Kevin Donnelly's proposal would lead to more "dumbed down" students; students less capable of thinking for themselves and educated in their own particular religious or cultural cocoon. Too many student leave school not knowing how other people in different cocoons live and what those other students think and believe. Also they have never tested their own ideas against the often different ideas of students from different backgrounds.

There is one way to improve the education system and guarentee the future internal well being of Australia.

Eliminate all indocrination effects by teaching all young students how to think clearly. It is easy, give each student the opportunity and encouragement to listen to and evaluate the ideas of every other student they are in contact with. And, expand the range of backgrounds each student is in contact with.

Encourage each student to listen politely to every other student's ideas, and throw their own ideas into the discussion, on as many open ended questions as their group can think of for their age.

Give every student such an opportunity for one hour per week from the very start of their of school education and their intellectual ability will improve at least by 6-7% and the behaviour of every student will improve substantially.

Bullying will be virtually eliminated as students learn to negotiate their differences.

Don't take my word for it; read and evaluate the evidence for yourselves. That is what I am advocationg the children do. Try it yourself.

The first and best evidence is available at On Line Opinion. Read it at,
http://onlineopinion.com.au/documents/articles/Clackmannan.doc

Kevin Donnelly's recipe is to continue the indoctrination of young children and undermine Australian society and our long term well being.

Well written well researched cogent article, most parents with school age children will likely agree with. Autonomy is good; and clearly proven best practise; but, that freedom shouldn't extend to a completely standardised compulsory national curriculum. After all, our dependence on mining and services, means a very mobile populations and kids continually obliged to frequently change locations and schools; often without much forewarning mid term.
Simply put, teaching is a vocation and part of a growing service industry; and, not every teacher is there for the best reasons? Even so, those that are prepared to put their hand out for the taxpayer funded pay packet every week; ought to be au fait with community views and values.
Untried and unproven theories/teaching methods are all well and good; but need to be convincingly proven, before being introduced into the class room! Our kids are not specimens; nor are our classrooms laboratories!
Nor are school districts fiefdoms for political activists! There is no place for that or political indoctrination inside our classrooms. Green views may be good, but ought only be introduced, with countervailing views and the lessons of history! It's supposed to be education not dogma indoctrination; and how to think; not what to think!
Autonomy ought to allow more funds to be directed away from entirely unnecessary central administration and onto the coalface inside the classroom.
A win/win outcome; except for unelected petty tyrants trying to preserve their minor empires?
More autonomy could enable more local/regional competition for funding and students; and, parents able to vote with their feet?

Common sense tells us adults ought to be in charge not children. Children ought to be encouraged to discuss cultural difference critically; and indeed, identify any perceived shortcomings; and, the right to be different, but only in a very controlled and moderated environment; rather than a largely uncontrolled school yard. Where ethnic and other difference can become right of entry into a pseudo tribal club; and or, a mindless excuse for bullying?
Personal phones ought to remain in lockers during school hours! Kids ought to be obliged to socialise with each other; not a small clique of club members! They are there to learn and expand their minds; not close them off. If a parent needs to talk to a student during school hours, it ought only occur via the school phone system. This ought to allow the school to have some insight into home conditions/supervision etc; some of which may have extremely important education consequences/outcomes?
[And, Kids must be instructed that gum must be disposed off hygienically for very cogent health reasons.]
My experience seems to suggest, holding the biggest bullies responsible and accountable for eliminating bullying, seems to result in a bully free culture. However, only genuine autonomy, would allow such radical innovation to be introduced or allowed?

The trick in this discussion is the use of the abstraction, “autonomy”.

The true history of autonomy on Victoria is that schools here gained curriculum autonomy from the late 1960s onwards. The Coalition government that ran the state from 1992 to 1999 made a song and dance about increasing school autonomy but what it actually did was reduce school autonomy and increase principal power. It centralised curriculum control, reduced professional input at the school level and imposed onerous time-consuming accountability mechanisms. To this day, it has the media and commentariat fooled. My first school had more autonomy in 1974 than my second last did in 1994.

Victoria has had elected school councils, supported by the teacher unions, since the 1970s. It has had local appointment of principals, supported by the unions, since the 1980s. It has had local appointment of senior staff, supported by the unions, since the early 1990s. It has had local appointment of all staff, supported by the unions, since the mid 1990s. It has had principal budgetary control since the mid-2000s. But it still has some teacher input, and principals are not free to fire people on a whim.

The real issue is the distribution of power between the school community and the principal. The claimed school autonomy of the 1990s was a pretence under which power was taken from school communities and concentrated in the hands of principals, many of whom lack the leadership skills that their colleagues of 30 years ago showed every day and who are already out of their depth.

Foyle’s cry from the heart to employ the ‘one way’(only way?) to improve Australian Education is no doubt well meaning - but sadly well removed from reality .
Helping children to think clearly is central to good education.
But is Foyle's way the only way? I don’t think so.

Dr Donnelly’s very clearly argued case for releasing Australian education from the ‘soviet style’ of inflexible, centralized education in the iron grip of the unions and remote bureaucrats, accountable only to ideology of the Government of the day, is supported by some very compelling empirical evidence.

Education in Australia needs more openness and accountability. Schools need to be more transparent and accountable to parents and the families they serve.
Our recent attempt at a national educational improvement does not bode well. The new Australian Curriculum fails to clearly articulate what schools are expected to teach their pupils.
So obscure is this new document that school systems are finding it necessary to provide ‘expert interpretations’ to convey to experienced classroom teachers just what employing authorities think the new curriculum means. In Queensland this is being achieved by the confused ‘C2C’ initiative.
The outcome of the Australian Curriculum is likely to be one ‘curriculum’, many interpretations, and poor standards for all.

It is time for all Australian families to enjoy much greater choice, and a say in how the school their children attend will be run.
For years, families who can afford to pay fees have had this freedom. But left wing ideologues in the unions and government have decreed that this option should be denied to the neediest members of society – and the research shows that the education opportunities of these children have suffered.

Who has stood to benefit from this situation?

Is it because the left believes that underprivileged children should be denied the benefits identified in the research Dr Donnelly cites or because it will destroy the hegemony the left enjoys in the grotesquely centralized enterprise that Australia employs in the falsehood we accept as ‘equitable public education’ controlled by big unions and big government bureaucracies?

Nice article. Expect the frothing of the mouth.

'Local research by Gary Marks, at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) concludes that Catholic and independent schools outperform government schools even after adjusting results for students' socioeconomic background.'

please don't threaten tax payer public funding by pointing out facts.

CARFAX, you must understand that as soon as you turn your post into anti-left rant you sound like a right wing nut shouting at the wind to stop. It's clear you hat....
The thing that is missing from this piece as other have said, is what does Autonomy mean? The author is well known for his ideas, but he lives in a fantasy world however his ideas never have to be tested. Where he can cherry pick the stats to fit his conclusions. My take is to always mistrust someone who can’t or won't tell the down sides of their ideas. It means they either have thought them through or their ideolog, either of which disqualifies them in my view. No system is perfect.
I also can't help but notice that most people pushing for "choice" in schools are likely is from a dogmatic religious background as well.

The author comes off as a cultural warrior not an education academic.

I think the NBN will make a national curriculum easier to impose; and give recalcitrant teachers far fewer excuses; for quite deliberately disadvantaging those placed in her or his charge; particularly when inculcating the basics, which become the foundation stone and building blocks; upon which the rest of a child's education is built!
[And indeed, whole of life academic outcomes and career pathways.]
If a few teachers find that "boring" and want to experiment; I say, get a job in a lab. For mine, it is never boring imparting new information,[for them,]to young children. The trick is to make it interesting.
If one wants to argue that the curriculum ought to be changed or updated; to line up with our most successful school's topic choice and methods? Well who could argue with that?
Only rebels, without a stated cause; seeking to impose an entirely inappropriate and unacceptable Ideology, perhaps?

Autonomy in the hands of a really good leader is excellent. Autonomy in the hands of a tin-pot dictator is disastrous.

Those who want a detailed account of recent educational history in Victoria can go to:
http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/462500.aspx.

The question of autonomy is connected with the notions of “public” and “private”, words thrown around in so much discussion of education, and thus with funding systems.

My submissions to the Review of Funding for Schooling argue for an explicit staffing ratio for all schools (18:1 for years 3-6 and 15:1 for all other levels), a student learning entitlement sufficient to support those staffing ratios ($6,993 for years 3-6 and $8,320 for all other levels) ands a base funding amount of up to $250,000 for each primary school and $1,000,000 for each secondary school. These amounts would fund two and eight teachers respectively plus other costs. All schools whose fees do not exceed $1,000 would get the full SLE from the state and federal governments on the same cost-sharing basis for both public and private schools.

Sadly, the federal AEU’s submission was so poor that it did not even attempt to make a case for any particular staffing formula or any particular funding level. This has lessened the chances of the review making a recommendation in the best interest of the students and teachers (i.e., the AEU’s own members) in public schools but not the chances of the federal AEU complaining about whatever the recommendation is.

Links to my submissions appear at:
http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/542494.aspx?PageIndex=2

There is one rule that every school should have to observe under pain of losing its operating licence: no school should be allowed to coerce children to believe theories that do not enjoy at least close to unanimous endorsement from the people and organisations in the world best qualified to appraise them. This, of course, would mean that there would be no place for schools that require children to hold to certain beliefs as a matter of mere faith. It would not mean that schools would be unable to encourage children to appraise certain beliefs in which significant numbers of adults have faith but it would mean that schools which chose to offer children this opportunity should do so after the manner described by Foyle in the first post on this paper, not after the manner beloved of hell raising preachers in pulpits.
Assuming a person to be a Christian or a Muslim or a Keynesian or a Socialist presupposes that the person has made a decision typically only capable of being made by an autonomous, well informed adult. Schools that assume that their students are little Catholics, or Mormons, or Muslims or capitalists, and which claim the right to indoctrinate them in the beliefs of those faiths, assume a role that should never be allowed by an intelligent country anxious to minimise the reasons its citizens can find for hating each other.
Does Mr Donnelly have any evidence to refute the suspicion that the more autonomy schools have, the more likely they are to use it ensure that undesirable and difficult students never enter their hallowed halls nor imperil their value added scores?

Ah Kenny an 'ad hom' response followed by a false dicotomy, stock in trade tools of the 'true believer'
If advocating choice for all families and better opportunities for all children, rich or poor, is a right wing rant then I am pleased to plead guilty as charged.
I was not aware that advocating anything other than left wing ideology in education was shouting against the wind.
Looking at Federal LABOR and various State Coalition initiatives on increased school autonomy it seems that winds of change may be upon us.
Do find yourself a suitable coat.
It could be chilly.

Choice in education is there, the problem is the unfair divide of the education funding. Also if these schools want autonomy then they should forfeit some of the taxpayers funding to them.

Carfax: "If advocating choice for all families and better opportunities for all children, rich or poor, is a right wing rant then I am pleased to plead guilty as charged."

Watch your words. If you are really advocating that all parents should have equal access to the school of their choice, you must be implicitly proposing a massive change in the distribution of the nation's wealth towards that huge majority of parents who, at the moment, have a snowflake's chance in hell of being able to afford an elite school.

Another thing: You are dreaming if you think that the private schools would ever allow a situation in which parents of the children who are difficult, disadvantaged or dumb would ever able to knock on their door with their vouchers in their hands and demand that their children be taken in. The manifestation of their autonomy that elite schools value most is not the ability to adapt the curriculum to suit their own philosophy; it is the power it affords them to block undesirables from threatening their tone; and their NAPLAN scores.
I applaud your view that all parents should be able to choose whichever school they like; but don't assume that the right wing will. The last thing many of them want is for their children to come in contact with the children of social undesirables.

And yet another. I'll bet that the commentators who claim that the elite schools outperform government schools on value adding after allowing for disadvantage have assumed that the relationship between NAPLAN type scores and ICSEA type scores should be linear. They possibly also think that a 20ºC day is twice as hot as a 10ºC day when, to an American, those days would be 68ºF and 50º.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/06/gps-special-re-airs-fixing-education/

I watched an interesting programme about education on CNNs GPS,
over the weekend.

It sounds like Bill Gates is throwing some huge money at the problem
of how do we land up with better teachers?

Its an interesting question, for boring teachers droning on and on
and on, they must have loved the sound of their own voices and
we were compelled to listen, was part of the major problem.

The Khan Academy approach, makes huge sense to me. I would have
learned a great deal more at school, had it been available in my time.

Hopefully some forward thinking Australians involved with education,
will do some trials with it, here in Aus.

Yabby,

Attracting good teachers is the key. There are many excellent teachers around but unfortunately as the status of teaching continues to decline, teachng will continue to struggle to attract the best quality recruits.

Teachers and universities have themselves to blame. So long as teachers and academics see education as a means for redistributing wealth rather than as a means of individual improvement than curriculum standards and the quality of personnel will continue to fall.

The most politically incorrect thing to say is that if teachers really want the status to improve they must attract more men. Women make fine teachers and there are many excellent female teachers, however the plain and unpalatable truth is that women often have babies and when they do their priorities change. Work is simply not as important for them anymore. They often reduce work to a few days a week. Men on the other hand often define themselves by their work. It assumes a central importance in their lives. They are also less likely to follow the latest teaching fad. Unfortunately (again) with all the hysteria about child abuse etc, teaching is just not attractive to many men. Why would you study for 4 years, acculumate a big debt and then have people look at you suspiciously because you are a teacher?

I taught in the UK recently. In many schools I went to the only men were foreign relief teachers like myself. It is just culturally unacceptable to be a male primary school teacher in the UK. What a shame for kids (esp. boys who are doing so poorly under the feminised teaching structures) and for society. I don't hold out any hope of things changing soon.

What about the transformation coming with effective mobile internet / GPS and light weight Tablets, UltraBooks (whatever)? Why spend a bucket on a school or Uni and often mediocre teachers when the best can record lessons, and the learners responses are reliably recorded for open and verifiable evaluation. Schools past Primary should no longer be an industrial process.