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The Forum > Article Comments > Making the school system work > Comments

Making the school system work : Comments

By Sue Thomson, published 6/12/2013

Is there anything we can learn from the top-performing countries or economies? Absolutely, so long as we understand the complete picture in terms of the approaches taken.

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The performance of our school leavers is not dismal.
Chris C,
I move in different circles to you. So I'm not qualified to dispute your experience. I experince young people on whom a lot & I mean a lot of tax Dollars were spent to educate them. Yet, when they arrive in our workforce they are useless beyond the wildesd imagination. So, my experience is that the system is dismal.
I witness the behaviour of teachers & it nothing short of a crying shame. It really is no wonder that the show is in an irreparable mess. I don't know as how important other people see mentality but to me it is on the top rung of the ladder in education & society. the open display of the mentality of school leavers is barely reaching the bottom rung. Just look at schoolies events around Australia & australian schoolies in Bali. Why isn't discipline taught in our schools ? Why is sense absent from the curriculum ? Is it because the teachers are out of their depth ? It certainly looks like that to me.
Posted by individual, Sunday, 8 December 2013 8:12:18 AM
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With all the debate about school education in recent years, the one element that is missing is "teaching" or "pedagogy". It is assumed that teachers can teach but students can't learn. It is taken for granted that "teaching" is so complex" that it can't be codified. It is routinely accepted that teacher preparation should be based on "critique" of teaching models rather than being able to apply them. The result is a "pedagogical void" in the policy, academic and research literature of education: plenty about curriculum, about teachers but precious little on "teachING".

All is not lost. In recent years there has been a growing body of research-based material about what to do in teaching. Education should emulate earlier days in Medicine and adopt a research-based teachING strategy approach to student achievement. Many will have to give up their dearly held beliefs about what makes a "good teacher", just like medieval magicians did when faced with medical and biological research.
Posted by Nova986, Sunday, 8 December 2013 12:29:02 PM
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It is assumed that teachers can teach but students can't learn.
Nova986,
Teachers and, I'm commenting from personal observation, lack the one thing that's so desirable, committment. Yes they always tell us how committed they are but are they really ? When they desire a payrise the teachers & union gang up on the Government of the day & put forward their demands. I have yet to see them do the same thing to regain control of the classroom & discilpline the undisciplined distractors in the class. I have yet to see them gang up on those parents who claim their little crapheads are angels. I have yet to see them submit a petition to change legislation re all of the above. Let's see some of that & many of us may just do a 180 & support them. As it stands now they're not worth half the pay & conditions they're getting.
Posted by individual, Sunday, 8 December 2013 12:43:59 PM
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As it happens I sat in on a course a while ago & it was an eye opener for me how it works. I found that most of the teacher's effort was put into putting everything into fancy wording whilst the students were totally absorbed in trying to work out the meaning of the questions. I asked several students about the difficulties they had in absorbing what the teacher told them. Every single one gave me the same answer, "I didn't know what the questions meant but once put back into everyday english during discussions I understood it all".
Problem exposed !
Posted by individual, Sunday, 8 December 2013 4:01:31 PM
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Hasbeen has part of the answer, but not all of it. The most obvious event associated with the decline of literacy and numeracy over the last six years must be the increase in salary paid to teachers in Australia over that period. If that were to be reversed, with salaries reduced to the levels paid in Beijing (which topped the world scores), surely we could expect the educational outcomes to approach the ones there. In the event that the teacher unions declined to work for these salaries, I am sure that many thousand of Beijing teachers could be brought here on 457 visas to fill the gap.

Now I know that any suggestion of reducing salaries will bring howls of objection, and am puzzled as to why. After all, self-funded retirees have had their incomes reduced by 40% over the last two years with hardly any mention, let alone comment, in the media. Why the difference, and why can't we campaign for a reduction in everyone else's income?
Posted by plerdsus, Sunday, 8 December 2013 7:39:51 PM
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Thank you Sue for an excellent summary and for those who are genuinely interested I would recommend the full report that you wrote with Lisa Bortoli and Sarah Buckley:
http://apo.org.au/research/pisa-2012-how-australia-measures
And thank you Chris C for introducing a little bit of enlightenment into the dross. If the majority of correspondents with their simplistic, doctrinaire comments are products of an education system of the past let's hope we are doing better today.
It would be good to have a genuine discussion on education, but On Line Opinion does not seem able to provide it. For those on Linked In the Australian College of Educators has begun a discussion group.
Posted by Ian K, Sunday, 8 December 2013 8:09:54 PM
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