Chris, when you write about 'good principals' here you must have never travelled to Qld to see the parlous state of our schools, our principals and our Ed Qld officials.

"School principals know that effective leadership is about creating evidence-driven and long-term improvement in schools."

There is absolutely NOTHING in Qld schools that is connected to 'evidence-driven' anything.

How do you explain the rush to 'teach to the test' that is going on in our state schools? How do you explain the school principals leading the charge to de-secularise state schools with their over enthusiastic support for school chaplains? How do you explain their meek acceptance of the Religious Instruction system that wastes, on average, 45 minutes a week of scarce teaching time and increasingly consists of nothing more than evangelical Christians offering fire-and-brimstone to primary school students?

No, far from any good leadership to be found amongst public school principals, what we find is unprincipled behaviour, dodgy ethics and a defiance of the AEU policy of support for secular public schooling.

And, lest anyone think that principals are doing this on their lonesome, they are not.

The rising tide of unethically coerced religiosity in state schools is being driven by willing, eager and unethical school teachers too.

What we need is an education revolution, with a far different mindset than is currently on offer at the school leadership and classroom levels.

Until educators show a modicum of honesty and ethical behaviour, we will continue with poorly run, poorly designed, poorly funded and poorly staffed public schools because our politicians are just as ethically challenged as our school principals and many classroom teachers are.

Chris, you may have problems with religious education in Ed QLD schools and I agree that these should be secular as well. However, you need to stop linking this issue with the role that principals play in using evidence to improve school performance. Maybe you have been to or teach in an Ed QLD school that does not do this, but I know that most do. Due to Teaching and Learning audits there is a strong requirement in all EQ schools to use data to create an improvement agenda for the school - it is part of the EQ roadmap. So, just so you and the readers of this forum know that general comments need to be made carefully. It may not be 100% but it is definitely not none. I think that EQ schools generally have great leadership in a time of difficulty. As acknowledged in the article, who would want this job when people are so quick to judge.

Whoops, that comment was aimed at The Blue Cross.

I have yet to see any 'improvements' in EQ schools over the last 19 years.

In fact, I suggest they have got worse. Certainly the standards of new teachers has not kept pace with the changing face of the community, and older teachers seem to have considerable trouble in adapting to changing technology.

They have barely changed, for years, and ignore policy that is too hard.

Too many staff are not well trained and many are fearful of the bullying from the top.

The involvement of parents is not wanted, and complaints are glossed over, buried, denied and when all else fails, ignored.

There are certainly many good teachers amongst the dross, which has a habit of gaining promotion into the regional and head offices, thus compounding the problems in schools.

Read Phil Cullen's 'Back to Drastics', a good round up and description of the appalling state of EQ schools.