Ispiring teachers? It's more like unpaid(?) ALP advertising to promote current state elections.

What the heck is it doing here on these pages?

Tut-tut, naughty.

The comment

"A great teacher knows both the content of their subjects back to front, and how best to teach that content to their students"

is good and obvious. However, the modern school syllabi in almost all cases have downgraded content. Content and facts have almost dissapeared from some syllabi. For example, the new Qld Physics syllabus has a single completely unhelpful page on content. It does not say what will be taught even though it is a 30 odd page document.

You are right, we need to encourage great teachers, but we must do something about the crazy syllabi as well.

Well done Jenny,
"I may not agree with you all the time but I will defend your right of free speech."
My teacher never got the quote right,and I have suffered all my life.
Good teachers like good parents are so important.
Some children are naturally gifted and no matter what stands in their way they will always finsh up on top.
I like many writers have been lucky enough to be taught at primary school by a remarkable teacher.
She was awarded the C.B.E. by the Queen for services to teaching.
My brother became a judge and I a City Councvillor,my sister the salt of the earth the mpother of two children both successful people.
From little things grow big trees.
Well Done Jenny,state election or not,who cares.

Jenny,

I think that is the most simplistic piece of rubbish I have read for some time. Great teachers inspire students to great feats of scholarly brilliance? Many of the State Labor Government funded schools are so poor and so badly resourced, paying teachers $10K more would never compensate for the fundamental shortcomings in teaching aids and infrastructure. You could pay them $20K more and they will still fail to lift student standards. The money needs to go into the very basics, some school in the southern suburbs of Brisbane for example, are so poorly resourced teachers are subsidising student education with their own money. They are so poorly resourced that 12 year olds have reading ages of 7 year olds.

You and your Labor mates need to stop tinkering around the edges and have a real good look at your funding history and hang you heads in shame. The equalitarian Labor Party has presided over the formation of an intellectual up and under class in this country. You have no right to come to this forum with your advertising hype!

Jenny, there’s some truth to what Woody has said. But there is also some recognition in your piece that current state governments have no idea or interest in putting the teaching profession up there ^ where it belongs.

The most critical flaw in your proposal is that you have not examined curriculum in teacher education at all.

See Kevin Donnelly's tripe here on line opinion - about Leftist teaching for instance and you'll understand how the Howard government has created a crisis in education just for ideological reasons.

Labor needs to understand the education wars. You fail to address this at all in your piece.

Its a hodge podge of progressive and draconian methods and approaches to teaching and learning for pre-service teachers.

Labor needs to invest from the first year in teacher education, not try and fix them after they have graduated.

And guess what Jen; the best and brightest do not always make the best teachers too. (what a stupid myth) Many good teachers are born, the others simply work hard at it against the odds and many don't give stuff and just roll with the flow. Sadly many good one have just given up waiting for change

Jenny,

Interesting article. I am a registered high school teacher who, in principle, agrees with the concept of rewarding excellent teaching. Primarily for the reason that their seems a current generation of teachers reluctant to engage with their students in meaningful ways. For example, I often see great, modern, useful technologies being blocked at the staffroom door as teachers struggle to even check their email daily.

However, as previous posters have pointed out, there currently exists a massive gulf between the top and the bottom schools - even within the government sector. So it seems unreasonable to apply the same criteria to all teachers when assessing their excellence.

So how do you (Labor) propose to accurately judge an excellent teacher while taking into account the socioeconomic status of their school, their class sizes, their school's level of resourcing, the number of special needs students in their classes and the myriad other differences that make every school environment unique?