So sad, and much too true, Dean.

It bewilders me that the so-called intelligent media allow some well-placed spokesmen for the wealthy schools to talk about "the independent sector" as needy and hard-working. There is no independent sector- but a collection of schools run in vastly different ways. And State schools don't need help?

The Building the Education Revolution miss-mash was a catastrophe for needy schools in NSW which were given the same school hall, whether it suited them or not, at the cost of $1m each. Shameful waste. In the State system. Private schools did far better by managing their own money. And disadvantages were entrenched.

The needs of the poor kids from disadvantaged homes, going to disadvantaged schools, seem to have been forgotten.

And the intelligent media ( ?? ) are full of foolish journalists keen to write about themselves and their little interests. Freedom of the press- yes, to trivialise everything. And freedom for governments to pander to wealthy interests.

Bronte,

The media reporting on the Gonski review has been very poor; e.g., The Age has never explained how the SES funding model works, why so many schools are compensated for its failings or that the Gonksi report recommends keeping it under the new name, “capacity to pay”, while The Australian keeps repeating meaningless or untrue claims about various supposed increases in education spending, changing the percentage, the period over which they allegedly occurred and whether they were in total or per student – all at random.

There are 13 weird features of the Gonski “debate” that hardly get a mention. I have reproduced them in one form at http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/going-for-the-full-gonski-20121206-2ay8z.html.

When the above article appeared in The Australian, I submitted a letter to the editor:

‘16/3/2013

‘It is a pity that the broader and deeper knowledge would-be teachers gain from doing the longer Master of Teaching course at the University of Melbourne (“A degree of class awareness”, 16-17/3) is not recognised by such graduates starting higher up the pay scale.

‘If they did, no doubt yet another musing would join the long series of anti-Gonski articles published by The Australian, the latest being Dean Ashenden’s (“Rules of engagement to survive the schools debate”, 16-17/3), which like almost everything written on the Gonksi report fails to mention its key fault; i.e., its explicit recommendation to continue the Howard government’s policy of ignoring the actual resources of schools in providing them with public funds. This policy, which is completely contrary to Labor’s social justice principles, will further socially stratify our education system and lead to pressure for means-tested fees in government schools.’

It was not published.

I have dealt with the attack on teachers’ having decent class sizes at http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/576719.aspx?PageIndex=22.

Chris, thanks for the link to the TES comments/commentary. The class size issue is indeed problematic. My take (30+ years teaching secondary humanities) is that, at the margin, class size is irrelevant. Taking a class size down by say 10% say from 28 to 25 students seems, from my own experience, to have little effect both on my workload and/or my effectiveness. On the other hand, for me, increasing my non-teaching time by 10%, especially if that time is spent working with other teachers (planning etc)would have an impact - both on my kids (better teaching) and on me (better work environment as the key influence whether I am happy or not as a teacher is whether I am being enabled to do a good job). If we start talking reductions of 28 students down to 15 then that's another matter. Clearly a reduction in class size of that quantum would make a difference - But the net $ cost of reductions like this would be huge - in effect doubling the wages bill of teachers. If they were going to spend twice as much on teachers I'd rather keep the class size at 28, employ more teachers and halve my teaching load so I can focus on quality. As you know planning and implementing effective lessons takes time. Something which there is too little of in Australian schools. And maybe with some of that extra spend they could bump my salary up a wee bit; that'd be nice.

Your article is enlightening but at the same time quite depressing and if (?) the Coalition wins the September election, where will we be then?
Our tripartite system is one of the key hindrances to reform (despite teachers in all systems doing similar work, but under quite different conditions) but now the omelette has been made, it can no longer be unscrambled.
Perhaps the best solution is to build on the strengths of the Government schools so that for most people they become the logical alternative.
It is here that I would focus on your sixth point – the quality of the workplace. This will mean more flexible work conditions, high salaries for the best performing teachers, different class sizes in different circumstances. Teachers have to be helped to discover where their real interests lie and spell this out to their Unions who are still operating on an early 20th century industrial model.
Of course the details of this cannot be spelt out in the spacefor comments here, but I will try to find time for an Online Opinion article in the next week.
Ian Keese

For bondi-tram and Ian K
The class size issue, and the opportunities it presents, are discussed in http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14746 and in the very interesting comments on same.

bondi tram,

My experience is different from yours. Class size makes a big difference to workload and thus effectiveness.

I taught in Victoria. Classes of 25 have been standard in high schools since the 1970s. In only one of my 33 years did I have more than one class of more than 25 students, and in only one year did I have even one class of more than 25 students. In fact, the average secondary class today is, at 21.4, higher than the 20.0 it was in 1992.

I have been the timetabler in three schools. The average regular teaching load in my first school, in 1980, was 15 hours 29 minutes. The average regular teaching load in my last school, in 2004, was 15 hours 44 minutes. In 1980, the average face-to-face teaching load in a high school was 15.9 hours for an assistant class teacher, 14.7 hours for a teacher with a responsibility position and 12.5 hours for a Senior Teacher, giving an overall average of some 15.3 hours (Legislative Council Hansard, col 1092-1093, October, 1980). Under the ALP, industrial agreements increased this minimum to 16.3 hours. I might add that the secondary PTR was 10.9:1 in 1981 (the last year the state had a Liberal government that cared about education). It has worsened to 11.9:1.

Teaching conditions in this state are worse in now than they used to be even 10 years ago because teachers voted in the 2004 EBA and again in the 2008 EBA to make them worse.

Teacher salaries have fallen in relative terms by a greater percentage than the long-term improvement in pupil-teacher ratios. I have a detailed post on the matter at http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/449991.aspx?PageIndex=31.

There is no doubt that society can afford decent salaries, decent class sizes and decent teaching loads.