vanna,

Why are you still saying “report cards”? Did the teachers you lived with them call them that? As I have said twice already, the term used universally in schools in my time as a teacher was “reports”. How did this Americanisation of the language sneak in? Or was it just Victoria that used “reports”, while other states actually wrote them on “cards”?

There hasn’t been a “tragic” decline in maths and science, as the PISA results show year after year. There has been a minor decline in comparison with some other countries, the reasons for which are complex. In reading, the lowest decline in Australia, was in Vicotira, where is was an insignificant 516 to 513.

I put that best performance in the country down to the Labor government’s re-investment in education – i.e., the spending of more money – and its re-introduction of some sort of system in place of the previous market rules.

I worked with hundreds of teachers over 33 years and none of them had their No 1 priority as getting money from the government. Many of them knew the benefits of smaller classes and decent teaching loads (which do cost money) and they, like all workers, wanted to be well paid, even the more than $20,000 more that they got in 1975 compared with now. Society would, if it cared about children, support them in their quest for decent working conditions and pay because society would want the most able people to go into teaching and to stay there.

Victorian stonemasons won the 8-hour day 155 years ago. All employees should fight to retain it.

Chris, perhaps vanna is a north Queenslander.

They were always called report cards, when I went to school there, & they were in fact a card, so not all that much on them.

However, unlike today they did have the most important things for parents, interested in their kids progress, like percentage mark scored in a test, & position in class, or in some subjects, position in that year.

The incompetent teacher who's kids were all doing badly, could not hide behind a whole pile of bull dust about competition being bad for kids.

I was appalled when my oldest daughter did HSC and I found out that the the point of the English exam was to regurgitate a memorised essay. As far as I am concerned this makes the English exam a speed writing test. I thought the point of an exam was the unpredictabile question which forced the student to think on their feet and write cogently in a limited time frame.

What does the current form of the English exam assess? As Daniel Brass says it tells us that the student has a good memory and can write fast. How do we know that the memorised essay is the student's own work?

I thought the point of English was to teach students to communicate, but good writing seems to be rather low on the list of tasks in the classroom. The rationale for English that Brass shared with us in his article does not mention communication as a rationale for English.

Realising that Brass had quoted a small extract I checked out the NSW Board of Studies document online: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/english-syllabus-from2010.pdf Communication is discussed in the rationale of the course. However, the impression that I have is that the quest to identify techniques in the texts being analysed and the 'paint by numbers' approach that Brass believes is encouraged by the curriculum leads to a lack of time spent in developing the ability of the students to effectively communicate what they found in the texts being analysed. One of my daughters who is currently doing year 12 observes that English teaches students to deconstruct texts but not how to construct a text themselves.

I would like to see a lot more time allocated to helping students become better communicators. We need a curriculum that gives teachers the time and encouragement to do this.

I have lived in every Eastern state of Australia and been either a student or parent of a student in each one. Each state/place has a different vocabulary that is used for education (and also for some other things). I agree that 'report cards' sounds American and I certainly did not use that phrase or hear it when I was at school or more recently as a parent in most places that I have lived. However, it seems to be an extensively used phrase in Sydney.

Let's just accept that in some parts of Australia different language is used for different aspects of education (eg different names for the first year of school and the last year of school). While there are strong similarities between the education systems of each state, they have operated separately from each other for well over 100 years. It is therefore understandable that over time different words are now used to describe the same thing.

Has been,

Perhaps vanna is a North Queenslander or, from what Perkinsy says, a New South Welsh.

If you have any evidence that ranking students’ position in class adds to overall educational achievement, please share it. Most schools I taught in graded by letter, but one graded by a mark out of ten to one decimal place (effectively the same as a percentage). It made no difference to work standard or effort.

Competition existed in every school I taught it. It is a myth that it has gone.

Perkinsy,

Perhaps instead of seeing “report cards” as an assault on my Australianism, I should see it as an assault on my Victorianism. I fear it may be another case like the so-called standard gauge. NSW reneged on the deal with Victoria and SA to have broad gauge in the 1850s, yet managed to get its gauge adopted as the standard throughout the nation 150 years later. I hope that the same does not happen to reports, given that there is no “card” involved.

Chris C
Having smaller class sizes makes no difference if the teaching methods are not good enough.

The decline in maths and science has become so extreme that universities are now describing it as “critical”, and the PISA test does not test for what a student knows. The TIMMS test does, and ranks Australian students below world average.

These students are technologically illiterate, and while the class size for science subjects in many high schools has declined dramatically, the student marks and student interest in science and maths has declined also, due mainly to inadequate teaching methods.

As for English, it was found that about 30% of foreign students applying for permanent residency in Australia could not pass the immigration department’s standard test for English. This is after they had completed a degree at a so-called Australian university. So they could pass a degree at a so-called Australian university without being able to adequately read and write English, and who knows what the standard is for the rest of the students in the country

I have yet to find a teaching who does not place getting "Government funding" as their highest priority, and I really don’t believe teachers would care if the standards for English fall below world average for English speaking countries also.