What the author and all the commentators on the issue have failed to appreciate is the fact that the most recent scientific research into literacy indicates that a child's reading ability is 70% genetically determined, which means that putting added pressure on young children via furthing testing regimes will have little beneficial affect.

Moreover, one of the predictors of a child's future educational achievements is actually the number of books possessed by the household they reside in, a more important factor than how much they are read to.

As a parent of a 6 year old of above average reading ability who nevertheless was not reading when he commenced school but who has been read to since an early age, I see little evidence of a literacy crisis. Instead I am deeply suspicious of a debate that is seemingly driven by a consultant to a federal government who educational policy is overseen by a politician more interested in political stunts as a way of increasing his profile than in making substantive improvements to the educational system.

Maximus, Pray tell, the difference between a boy or girl in the education system? My daughters teachers have treated both equally, as I have been in the classroom on several occasions, and haven't noticed any difference in treatment, as I stated in my previous post, the teachers my child has had have been very professional, very disiplined {unlike one or two of the students} and give not only their genuine attention to students, both male and female, but also give their time freely to fundraisers, and school promotions, outside their normal hours, however if your experience differs from mine, I would very much like to hear your views.

Shonga,

Try this - http://www.kittennews.com/depts/mag/johng_01_boys.htm

And lt me tell you, it's 100% the truth.

Again what we witness here is the progressive degradation of society as we knew it. To understand what is happening today we have to rewind the history tape some 50 years back or so.

Two major factors happened then: the individual emancipation and the distrust /disregard of authorities. The natural consequences of that is the moral decline of our society.

What does this have to do with literacy and education? I can answer that with a question: How can we expect the morally bankrupt to act on our behalf and make regulatory rulings and guideline decisions?

The minimum requirement for good governance of a nation should be based on an acceptable level of health, education and security.

As a nation we are doomed on all three counts. But then again how can we expect change if we lost the bench mark standards to compare it to?

The moral debate should be at the forefront today if we want to save our nation from total bankruptcy.

The major problem is that teachers no longer teach.We have the duel problems of the left wing Teachers Federation and an Education Bureaucracy comatose with fear of litigation,hence teachers made impotent with red tape and regulation.
Today we seem to have many teachers neglecting their duties by finding some glamorous artistic activity such as drama that may only cater for the top 2% who will achieve anyway.The real nuts and bolts of Reading and Mathematical concepts fall by the wayside.

It was only recently that I learned that reading around the class has been frowned upon by the whimpish left since the less able will feel socially alienated.Well I said to this retired teacher who painted the present debacle,why not give all the poor readers a passage to prepare the night before an thus display their eloquence and before their peers.No, the left wing Teacher's Federation take all the soft options.

I used to think I was an average teacher back in the 80's,but now I think I did a really good job.

We need:

National program for mothers for pre school age children giving them insight and tools to provide their child with basic numeracy and literacy prior to school, i know many are aleady doing it off their own bat, but it is a case of the haves and have nots and we need to take the competitive advantage off the middle and upper class to ensure changes are effective.

Subjects introduced alongsid maths and english, including:

Property - The home is the basis and centre of wealth for Australians, and nessecary provision must me made for this understanding to be passed to all students, rather than the haves and have nots again.

Business - The growth in SME's in Australia is immense, and in the future almost as many children will be contracting/running small businesses than working in one, therefore it is Australia's responsibility to provide the tools, business skills and the like to help success rates.

Leveraging - A most essential ingredient also. Almost every person will acquire credit or levarge during their lifetime. It is Austrlia's resposibility to ensure our children understand the dangers and outcomes of credit, both bad credit and good, so they are equipped to face the world with less chance of uneducated, damaging finance decisions that ruin them before they are 25, as almost half of all under 25's at present facing this problem.

Retirement - Once again, this generation is the first generation that will have the knowledge and ability for retirement to be a choice, therefore strategies aligned with intended career path can give goals, direction and planning to a child that can also steer them on the path to a stable successful future.

We need to combine the existing fundamentals with these new ones, because at present we are not training chilren with needed life skills, they are overdone on some things and completely underdone on others. until this happens, education effectiveness will decline more and more.