The whole education system stinks.

The brightest and best are hardly ever the best academically, they find it boring, monotonous and many lay undiscovered until they get the chance to shine in life. As you know, the most successful do not come from the top, they come from the middle and upper ranges who sail through their academic life, many under the rader.

Whilst testing etc should be looked at, it should be a measure of differing things, not how much you can reconstitute back on paper.

A persons intelligence is not tested, yet this should be the basis for how they learn.

As long as we can read, write and communicate by the time we leave, that is all that matters.

Kevin Donnelly is right that reading should be a priority when teaching children. It is universally held that people with inadequate literacy skills are severely disadvantaged throughout their lives in a number of arenas, from the most basic means of interacting in society to acquring and maintaining employment and ensuring ongoing financial security.

Kids who read early, read well and have good comprehension, often come from homes where reading is encouraged and valued, and similarly where learning and education are seen as worthy pursuits. This is one of the challenges for increasing literacy amongst the children of parents who have had unpleasant school experiences: because like it or not the biggest influencing factor on children's attitudes to school (and their teachers) are their parents.

I don't agree that the whole education system stinks. Schools provide kids with a great opportunity not only to learn the kinds of skills we expect them to have, but also to interact with their peers, from a broad range of backgrounds and life experiences. What programs like 'Reading Recovery' have attempted to do is to reduce the stigma associated with reading difficulties and address the problems before kids progress through the school system. While they mightn't be perfect, it's a far cry from the "passing up or dropping out" of years gone by.

Education is no different to any other subject, it is difficult to say one person is correct, and the other is not, when it comes to opinions,as we each carry our individual experiences. To be perfectly honest I think both of the previous opinions have merit. My daughter is in Grade 1, and is excelling because of parental attitude to school and the teaching process in general, however as the first poster says some are intellegent, without transmitting that to paper in an exam. With the constant interruptions mentioned in the story, teachers must be at their wits ends, in trying to second guess what it is they are supposed to be doing. I only have praise for my daughters teachers, they have been very professional in their approach, take on a multi-facited approach to their work, and really care with a passion for their students. They have a difficult job to do, but manage to do it well. I of course can't speak in general terms, however the teachers I have encountered have been of the highest quality,I believe as a community we should be putting more resources into this field, as these children will be our future.

These discussions are one of the reasons I made sure my three children all were able to read before going to school. There are so many distractions in the classroom, plus the extreme variable of a competent or incompetent teacher in front of it, that allowing your child to go to school unable to read is like buying a lottery ticket. You might get lucky, but equally you might miss out.

I have absolutely no faith in "the system" being rectified in my lifetime, an observation based on the fact that the problem has not changed since I was at school. Given that today's classroom is noisier, less regimented and the teaching less structured than in my day (and more fun, by the way) I can't see an improved learning environment emerging for a while.

I agree with Realist, who eloquently understates the in-your-face obvious - "The whole education system stinks."

And I agree with Pericles, who correctly identifies that he has -"absolutely no faith in 'the system' being rectified in my lifetime".

So there you go, the system stinks and it isn't going to be un-stunk for quite some time. So why do clever people like our Mr Donnelly here keep writing polite opinions about it and not actually do something about it?

We already know the problem exists but we can't change it. Imagine me writing a letter to the local Board of Studies or whatever saying, "Now, look here you chaps, this reading business, you aren't getting the job done properly it seems. Your errant ways must stop immediately and you must strart doing the job the old way."

Yeah, that'd work wouldn't it?

It's a hopeless mess, thanks to the Teachers Federation.

They're the only one's who can fix it, not us. We have absolutely no say in the matter whatsoever. Even politicians can't control them. It's useless.

And to Shonga, if your child was a boy, you might be singing a very different tune.

Kevin Donnelly has often criticised outcomes based education because it doesn't provide teachers with a 'map' to teach to. He criticises it as allowing standards to fall. I agree completely. But I don't think he's made the link between increased testing and highly structured reading programs like RR and AL and the lack of a syllabus.

With outcomes based education failing students, governments have been forced to introduce more testing to force teachers to teach to some sort of standard, otherwise standards would just keep falling. Highly structured reading programs attempt to do the same thing. They fill the enormous gap left by a teacher training system that basically says, just let kids teach themselves - here's your degree, and a curriculum that sees equal value in a coke advertisement and a Shakespearean tragedy.

It might be a pain for teachers, but as other posters have alluded, the system is not going to be fixed soon. We'll be stuck with outcomes based education for some time, so as far as I'm concerned lets have a national test every year for every child. At least then we'll know something is being taught.