Brian while I agree with you that much syllabus development has been dreadful, too much input from academics & not enough from the classroom, teachers MUST stick to the syllabus once it is set.

You say my experience is at one school, but so is a teachers. With our much more mobile population schools must make it easy for kids transplanted into a new schools, by using the same syllabus, in the same order, at the same time. Teachers running off at a tangent may be good for some pupils, & fun for teachers, but is too damaging to some kids to be allowed.

I can't see any escape from testing to achieve a relativistic look at a teacher's and a schools (teachers') performance.

From a school's perspective, some expectation of its performance must arise from an understanding of its demographic, so it can be compared with schools of similar ilk.

From a teacher's standpoint, if standards fall under their watch, consistently, it should be observable as students move through the years through a number of teachers while having their literacy regularly externally measured.

Those charged with oversight of schools and teachers must have the right to try to correct matters, if Oz is to rise in the rankings. Unions should not stymy this.

If your cynicism has a basis, BoB, it may be in the overseers too often having insufficient classroom experience to be capable of fully informed judgement of the data. Too many aspire their way into management without spending enough time in the ranks, in many industries, leading to simplistic, alienating, organizational solutions. The trouble, too, is that those in the ranks wear the odium for poor outcomes, rather than management. All the above has gone on since time immemorial.

Luciferase, your last paragraph makes my point precisely. Many of those making policy have never been in a state school classroom, having been educated at an independent school, and they have no idea of the problems faced by teachers working with students with unhelpful attitudes to attendance, behaviour or work rate. The parents of many students did not have success when they [parents] were at school and the attitude of the parents is reflected in the performance (or lack of it) of their children.

State schools lack the ability to expel or in, the case of many principals I have worked with, the drive to begin the long, slow process of convincing higher-ups of the need for it

When PE teachers are teaching Maths and Physics it's a new low. You can't inspire children when the teachers aren't inspired.

Perhaps it's time to import proper teachers ?

Dear Jo,
you talk of literacy in your article and yet I find it hard to reconcile the figures you put forward in your article. So I decided to fact check...
"Australia has a major problem. UNIFEC rates Australia's Literacy standards as 39th in the world out of 41 countries. 2016 International PIRLS literacy results of Year 4 children found 21% cannot read and there was a 'significantly long tail of under-achievement' of other Year 4 children."
I would ask that you reply and provide your sources for your statistics because they don't seem to come from the sources themselves.
UNIFEC(?) doeesn't rate Australia's Literacy standards. But part of the measures UNICEF took in the 2017 Innocenti Report card did look at an element of 'quality education' which mass media also misquoted, as the element where Australia fell down was pre-school attendance. Apart from that we did quite well (above the average)- literacy included.

And I'm wondering where you got your PIRLS data from? "The latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) results, released today by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), show 81 per cent of Australian Year 4 students are achieving at or above the Intermediate benchmark (the proficient standard for Australia), compared to 76 per cent in 2011, with more students achieving at the High or Advanced benchmark." The article here "https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/pirls-2016-year-4-reading-and-literacy-results" quotes the numbers correctly. That can only leave a possible 19% to be below the Intermediate benchmark, not 21 as you say (curious where the 21% came from) and which is a bit of a stretch to then suggest there is therefore 19% (or 21) illiteracy.