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The Forum > Article Comments > Q&A and the education policy debate > Comments

Q&A and the education policy debate : Comments

By John Turner, published 15/3/2013

Australian education on the road to Americanisation.

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Why Mr Turner? Because governments slavishly follow the dogma that quantitative analysis of performance will legitimise the allocation of resources and ultimately maintain and/or increase political influence over how and where money is spent. I’m an advocate for returns on educational investment but more time, effort and resources need to be allocated towards two less narrowly constructed outcomes based on increased qualitative performance assessments, namely, improving teacher quality and supporting life-long learning characteristics instigated in latter infant and primary student learning years.

A rebuttal of simplistic observance of PISA/ TIMSS system assessments has been made by Jennifer Buckingham: https://www.cis.org.au/images/stories/issue-analysis/ia136.pdf

A broader assessment of various national school system outcomes has been examined by McKinsey & Company:
http://www.redage.org/files/adjuntos/How-the-Worlds-Most-Improved-School-Systems-Keep-Getting-Better_Download-version_Final_0.pdf

Bennery
Posted by bennery, Friday, 15 March 2013 8:14:00 AM
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You've nailed it John. Thanks/
When Bob Brown was in charge of the Greens their education policy was much more about social equity than either of the two major parties.
(Not sure whether they're still in place now that Milne is in charge.)
The educational advisors who are responsible for educating Pyne and Garret are incompetent no-nothings who pander to the populous junk that neocons like Alan Jones and others of his ilk subscribe to.
A pox on both their houses!
Posted by Cambo, Friday, 15 March 2013 8:20:37 AM
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500,000 studies have shown that “the sage on the stage approach to teaching” leads to students knowing more than the alternative “guide at the side”. Dr Ken Rowe is the source. If a teacher does not know more than the students, he or she should not be a teacher.

Ken Boston misrepresented his own report when he said the Gonski principle was “that funding should be calculated on the basis of the measured difficulty of the job facing each individual school regardless of sector”. The Gonksi panel actually proposes to fund private schools differently from government schools, so “regardless of sector” is nonsense. Nor is funding based on “the measured difficulty of the job facing each individual school”. It is based on the wealth of the people who live near the students; i.e., the Howard government’s SES model, which the panel calls “capacity to pay”.

I will be providing a more detailed comment on the Q&A program on Sunday. In the meantime, those interested in the realty of school funding and the Gonski proposals, both of which have been poorly reported in the media, will find the following informative: http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/576719.aspx?PageIndex=1.
Posted by Chris C, Friday, 15 March 2013 9:27:10 AM
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I suspect that one of the reports that Mr Turner referred to is the one at http://onlineopinion.com.au/documents/articles/Clackmannan.do
Posted by GlenC, Friday, 15 March 2013 9:32:34 AM
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Education in the US is unequal because the schools are funded by taxes from local districts rather than from larger political entities. As a consequence of such funding schools in districts with a high average income and a desire of the voting public to direct money to schools are excellent. My education was in US public schools during the 1930s. Even though this was during the depression my education was a very good one. The high quality was partially due to the depression. Highly qualified people who would ordinarily not be teaching turned to teaching because of lack of opportunities in other ways.

Have funding in Australia on a national level in Australia, and there will not be the inequities that there are in the US case.

One reason the school results are not as good as they could be in Australia is the diversion of public funds to private schools. That is one area in which the US has got it right. In the US there are private schools, but they are financed either by tuition or by the organisations supporting these schools. Public funding for private schools in the US is illegal.

To improve Australian education:

1. Make teacher's salaries in the public schools competitive with jobs in the outside world.
2. Restrict public funding to public schools. Eliminate government funding to private schools. This will have the immediate effect of increasing the student population in the public schools. However, the influx of higher quality students will improve the public schools, and the increased money available will pay for it. Many parents send their gifted children to private schools because the public schools are not as good. Make the public schools better, and that will not be the case.

Private schools are primarily religious. The segregation of students by religion is in my opinion no better than segregation by race which was outlawed in the US in 1952. Parents should have a right to send their children to religious schools. However, the cost of such a choice should not in any way come from the general public.
Posted by david f, Friday, 15 March 2013 10:00:27 AM
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Well said John Turner. I too went to some considerable trouble to be part of that Q and A audience, and share your concerns regarding the choice of questions to be presented to the panel. The debate was all about the distribution of money, and little or nothing concerning the future direction of education in this country. Christopher Pyne using the time honored dog whistling tactics of the coalition made it clear that wealthy private schools had nothing to fear as to loss of government subsidy in the event of a coalition victory at the forthcoming federal elections.
As to why this country chooses to follow the wealth based, divisive, and unproductive American education model rather than pursue the demonstrably better outcomes of some Scandinavian countries is a mystery yet to be fully resolved.
Posted by GYM-FISH, Friday, 15 March 2013 10:35:22 AM
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As per the other comment, we pay peanuts & naturally we can expect to
find monkeys in the teaching profession. We need to have higher quality teachers especially in the primary schools or even at preschool where the early formative years are the most important period in the learning process for the child. Developed western economies undervalue the importance of teachers in schools.It's
time that we make the teaching profession as glamourous as law,
IT etc.
Posted by pw1aa, Friday, 15 March 2013 1:59:30 PM
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ChrisC re;
"500,000 studies have shown that “the sage on the stage approach to teaching” leads to students knowing more than the alternative “guide at the side”. Dr Ken Rowe is the source. If a teacher does not know more than the students, he or she should not be a teacher."

In this age, when reports on nearly every aspect of learning are so readily available, students need to know how to evaluate what they find. The thing they need to be most competent at is thinking, even thinking outside the square. They need to be able to evaluate the information that is available on the things that are important to them and the society they live in.

The teachers and lessons that I remember from my school years are the teachers and lessons that stretched my thinking ability. In my era I think Euclidean Geometry was taught, not because it was all that important in itself, but because the subject taught the students to think. I loved that subject, and physics. Some decades later I still do.

The Khan Academy has a free site which carries an extensive range of free lessons in "sage on the stage form" but to evaluate what is there the students need to be able to think clearly. That is what the first of the two reports referred to in Mr Turner's paper is all about - starting early to teach children how to evaluate evidence and opinions. Thanks to GlenC for providing the directions to that report.
Posted by Foyle, Friday, 15 March 2013 3:21:32 PM
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Thanks for raising the Khan Academy, Foyle. I think I know how to while away my weekend now, without doing the chores I had promised myself I would do!
Posted by Otokonoko, Saturday, 16 March 2013 5:28:33 PM
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A bit like bald men fighting over a comb, Education is an industry on the precipice of disruptive change. Why have your child held hostage to the latest fads flooding through the bowels of the local school when an average internet connection will provide instruction from the best on the planet. Locality is no longer a protection for sub-standard teaching.

Smart Educationalists are grappling with this now (starting a few years ago), particularly the current State system of factory style education is steadily becoming extinct. They cry "where is our respect", someone should tell 'em its earned not issued.

Even the great unwashed out Blacktown (you know citizens, remembered by Labor every pre-election) voice the opinion that schools are sheltered workshops for the staff and try to get theirs into the local independent (usually) Catholic school.
Posted by McCackie, Monday, 18 March 2013 8:41:58 AM
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Australia faces a bleak future. We either go the track of traditional manufacture which means competing with Asia and there cheap labour. Which means a large drop in standard of living (for some, the worker). Or the alternative which is go high technology industry development.
The problem with high tech, is that you need masses of well educated people who have the ability to "think out side the box".
Since the 70's our education system is based on memory. Not understanding. My children can remember mathematical formula, but what it means is lost too them. All they know is that if they remember it and spit it out at exam time, they'll pass.
Successive Australian Governments have led us down a path of fools where education is concerned. Why? Because industry mostly only want fools. Educated people know there worth and how too get it. For example, look at the leaders of industry, not too many fools there. Fools are cheap for industry. For Governament, there is the old saying, "a fool and there money is parted easily".
One third (and probably more) of all your income, goes to taxes. Your taxes pay for most children's education. Wake up Australia. Demand value for money. It's your money. Your children. Our future!
Posted by JustGiveMeALLTheFacts, Monday, 18 March 2013 4:37:31 PM
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Interesting point - though your assertion that education based on memory rather than understanding had its rise in the 1970s isn't entirely true. The model of schooling endorsed from the Victorian period to the present has always been based largely on memory rather than understanding. That's what didactic ('good', according to Mr Pyne) teaching is best at. It is, perhaps, best satirised in the opening lines of Hard Times by Charles Dickens.

Interestingly, moves away from regurgitation of facts are often vehemently opposed. Queensland's controversial Critical Literacy Syllabus in English was panned, opposed and eventually suppressed. Many of the things said about it were simply untrue; others, unfortunately, became the truth in some classrooms because some teachers were unable to cope with the push for thought, understanding and analysis it endorsed. Ultimately, the 'back to basics' approach won out and we settled for kids who could read texts without thinking about them, write texts without putting thought into them and recount other people's interpretations without ever understanding them. It's certainly true that some teachers are substandard practitioners. Others, however, are capable of working well above the expected standard but forbidden from doing so and hamstrung by substandard curriculum expectations.

Perhaps you're right, then: the nation wants people who can do without thinking, rather than people who can understand what they are doing.
Posted by Otokonoko, Monday, 18 March 2013 9:58:33 PM
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What a ridiculous article.

Comparisons akin to apples vs oranges, unfounded generalisations, random anecdotes, etc (I'm very happy the nice lady had a pleasant birthing experience!). And let's not forget the usual, "Look to Finland for our salvation" argument. We aren't Finland in any way, so trying to force their education model onto Australia is absurd.

How disappointing, when I was looking for a factual analysis of the issues facing education today.
Posted by rational-debate, Tuesday, 19 March 2013 6:46:46 AM
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Foyle

I agree with most of what you say. Of course students need to evaluate what they find. My point is that the total touchy-feely group project open classroom approach is nonsense. Teachers can use all sorts of techniques – discussion, projects, group work, the internet, even giving a lesson. The point that gets lost in the “guide on the side’ mantra is that they are the ones in charge of the process. They ought not just hang around letting students do whatever they like.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 2 April 2013 9:07:16 AM
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