That is a very interesting system they have in Singapore.

I think it could be introduced in Australia and may do a lot of good.

Chances of anything even aproximating such a system being accepted in public education: Nil

It would have to be a private initiative.

In fact to do the most good it woould probably have to be come kind of public-private partnership.

If you think a culture of rote memorisation followed by mindless regurgitation represents 'effective' teaching, learning, and assessment then this would work very well.

But Cambo, according to school teachers and their union there is apparantly no effective way of assessing teaching and learning in schools. Parents like myself see this as nothing more than union protection of under-performing members at the expense of my children's education.

What about also attacking the issue from intake. Make entry into teaching degrees require a higher score accompanied by higher salaries to attract good applicants.

It is not a failsafe certainly given that many bright people with a good grasp of their area of teaching may not be able to teach. However many low scoring students enter into teaching courses in the current system compared to the benchmark for example for Law or Communications and Journalism. Making the standard higher has to be part of the solution.

Secondly, in regard to rote learning. Many years ago the Japanese were worried about the lack of innovation among graduates who had primarily come through a highly disciplined rote style education without much room for creativity. That realisation meant factoring in a level of creative thinking or problem solving beyond a rote memory approach. Knowledge is one thing, how to use it another.

Entry scores into university courses are determined by demand Pelican - part of the KPI's that the tertiary and vocational sectors have learned to work by. The better the course, the greater demand and so the higher the entry score. The more students, the higher the score, the greater the funding that the university receives. Its not perfect of course but it has worked to focus universities on student outcomes much more than they were prior to those reforms.
Simply raising salaries without measuring performance would perhaps improve the quality of the teacher pool but overall the quality of the pool is not the main issue so really, it's a poor policy option and a waste of money. I'd agree with the author that there's a lot that can be done with the current level of funding that isn't being done before we have to start throwing more money around.

Applying the Singapore method of assessment would be a great plus for our kids, & in the long run for teachers. The current method of keeping the incompetent, & the no hopers in the class room has much to do with the low esteem in which teachers are held.

In my experience the average assessment of teachers by parents is "over educated, over paid, & under worked". This obviously makes it hard for anyone to justify any increase in pay.

I would also suggest a few hard changes in university efforts. It is obviously detrimental to the institutions income to weed out the poorly performing student, but it must be done. I guess some even claim the moral high ground, of "helping" the less competent to graduate.

Make the courses much harder to graduate & we will get firstly a reduction of applications from marginally adequate students, & a better trained graduate. Only after that improvement can we expect results to show in schools.

HEX has some blame here. When I was of uni age, you needed extremely good results to get most scholarships. A lot of very bright people took trade courses because of this, & many extremely bright people took teachers scholarships, as their only way of gaining a degree.

Yes some left teaching, after the 5 year required service, but many who today would not do a Dip Ed, found a happy home in high schools. Rather than higher pay, a percentage of HEX could be forgiven for every year of teaching by a graduate.

Hard in this day of demanded equity for the individual, this kind of inducement could be offered in areas like physics & math, where competent teachers are unusual, rather than the norm.