Chris C,

People like Kevin Donnelly and their pet parrots like HRS don't want to know about democratic decision-making in schools, the regular use of data, information-sharing meetings, curriculum planning and hard-working, thoughtful teachers.

That's way too much reality. They'd rather wallow in the old myths about falling standards, immoral or slack teachers, leftist dominance and the good old days when schools ran like factories and people knew their place and were kept there.

Please don't spoil things for them by intrusive accounts of reality.

HRS,

Re marks: under VELS, C means that the student is at the expected level; B, six months in front; A, 12 months in front; D, six months behind. Thus, a student who starts year 8 with a C and finishes with a C has actually made 12 months improvement. One who starts with a B and finishes with a C has made six months improvement - not good enough, I agree, but I am simply trying to give you the terminology.

ENTER scores are not marks, but rankings. If there are 40,000 students, the top 20 or so students in the state will get 99.95 whether their actual standard is higher or lower than the year before. The next 20 will get 99.9, and so on.

Comparisons are meant to be of like with like; e.g., Victoria has had a high proportion of students with non-English speaking backgrounds for years; such students will have lower marks unless they are first taught English, which is what the system attempts to do. Some schools have a large proportion of students from poorer families, and their marks will be lower unless the system invests more money in helping them, which it does - though not to the extent necessary.

I have taught for 33 years, 28 of them in leadership positions (including two periods as an acting vice principal), so allow me to make some observations. Students today are no worse behaved than students were when I began teaching in 1974, but they are much less willing to do the work that is set. This is not the responsibility of the teacher but of the students and their parents, who seem to see education as less valuable than they saw it as 30 years ago. This observation is not due to socio-economic factors, as my first school was in a poor Housing Commission area.

Attacks on teachers seem to have become a self-replicating lie. The first lie is believed and then repeated by those who know no better - and so it goes. Attempts to correct the lies are usually refused publication.

Kevin Donnelly’s argument is that the Left has wrecked education, so let’s have another “intrusive account[] of reality” about which side did the damage:

Wasting energy on re-organizing and renaming the Education Department/Ministry of Education/Office of Schools Administration/Department of School Education/Directorate of School Education/Department of Education/etc/etc (both sides).
Under-funding of school maintenance (both sides).
Cutting teacher salaries in both real and relative terms over the decades (both sides).
Reducing discipline in schools in the 80s (Labor).
Introducing the low-standard VCE (Labor).
Using retrospective legislation to get out of legally enforceable contracts with the teaching profession (Liberals).
Dumping 9,000 needed teachers (Liberals).
Increasing class sizes (Liberals).
Increasing teaching loads (Liberals).
Reducing elective choice (Liberals).
Abolishing history and geography in favour of the mess of SOSE (Liberals).
Reducing the number of marks required to get an A in VCE English tasks between 1994 and 1996 (Liberals).
Putting large numbers of teachers on short-term contracts (Liberals).
Putting principals on contracts to facilitate their supporting the Liberal attack on their colleagues in the classroom (Liberals).
Removing teacher input from principal selection (Liberals).
Changing principal section panels so that it was no longer required that the majority of members be local or that the majority have educational qualifications (Liberals).
Increasing the power of principals to bully and victimise their staffs (Liberals).
Introducing limited tenure promotion positions and bonuses for sycophants as command and control devices (Liberals).
Introducing performance plans, annual reviews and all the mad jargon of the business world (Liberals).
Bogging schools down in charters, triennial reviews, data-fests and the like (Liberals).
Discriminating against teachers and other department employees on School Councils (Liberals).
Destroying the advantages of economies of scale inherent in a system by making schools spend thousands of person-hours creating their own versions of key selection criteria, etc. (Liberals).
Running a campaign of denigration against the teaching profession (Liberals).

It looks like the Right has done far more damage than the Left, the Left in this case simply being the Labor Party which, according to election after election at the state and territory level, represents the majority of Australians.

It is often claimed that students are not taught facts any more, just PC attitudes. Below is evidence to the contrary - my school’s year 8 history course, based on VELS.

A student should:

1. show knowledge and understanding of medieval societies:
1.1 daily life, the role and work of various groups, the division of labour between men and women, education, rituals and family, clothing, housing;
1.2 the values and beliefs of medieval societies through their religions, myths and legends, and their social and political structures;
1.3 the ways that medieval societies were governed, political features and the nature of the political system, the dominant groups and how they established and maintained power;
1.4 key events and significant individuals (the fall of Rome, the Viking raids, the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror);
1.5 the influence of trade and contact with other cultures.

2. know and use historical concepts:
2.1 time – chronology and sequencing, change and continuity, the ability to locate periods within a time frame;
2.2 cause and effect.

3. compare key aspects of medieval and present societies;
3.1 aspects of 1 in medieval and modern times;
3.2 influences of medieval societies on contemporary societies; for example, the origins of written law, democracy and the calendar; the limitations on the power of the monarchs (through the rule of law and the writ of habeas corpus); and the origins of major world religions;
3.3 key concepts of democracy, governance, the rule of law, justice, religion, liberty, authority, leadership, culture;
3.4 key individuals’ contributions and legacies.

4.use historical conventions:
4.1 use of a variety of primary and secondary sources;
4.2 evaluation of historical sources for meaning, completeness, point of view, values and attitudes;
4.3 reflection on strengths and limitations of historical documents;
4.4 identification of the content, origin, purpose and context of historical sources.

5. use historical processes:
5.1 framing key research questions to guide their investigations, planning their inquiries;
5.2 using appropriate historical evidence to present a point of view and to report on their findings;
5.3 documenting sources by using a bibliography and footnotes.

Not particularly left-wing, is it?

There you go again Chris C!

I told you before that facts only confuse people who want to believe what the Donnelly's of this world want them to believe. We all 'know' that schools are full of left-wing, post-modernist, value-free, relativist apostates. Please don't muddy the waters with actual evidence.

here it goes again

BLAH BLAH BLAH

You know how to solve this but no keep going whether its liberal federal or labor at state you still have the problem but due to the inground beliefs that you have you have no interest in schooling but about political bashing.

When will you see that a change can be made if we work together for a goal and not a political party based policy.

When it comes to solving this it is up to the people that is us not politicians who have created this whole mess with you banging your heads againts each other.

Its just like opening a door but you lot are trying to pull in one direction and the others in the other direction.

You do as you are told and how to follow now how about looking at the problem and stop listening to those that are telling you what to do but look within and what does it tell you what to do.

Now that is the morally right thing.

Now that since i have had no replies from anyone this tells me that your interest is education is only party politics based and you have no interest in fixing the problem, also at the rate the liberal and labor governments are selling off Australia it wouldnt suprise me if education is well on the agenda.

But just in case here is my contact again.

email:swulrich@bigpond.net.au
Australian Peoples Party