Morning Vanna - not a case of no answer, I just don't log on to this site from home. Nice to see the family from time to time!

"As you may be able to tell, I really am over the stage where I automatically believe anything said by a teacher."

If you wish to accuse me of lying, or even distorting the facts, then please do so openly. I have not done so, and am not sure what possible gain I would have in doing so, especially on an anonymous forum...

The "high disadvantage" to which I refer can be summarised with a few generalisations (not my preferred mode, but hopefully will shed some light in this instance).
- Lack or parent connection with school and education
- Low or sporadic attendance
- Single parent families (as mentioned by you)
- NESB
- Difficulty in attracting staff to South West Sydney
- Etc.

What are we doing about this? Well at my school, the following:
- Engaging parents in a many ways as we can, in the classroom, parent nights, information evenings, etc. There is a very strong correlation between parent involvement and pupil performance. Drives my staff crazy that I am always expecting them to go to this night or that, but it works.
- Spending more than we can afford on support staff
- We host both Speech Therapists and Occupational Therapists on site, to make accessing them more convenient for parents (note we don't pay, just take some of the pain out of getting to and from these services)
- We are in dialogue with any outside professional (universities, specialists, etc) who will talk to us about strategies we can use for struggling students
- We have embarked upon a whole school programme that continually evaluates everything we do, and this includes feedback from parents, students, etc

Sorry that this is a quick response, but work calls.

Rational-debate
It is good that your school is attempting something, as I do think the situation is quite likely to get worse in future years, particularly with an increasing number of children coming from a certain family type that produces an inordinate number of “disadvantaged children”

I could give some opinions that may help.

Not to use terms such as NESB, as few outside of education will understand it.

Attempt to get two way communication with parents, and parent nights and information evenings do tend to be one way communication sessions.

Show credit where credit is due, and I have noticed that if a student does well, then the teachers will say that this is because of teachers and not because of the student’s parents, but if the student does badly, the teachers will say that this is because of their parents, and not because of their teachers.

Engage the students by setting goals and class projects or even school projects.

Eliminate feminism or male denigration out of the school.

Develop a workable system of performance pay for teachers.

Please note that the above are in reverse order of importance.

Fritz:

"Now with the addition of funding sources we can finally have an informed debate about what the minimum funding level is to guarantee a quality education and ask why the the Feds are "topping up" private schools to a level well above this when state schools are well below it."

Valid point. By looking at the data, it is revealed that the federal 'top-ups' do not push private schools above state schools in funding; in fact, the Catholic school at which I work sits nearly $1000 behind the local state school in per-student funding. Interestingly, we achieve extraordinary outcomes despite this.

Otokonoko
"THE nation's most elite private schools have at least twice the income of the average government school yet their students do little better in national tests than their peers in the public system."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/elite-school-students-dont-excel/story-fn59niix-1226016177993

I would think that once a certain level of funding is reached, any extra funding makes very little difference.

There has to be “fire in the belly” for both the teachers and the students to achieve better results, not more taxpayer funding.

Nothing puts “fire in the belly” better than performance pay, or without a well functioning performance pay system, the employees will just go through the motions.

For students, they need to be engaged and also interested in the learning process.

"Eliminate feminism or male denigration out of the school."

I think you'll find denigration of either sex is explicitly prohibited in the state school system, and it is clearly explained why.

If there is a specific instance in which you or your child is denigrated in this way within the system (from any member of the school community) then you have every right to demand that this be rectified.

Blanket comments to the effect that such denigration is commonplace and accepted in a commonplace fashion are incorrect, misleading and do not help.

I'll be happy to provide examples if you are willing to define exactly what you mean by "feminism" in the system and to give concrete examples of this.