HRS

Two quick points about your last post.

1. Your suggestion that chaplains may "act as a catalyst to ensure the teachers are actually carrying out quality teaching" is a bizarre variation on an already ill-advised government decision to pump funds into religion in schools. What pedagogical expertise will these chaplains have? Who will they report to? Will teachers, in turn, be able to ensure that chaplains carry out quality chaplaincy? Or will we call in the lollypop men and women?

2. Re your anecdote about a science test. Let me tell you my anecdote: Recently my son got 94 out of 100 for his science exam and received an A-. When he asked why not an A or A+, the teacher said most of the class of 26 (in a state school) got between 87 and 98. So which of our personal anecdotes will we use to assess the quality of teaching in our schools? Or would it be better to avoid altogether assessing the state of teaching across the nation based on personal anecdotes?

That was real outrage not 'mock outrage' because it is outrageous to infer that Traditional Religion is right for everyone. (Applying trad religion in the process of teaching right from wrong, implies that trad religion is right.) No place for agnostics, scientologists, geometric paradiddles or atheists there.

Also I would like to challenge the assumption that if education is poor than education is to blame. One of the prime symptoms of family distress is poor school work - with half the marriages in this society going up on the rocks maybe a lot of the educational dysfunction is much more related to what is going on at home. The larger representation of boys over girls could also be due to something like the demonization and derision of men in this post-feminist culture.

In addition, with respect to things like grammar and spelling, when I was young we were surrounded with correct spellings and grammar - even signwriters could spell. Nowadays, in an attempt to attract attention, words are often deliberately spelt incorrectly or grammar is scrambled. These practices provide 'bad examples' to young people who, it must be remembered learn now very much as we did when I was young, that is by imitation.

Frank Gol
My relative was in a QLD state school as well, and your anecdote and mine highlight the completely arbitrary nature of so much of the education system. When something is so arbitrary, there is the very great likelihood that there are significant inefficiencies occurring in that system, and I think that the author has highlighted this often enough in his various articles on education systems.

It is also a myth that teaching methods have improved over 30 years. I have given links to data relating to this earlier.

After being on a P&C association in a medium and a very large school, and after talking to many other P&C association members, it leads me to believe that their biggest problems result from not getting sufficient information about what is going on inside their schools. Quite often a Principal will only tell them what the Principal wants them to hear, and often a P&C association can only rely on what the Principal tells them.

But a P&C association can make use of a Chaplain to find out more about what is occurring with the students inside the school, particularly if there are students at risk inside the school. That’s presupposing that the Chaplain system works well enough.

A P&C can also train a Chaplain to give them information about what they want to know. For example:- They could ask a Chaplain to provide a monthly or semester report on the school, and then compare that to what the Principal has told them.

Potentially the Chaplain can provide better information about what is occurring, and a P&C association can make good use of that information. That’s how the Chaplain can become a catalyst for improvements to occur inside a school.

If you have an interest in education, I could only encourage you to join a P&C association. It can be a real eye opener.

Let's see if I've got this right, HRS.

Your first point: If the schooling system were less arbitary, results would be more even across the nation. Your mediocre Queensland school would get better results and my excellent Victorian school would become more mediocre. There's efficiency for you.

Your second point: School principals can't be trusted to tell parents what's really going on in their schools, so we should employ chaplains to provide better alternative reports for parents. When we get that right, I reckon we could redeploy the Principals as church wardens. Think of the salary savings. After that, I could see school chaplains providing alternative daily news in the mass media - and if they make a decent fist of that, I reckon we could then make a move on Parliamentary inefficiencies and untruths, eh.

HRS, you're a gem!

Since when were P&C associations alternative governance structures for schools? My experience of them is that they can contribute significantly to outcomes for children through their own voluntary deeds or were disruptive forum of control freaks who made the lives of teachers and principals hellish.

Kevin is the most rigidly idological writer on education that I have encountered.He is a senior member of the liberal party and his output has positioned him well on the right-wing 'gravy train'. I believe he is also the recipient of 'no bid' government contracts. His writings, while purporting to be academic in nature, are in fact,a thinly disguised glorification of the Howard Government and not so thinly disguised attacks on teacher's and their Unions.