Hasbeen,

I’m not going to challenge your experience of individual teachers. I worked in education for 33 years. There are good and bad in every walk of life. My experience was of hard-working, dedicated and caring people. My criticism is that they tended to be naïve and industrially weak, ready to complain about their workload but not understanding that it was the result of decisions they themselves had made at both the collective and individual level. Victorian teachers had their working conditions stolen from them by the use of retrospective legislation in 1992. They have just voted overwhelmingly for a deal that will not restore what was stolen, but they will continue to complain.

The teacher pay issue is a long-term one. The declines in pay and entry scores, that went together, did not happen quickly, but over many years. To attract more able people to teaching will also take many years, but restoring pay is one of the necessary strategies.

Paying teacher less than they get now will drain the profession of the most able people in it. This really should be obvious.

I wrote about the 'Gonski' myself yesterday, and while I agree with much of Scott Prasser's perspective on it, I have gone rather further in one area:

http://donaitkin.com/education-needs-much-more-than-a-gonski/