A little too late perhaps.

Australian industry has to have a higher skilled workforce to be able to compete with other countries, and Australia cannot rely on coal and iron ore exports forever. As well there has to be an emphasis on innovation and development to be able to create more value added products from Australia.

Unfortunately, innovation, development and Australian made products are perhaps the least likely things to find within the education system.

In a feminist education system, I have also heard numerous teachers say “boys do all right later on”, and on one occasion this was said by a teacher in front of the school principal with no action taken by the school principal.

This attitude allows teachers to form a totally dismissive attitude towards their students, and they can pass at least 50% of the students through the school system with no interest in the students.

Reforms are unlikely to occur within the education system without teachers being paid according to performance, rather than appearance money.

Vanna I agree 100% with your post.

Check this out : With a shared interest in supporting the re-engagement of young people in Queensland this innovative partnership provides a powerful combination of key issues and evidence-based recommendations that reflect the knowledge of young people, practitioners, and researchers....end quote.

What does it mean ? Answer ; Bureaucrats and Leftie Teachers congratulating each other at a "Talk Fest on the Gold Coast"

Education has become too Politicised Left Wing Fanatics prevail.

On one occasion a meeting was called to advise the Public about a new School to be built at a Victorian City two schools were to be closed and the real estate sold before the new school was built ! There was widespread resistance to this because no sensible explanation was forthcoming explaining where 900 students would be properly accommodated , many of the Teachers were upset and the School P&C Board were threatened and Coerced into signing off the School many were so distraught they vomited others were crying this happened not in the USSR indeed no here in Victoria !

Some more details about the meeting : Booklets were handed out outlining the intended new school it was too extensive about 70 pages to read at the time and the MC was working the crowd and he revealed that this day was the culmination of 7 years work and proceeded to thank/congratulate the cotery of super Clammed up's involved each stood up and beamed as he did so it was a bit like an Amway meeting we were being played as dummys. continued

I agree with vanna on this one. Our population is made up of two genders and as such education has to cater to both learning styles and needs.

As for Left Wing. Public schools may be dominated by Left leaning thinkers but it does not seem to be doing too much 'harm' in the outside world which is by far dominated by Right wing economic policy, in particular global trends. There is much hot air produced about the influence of the Left wing in Australia when in fact the Left Wing is dying a slow death, yet about the growing extremes of the Right Wing little is written.

Feminism is nothig to do with the Left Wing and is proudly claimed by women on both sides of politics.

For my two bob's worth, there is some merit in the idea of co-ed schools but with segregated classrooms for most subject areas with perhaps a coming-together in subjects like drama and art.

Keeping students engaged and wanting to participate in education to Yr12 involves getting rid of the one-size-fits-all approach. Unfortunately our schools are not sufficiently resourced in what used to be called remedial education ie. catching problems early before it is too late without the ridiculous strict criteria that results in some 'borderline' kids missing out.

The main problem is not the schools. It is the homes. Schools are being asked more and more to take on board social welfare programs to pick up the slack in disadvantaged homes. That is where support needs to be increased. How to do it? More expert sociologists than I can offer comment on that one.

In saying all that I too have had some negative experiences with schools including dealing with patronising teachers/principals and resisting some of the current flavour-of-the-day approaches to teaching.

One of these included assimilating children from a behavioural unit into mainstream classes before they were ready which resulted in six months of wasted time for the teacher, the students and the behaviourally challenged child. Students had to put up with this boy constantly running around the classroom, intimidating other children, pulling down bookshelves of which the other kids had to constantly clean up, while being told they had to show understanding and compassion for this boy who had problems and "we must all help him". There is merit to that approach but only so far and if the 'experiment' fails don't prolong it. Many kids could not understand (Grade 4s) why this boy wasn't disciplined and why he was treated differently (leniently for gross misbehaviours). They were not fooled by the inconsistency and the boy just flaunted his 'power' in front of the other kids and his ability to get away with almost any misadventure. The boy is also disadvantaged when he learns the rules do not apply to him.

The needs of this one boy for a short time (six months), took priority over the needs of every other child in that classroom before it was decided he was not ready and should be returned to the behavioural unit. I hope current teaching practices have changed. These 'well-meaning' policies help no-one. Obviously the goal should be to help disadvantaged children return to mainstream classes with as much support as possible. Many of these kids knew how to play the system and what was needed was a bit more old fashioned no-tolerance.

Pelican,
There is no great need for even more sociologists in the education system.

What is a main problem has already been identified.

"Like wealth, risks adhere to the class pattern,
only inversely: wealth accumulates at the top,
risks at the bottom. To that extent, risks seem to
strengthen, not abolish, the class society. Poverty
attracts an unfortunate abundance of risks.
By contrast, the wealthy (in income, power or
education) can purchase safety and freedom from
risk. (Beck, 1992, p. 35)."

http://www.yanq.org.au/images/stories/Documents/yanq_report_final-art_press_compress.pdf

The education of children depends heavily on wealth, and most of the wealth in society depends upon the family unit. That means marriage, as marriages accumulate more wealth over time than de facto relationships or single parenting.

In a feminist education system, few teachers have ever spoken out in support of marriage.

In fact I haven’t heard of any.

So there are now numerous asking for more taxpayer funding for early intervention and programs for disadvantaged youth etc, but none asking for restoration of the family unit, that will do more to remove child poverty over the longer term than schools for disadvantaged children.

The highly feminist education system has created its own mess.

Setting ambitious education goals is great – but what do they mean? :

Continued from earlier post:

In the brocure was an illustration provided as an example of what our new school would look like , The school was MtLawley a new school in inner City Perth . WA had a Education internet site that rated all schools by their success rates however it no longer exists because the open plan concepts distractions were so bad nobody except the deaf could concentrate adequatly to present good enough results for Mt.Lawley to qualify a top spot on the WA's top schools list.
But the Speaker at the Vic meeting was on top of this problem his solution was to encase the maths classes in a huge glass cube using frosted glass to eye level when standing clear glass above the ceiling also clear glass the cube was to be mounted on caster wheels so it could move around the building in keep with open plan concept no more questions were allowed so the issue of Airconditioning and safe ventilation in a mobile cube within a cube could not be canvassed plus
terrorism , fire ,smoke and asphyxiants , refrigeration gasses etc.
How did the famous Schools and Uni's of the UK make out with none of this Madness , were all their graduats Fakes ?