Kenny,

You are ill informed.

Faith based schools, including their curriculum, are subject to review by Government school inspectors and their students must pass through the VCE gate to go further in education.

Many of the faith based schools are far from small with numbers of children ranging from 500 to 1,000 students.

I know a number of children who have been home schooled, are in their twenties, normal, balanced young people, succeeding in tertiary education, gaining employment, getting married, having children, people this nation can be proud of.

No political party of any persuasion is going to propose closing non government schools, not least because of a) the cost to Government on a per pupil basis is less for private school education vis a vis public school education and b) voter backlash.

True, there is nothing wrong with home schooling, especially for those students whose needs are not adequately addressed by the public system.

On another matter, how can you base teachers wages on their performance? Just how do you measure a teachers performance? Will it be based on the results of the students?

“teachers may be paid based on their performance, rather than the union award”

Just an opinion asks
"how can you base teachers wages on their performance? Just how do you measure a teachers performance? Will it be based on the results of the students?"

There is a method of measuring how much children learn in a year. In a nutshell, you test their numeracy, literacy and IQ at the beginning of the year, and then retest their numeracy and literacy at the end of the year.

By comparing the child's improvement with the average, and possibly adjusting for socio-economic status, you can get an idea of how effective the teacher has been,

The curriculum should be expanded to include;"Making your marriage last",and "How to invest wisely" since we can no longer rely on hard work to secure our futures.

The ignorance of these two objectives have created a lot of poverty.

Good point Arjay, I have always believed that schools could provide more teaching in 'life skills', such as driving, negotiation, communication and humanities. I realise that many schools do offer courses like this I would just like to see them become universal.

How to measure teachers' performance is difficult. My son is dyslexic something that wasn't discovered immediately, while we have long since addressed that problem, his performance back then was not due to any failure on the part of the teacher. She was the one to bring my attention to the possibility of dyslexia. A system just based on student scores isn't necessarily a reflection of the teachers' skills.

An indication would be whether kids are happy, motivated and interested - all subjective I know. But high grades really aren't everything.

''PARENT POWER''

Aboriginal students should have no study plans that are diferrent to any other or ''white students''.They should be assimulated into our education system totally,and under the same rules as white students with racial laws obolished,in other words ''no special treatment'',with parents having no more of a say then white or other

parents of other cultures in the curriculum of our government schools or the management of such schools.

Open educational markets-This is not a business,how stupid and pathetic an idea,THIS IS GOVERNMENT FUNDED EDUCATION FOR OUR CHILDREN,THE FUTURE OF THIS GREAT NATION.

ITS NOT THE STOCKMARKET