Ian,

I accept that you were not making a personal criticism.

My experience of flexibility is that it is all one way.

One of the schools in which I was a timetabler used the provisions of the Victorian agreement to have lectures and tutorials, but it was very rare because of the complications of in structuring the curriculum of a school. I have no objection to new approaches, but I insist that the basis remain a set pupil teacher ratio based on a class size maximum and a teaching load maximum. Those who say otherwise do not specify how much larger classes have to be.

Classes of 25 have been standard in Victorian high schools for almost 40 years (in the 1970s in strong union schools; from 1982, in all schools). (In techs, the standard was 20 students.) I see no reason that this cannot be afforded in the much wealthier society we are today.

As for the general issue of educational improvement, I could write a book on it, but my current focus is getting the Gonski report implemented without its continuation of the Howard government’s SES model.