Steele. Disagree with your take as would the overwhelming body of critical thinkers who do not allow others to think for them! I believe we should support excellence with appropriate financial reward, rather than the lowest common denominator and mediocracy currently foisted on us by unions!

And should not need militant unions to achieve that very outcome! Just a rationalised and guaranteed reward remuneration objective set as it should be by a non-government tribunal If amounts as large as 2 million P.A. are ok for NDIS executives, then why not for thoroughly more valuable, ultra-competent teachers? Were that the remuneration paradigm, how many of our best and brightest be drawn to teaching as
their preferred career path?
Alan B.

If English was a phonetic language, through and through,teachers would be leading the call for phonics. Please, can we all accept the fact that English is NOT a phonetic language and that pushing the inclusion of phonics, or worse the exclusion of all other ways of teaching the language, will NOT solve all the problems that learners face.

It is reasonable for lawyers to have a lawyer as Attorney-General. It is reasonable for doctors to expect someone with medical knowledge as minister for health and farmers to have a farmer as minister for agriculture.

Why appoint someone with no recent knowledge of education other than their own distant schooling as minister for education and let them start fiddling with curricula that classroom teachers have to deliver.

The article is a clear and lucid explanation of what has gone wrong and what needs to be done to restore things Even more worrying is the future prediction that those in charge will run our country into the ground I do not think this is a future prediction it is already happening and unless people wake up and begin writing to their members of Parliament and the ministers of education both State and Federal and stating clearly they want this dangerous and inferior educational model to be thrown out and replaced by a sequential generous curriculum with a rich and deep offering of music ,art ,sciences, physical activities, reading, writing, math ,history and geography.

My comments are not 'smart-arse' comments, ttbn, but reflections by someone who was a classroom teacher from 1968 to 2012, who completed a degree in Education and Geology as an external/evening student, a master's degree as an evening student and who is completing a doctoral degree as an external student.

A major theme for me, throughout my high school teaching and learning, was literacy in the subject I taught. I see myself as someone with a bit more knowledge of literacy than most people. People who have made no attempt to see what schools are actually doing but who push 'fads' can be really annoying.

The greatest danger facing every Australian child is the education system & left wing feminist teacher.

imacentristmoderate,

Yes, aided and abetted by politicians who are lazy and gutless, or they actually support the nonsense. Generation Z has shown itself to be the most ignorant and uneducated in history. Lord knows how much lower future generations will descend into uselessness, at best, and hazardous to society at worst.

I had a good laugh at Brian's suggestion that the federal minister had power over the states because he held the purse strings. No federal minister has the guts to withhold money from the states.