Rhosty has presented another valid side to the argument. I personally like the Singaporean method. Out of work teachers are paid by the Government (work for the dole) to tutor students that have fallen behind. They are assigned a student. A student may have different tutors for different subjects. If homework isn't done then the parents are asked for a please explain & can be fined if it’s found that they can’t be bothered supervising homework.

I have another approach. The best way to learn anything is explain it to someone else. (teach) A method I use on backward students. It works. "But now for something completely different" To quote the Goons. Average students do reasonably well at school. So they're fine for the most part. Above average & below average students have an enormous problem.
Above average students, get the concept easily & get bored waiting for the average students to catch up. They create & get into trouble because they are bored & lose interest.
Below average students just don’t get it. Or can’t get it because the pace is too fast for them. They create & get into trouble because they are bored & lose interest.

As a former teacher and now a parent, I believe the main problem with our Australian education system is mediocre teachers. We simply must get better teachers and be able to get rid of non-performing ones. The problem is, everybody seems to know who is and who isn’t a good teacher except the schools! The children know, the parents certainly know and speak of it regularly amongst themselves. This is not an issue of infringing on teacher’s autonomy or professionalism. Mediocre doctors, for example, simply find that people go elsewhere. However, in a school, your teacher is allocated to you by the institution. You have very little choice who teaches your child, so evading a mediocre teacher is much harder. Therefore, the school must assess its staff regularly. Measuring the performance of teachers through student testing, parent experiences and peer or leading-teacher mentoring is a sensible approach which will deliver fast results. Mediocre and underperforming teachers should then be able to be quickly removed from the institution, rather than allowing multiple generations of children to languish under their tutelage.

continued from my previous post.

There is a ready solution to this problem. I believe it stares you in the face. No one wants to recognize it because it’s not a Politically Correct Solution.
Combine the two outside groups. Let the above average students tutor the below average students in the same class room. The above average students consolidates by teaching & the below average is helped by his peers to create an interest in learning. Therefore his grades will improve. Neither group will get bored & lose interest.
There are others outside that. The exceptional student who has special needs & those at the other end that just will never make it at all. It’s not PC but the World has a need for Geniuses & those who would be Slaves as well.

hadassah89: We simply must get better teachers and be able to get rid of non-performing ones.

I agree mate. I've had some dreadful teachers in my adult education. Some of them know the answer in a myriad of ways compute 2+2 but couldn't explain how to do the sum once.

I had a bad teacher in grade 6 & 7. The same teacher taught both classes simultaneously. He was an aggressive & loved the cane & bullying. He was later sacked & his teaching licence revoked, but it was too late for me, hives & all. I never achieved any where near the grades I achieved before. Top of the class to bottom in one term. The two classes went from getting an average of 90% to 55% in one term. I still have my school reports from 1950 to 1960. I failed Junior miserably. I have made up for it since.

So the message is, if you get a bad teacher & lose the plot, it's all downhill from there.

The problem is psychological abuse of teachers in a 40 V 1 no-win classroom scenario.

Its not such a problem in select or private schools where authorities, parents and kids are INTERESTED in learning and RESPECT is evident.

But in the 90% slum schools where kids don't want to be present a teacher needs to be a front row forward and an Albert Einstein to not only get success but to maintain SANITY.

The Ed Dept. deliberately throws good teachers into this melee and expects attrition. They waste people like bloody generals in war. And they waste fortunes of taxpayer funds and LIVES! Its all covered up with statistics and bad grades melt into swanky inter school NAPLAN test results.

Solution:

No teacher should have to face even remotely hostile classes alone. In war 3 to 1 is a certain loss. In a classroom the odds are stacked at 40 to 1! Ignoring this is fundamentally ignoring the huge human potential of the classroom. It is replete with all manner of danger.

If that means having 80 students and two teachers that's a better option. One teacher teaches, the other roams to maintain discipline, deal with hands-up questions, deal with daydreamers who are getting left behind and fostering the 10 brightest students to also roam the class at appropriate sessions to assist with revisions. The latter being the TRUE basis for future teacher stocks.

I've seen far too many excellent teachers who have the best intentions just give up under the psychological and threatening environments of a hostile classroom just in order to maintain discipline (at the expense of learning) that could be erstwhile achieved by multi-teacher classrooms.

To my mind its the Education Dept bean-counters that needs educating & with that, teachers will get the respect & mental freedom they require & students will fall in line forthwith!

So you all keep getting stuck into the teachers once again.

KAEP...Discipline should start at home, so if little Johnny/Sally acts like an uncontrollable brat in the school time lines, maybe the parents should take all the blame. Mine were "disciplined" before entering the education system. True, its only 20% of these mums and dads that relates the "too cool for school mentality" and the same parents were taut by their parents and so on. So the cycle is never broken.

Definion.....In its original sense, discipline is systematic instruction given to disciples to train them as students in a craft or trade,or any other activity which they are supposed to perform, or to follow a particular code of conduct or "order". Often, the phrase "to discipline" carries a negative connotation. This is because enforcement of order – that is, ensuring instructions are carried out – is often regulated through punishment. Discipline is also believed to be one of the main pillars of modern life, according to many different religious beliefs.

This is also why more jails need to be built, because of the " I want to be a JAIL want-to-be" why on earth would some parents want to do this to the children they say they love and get payed for? The rest of Australia's good parents have to put up with these small hand fulls that destroys the other 80% of students.

Maybe all expelled dysfunctional students should be allocated and sent to just one special education facility preferably the most run down school for reassessment.

Or the armed forces.....that would be my choice.

Why waste good Australian men when the "jail want-to-Be's" just love shooting up decent lawful people in our towns/cities.

Plenty of all you can eat"drug wise" and the Taliban need something to shoot at as well:)....ok, maybe thats not such a hot idea;)

you know the old saying" one bad apple spoils the barrel.

Its better than the jail system......remember once your in the government's hotel, your life is as good as over.

maybe its better just to invest in some overseas students...20%

cc

Ah Plant1.3!

Nothing like seeing the GOOD in people eh!

If a student has the MIND to disrupt an entire classroom he has the mind to excel in abstraction and thus higher mathematics.

But you need one teacher teaching him and one keeping him in line. The mainstay of one teacher to 40 students is NOT an option for a civilised and progressive Education system.

I sum your reply up thus: "what we haf here is 'failure ta commune-a-cate".

Surely you're not for real!