Sorry Jolanda, but I think you're going way too far down the conspiracy theory road. Things like the Daily Tele can hardly be considered 'left wing'!

Also, teacher's kids have just the same issues as anyone- my mother is a teacher, and while I have done well academically, my brother left school at the end of year ten and did a trade apprenticeship- hardly unfair access to selective schooling! If teachers kids do have any advantage in schooling, its the fact that their parent/s have a keen interest in learning.

Jolanda - I suspect the reason you came across a lot of ex teachers is because instead of sacking the bad ones they just move them into administration. Be thankful - at least they are not actually teaching!

I am a NSW State trained Primary teacher... I am also home schooling my 5 year old daughter after two terms of Kindergarten. Why? well... my own experience with teaching lead me towards Montessori education... which is really a method used to help children become effective peace makers. My daughter attended a Montessori preschool for two years prior to attending the local state school (her choice to go...and I supported her, but was always prepared to home school her if it didn't work out). One day, after we walked home, she threw her bag down, and in a fury I honestly did not expect from her yelled "Do you know who the biggest bully is in our class?" I just shrugged (I was a bit taken aback actually...) "Mrs XXX!" Her teacher!

I volunteered in her class with a reading group weekly. One cold rainy day the assisting teacher had just finished marking the roll, and with folder still on her lap, six children one after the other arrived late. It was pouring out and their parents must have made mad dashes to drive them to the gate as there was mayhem and there were kids everywhere. But the main class teacher sent them all back out into the rain to get late notes... even though the roll was still there, in the class. THEN the class teacher chose two "VIP's" to take up the roll to the office.

I have witnessed staffrooms. Some Teachers REALLY DO swear about children… they complain about trivial things brought to schools, parents, siblings, and sometimes how they can’t stand kids… NOT ALL TEACHERS…. When I taught casually and the day I HAD to yell at a class of year 6’s, because as they said “we won’t do what ya say miss cos we can walk right over ya..ya gotta do what Mr XXX does and yell at us real loud miss”…I quit teaching in the state system. I was changing my love for the job and appreciation of the learning experience into what "the system", was forcing me to become…a bully.

Continued... My daughter asked if she could home school instead of going back. She made mention that she wanted to go back to preschool where you were allowed to be yourself, and that her Kindergarten teacher was making all the children become bossy.

At the 'school gate' one morning, a mother had said to me that her girl "has a real attitude since starting school... but what can I do... you only have em for five years, then they belong to the school". She meant it, and we even argued about it... in a friendly way!

Jolanda, you are absolutely right... racism is alive and well in our education system. But from my experience people don't acknowledge what they can't see... and too often those people (parents, teachers, principals, and of course students) are just parroting what they hear without thinking. I am a blonde haired, blue eyed female, but am also a descendent from an Aboriginal blood line. My mother and sister identify as Aboriginal, but I refrain out of respect, as until we are sure of the country we come from, this side of me is 'ghost like' and awaiting the stories necessary for me to 'learn what this means for me'. I am a bit ultra sensitive to racism, because people assume they can say anything around me, and not offend me. My Step mother is Jamaican, my father Scottish, so my half sister and I don't exactly look alike. I was 12 when she was born and watching her as she has grown up into the lady she is now it has often shocked me how 'polite' people become suddenly rude. None was harder than my sisters first school. Her mother actually moved them so that my sister could "mix with more colour" and get a fair go. (They've always lived in Sydney).

Has anyone else out there been following our government's purchases of FAILED American education programs, such as HEADSTART? I believe that this is part of the problem too...