EBA.
    
    “It definitely appears that branches which are reporting their vote, they are ‘no’ votes,” he said. If teachers rejected the EBA, the Government could still stave off threats of industrial action if it upped its offer in time for the start of school.
    
    "If negotiations failed, the new committee favoured one-day rolling stoppages across districts rather than one all-out strike.
    
    “We might have three or four schools in the Bunbury district and one out in the Goldfields and 20 schools in Perth, and a couple of days later you have a different selection of schools,” Mr Thompson said. Union vicepresident Anne Gisborne, who will become president next month, said it was far too early to predict what form industrial action might take.
    
    "Education Minister Mark McGowan said if the offer was rejected, negotiations would be suspended until the new union committee took over.
    
    "A rejection would also mean teachers would not receive an increase in allowances scheduled for early 2008, including up to $3000 a year for teachers working in tough city schools.
    
    “This is the biggest pay offer to any group of government employees in the State’s history,” he said. “If accepted, all teachers will receive significant pay increases, including senior teachers at ordinary metropolitan schools who will receive $84,357 by February 2011.” [Ah, he's no longer saying the average metro teacher will earn $85,000. Web]
    
    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • Unis fight over young scholars
    by Milanda Rout
    
    "They were on top of the world yesterday and being fought over by two of the best universities in Australia.

    "Thirty-two Victorian Year 12 students achieved a perfect tertiary entrance ranking of 99.95, and most were being flooded with scholarship offers from Monash University and the University of Melbourne.

    "It was the first real test of Melbourne's controversial new US-style model - where medicine, engineering and law are shifted to postgraduate level - so all eyes are on where the cream of the crop will choose to study next year.

    "Both universities were yesterday on the hard sell and throwing money at the state's top students, with Melbourne offering a $5000 annual living allowance while Monash gave 99.95-scoring students $6000 a year..."

    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • School enrols thin clients
    by Fran Foo
    
    "The Central Coast Grammar School has saved almost $15,000 by replacing 100 desktop computers with thin clients.
    
    "Unlike traditional desktops, thin clients rely on servers instead of their own CPU to process instructions.

    "Because they are controlled by IT administrators rather than users, thin clients tend to be more secure than desktops.

    "The school's IT manager, Michael Lowbridge, said the thin clients from Hewlett-Packard use notably less electricity and are tamper-proof.

    "I've heard stories from other schools of students stealing the PC memory. This can't happen with thin clients as there's nothing to pinch," Mr Lowbridge said.

    "An HP blade computing user, it will spend a total of $200,000 to lease the thin clients and servers over a five-year period.

    "We'll add another 30 thin clients in January," he said."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Lecturers with PhDs 'overqualified'
    
    The PhD - seen as a foundation for an academic career - is becoming redundant for many lecturers as they are increasingly sidelined into teaching-only roles.
    
    
    
    
  • Nine in 10 families online: report
    
    The family home is increasingly a media-saturated home. A new study has found most Australian families with children older than eight now have three televisions, three mobile phones, a gaming console and internet access.
    
    
    
    
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • School earns stripes with Bard project
    
    Academics from the University of Sydney and English teachers at Barker College are putting their heads together to improve the way Shakespeare is taught.
    
    
    
    
• ABC News
  
  
  • WA economy growing faster than forecast
    
    Not an "education story", but one suggesting the State Government has rather deep pockets when it comes to giving teachers an appropriate pay rise. Web
    
    "New figures reveal Western Australia's economy is growing much faster than previously thought.

    "The Treasurer Eric Ripper says economic growth is now estimated at 7 per cent, an increase of 2.5 per cent on the forecast delivered in the State Budget in May.

    "Mr Ripper says growth has been driven by a huge surge in business investment which is growing four-and-a-half times faster than previously forecast..."
    
    Full story on ABC News at link

Wednesday 19 December

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Editorial
    Teachers' pay should reflect performance in classroom (page 20)

    "As a tumultuous year in education ends, ominous signs are emerging of possible union disruption in State schools from early next year. Surely students and parents have a right to relief from the continuing uncertainties and upheavals that have bedevilled the State school system.

    "The State Government is struggling to find teachers for all its classrooms for the beginning the next school. Now the State School Teachers Union has put the possibility of strikes early next year on the agenda, if its members reject the Government's latest pay offer.

    "Indications are that teachers will do so but talk of strikes at this stage is premature, even if it is judged to be mostly industrial muscle-flexing at a Government that is seen as vulnerable on education because of the bureaucratic mess over which it has presided. The continuing teacher shortage has given the union a bargaining edge and it can expect significant public support for a pair pay deal for teachers.

    "However, much of this support will evaporate if, as has been signalled by the union, teachers try to close schools for a day at a time with a series of rolling strikes. Both sides should accept that there is scope for further negotiation if the latest offer falls through.

    "The negotiations should include acceptance by both sides of more variations in teachers' pay according to performance. The union seems to have been guided by a doctrinaire view that all teachers are equally excellent and by a distrust of measures that may be used to judge the differences in the effectiveness of classroom teachers.

    "At the same time, it professes to represent the interest of teachers as professionals. One of the marks of a profession is that its members progress according to ability, competence and effectiveness. Professionals, by and large, have to accept continuing judgement of t heir merit based on the quality of the services they provide. They also accept that their pays vary significantly as a result of such judgements.
    
    "A pay system based mainly on merit would not only ensure that teachers were rewarded for ability and effort but also improve the standing of the teaching profession. It would help to increase public confidence in teachers by providing continuing incentives to good ones to stay in the classroom while discouraging poor performers. And it would help to attract more bright young people to teaching if they knew they could move quickly to higher levels of pay as a reward for good performance.

    "The teacher shortage is partly a result of competent and effective teachers leaving to get better paying jobs elsewhere. The present system offers them too little encouragement to stay.

    "Of course, teachers also have been driven out of schools by the dumbing down exercise of outcomes-based-education and the increased workloads that go with it. Many of them have understandable dissatisfaction with the education bureaucrats who have tried to foist this on them without paying attention to their needs or opinions.

    "Education Minister Mark McGowan should now have the wisdom to see that the present stand-off is about not only the size of the across-the-board pay offer but also about a wider disaffection among teachers about the system and how it is run. He should be negotiating for an improved teaching service with increased professionalism, not just a pay increase."

    From The West Australian at link
    
    
    

• ABC News
  
  
  • Booming economy sparks calls for tax cuts
    
    "New figures which show Western Australia's economy continues to grow at breakneck pace has prompted renewed calls for tax cuts.

    "The Treasurer Eric Ripper says economic growth is now estimated at 7 per cent, an increase of 2.5 per cent on the forecast delivered in the State Budget in May.

    "The figures have fuelled expectations the Government will significantly increase its budget surplus forecast next week. [emphasis added]

    "The Opposition treasury spokesman, Troy Buswell, says the surplus should be used to provide meaningful tax cuts.

    "Whilst the economic growth figures are good news for Western Australia, this certainly places a lot more pressure on the government to make sure they rein in their excessive expenditure program and look at the delivery of meaningful tax cuts for Western Australian households and Western Australian businesses," he said.

    "Eric Ripper has a nasty habit of habitually underestimating the size of the budget surplus.

    "He does that every year to take pressure off him to provide tax cuts. Western Australian households and Western Australian businesses are the highest taxed in Australia and he needs to use the economic good times to deliver a tax cut dividend to the people of this state."

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • Maths grads out of work
    by Brendan O'Keefe
    

    "Despite a mathematics skills shortage, maths graduates are in the top 10 of university-leaver discipline groups still looking for full-time work four months after graduation, according to a survey.

    "Industry experts said part of the problem was that maths jobs were seldom advertised as such, so people with maths qualifications had trouble identifying the jobs that suited them.

    "Out of 40 disciplines, maths had the ninth highest proportion of graduates not working at all and the eighth highest who were working part-time or casually while looking for full-time work..."
    

    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
  
  
  
  • Grammar tests return to classroom
    by Justine Ferrari, Education writer

    "Spelling, grammar and punctuation will be assessed nationally for the first time next year with the introduction of uniform tests for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

    "The national literacy and numeracy tests, to be held over three days in May, will include an extra test on language conventions in the literacy assessment, in addition to reading and writing.

    "The language conventions test will comprise about 50 questions, half on spelling, half on grammar and punctuation.

    "Sample tests show that Year 3 students will be asked to correct misspelt words in sentences such as "we jumpt on the trampoline", choose the correct tense of a verb to insert in a sentence and show where quotation marks or capital letters should go.

    "By Year 9, students will be asked to correct misspellings such as "apreciate" and "seperate", place apostrophes and identify whether "a" in the sentence "a product" is a noun, definite article or indefinite article.

    "The national testing regime includes separate tests on reading, writing and numeracy, with students in Years 7 and 9 to sit two for maths, one using calculators and one without.

    "In reading, students will be given several passages of writing of different styles, varying in number from six for Year 3 students to eight in Year 9, and asked to answer mostly multiple choice questions.

    "The writing task next year is to compose a narrative, with students in all years given the same brief. The sample question is based on discovery, and gives students half a dozen sentences about people discovering new ideas, objects or secrets, from which they are expected to write astory.

    "Previously, states and territories set literacy and numeracy tests in Years 3, 5 and 7. Results were manipulated to compare students in different jurisdictions against national benchmarks.

    "Under pressure from the Howard government, the states and territories agreed to replace their tests with common literacy and numeracy tests and include Year 9 students in the assessment.

    "University of Western Australia professor Bill Louden, who has written reports on literacy education, said constructing a separate test for spelling and grammar was a better way of assessing students' skills than marking it as a part of a writing assignment.

    "Professor Louden, head of the graduate school of education at UWA, said parents, teachers and employers tended to regard students' spelling and grammar as markers of their quality.

    ""Students may not be aware people draw all sorts of inferences from the general ability to spell and construct grammatical sentences, so tests are important to draw students' attention to that," he said.

    "Australian Education Union acting federal president Angelo Gavrielatos had concerns that a national testing regime was being introduced before the development of a national curriculum.

    ""We appear to be going at this the wrong way; we're talking about reporting first then assessment before we've had a conclusive discussion about curriculum," he said. "Curriculum must be centre stage."

    "Terry Aulich, executive officer of the Australian Council of State School Organisations representing government school parents, said the tests should be trialled on adults as well as on the students to ensure they were an accurate reflection of ability.

    "Mr Aulich expressed concern about the sophisticated language skills required in the sample tests, with the use of words such as "dugong" and "habitat" in the Year 3 reading test, which he said were not part of the average eight-year-old's vocabulary."
    

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Language of East sinks in the west
    by Paige Taylor
    
    "Caitlin Furber is just the sort of seven-year-old West Australian Premier Alan Carpenter wants to have in his state.

    "As the Sydney primary school student received an award for her efforts in learning Mandarin yesterday, the Carpenter Government ordered an inquiry into why so few West Australian children were learning the main language of the state's biggest export market.

    "More than 25,000 Victorian students learned Chinese in primary school and high school this year, and in NSW 1147 Year 12 students were studying the subject. But in Western Australia, just 62 Year 12 students studied Chinese this year, down from 123 in 2004.

    "Chinese teachers say the fluent Mandarin skills of Kevin Rudd are spurring parents' interest in the subject. At Perth's elite Christ Church Grammar School, demand from parents has prompted it to drop German and introduce Mandarin to its high school students..."

    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    
  • Op Ed
    School reduced to PC self-loathing
    

    As one who recently graduated from one of Queensland’s best private schools, I view the Rudd Government’s promise to consult a team of education experts in drafting a national curriculum with trepidation, writes Hilary Martin.

    "These so-called experts, remember, inflicted on us entire terms of work on Queen Kat, Carmel & St Jude Get a Life and The Simpsons, not to mention long assignments on designing advertising campaigns and the front covers of teenage magazines.

    "The justification for The Simpsons was that it contains myriad references to Dante. Too bad hardly any of the students knew what he’d written before or after that term. My five years of high school English were dominated by some of the most vapid aspects of our culture.

    "In history, meanwhile, we took a suffocatingly PC approach that emphasised all that is wrong about our nation’s past and identity.

    "Studies are repeatedly showing that standards in literacy and numeracy are slipping. Regrettably, the Howard government failed to halt this trend. But at least it, unlike Labor, recognised the link between falling standards and the time spent analysing the values espoused by, say, a Vegemite jar.

    "Luckily, many Australian children are indeed articulate and well-read. But this is in spite of their schooling, not because of it. They are fortunate to have parents who see the problem, correct their spelling and grammar and guide them towards better literature than Harry Potter. As for the young people who dispute that this is even an issue, in many cases their education has been so inadequate that they don’t even realise its deficiencies. Even if most students can read and write at what the government deems an appropriate standard, the question remains: could they do better?

    "At high school, I can remember a grand total of five English lessons on language. In Year 8, we had one on synonyms, which was so puerile it was insulting (for example: “big, enormous"), and in Year 11, noticing that many students were still making mistakes in elementary punctuation, our teacher endeavoured to explain the difference between “its” and “it’s”. Oh, but I’m forgetting, we learned these things in primary school, didn’t we? And apparently, grammar and spelling were better taught integrated into all our subjects. Perhaps my (first-rate) physics teachers should have taught me some French as well?

    "I read seven novels in my five years of English classes. We did study a few works from the canon: four of Shakespeare’s plays, A Room with a View and Pride and Prejudice (though we tended to watch the cinematic adaptations to analyse film techniques).

    "However, since everything is a text (even a table, one teacher told us), and all texts are of equal merit, it didn’t matter whether we were reading Macbeth or watching Australian Story. We still churned out essays on dominant discourses, foregrounding, privileging and marginalisation. I recycled these essays from one year to the next, and still ended up with good grades.

    "All I learned from five years of English was that “texts” can have multiple “readings”, and that it is not necessary to choose the one the author intended. What a profound observation. Never mind the subtle nuances of our beautiful language, as employed by Blake, Hardy or Steinbeck. “Critical literacy” taught me to become a critical thinker: critical, that is, of what the education authorities disapproved of.

    "Subsequently, I became an authority on the marginalisation of the working classes in Pride and Prejudice. I became well-practised at disparaging the West. After a term studying racism, my understanding of American and Australian history surely lacked nothing, except perhaps some knowledge of the oldest constitution in the world, or the war with fascist Japan. I knew plenty about the binding of women’s feet in ancient China. But was I aware of the beginnings of democracy in Greece?

    "After a term on the Vietnam War, everyone had grasped that Americans are stupid. What a shame we never studied the Cold War as a whole, and that nobody mentioned the millions of people who died under Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. How about the Holocaust, the foundation of Israel and the subsequent turbulence in the Middle East?

    "It gets worse. Of my eight terms of history, one was spent on popular culture, one on foot-binding, one on East Timor, and one on racism. In selecting only those periods in history to study, our teachers made it clear what their views were. Yet surely it is inappropriate for them to show political affiliations of any persuasion. Their task should be to provide students with the facts (yes, the facts), discuss arguments on both sides, encourage us make up our own minds and to aspire to great things.

    "At the moment, though, we’re made to feel ashamed of most of our history, and to wallow in the cultural mire that is postmodernism.

    "We were continually being told at school that we were getting a world-class education. Frankly, though, I feel cheated in the humanities. The teaching of other subjects was excellent. Other young Queenslanders may protest that their own experience was nothing like mine. If that is the case, they were fortunate not to attend a school that boasted of “leading the way” in progressive education. Unless Julia Gillard has significantly more influence over the teachers’ unions and the state bureaucrats than her predecessor, I am certain that all students will soon have to endure the same boredom that I did."

    Hilary Martin graduated from high school in Queensland in 2005.
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Universities get tough on ESL
    by Milanda Rout

    "International students, Aborigines and newly arrived migrants face tougher English language requirements to get into Victorian universities after institutions complained they were not performing as well as local students.

    "The Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre has allowed universities to raise the entrance scores required for students who have completed English as a second language instead of English in their final year of school.

    "Secondary school students who have been in an English-speaking country less than seven years, are here studying from another country or Aborigines whose first language is not English are entitled to study ESL, which was previously worth the same marks as English.

    "But under the changes to start in 2009, ESL students will have to get five points higher than students studying English to meet university entrance requirements..."
    
    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    
    

• The Age
  
  
  • Op Ed
    The making of a school
    by Chris Wheat [a teacher at Sunshine Secondary College]
    
    Schools struggle and fail for complex socio-economic reasons not easy to solve.
    
    "... Monday's report that the Premier and his Education Minister have decided to consider bribing successful university graduates to work in disadvantaged schools suggests an exhaustion of imagination; not quite a silly idea but a rather feeble response to a big problem. It implies that failing schools don't have young and academically successful teachers and that if such people are injected into unsuccessful schools, student academic success will follow. That's naive.

    "At the federal level, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard also ignore the gulf between rich and poor schools. Their vaguely defined education revolution morphed, like most election promises, into a cargo cult offering computer access to rich and poor alike — a revolution ignited by a distribution of electrical goods. Because we try to remain in denial about the educational segregation and inequality of Australian students we get sound bite solutions to a national disaster. Merit pay, technical schools, a national curriculum, flagpoles: these won't solve the problem.

    "The multiple and tangled issues of illiteracy, diet, negative peer influence, inadequate facilities and parents who lack the networks and skills that middle class parents employ to advance their children, all lead to low engagement and self-esteem, and schools struggle to develop a sense of community and shared successes..."

    Full story in The Age at link

Thursday 20 December

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Union divisions may scuttle pay offer (page 3)
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "Education Minister Mark McGowan has blamed deep divisions in the teachers' union for the likely rejection of the State Government's pay offer this week.

    "Mr McGowan claimed that the union committee privately endorsed the latest enterprise bargaining agreement proposal, but its support had been destabilised by the newly elected committee, which will take over next month.

    "Teachers have until tomorrow to decide whether to accept the offer, but many schools have already rejected it, leading union sources to believe the proposal will fail to win majority support.

    "In an interview to mark a tumultuous first year as Education Minister, Mr McGowan said he believed the teacher shortage would continue but many teachers had "unrealistic expectations" about how much leverage that gave them in negotiations.

    "Part of the problem is division in the union - one part of the union that we negotiated with thinks it's a good deal," Mr McGowan said. "You then have the new people coming in to the union who are bagging it and so when you're dealing with a divided union it makes it very difficult to get your message out." [We heard your message, loudly and clearly, Minister: We're just not buying it. Web]

    "Mr McGowan said the union committee had been keen to bed down the EBA before they handed over the reins to the new executive body in January, even though the current EBA did not expire until March. [emphasis added]

    "It would be nice to have a union that actually negotiated and didn't have two groups, one running it down and one supporting it," he said.

    "Although the ones who supported it didn't do so publicly, they were quite appreciative privately." [emphasis added]

    "Mr McGowan said the new offer was $685 million, 75% better than the last EBA the union accepted two years ago. [But that one was for two years and this one is for four years, Minister. Web] He said people in other States were "gobsmacked" by what had been put on the table.

    "When your average classroom teacher is going to be on $84,000 before allowances in February 2011, that's quite a reasonable offer," he said. [That's TOP of Senior Teacher 2, Minister, very far from "average". Web]

    From The West Australian

    
    
    
  • Fast track teachers plan alarms WACOT
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "The teachers' registration body is investigating a plan for education assistants to qualify as primary school teachers in two years instead of the usual four.

    "The WA College of Teaching has written to Curtin University requesting more details about the new conversion courses after many teachers raised concerns that it would undermine teaching standards.

    "The investigation comes a month after the State School Teachers' Union said teachers were worried that the new course would lead to poorly qualified people instructing children at the most important phase of their schooling.

    "Union members also attacked the scheme as unfair because those who completed only two years at university would have half the HECS debt of their colleagues.

    "WACOT chairman Brian Lindberg said teachers were nervous that the State Government could be looking for ways to circumvent qualification standards in a time of teacher shortage.

    "The board has major concerns," Mr Lindberg said. "We have written to Curtin seeking further detail and we're waiting on that information."

    "He said the college was responsible for accrediting teacher training programmes by assessing course content, delivery and the practical component.

    "The conversion course has not been accredited by WACOT. But the Curtin course was similar to another programme that had been in place for some years, which has been accredited.

    "Under the scheme, education assistants with at least five years classroom experience are eligible for scholarships to qualify as an early childhood or primary school teacher within two years.

    "The 60 people selected would attend Curtin University for eight weeks each year and complete the rest of the course while working in schools.

    "WA Primary Principals' Association president Stephen Breen said representatives had met senior Curtin staff to discuss the selection process for the course.

    "Mr Breen said there were concerns that anyone could sign up, but he had been reassured that only highly competent applicants would be selected.

    "There are still negotiations going on regarding how it would impact in schools," he said."

    From The West Australian

    
    
    
  • Disabled pupils face school ban (page 3)
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "Disabled children who disrupt classes and divert teachers from meeting other students' needs could be excluded from mainstream schools under a radical proposal revealed yesterday by Education Minister Mark McGowan.

    "Mr McGowan said there was "considerable disquiet" among teachers and parents about the educational consequences for other students of integrating disabled children into State schools.

    "A teacher might not be properly trained to cope with those students, they might not get full aide time … and the kids might have some time taken away," he said. "I am currently examining the policy to determine what changes need to be made to ensure that inclusion works in the interests of all students, including mainstream and those with disabilities. This may involve changes that mean more students remain in education support centres over time."

    "Education support centres offer special facilities to cater for children who have intellectual or physical disabilities.

    "Mr McGowan said it was important disabled children were integrated into schools and society but some adjustments needed to be made. "We might adjust the cut-off of where kids go into the mainstream classes," he said. "The philosophy behind it is fine and I agree with it, it's the practice that I think has some difficulties … in terms of the numbers or the suitability of some students that have been put into mainstream classrooms."

    "But international inclusive education consultant Loretta Giorcelli said it was against the law to exclude children with disabilities from a regular school. Canberra University based professor Giorcelli said policy revision was positive if Mr McGowan was looking for ways to improve practice. "But if it's looking to see where we can exclude children then we have enormous problems, both philosophically and legally, as a system and as a government," she said.

    "She said WA only recently caught up with the other States in the way it included disabled children in schools.

    "Centre for Cerebral Palsy chief executive John Knowles said all children with disabilities had the right to attend the school of their choice and the department had a responsibility to provide resources to support them.

    "Inclusion in schools is often put at risk when the child and the classroom and the teacher aren't properly supported with either enough teacher aide time or training for the teacher or… access and equipment in the school," he said.

    "News the inclusion policy was under revision concerned Alice Angus, whose son, Calum, just finished Year 8 at Kinross College. Calum cannot use the left side of his body and has daily help from an aide.

    "Mrs Angus said that when her son was in pre-primary, the State school psychologist had suggested he would be better off at a support centre because he could not write his name - but she stuck to her guns.

    "Mainstream was the best place for him," she said. "It would have been like sending someone who had a broken arm to a support centre."

    "Calum works hard, was elected to the student council in Year 7 and won an award last year for his community spirit. Calum, 13, said he loved school. "The students are nice and the teachers are really friendly," he said.

    "The Education Department has 2260 students in mainstream schools who have been assessed as needing the highest level of educational support. Another 2540 students attend support centres."

    From The West Australian
    
    
    
    

• The Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor
    
    
    • Most Talked About: Education Standards
      We are all the poorer and dumber for those years
      
      "Hilary Martin’s column on the sorry state of Australian schools ("School reduced to cartoons and PC self-loathing’’, Opinion, 19/12) is one of the most important you have published this year. It speaks for an entire generation (me included) who have felt the despair that comes from being victims of "progressive’’ education systems.

      "Since the 1980s, our school systems have been travelling down the path of dumbed-down and politicised education and nothing has been done to halt the process. Who really wanted an education like this in the first place? Students didn’t want it, parents certainly didn’t, and neither did any of the many conscientious and thoughtful teachers who taught me. It seems that the only people who did were ideologues in the teachers unions and state education departments, aided and abetted by Labor state governments which either embraced this agenda (in the case of Joan Kirner) or, more commonly, were too apathetic or clueless to realise the damage that was being done.

      "Levels of literacy and numeracy continue to be far worse than they were a generation ago. It’s a source of regret for my generation that we would have been better educated at most schools in the 1950s than we were in the 1990s or early 2000s. Even well into adulthood, people like us are paying the price for not ever being taught such things as basic grammar.

      "Martin’s insightful piece shows that amidst the ruin there is still hope. What a pity that politicians and policy-makers have been unable to identify the problem and articulate a solution as well as she has."
      
      Dale Peterson, Greensborough, Vic
      
      

    • "Well said, Hilary Martin. I have an enduring memory of an interview with an English teacher at a Canberra high school my two sons attended in the late 1990s. We were told, upon their enrolment in July, that the school "had done the novel for the year’’. What about the poetry curriculum, then? The thoughtful reply: "Yes, we might do some poetry this year.’’

      "Needless to say, neither boy received the slightest scrap of literary education at school, let alone literary inspiration. Forget grammar completely, and history and geography for that matter. Total time-waster subjects such as "Natural Disasters’’ and "Media Studies’’ cheated them of a quality learning experience. I feel both guilty for not raging at the system more effectively at the time and betrayed by it. Now in their 20s, and despite a decidedly bookish family background, my sons’ emails reveal that they never even learned the difference between "their’’, "they’re’’ and "there’’, or "your’’ and "you’re’’.

      "The idea that they and their peers brushed up against the canon of great Western literature at school is laughable. How many parents must be out there trying to complete their now-adult children’s basic education as they launch into busy careers! We are all the poorer and dumber for those years, and the next generation deserves much better."
      
      Peter Martin, Blackwood, SA
      
      

    • "What a pleasure to read Hilary Martin’s flaying of the educational system and the black armband view of Australian history. Is it any wonder that the generation teaching Hilary made her feel ashamed. They never fought for or sacrificed anything."
      
      Paul Stockdale, Mosman, NSW
      
      

    • "Bravo, Hilary Martin. You have summed up perfectly my feelings and observations about the humanities in high school education. As a social sciences teacher in NSW, I despaired of the way things were going, to the point of transferring to become a teacher-librarian, where I could teach people to think logically, find information, assess the validity or otherwise of that information, found in books and on the internet, and develop informed opinions. Maybe the current attitude to the humanities is the reason students are abandoning these subjects and moving to the physical sciences and business studies?"
      
      Terry McCullagh, Tugun, Qld
      
      
      

    • "Hilary Martin, unlike you, I did not go to one of the nation’s best private schools. However, I did attend an excellent government secondary school, Belmont High School in Victoria, and was awarded honours in English literature in my sixth and final year in 1965. Despite this excellent opportunity for a girl from a working-class family, I left high school with not a clue about multiple readings of texts, dominant discourses, foregrounding and marginalisation. Fortunately, life experience and life-long learning, inspired by my early schooling and a father who loved books, has overcome that deficit.

      "Surely an important aim of schooling is not to read every text, or to read only the classics, but to equip students to think and to think critically. I am sure that you are now equipped to seek out and read the texts you feel you missed out on, to read them actively, with a critical and informed eye."
      
      Carole Peters, Shenton Park, WA
      
      

    • "I know of many high school students who loved English and history and have been turned off them. High school humanities teachers seem to have become ``facilitators’’ when most 15- to 17-year-olds need structure. The able students cope and get bored; the less able just get bored."
      
      Roseanne Schneider, Yeronga, Qld
      
      
      
      
• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Islamic school's debut in HSC top 10
    
    The Sydney Islamic school Malek Fahd has swept into the top 10 HSC performers this year, joining James Ruse Agricultural High, which has maintained first position for the 12th consecutive year.

Friday 21 December

• State School Teachers Union of WA Media Statement
  
  
  • Teachers Overwhelmingly Reject Pay Offer

    State School Teachers’ Union members across Western Australia have overwhelmingly rejected the State Government’s latest offer for a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.
    
    President of the State School Teachers’ Union of WA (SSTUWA) Mike Keely said today that the union’s executive had decided earlier this month to send the offer directly to teachers for them to express their opinion given the fact that the Government had refused to move on significant areas of negotiation.
    
    “What members thought of the offer happens to coincide with the views of the Executive – it simply does not respond to the needs of educators and the system,” he said.
    
    “Since these negotiations started it has been very obvious that the Treasurer, Eric Ripper, cares more about being able to brag about a government surplus than he does about our children’s education,” he said.
    
    “He, and Minister McGowan, have been busy issuing media releases about $100,000 a year teachers (fifty of them) while the real issues and the real salaries have been hidden,” Keely said.
    
    Mr Keely said that workload was a major issue in the Union Log of claims; educators in the public system had been under enormous workload pressure and yet the Minister had reneged on the promise of continuing increases in primary teacher’s preparation and planning time, made in the 2004 EBA and the 2006 EBA. The Minister had not responded to other major workload proposals in the Union Log of Claims.
    
    “Eric Ripper and Mark McGowan had the opportunity to make a decent offer to teachers weeks ago – an offer that may have stopped many teachers from retiring and may have encouraged more young people to take up teaching.”
    
    “Instead, they played politics without any concern for teachers, the status of teachers, teacher workloads and teacher salaries,” said Mr Keely.
    
    “Now, we face a teacher shortage where up to 15,000 children will not have a proper, regular classroom teacher at the start of next year – and up to 30,000 more could find themselves being taught science and maths by teachers qualified to teach English or Phys Ed.,” he added.
    
    “I shudder every time I see Eric Ripper grinning on TV about the multibillion dollars surplus he has.
    
    “He has a surplus, no question. But I ask whether it’s because he has simply not invested in an essential public service, the public education system, or because he has over-taxed the public? He has money in the bank and refuses to invest in teachers and school leaders to meet community needs.
    
    “I call on the Treasurer and the Minister to resume negotiations”.
    
    “If not he leaves the Union with little choice other than to start campaigning now against the Government which has failed to meet its education priority and to continue that campaign right up to the next State election,” said Mr Keely.

    Authorised by David A Kelly, General Secretary, SSTUWA, 150-152 Adelaide Terrace, East Perth
    
    
    

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Letters to the Editor (page 24)
    
    
    • Teachers are united Mr McGowan

      "As a member of the union executive committee who was presented with the latest pay offer, and as a member of the team which undertook negotiations with the department personnel, I must refute the comments made in your report (20/12) by Education Minister Mark McGowan. There was no one from the executive committee of teachers representing primary, secondary and TAFE educators who spoke in favour of or in any way supported the offer.

      "The pay deal will reward some 0.03% of the workforce as "executive" super teachers. A lot of the devil is in the detail of the offer. It does not provide incentives for teaching administrators or administers in general - groups which are undervalued and grossly overworked in our system. In reality, it will barely keep pace with inflation and it will definitely not lead to the attraction of quality graduates or retention of experienced teachers.

      "I would like to know the recommendations of the Twomey taskforce into the teacher shortage crisis. Will it recommend a significant improvement in teachers' professional pay?

      "Also, Mr McGowan's comments about teachers overestimating their bargaining powers in a time of teacher shortage sound like fighting words to me. He may well be surprised by the unity rather than the division among teachers. I hope later next year he might realise that while teachers may not have a lot of industrial power, they and their family members do have significant voting power."

      Andrew Bell, Woodvale.
      
      

    • Supply problem

      "Your assertions in your editorial cannot go unanswered (Teachers' pay should reflect performance in classroom, 19/12). Supply and demand ultimately determine quality and price. Few teachers would object to being paid on merit if merit could be easily determined.

      "The problem is supply. Despite years of warnings that demand for teachers would eventually exceed supply, they have largely been ignored. Each time an EBA falls due, all kinds of rationale are used to argue against anything but an inflation-balancing rise. The current EBA claim is also on behalf of all those yet undecided and untrained people.

      "Attempts to poach teachers from other States or overseas, offering inducements via super concessions to teachers still in service, enticing retired teachers our of retirement, training suitable teacher assistants or moving all able-bodied teachers in central and district offices back to schools have helped, but they are stopgap measures. The West Australian, over recent years, has succeeded, intentionally or otherwise, in profoundly adding to the perception of the teaching profession as one of mediocrity and dominated by bureaucracy.

      "The chickens have come home to roost. Our young people, the only sustainable source of new graduates, are deciding collectively not to add their numbers to replace the huge teacher departure rate that is coming from inevitable retirements. There is a perception, disturbingly rife among young people and their parents, that it is not worth the effort of a TEE, four years of further study for what is a hard job (the drop out rate among student teachers is around 50 per cent) for a mediocre salary with limited prospects.

      "The job has great rewards, not all of them monetary, but in our current climate of a boom economy, it is hard to convince a generation of people, fewer of whom see service as a value to be nurtured, that teaching is a profession to be proud of. But attract and retain them we must, for both public and private systems' long-term survival."

      Paul Storey, Sorrento
      
      

    • No valid method

      "I have read for some time now suggestions that teachers' pay be linked to performance, but I have never seen a valid method of assessment. There are some serious issues related to this - I offer only three personal examples, there are many more.

      "In a random year in my class, I had five students whose spelling ages went up by over 18 months. Presumably I get some sort of bonus, but what about next year's teacher? These students can't keep improving at that rate for all of their school years. What about the two who went backwards? Same programmes, same opportunities but they misbehaved. Am I to be penalised for their misbehaviour? Will future teachers have the right to refuse students with poor behaviour records as they directly influence their pay?

      "One year I had five education support students in my class. Very little academic movement can be expected - and if they do succeed is it through my efforts or their hard-working and dedicated education assistant? Who gets the bonus - or the drop in pay for "non-performance"?

      "Let's go to a small country school where I was principal. I was responsible for teaching Years 3 - 7 for three days of the week in tandem with another teacher. Who gets the performance pay? What about the disparity in workload between a teaching administrator and a teacher?

      "What's the fuss over WALNA results? The curriculum framework I work to insists assessment is fair, valid, educative, explicit and comprehensive. WALNA meets none of these criteria. Your paper is doing everyone involved, schools, students and parents, a disservice by emphasising these results. To report accurately you should be calling for these forms of assessment to be scrapped. An OECD headline should read: Australian State schools in top 10 OECD despite being third-lowest funded."

      Douglas Klaffer, Mt Barker
      
      

    • A merit pay system could never work

      "Your editorial on merit pay was interesting (19/12) but, like most of the editor's ramblings on education, it was devoid of facts and suggestions about how to implement merit pay.

      "A teacher stands before a class at the start of the school year and may be facing anywhere between 18 and 25 students - that makes a difference. The classroom may be in Peppermint Grove or Allawah Grove - that makes a difference.

      "The students may come from a very supportive home or a dysfunctional home - that makes a difference. The students' IQs may range from not being able to be accurately measured as a consequence of various disabilities, to the mid 60s to 150 plus - and that makes a difference.

      "The problem with the type of merit pay the editor suggests is that people try to judge the results of a teacher's efforts without taking into account what the starting point was and what support there was throughout the year.

      "So far, merit pay based on so-called student performance has been pushed by political and bureaucratic ideologues mainly in the US where the Cornell University report to the US Congress showed that the various systems constructed at State or district level had failed to improve student outcomes. The history of such schemes in the US is that they are abandoned as failures.

      "The type of merit pay you seem to be suggesting (without anything in the way of real detail) has a major problem; teachers who normally work together to make a school operate successfully now compete rather than cooperate. And who is going to assess the level of merit?

      "The editorial also ignores (despite advice from this union) the fact that better forms of "professional pay", ones that actually work, have been in place in WA for 10 years or more. They have been negotiated with the Department of Education by the State School Teachers' Union through our industrial agreements representing the professional and industrial interests of our members.
      
      "Classroom teachers who undertake additional study to improve their skills can move up to senior teacher, senior teacher two and level three classroom teacher. Teachers who choose to work in remote, rural and disadvantaged schools gain increased salary and benefits to provide some recognition of their work.

      "The latest OECD report comparing the performances of 400,000 15 year old students (in 57 countries) showed that WA rated sixth in Maths while the US rated 43rd (just below Latvia, Russia and Azerbaijan). In Science, WA was third and the US was 37th (below Croatia, Iceland and Latvia).

      "Trying to introduce a US style merit pay system that has failed there does not make good sense for our children or our teachers."

      Mike Keely, president, State School Teachers' Union of WA
      
      

    • An old tactic

      "Education Minister Mark McGowan insists on dragging out the old "divide and conquer" tactic as he tries to convince the public that teachers should accept the Government's stingy offer of 13 per cent over four years (report 20/12).

      "Perhaps when he says that people in other States were "gobsmacked" by the offer he was referring to their reaction to his maths in stating this four year deal was 75 per cent better than the previous two years.

      "There is no division in our union, Mr McGowan. There are simply two people at the top who have tried to please their ALP cronies by sugar-coating your feeble offer and used yet another old and tired tactic - that of fear as the stick to accompany the baby carrot."

      Michael Armstrong, Balingup
      
      
      

  • Bid to exclude disabled pupils may be illegal (page 17)
    by Bethany Hiatt

    "Education Minister Mark McGowan's proposal to exclude disabled children who are disruptive and divert teachers from meeting the needs of other students from mainstream schools could fall foul of equal opportunity laws.

    "Mr McGowan is reviewing the Education Department's inclusive schooling policy, which has been in place for the past four years, because of concerns among teachers and parents that it fails to meet the needs of all students.

    "He has flagged the possibility of changing the policy to recommend that more disabled students remain in education support centres which could better cater for their requirements.

    "But under the Equal Opportunity Act it is unlawful for an education authority to discriminate against a student who has a disability by rejecting their application to enrol in a school.

    "Equal Opportunity Commissioner Yvonne Henderson said if parents insisted that their child attend a mainstream school, but the school did not believe it could adequately accommodate their needs, then the onus was on the school to show it would suffer "unjustifiable hardship" if the child attended.

    "Examples of such hardship could include a child needing constant one-on-one help from an aide or a school having to build costly wheelchair ramps.

    "Ms Henderson said each case would have to be considered on its merits, adding: "Unless an education institution is able to demonstrate unjustifiable hardship then the law does provide that people have access to education opportunities irrespective of disability."

    "The commission has received complaints about disability discrimination in schools. Most were resolved by conciliation without proceeding to court.

    "Mr McGowan said on radio yesterday that he did not believe parents had a right under law to say which school their child should attend. However, later in the day he said he agreed with Ms Henderson that students should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

    "State School Teachers Union president Mike Keely said teachers who had children with disabilities in their classes needed more help from aides and their class sizes should be reduced by three ordinary students for every disabled child.

    "Mr Keely said it was unfair for teachers to deal with up to 31 children while trying to meet the needs of those with disabilities. If an aide was not available, teachers may have to give medication or help students visit the toilet.

    "Mr Keely said schools had a duty of care to recommend that disabled pupils move to education support centres if that was in their best interests.

    "Therapy Focus, which provides therapy to more than 2400 children in education support and mainstream schools, said it was concerned about the impact of Mr McGowan's proposal on families of children with disabilities.

    "Disability Services Minister Sheila McHale said the needs of each child had to be assessed to find the most appropriate learning environment."

    From The West Australian
    
    
    

• ABC News
  
  
  • Teachers reject 'huge' pay offer
    
    "Members of Western Australia's School Teachers Union have rejected the State Government's latest pay offer.

    "A formal vote count was concluded a short while ago and members overwhelmingly rejected the offer.

    "The Education Minister, Mark McGowan, had described the proposed $685 million pay deal as a 'huge' offer that would have made WA teachers the highest paid in the country."

    From ABC News at link
    
    
    
    
• Nurses accept last ditch pay deal
  
  Nurses have voted to accept a last ditch pay offer from the State Government... "For most nurses it will be a 15 per cent increase over three years," [Australian Nursing Federation State Secretary Mark Olsen] said.
  
  
  
  
• The Australian
  
  
  • Students not punished for copying
    by Brendan O'Keefe

    "University of New England graduates accused of plagiarism will escape punishment, but staff responsible for upholding academic standards may be disciplined.

    "UNE chancellor John Cassidy said there was “an ongoing inquiry into the conduct of the staff involved”. The northern NSW university could not say how many staff were under investigation.

    "Mr Cassidy said the university took “full responsibility” for quality in the masters unit in which overseas students of information technology apparently copied material from the internet.

    "The unit was taught by UNE's private partner, the Melbourne Institute of Technology, but students emerged with UNE qualifications. There was no evidence of “corrupt conduct” in delivery of the unit, Mr Cassidy said.

    "In August, when The Australian revealed the allegations of plagiarism, vice-chancellor Alan Pettigrew warned that students could be stripped of their degrees in “the most severe cases”.

    “We are not going to shy away from taking the most difficult steps,” Professor Pettigrew told The Australian. “We have to protect academic integrity.”

    "This week, Mr Cassidy said UNE had decided not to penalise “retrospectively” the former students, who had already graduated, after taking advice from a barrister and external review panel.

    "The advice “raised questions to do with UNE's conduct and management of the unit, the distinction between intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural understanding, natural justice and the time since graduation”, UNE said in a statement.

    "The UNE plagiarism policy applied to students but might not cover former students who had graduated, the university was advised.

    "Mr Cassidy said UNE would review the case and take action if any “different evidence” arose “in relation to plagiarism or academic misconduct”.

    "The higher education sector has been dogged in recent years by plagiarism cases and claims of “soft marking” by universities not wishing to endanger income from foreign students.

    "In August, UNE revealed that it had examined the work of 210 masters students submitted from 2004 to 2006 and found that a “significant proportion” contained short passages or slabs of text apparently copied from the internet.

    "In this week's statement, Mr Cassidy said UNE would introduce the plagiarism-checking program Turnitin from first semester next year.

    "The university would “review and strengthen academic quality management in all existing external partnerships offered in association with UNE”.

    "Talks had been held with MIT to ensure that appropriate processes were in place and that there was a “full understanding of our mutual obligations”, Mr Cassidy said.

    "MIT did not reply to a request for comment."
    
    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Work begins on digital classrooms
    by Fran Foo

    "State and territory governments have scrambled to boost the Rudd Labor Government's plan to provide senior school students with computers.

    "All states and territories have agreed to conduct an audit of computing infrastructure at schools immediately.

    "The audit is expected to be completed mid-February in time to meet the federal Government’s plan to start allocating funds to schools by March next year.

    "Representatives of each government agreed to the plan at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Melbourne today.

    "The $1 billion National Secondary School Computer Fund is set to benefit around one million secondary students nationwide each year with schools identified has having the most urgent needs given priority.

    "World-class ICT in schools will make a real and sustainable change in the way teaching and learning are delivered in classrooms across Australia," Deputy Prime Minister and federal Education Minister Julia Gillard recently said.

    "The Rudd Government will work with the school systems in every state and territory to identify schools that have the highest priority in terms of need, and assist them in making applications to the fund. Over four years, all secondary schools will have access to the fund," she said.

    "The secondary school fund complements computing tax rebates that will kick-in from July 1, 2008.

    "The federal Government has introduced means-tested rebates for parents, of up to $375 a year, for primary school students and $750 a year for those in secondary school.

    "Tax-deductible items include home PCs, laptops, printers, home internet connections, education software and school textbooks."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • Audit to ensure that neediest log on first
    by Justine Ferrari, Education Writer
    
    "The schools most in need will be identified during a national audit of computers in the classroom, with the most under-resourced placed at the head of the queue for IT handouts.

    "At the first COAG meeting with Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, premiers and chief ministers yesterday also agreed to implement a national curriculum by 2010 in key learning areas.

    "The meeting agreed to accelerate the National Secondary School Computer Fund, a key plank of Labor's education policy announced during the election campaign.

    "Under the policy, the federal Government will buy computers and install the technology to give every student from Year 9 access to a computer and high-speed broadband. The audit will identify by mid-February those schools most lacking in computers. The schools will be able to apply for grants from March.

    "Education Minister Julia Gillard has previously said she wants to spend $100million in the first year of the program and state leaders yesterday agreed to prioritise those schools with the scarcest resources.

    "The COAG meeting also set out an action plan for the coming year, establishing a working group overseen by Ms Gillard to examine skills, training and early childhood development.

    "The group will develop plans for the implementation of Labor's main election commitments in education for presentation at the next COAG meeting in March.

    "Top of the list is creating an extra 450,000 training places over the next four years to tackle the nation's skill shortage, overhauling Australian Technical Colleges and establishing trades training centres in high schools.

    "The colleges were established as trade schools for students in Years 11 and 12 by the previous government and vehemently opposed by the state governments, which argued they were merely duplicating the TAFE system.

    "The group has also been charged with drawing up plans by March to encourage the study of Asian languages, introduce a year of preschool for every four-year-old and increase the quality and availability of childcare."

    From The Australian at link
    
    
    

  • 'Worm' keeps lecturers on track
    by Sanna Trad

    "Electronic keypads similar to those used on game shows to track audience responses have made lectures more interesting and effective, according to students and lecturers at the University of New England.

    "The personal response systems allow students to answer questions and enable lecturers to track students' level of understanding.

    "UNE chemistry lecturer Peter Lye said the personal response systems alerted lecturers to the areas where their classes were struggling.

    “We can deal with common misconceptions right there. We can see where they are lacking - it's instant feedback,” he said..."

    Full story in The Australian at link
    
    
    

• The Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
  • Op Ed
    Getting a roll on with public education
    
    The HSC honour roll published this week showed, as it does every year, that if you take the brightest students and cluster them in a few schools, those schools will produce very good results.
    
    
    
    
  • Letter to the Editor
    
    
    • The top schools turn blank canvases into works of art
      
      "As a mathematician, my annual dismay at the lies, damned lies and statistics published with the HSC results has returned. Congratulations are certainly due to those exceptional youngsters who have blitzed the HSC - and to their schools. But to suggest our top schools are those in the Herald's list is just a lie.

      "Our top schools are the ones that "value add". If you start with a Picasso, clean it up and reframe it, it is a good job, and it is still a Picasso. But if you take a blank canvas and turn it into a Picasso, you are amazing.

      "Some of our schools do that, helping kids achieve results well beyond expectations. And we can identify them using information that is available.

      "Research shows Australia's top students cut it with the best in the world. However, as we slide down the social scale our results decline, so that our children towards the bottom perform worse than those at the bottom of all OECD countries.

      "If the education revolution of the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is to have legs - and it should - we will need to see that the performance of those out of the elite bands improves and those towards the bottom improve significantly. It is a huge task, but Australia's future hangs on it.

      "We should be identifying the value-adding schools rather than the schools that have selected bright students. It will take courage, because vested interests will resist publicising that some schools that enrol children only from the top percentiles get results well below enrolment expectation.

      "Australia stops for the Melbourne Cup. We love it. It is a handicap race. So is education. Why can't we celebrate the schools and teachers that really succeed? Those that take a child irrespective of their background and develop a range of new skills - not necessarily the best in the class, but those schools where most children leave them having achieved their personal best."

      Jim Doyle Executive, director, Boys' Town (school for troubled youth), Engadine

  
  
  
• The Washington Post [from 20 December]
  
  
  • To Draw Top Teachers to Troubled Schools, Foundation Will Offer $30,000 Stipends
    
    The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation... announced plans to award hundreds of future teachers a $30,000 stipend, starting in 2009, to attend graduate school. In return, the fellows will agree to teach for three years at high-needs schools, including some in Virginia. Partnering universities will focus on math, science and other content areas, and provide mentoring and support for teachers when they enter the classroom.

Saturday – Sunday, 22 – 23 December

• The West Australian
  
  
  • Teachers strike looms over pay [Front Page Headline]
    by Bethany Hiatt and Debbie Guest

    "Schools around WA will almost certainly be hit by industrial action early next year after teachers overwhelmingly rejected the State Government's latest pay offer last night.

    "State School Teachers Union members voted against the Government's pay offer to lift teachers' pay by 13 per cent over the next four years. The deal would have increased the salary of the highest-paid average classroom teacher from $69,132 to $78,557 over the period.

    "The stand-off with teachers came as nurses voted to accept the Government's offer of pay rises of 15.5 per cent over three years, adding further ammunition to not only the teachers' argument but also a host of other public sector workers pushing for above-inflation pay rises.

    "Labour shortages combined with the lucrative salaries being offered by the booming private sector are giving public servants virtually unprecedented negotiating clout in EBA talks, driving up the Government's wage bill at rates well in excess of inflation.

    "Public sector unions also point to the Government's $2 billion-plus Budget surplus as evidence of its ability to afford above-inflation pay rises.

    "SSTU president Mike Keely said the fresh offer was too low. "Since the negotiations started it has been very obvious that the Treasurer, Eric Ripper, cares more about being able to brag about a Government surplus than he does about our children's education," he said.

    "He and (Education Minister) Mark McGowan have been busy issuing media releases about $100,000 a year for teachers, 50 of them, while the real issues and the real salaries have been hidden.

    "Now we face a teacher shortage where up to 15,000 children will not have a proper, regular classroom teacher at the start of next year and up to 30,000 more could find themselves being taught science and maths by teachers qualified to teach English or physical education." [emphasis added]

    "The teachers' decision means the Government will almost certainly be confronted by industrial action in schools next year in addition to widespread teacher shortages, which the union warns could be as high as 600.

    "The Government's predicament is likely to be made worse by the fact that the teachers' union will come under the control of a newly elected committee in the new year, which is considered to be more militant than its predecessor.

    "Evan Thompson, a spokesman for the new committee, said the rejection showed teachers were prepared for industrial action. "Teachers have overwhelmingly rejected a poor offer," he said. The form of industrial action is yet to be decided, though the union has already raised the prospect of rolling one-day strikes across education districts, with schools taking turns to shut down for a day.

    "Mr. McGowan said negotiations would be suspended until the new executive took office in January. "This means those teachers working in the tougher areas will not receive the increases in allowances that would have kicked in in the new year," he said. "I think there was a lot of misinformation put out about this pay offer by some people, which made it difficult to communicate the e