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The
Top Education News Stories from 2007
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"I
am just wondering whether the kids who struggle at school should be the
ones we want as the next generation's teachers," [PLATO president
Greg Williams] said. "I still think that a teacher should be a person
who has a great love of academia." More
than 50 school leavers will be allowed to study to become teachers, without
having sat for TEE exams. As
the teacher shortage deepens, Edith Cowan University has offered 52 non-TEE
high school graduates "direct entry'' into its 2008 education course. Many
TEE students achieved such low marks in the new outcomes-based education
engineering course that the Curriculum Council has taken he unusual step
of scheduling special meetings to discuss their results with them and
their parents. Education
Minister Mark McGowan concedes teachers will just have to endure living
in grimy, badly maintained public houses when working in some country
areas. State
School Teachers’ Union members across Western Australia have overwhelmingly
rejected the State Government’s latest offer for a new Enterprise
Bargaining Agreement. [Eric
Ripper and Mark McGowan] 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. 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... 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... Although the ones
who supported it didn't do so publicly, they were quite appreciative privately. 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. Greg
Williams, president of People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, said
his group would push for teacher registrations based on specific qualifications. Parents
and children will be caught in an education lottery in which some teachers
will follow a prescribed syllabus while others will adopt the so-called
flexible options available under the outcomes-based education. Reports
of outcome-based education's death are greatly exaggerated... The hated
levels of achievement have been rooted out of Years 11 and 12 and replaced
by percentages and grades. But they are still very much in force in lower
secondary and primary school. OBE, as we know it, may be terminally ill.
But its death certificate won't be signed for some time. Teachers
union chiefs have been accused by their staff of rushing pay negotiations
with the State Government to the detriment of members. State School Teachers
Union staff have written to president Mike Keely saying they have "grave
concerns about the undue haste" with which the union is pushing for
an enterprise bargaining agreement. After
nine years as a directionless shambles, schooling in Western Australia
has been given an important boost with the reintroduction of school syllabuses
for kindergarten to Year 10... [But]
If the
syllabuses are not mandatory, subject heads in schools not committed to
curriculum rigour will cherry-pick the approaches they favour, such as
an over-emphasis on films, websites and magazines in English, and ignore
the specification that contemporary and classical novels, poetry and drama
be studied in Years 8 to 10. [Shadow
education minister Peter Collier] said the Government must also replace
unpopular "levels" marking with traditional grades to "complete
the circle" of reform. Entry
scores for future teachers are predicted to fall despite criticism they
are already too low, as demand for teaching places plummets across the
nation. Applications for teaching places had plunged by 30 per cent over
two years in Queensland, and Western Australia is unlikely to fill places
for the coming year. Bright
kids and kids from good homes with interested parents, will cope with
almost anything and survive most of what dysfunctional school systems
come up with. The markedly less able will not. Basic skills need to be
rock solid for two reasons. We need to be sure that the ones who do leave
the system early are doing so for the right reasons, not just because
their schooling has betrayed them and they present as less able rather
than suffering from boredom, bad behaviour and underachievement simply
because they can’t read. One-quarter
of Year 7s attending the State's public schools cannot spell and almost
one in five are not reaching the minimum benchmarks for reading and numeracy,
the latest annual school test results have revealed...
the Education Department has refused to release the benchmark figures. Almost
20 per cent of West Australian Year 7 students failed to meet key literacy
standards this year, and their performance in numeracy tests slipped...
Year 7 students across the state returned the worst performance, with
only 78.4 per cent achieving the required level of competence in spelling.
Reading and numeracy skills also dropped compared with last year's results. The
group of teachers elected to take over the State School Teachers Union
committee next month said yesterday the Government's latest pay offer
was inadequate and teachers should brace for industrial action. The
State Government is bullying teachers into rushing through a new pay deal
before the end of the year. The
organisation charged with registering WA teachers last night thumbed its
nose at parents around the State by refusing to reveal how many teachers
faced being barred from classrooms because they failed to pay their compulsory
annual fee.
One
only needs to look at the parlous quality of state and territory curriculum
to know where the true explanation lies for falling standards. Literature,
especially classic texts, is no longer pre-eminent as students are asked
to deconstruct SMS messages, graffiti and movie posters. Across Australia,
many students are able to complete Year 12 English without ever reading
a substantive novel or play. Australia's
top students are failing to keep pace with their international peers,
with the latest OECD tests of high school pupils showing a drop in reading
and maths skills... the decline [was] caused by a fall among the highest-performing
students... the main decline in maths scores occurred among girls and
in the states of Western Australia and South Australia. The
disturbing evidence that has emerged from the latest results of the OECD
Program for International Student Assessment is not of socio-economic
inequity. Rather, it shows Australian schools are dumbing down their high
achievers, particularly girls... The sooner Ms Gillard has a showdown
with the black armband activists and the unionists, the easier it will
be to start making the changes which are necessary to raise Australia's
educational levels to the top of the OECD instead of creating a culture
of mediocrity that discourages high achievers. Schools
are expected to be spared a crippling teacher shortage in the last week
of the school year, with the industry registration body set to provide
a last minute reprieve for teachers who have not paid their compulsory
professional fees. After furious last minute lobbying by education minister
Mark McGowan, the WA College of Teaching is expected to delay... the deregistration
of teachers who have not paid their $70 annual fee by Friday's deadline. The
Education Minister Mark McGowan will intervene to prevent hundreds of
teachers who have refused to pay their annual registration fees being
sacked this week. Senior
education bureaucrats have been ordered back into schools as part of increasingly
desperate measures to keep teachers in classrooms. The
teachers' professional registration body is not likely to wait until after
the election of its new board before it strips members of their licence
to teach, despite calls from the teachers' union and Opposition. WA College
of Teaching chairman Brian Lindberg said the Government appointed interim
board was reluctant to hand over power... to the new and "inexperienced"
board. Mr
McGowan is now warning the board of the West Australian College of Teaching
that it was "not there to exacerbate any teacher shortage"...
The board's chairman, Brian Lindberg, yesterday accused Mr McGowan of
wanting to "protect his back"...
"The Government needs to have a good hard look at itself because
they did not get the legislation right and that has caused these sorts
of problems," Mr Lindberg said. Maths
skills among Year 7 students have fallen to their lowest level in five
years. Unpublished
figures to be released next month, and obtained by The Weekend Australian,
show that more than one in five Year 7 students failed to acquire the
necessary maths skills to progress through school. Almost
half of Australian adults do not have the basic reading and writing skills
needed for everyday living have difficulty finding information in newspapers,
using a bus timetable or understanding directions on medicine labels,
a new report reveals. The Australian Bureau of Statistics adult literacy
and life skills survey released yesterday found the worst literacy problems
were in school leavers aged 15 to 19. Students
could be forced to study certain subjects at different schools and the
traditional school day could start as early as 7.30 am and finish as late
as 5.30 pm, under State Government plans to overcome the teacher shortage.
There
have been at least 20 complaints about the Year 12 exams - just two days
after they ended. On Friday, Curriculum Council chief executive
David Wood confirmed most complaints were about the new outcomes-based
education engineering studies, and media production and analysis courses. But
there is a gaping hole in the education policies of both parties: the
teacher.
As
Victoria's teachers strike for more pay, it is in the community's interest
to give it to them. A
prestigious Perth school has formally complained to the Curriculum Council
that a TEE exam in a new outcomes-based education course failed to reflect
the content students studied in class... Parents
and teachers have complained that the paper contained questions that had
not appeared in sample exams provided by the council or in the course
syllabus. Yet
amid all these promises, investment in our most important educational
resource has largely been forgotten: teachers. These are the people who
have self-funded photocopying accounts with Officeworks, because their
work photocopying budget ran out. The ones using their own money to pay
for whiteboard markers and paper. The ones whose evenings are filled with
meetings, and whose weekends are filled with marking. Teachers
of the outcomes-based education engineering studies course are calling
for a panel which set the Year 12 exam to be sacked, saying the paper
contained questions which did not appear on the syllabus or in sample
exams. The
big disappointment in Labor's education revolution is its lack of emphasis
on lifting the quality of teaching staff, fixing the national curriculum
and making sure parents get better feedback on school performance. These
issues, more than anything else, highlight the difficulty Mr Rudd can
expect if he intends to truly embark on a revolution. The
intellectual capacity of the teaching profession has diminished over the
past two decades, largely as a result of a flat, short salary structure.
Head of the University of Western Australia's graduate school of education
Professor Bill Louden yesterday called for a pay structure that gave teachers
a 25-year career path to attract smart students to the profession. Too
much is made of teacher education programs because they meet quality criteria
and are in alignment with professional frameworks. These programs sound,
look and feel good but whether they deliver the desired results, we simply
do not know. The
Western Australian Government has rewritten almost its entire set of new
courses following widespread criticism that they dumbed down subjects
and the assessment process was complicated and meaningless, levelling
students according to their progress rather than giving them a grade...
After the debacle we've seen with essential learnings
in Tasmania and outcomes-based education in Western Australia, what we're
seeking to do is ensure we get a nationally consistent framework. WA
is facing a shortfall of 600 teachers at the start of next year and a
pay dispute with the Government is one of the reasons for the crisis,
the teachers' union warned yesterday. Kevin
Rudd promises an education revolution but his battle plan is silent on
the one thing that would guarantee success: teachers. The
[McKinsey] report concluded that three things mattered most across all
systems, primarily teacher quality. "The quality of an education
system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers," it says. English
teachers opposed to the controversial OBE system have attacked yesterday's
Year 12 TEE English exam saying students could have done the paper without
having read a single book. Teachers
of the Year 12 outcomes based education media course have attacked the
first TEE media paper as more than 10,000 English students who have borne
the brunt of problems caused by the State Government’s hasty implementation
of the controversial system prepare to sit for their final exam today.
The
teachers' union committee is set to be heavily dominated by disciples
of one of WA's most ardent OBE critics after its members voted yesterday
for a widespread changing of the guard. In a move that could lead to an
increase in hostility between the State Government and teachers, 12 of
the 14 committee posts are expected to be filled by representatives of
the Members First group led by Marko Vojkovic, who has also led the teachers'
anti OBE lobby group PLATO. Teachers
fear students are not ready for the looming TEE English exam because they
are "guinea pigs" for the new course. The
teachers – from government and private schools – said implementation
of the Outcomes-Based Education English course in the past two years was
a mess that left teachers unsure of what to teach for the exam. Applications
to study secondary teaching at WA universities have plunged by as much
as 50 per cent, dealing a fresh blow to the State Government's bids to
solve the teacher shortage. Eight Busselton Senior High School teachers have been on stress leave in the past two years and more than 10 senior teachers have quit teaching, according to a group of former teachers at the school. The teachers say they can finally speak out about the situation, now that they won't face certain disciplinary action or dismissal for revealing the "awful truth" of WA and Busselton's high school education system... ... Inappropriate timetables at the school meant teachers without expertise in those subjects were taking the classes, while specialised teachers in core subjects such as maths and science were teaching subjects like health education... The school even closed courses while we still had specialised teachers to take these courses... from
Our schools in crisis:
Teachers are frustrated by a 'dumbed-down system' [The recommendations of the Senate Inquiry report mean] putting an end to the educational fads and fashions to which school systems are particularly vulnerable. The outcomes-based education misadventure in WA is a deplorable example of the damage headstrong bureaucrats in the grip of trendy ideology can cause. It continues to have disastrous consequences of confusion and disruption in schools, not to mention disaffected teachers, a discredited education bureaucracy and seriously eroded public confidence in the education system. from
Senate report
a starting point for improving school standards The
Year 12 outcomes-based education English course, for which students will
sit their final exams in just a few weeks, has been described as flawed
and in need of rewriting by the group of teachers engaged by the State
Government to assess it. from
Year 12 English flawed:
teachers Academic standards in WA are so poor that university students need special lessons in how to write a sentence and other basic skills normally taught in primary school. Perth
academics have slammed the embarrassing decline in education standards. The
beleaguered Curriculum Council, the body which has overseen the disastrous
implementation of outcomes-based education, will be scrapped because the
State Government says it is fundamentally flawed. The picture that emerges is of a self-absorbed bureaucracy that is driven largely by ideology and self-interest rather than a commitment to the interests of the public that pays the salaries. That is consistent with repeated criticism by this newspaper that the department is not only incompetent but also out of touch with public expectations of schools and indifferent to the needs of students and teachers. For
a start, he should uproot the remnants of OBE from the system and throw
them away with the destructive ideology that denies both achievement and
failure and devalues academic rigour and the pursuit of excellence. That
would show that there was substance behind his words and a commitment
to the hard work of culture change in the department. Education
Minister Mark McGowan has given senior education bureaucrats a stinging
rebuke and ordered a wide-ranging review of the department.
OBE
in limbo after teachers win delay Outcomes-based
education a 'failed philosophy'
14,000
Teachers tell WACOT: PLATO's
"WACOT Special Edition", 7 April 2007 The
department [of education], with the way it treats teachers and
its incompetence, not only fails to recruit enough teachers but is instrumental
in driving practising teachers into retirement or other jobs. Its high-handed
management of the outcomes-based education disaster is just one example
of this. Until compelling evidence for the success of OBE can be presented, then the value of the theory for practice remains suspect,” the lecturers wrote in national education journal Issues in Educational Research. Evidence suggests education authorities would be unwise to wait any longer before making a careful audit of OBE’s bona fides, examining other paradigms for the provision of compulsory education, and then taking the bold step of choosing the model which offers the greatest empirical evidence of success.” Professor
Berlach stopped short of saying OBE should be scrapped but said there
were more successful education models that should be examined. He did
not believe there was any evidence to show that OBE worked. The
Curriculum Council said it would defer 20 courses – including key
subjects such as chemistry, history and literature – after "teacher
juries" found they were not ready. The damning verdicts mean the
courses – some of which were meant to be in place this year but were
already delayed amid the OBE furore – are now scheduled for 2009,
provided teachers can be convinced they are acceptable. Universities
are threatening to undermine a key plank of the State Government's outcomes-based
education system amid concerns that students will be accepted into tertiary
study without an adequate education. Off
to the Planet Zog, with Calvin, Hobbs and the SSTU The
State's controversial outcomes-based education system came under fresh
fire yesterday when the head of the Curriculum Council labelled the much-maligned
"levels" as useless for assessing students and it emerged that
a new university course says levels are a fundamentally flawed way of
marking pupils. A University of WA post-graduate course on educational
assessment, measurement and evaluation that started this year identifies
the OBE levels system as an inadequate way of gauging schoolchildren's
progress. That
the OBE is useless, at best, has been confirmed... [Education Minister
Mark McGowan] should assert his authority over the bureaucracy, stop the
patch-up process, insist that the department stop mucking about and fulfil
its fundamental responsibilities and purge schools of all vestiges of
OBE. The
report, from Curriculum Council chairman Bill Louden, "puts pressure
on Education Minister Mark McGowan to dismantle OBE"... Mr
McGowan said a
letter to State schools today would outline his latest changes to
OBE from kindergarten up to Year 10. All
school changes should be researched, tested and independently evaluated
before they are implemented across the State, according to WA education
expert [and Curriculum Council Chair Professor] Bill Louden. Ultimately,
OBE will have to be purged from the school system as a failed experiment
in social engineering. Libs
promise to abolish all levelling K-12 Time
to cane OBE and can levels Significant OBE news stories from 2006 Complete
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This page last updated 11 August, 2008 9:27 PM
