Ian Keese has nothing good to say about summer schools for teachers which leads me to question everything he has to say. Given the very low quality of teacher education I received (under a Labor government) I would have welcomed an opportunity to genuinely upgrade my skills at a summer school. While a certain amount of mentoring can go in schools, especially for new teachers, other teachers need quite different sorts of assistance to upgrade their skills, learn about new curriculum requirements and meet with other teachers outside their own schools. It has been done in the USA and Europe for years.
I no longer teach but I know many, many teachers and their reaction has been that they would welcome opportunities to upgrade their skills but they also believe that this will not happen because the AEU will refuse to cooperate. Another positive initiative will not get off the ground because the ALP and the unions will not acknowledge its potential worth.

Communicat, I think you missed the point. Ian Keese was asking some pertinent questions about how the summer courses will be conceptualised, planned and programmed. And whether they will be good value for the amount of money allocated.

It seems a reasonable thing to do. After all the Government has form, as they say. 'Plans' to spend $10 billions on water without clearance from Cabinet or input from the key interest groups should make us all a bit wary of rabbits pulled from budget hats in an election year.

Responsible citizens have a duty to ask questions, just as you do about the quality of your teacher education. Politicians have a duty to provide answers. That's part of the social contract, isn't it?

I have recently seen a document from a training firm for small business owners. It recommended that a small business owner should work 10-12 hr days for 6 days a week, and only has 10 days of annual holiday per year.

The work load of teachers seems like seventh heaven in comparison, but I would agree that teachers who are achieving good results from their students should be passing their teaching methods onto other teachers who are not achieving good results from their students.

Maybe a summer school is the place to pass on those teaching methods

HRS, so small business owner should work 10-12 hr days for 6 days a week, and only have 10 days of annual holiday per year.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Apart from the burn-out factor which ultimately makes workaholics totally inefficient and pains in the bum for work colleagues (and employees) , there is surely more to life than making lots of money.

Where's the time for spouse, parent, friend - not to mention your own quality of life? Where's the personal growth and fulfilment?

The best all-round people and the most effective business people in my experience are those who work efficiently within a reasonable time frame and make adequate time for the rest of their life. The old 8 hours work, 8 hours play, 8 hours rest formulation has a lot going for it in human terms.

Thank you Ian for another article reflecting relevance to current teaching issues.

Unfortunately, education always attracts imposing comments from the ignorant claiming to once have been a teacher or know teachers and therefore their comments are relevant.

Ho Hum ... such is life.

'With only six months ... It is, for example, going to be interesting to see who are given the lucrative contracts to run these summer schools.'

This comment is interesting because last year we had the most pathetic professional development program forced on our school. The blokes who managed to get the federal funding couldn't scrape a degree together between them and were rabbiting on about the sort of rhetoric you get from those who attach themselves to education issues without knowing what the issues are.

Communicat, I am sorry that you immediately jumped onto a party political platform. I specifically quoted Kevin Donnelly, who I have disagreed with on many matters and who has been an advisor to the Liberal Party, but who has similar ideas to me on this particular issue. I have worked under State Liberal and Labor Governments in NSW, and find that once they are in power their political stance played little part in their policies (although my impression is that the effect of Jeff Kennet in Victoria was quite significant. However I am critical of what I see as the illiberal market-driven policies of this particular Government. Robert Menzies, on the other hand, was a great supporter of public education.

To my regular correspondent HRS, when I was teaching I arrived at 8:15 am at the latest, left school at 4:00 pm after tying up loose ends and spent 2 – 3 hrs each on Monday to Thursday evening on marking and lesson preparation, plus 2 to 4 hours on the weekend doing the kind of work that was impossible to do during the day. Yes, not every teacher did that, and those who arrived and left on the bell were paid the same amount, but I got a lot more satisfaction out of it. How you differentiate between these two teachers is a complex question I tried to look at in my previous article. And I agree that Teacher’s Unions, while serving an important function, don’t, and can't, always represent the best interests of the profession.

Thank you Frank Gol, and my colleague and regular correspondent Liz. I try to write to encourage debate, and not close it down.

Ian Keese

Ian

I must speak up for those teachers' that arrive and leave on the bell, because I'm one of them.

The reason I do this is to minimise child care fees. I'm just not paid enough to pay my mortgage, food, fuel, school fees, and child care. Literally very little is left over after meeting the basic needs of a family.

But I spend ALL day Sunday, 10 until 10 at night (sometimes midnight), preparing for the week ahead so I can dash off early. Holidays are spent preparing for the term as well. This is when I write my exams, and I usually spend the time at a university campus library doing this so I can access their resources.

My children are collected by their father one day a week, and I use that day to stay back late and work until the cleaners kick me out.

I am always sourcing for resources throughout the week/end, and find the Sydney Morning Herald a brilliant source of resources for the classroom, particularly their weekend magazine. I hand out articles to all staff members.

I eat on the run at school, rarely sitting down or taking a lunch break.

That's what I see of other teachers as well. They're always rushing carrying large bundles of precariously balanced objects.

Of all the teachers' in my staffroom, I think there's only one that probably is a bit too relaxed about his preparation. He has a wife who is a teacher, and I think she does a lot for him as far as classroom preparation goes.

Liz: I don't wamt to divert discussion into the male/female issue again - but the people I was thinking about who dashed off were usually men, and many of those probably had valid reasons as well. Many of my staff were women in situations like your own, and I know how they used time late at night for preparation - one could see it in the quality of their lessons - and was happy to accommodate their needs to deal with sick children etc because of the overall benefits they provided to the school. One of the great rewards of teaching,apart from knowing that you are actually contributing something real to society, is the flexibiity it gives and your comments support my general thesis that the most valid indicator of "performance" is what actually happens in the classroom - which of course needs sophisticated tools to measure.

Ian

With regards to the selection criteria for teachers to attend these summer schools, why 'leading teachers'? If only leading teachers are to be sent to these programs, what happens to those teachers who are not quite up to scratch or worse, unmotivated and disinterested. Offering these teachers the opportunity to revisit some of the things that attracted them to teaching in the first place might actually reinvigorate their practice.

I'm about to finish my degree at a regional university. While I'm not entirely happy with the quality of preparation I have received, I've also gone out of my way to engage with models of professional development such as attending teaching and discipline specific conferences, have joined two professional organisations and worked as a research assistant during my degree. All this on my own time and using my own money (except the research assistant work where I've been paid to undertake it - but that's because the academics have seen that I am committed to my own professional and academic acheivement and are thus willing to assist me). I've had no holidays during my degree - all those long breaks have been spent working and studying. I intend to continue doing this after I join the teaching profession but I don't think that that should automatically qualify me for a summer school. Far better that the money is spent on professional development at the coalface for all teachers. Only then will the improvements in teacher motivation and student acheivement begin.

Oh dear - now it is party political to point out that my less than satisfactory teacher training was done under an ALP led regime. And even more party political to criticise the AEU no doubt. The ALP and the AEU have been responsible for the shift to the left in education. They dismantled technical schools and special schools - cheaper to have "one size fits all" dressed up as "politically correct". Same groups insisted on "social studies" and teaching a politically correct view of history, of teaching a narrow Australian focus, of filling the children's bookshelves full of either didactic literature about drugs, divorce, rape, sexual equality, AIDS and death or the equivalent of Mills and Boon for children. Give them a wee dose of an Asian language to round it out and they are "educated" but sans the basic skills.
Any wonder the students are bored and resentful?

HRS,

I would often leave school on meeting-free nights before 4.00pm, but equally often I had work to do at home at night, on the weekends and during the holidays. Surveys show that the average working week for a teacher has grown over the years to more than 50 hours.

At my last school, Hampton Park Secondary College, I was the daily organiser. This meant I had to start work at 7.30am in order to re-organise classes for absent teachers. This would usually take about an hour each morning. I averaged 8 hours 52 minutes a week over the year 2000. In some weeks, such as during exams and work experience, I would spend more than twice that time.

I was also the school timetabler. I averaged 15 hours 14 minutes for this job. In total, my leadership responsibilities took me 24 hours 6 minutes per week. For this, I received a time allowance (deduction from a normal teaching load) of 7 periods, or 5 hours and 36 minutes. I call that exploitation.

A 50-hour week is not unusual in teaching. I can point to 60-plus hour weeks in my own time as a teacher. Here are some examples of the time commitment required: Monday 24/1/2000, finished at 8.40pm; Tuesday 25/1, finished at 2.00am the next morning, Wednesday 26/1, started again at 3.50am and finished at 6.50pm; Thursday 27/1, finished at 10.50pm; Friday, 28/1, finished at 12 midnight; Saturday, 29/1, started at 1.05am and finished at 9.25 pm; Sunday 30/1, finished at 10.35 pm. (I do not have records for every day I ever taught. I kept them in this case because I wanted to know how long the timetabling job took.)

All those who go on about teachers’ easy life are profoundly ignorant of the truth. If we had occupational villification legislation, teachers would be the first victors in the thousands of cases that would follow. It intrigues me how so many are so ready to condemn an entire profession when they know so little about what its members do.

Chris C,
I've had a teacher tell me that they work 100 hrs a week, but I didn't believe them. Because working 100 hrs a week would involve working over 14 hrs a day, 7 days a week.

When teachers make claims of working 100 hrs a week, then I think members of the public can question what teachers are saying.

Who knows whether a teacher told you they work 100 hrs or not. I doubt it though HRS.

I think you're a huge story teller.

HRS,

The maximum weekly teaching load in a Victorian secondary schools is 20 hours. The high school maximum was a legally guaranteed 18 hours, but the 1992 government passed retrospective legislation to tear up the contract that set that limit. On top of the teaching, there are preparation, correction, interviews, meetings, yard duty, professional reading, etc.

I suggest that you read a year 7 novel, take notes while you do so on plot, character, theme, language, etc., plan a series of lessons on that novel, set some questions and devise some essay topics. Record how long this takes you. If you were a teacher, you might need to do this each term. You would have to do it again for your year 8 class, your year 9 class, your year 11 class and your year 12 class. It is extremely unlikely that you would have more than five English classes. In some cases, you would be able to rely on the same novel that you have taught before or you may have two classes at the same level, but neither of these situations is as common as it should be.

Once you have set the questions and the essay, you have to correct them. How long would it take you to read 25 essays of say 300 words at year 7 or 600 words at year 11 and put comments on them and record the marks in your markbook? Multiply that time by the number of classes you have (probably five).

Then take a stab at the time required to devise a comprehension exercise, produce a lesson on grammar or punctuation (yes, they are still taught), conduct an interview with a parent, read through applications for jobs, sit on an interview panel, go to the required meetings, do your yard duty, prepare material for your pointless review, conduct the review of someone else, keep up to date with the latest change in curriculum or reporting, etc.

It all takes time, and I haven’t even started on the specific tasks in a leadership position outside of the classroom.

Liz,
I do not lie, I’m not a feminist. Unlike yourself, I’ll also answer questions. Ask me a question, and I’ll give you an answer. That is how honest I am.

The teacher who told me that they were working 100hrs per week was undertaking a small business course. They were about to start their own business because they said they were working too many hours as a teacher. I don’t think they had any idea of what long working hours were like.

Chris C,
I have heard just about everything from teachers. I have heard that teachers work everything from 40 to 100 hrs per week. I think they should pick on a figure and stick with that one figure.

HRS,

It is not a matter of teachers’ picking a figure and sticking to it. If some work a 40-hour week and others a 60-hour week, a 50-hour average makes sense, and the last average I saw from surveys was over 50 hours. Teachers should generally work the 38-hour week specified in their award, instead of allowing themselves to be exploited, but teachers tend to be industrially and politically naïve and expect the fairy godmother to come along and make their lives better.

Victorian MAWOTE were $1107.30 in November last year (ABS 6302.0, November 2006).

In 1975, after seven years a teacher reached the top of the scale and was paid 166.6 per cent of MAWOTE. That equals $1844.76 today, or $48.55 an hour for a 38-hour week. Divide today’s weekly salary of about $1107 for that same teacher by the $48.55 rate will show that teacher is paid for, and therefore should be working, only 22.8 hours a week. In other words, the average teacher is doing about 28 hours unpaid work per week.

As you indicated some scepticism about how much teachers work, I suggested an activity you could undertake so that you might understand how much work is actually involved in teaching. The work does not end when a teacher leaves the classroom or the school.

Allow me to enlighten you on some of what a timetabler actually does - constant meetings with subject co-ordinators, level co-ordinators, sub-school co-ordinators, the principal, individual teachers; timing of blocks so that rooms, part-time teachers, external timing constraints, distribution of lessons across the timetable cycle ( a week, a fortnight, even three weeks in some absurd schools); allocation of classes based on teacher wishes, co-ordinators’ wishes, part-time attendance and available slots, etc; doing clash matrices; resolving clashes; preparing planning and timetable reports; printing and distributing timetables – and all of this can be done ten times a year. If you haven’t done it, you will not appreciate how complex, challenging and time-consuming the task is, even with computers which perform millions of calculations for you.

C. J Morgan
The article is about teachers and summer school for teachers. In posts I have mentioned teachers and summer school for teachers, but I have not mentioned mothers, nor have I mentioned women.

In fact the words “mothers” and “women” do not appear in any posts made by anyone, so maybe you are having difficulties reading.

Have you ever thought of attending a summer school?

Chris C
50 hours a week seems an accurate enough figure, and also an average type figure, as I understand that the average male in Australia with dependant children works about 49 hours a week.

So that clarifies how many hours a teacher is likely to work per week (on average), but teachers also have many more weeks holiday per year than the average worker.

I understand that teachers want more money, so they could work more weeks per year to get extra money, and this can include attending summer schools to upgrade their qualifications.

But of course it has to be judged how effective these summer schools actually are. The best way of determining that is to see if student marks improve, but I think that topic was covered in another article by the author.

There is much confusion in relation to what the Coalition is trying to achieve with their Summer Schools. At a school where a relative teaches, there was a cry of you beauty in relation to Summer School, as the teachers felt that they could pursue development of their personal interests in their subject areas. However, they later learnt that it would only be available to particular nominated teachers and only English and Maths would be concentrated on at the Summer School. My question was what about Science, and they did not seem to know.

Clearly, the Coalition is singling out particular subject areas; it suggests that only Maths and English are the only important cirriculum areas.
Teachers who complete the Summer School are meant to go back to their Schools and teach the staff what they have learnt. The relative suggested that it would be like teaching many teachers how to suck eggs.

Lets face it, the Coalition is involved in administering Education; they have no expertise in how to teach. How many more times are we to think in relation to the Coalition and their current plans; that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

HRS,

As you now accept the 50-hours average, I will refrain from continuing my account of what teachers actually do with their time. However, it does not make sense to me that you compare a teacher’s average working hours with those of males with dependent children. After all, some teachers are single, while others are women. I have no idea where the 49-hour figure you quote comes from. The standard working week is 38 hours. Most who work more than this get paid overtime. Teachers do not. In fact, Victorian secondary teachers gave up overtime payments in 1982 to fund the employment of additional teachers in the system. When the Liberals were elected in 1992, they took away those teachers (and a few thousand more besides), but unsurprisingly they did not bring back the overtime payments.

Teachers are not really seeking “more” money, just some of the money they used to get. If able people who would once have been able to earn 67 per cent above the average after seven years by becoming teachers realise that they will end up earning only the average, they will join another profession, and both the ability and the independence of mind of those entering teaching will continue to decline. What you are endorsing is a long-term pay cut, followed by an offer to get back a small part of that cut by working some extra weeks. This makes no sense to me as it actually undermines the quality of those who will teach our children.

Teachers need their holidays because teaching is a highly stressful job. They already use some of their holidays to prepare for the following term.

Not everything a teacher does can be judged by marks. Nor do teachers have total control over students. Students may or may not pay attention. They may or may not do their classwork. They may or may not do their homework. They may or may not be in a class of motivated fellow-students. They may or may not be in a well-run school. These things are not in the teacher’s control.

Chris C,
The 49 hrs per week for a male with dependant children come from here.
http://melbourneinstitute.com/hilda/pdffiles/RDrago.pdf

Go to tables 5,6 and 7 at the bottom of the file, combine all the data and you get close to 49 hrs a week for men with dependant children, while women with dependant children are working less hours.

There are also tables for singles in the study.

So the avg type hours being worked by teachers is not much more than the avg hrs being worked by many other people in our society.

I think you will also find that many people’s wages or purchasing power have reduced in time, which is why many households now need at least 2 incomes to run the household. In the past only one income was often necessary.

Why all this has occurred is another topic, but the basic way to increase wages is to work longer hours or improve productivity.

If teachers don’t want to work longer hours or work in their holidays, then they have to increase their productivity. It is the same for everyone else.

Chris C, that is a cop-out. Yes, students may or may not do their homework, classwork, etc. but part of the teachers job is to motivate them and pique their interest. Not just cough up content. My high school english teacher, for example, was fed-up with her (NSW) general english classes attempts to understand the text, so engaged her related english class (next level up) to sit in on a lesson and play devils advocate - something that we took great delight in! It at least fired up a few people and no doubt got them better marks as a result. Its just innovative thinking. My physics teacher was also a timetabler, and often left his physics class in charge of his most capable student to teach itself, while he did his timetabling. Our behaviour was based on the threat of being demoted to biology (a GIRLS class! - yes I'm aware of the irony, but I was the only girl in my physics class).

Look, there are plenty of teacher that put in huge amounts of time and effort, but like most things, its the exceptions that really get up the nose of the general public. Those that brag they can teach a lesson "off the cuff..."

As for teaching being a high stress profession, it is certainly not one that I would choose, but there are plenty of other high-stress professions too, and they dont get the same time off, so please dont use that as an excuse.

HRS,

I am unable to access the document you referred to via the web address you gave me. I have gone to the main website, but I still cannot locate the document you refer to. There is a 2005 statistical report that gives the average working hours of 42.3 in the main job for men with more than one job, so this is not the one. If you give me the actual title of the document, I will look again and comment further.

Country Gal,

If you were a smoker and you went to the doctor who told you to give up smoking and you did not do so and then got cancer, would you blame the doctor? This is the analogous situation to teachers, whose power to enforce learning is very limited. That is a simple fact of life. There is a limit to what teachers, even clever and innovative ones, can do in the system that they do not control. Nor is there any reason to expect them to undertake extra hours of work in the light of the dramatic pay cuts they have suffered over the past 32 years. Nor is there any reason to think that large numbers of able people will come into teaching nowadays when they see how much teacher pay has fallen.

As a timetabler for ten years, I never handed my class over to a student so I could leave and work on the timetable. That would be a very dangerous thing for any teacher to do.

The highly stressful nature of teaching is not an “excuse” for the extra holidays, but a reason, in the same way that the stresses of their jobs are the reason that police, nurses and fire fighters get additional annual leave. Teaching is exhausting. I say that both from experience and from observation of colleagues.

It’s not the “exceptions” that get up the noses of the general public. Surveys show that most people actually have a high regard for teachers. There are just a few commentators who continually attack them, basically by repeating each other.

Chris C
The paper comes from the recent nationwide HILDA survey, and is titled “Family Structure, Usual and Preferred Working Hours, and Egalitarianism in Australia”

Part of the abstract is “Data from a representative survey of adult Australians are analysed for usual and preferred working time across family types.”

It seems that it is only available as a PDF file now, but you can get to it from here
http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000579/

If studying work hours, people of different age groups and family types can elect to work different hours. So this paper divides people into various groups, which I think is the best approach.

As the debate begins to taper off, and the issues I originally raised seem to be sliding off the radar, I am at least glad that I have helped promote vigorous debate about education issues.

In some ways debate about whether teacher’s work is harder/easier better paid/worse paid is irrelevant – we choose what we choose. Teachers chose to work these hours, and others chose not to be teachers despite the holidays? So what? What is the point of attacking either?

In the Sydney Sun-Herald this weekend was an account of person who gave up law to be a primary teacher. He is neither a fool nor a saint – he just chose what he was happy with.

Yes there are a few brilliant teachers, many ordinary teachers and a few poor teachers (some of whom DO get dismissed when they are particularly hopeless). Paying more or less will not change that. What needs to be done is to find ways to make ‘ordinary’ teachers good teachers, and as the Forum debates show, getting adults to change their beliefs is a slow process.

If anyone is interested in what I thought about funding Chaplains in schools or my critique of Kevin Donnelly’s attacks on schools you can check things out on http://demed.wordpress.com/ or contact me through the author details at the end of my article.

Ian Keese

Ian K,
I suppose you have seen the latest news regards teaching methods: -

“The study found students' results could be improved by swapping teachers from the bottom 25 per cent of performance with those in the top 25 per cent. A teacher in the top 25 per cent achieved in three-quarters of a year what a teacher in the bottom 25 per cent did in a full year. A teacher in the top 10per cent achieved in half a year what a teacher in the bottom 10per cent did in one year.”

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21765738-13881,00.html

So a quality teacher can half the time it takes a student to learn something, and there is no mention at all of “bad parents”, or “immature boys”, or “social change”, or “bureaucratic interference”, or all the other reasons or excuses that teachers normally come up with.

It definitely appears that teaching methods far outweigh all other factors when determining student outcomes.

I would also suspect that quality teachers work no longer than other teachers, and possibly have less stress (and probably their students have less stress also).

I would agree that identifying the methods that quality teachers use, and then passing those methods onto other teachers would be of benefit to all.

HRS

You triumphal ejaculation (and that of Julie Bishop) over a limited study publicised in today's paper may be a wee bit premature. The author, Andrew Leigh, an economist with no particular expertise in education, admits himself that the study has not been peer-reviewed - which puts it well down the credibility ladder. (http://andrewleigh.com/?p=1464#comments)

The research took a limited area of educational achievement in a limited number of primary school year levels. The author concedes that his study has less applicability to secondary schools where students experience lots of different teachers in the course of a semester.

Moreover a quick reading of the report itself suggests that the media treatments distort many of the findings and make claims that were not tested in the research.

One other reaction is that he has confused the causality lines. What he measured and found effective was merely teacher years of experience rather than some notion of high performance upon which salary policy decisions could be made. If this is the case, we might as well stick with the traditional system of rewarding teachers by years of experience (and save taxpayer funding of inconsequential research).

In short this report that got you frothing at the mouth says what most people simply know intuitively - that better teachers get better results from students. That leaves lots of policy questions unanswered e.g. How can we get and retain more ‘better’ teachers?

I think you need to read more widely in the research HRS. One limited report is not an adequate basis on which to make policy decisions about teacher performance.

Frankgol,
I think it would be common sense that the a “top 10%” teacher would be able to half the time it takes to teach a student something, compared to a “bottom 10%” teacher.

So it is a process of identifying what a “top 10%” teacher does, and then getting other teachers to do similar. And of course it is a process that is continuous and doesn’t stop (or it can stop if a teacher doesn’t want performance pay).

But I’ll tell you a true story. When one of my children started high school, I phoned up the school and asked if they teach the students study skills. I couldn’t get a straight answer out of them, so I enrolled the child in a course of effective study skill with a local tutor. She went for 1 hour each week for a year, at $60 an hour.

At the end of the year, I asked her if she though the study skills she had learnt were of benefit, and the answer was “yes”.

I also asked her if any teacher in grade 8 had told her of those study skills, and the answer was “no”.

The tutor knew how to teach effective study skills, but not the teachers at the school. So I had to pay out all that money for something that the teachers at the school should have been telling her as a part of her basic education.

Ian,

It is a fact of life that in a forum such as this discussion will wander from issues raised in the original article. When the discussion is on education, you can usually guarantee that the critics of teachers will arrive to ensure that their low opinion of the profession is known. I would like to return to your initial point, but I need to respond to two critics first.

HRS,

Thanks for the reference. Table 1 gives the average working week for all employees as 38.51 hours (including overtime), while Table 5 gives that for all males with dependant children as 47.56 hours. I do not know how you calculated the 49-hour figure.

If the community paid teachers at the rate you paid the tutor, they would earn $120,000, almost double what they earn now.

Communicat,

My impression of teacher education under both Labor and Liberal Governments over the past 37 years is that what the teacher learns in school is more useful than what is learnt in the education faculty. This is the nature of the job.

Your summation of political responsibility for problems in education is one-sided. It was the Victorian Liberal Government that brought in SOSE, instead of history. It is the Labor Government which has dumped SOSE and restored history as a traditional academic discipline. Technical schools were never dismantled in Victoria. They were renamed secondary colleges, but they retained their distinctive ethos. There is no “politically correct” view of history or narrow Australian focus on it forced on our schools.

I am sure that the $5,000 holiday bonus will attract some teachers to summer schools to improve their knowledge. I fear that the selection within schools will be done by principals who will simply favour the more compliant members of staff rather than those who speak up for the profession.

If society wants to attract the sort of able and independent-minded people who came into teaching 30 years ago, it will undo the pay cuts and the worsening of conditions and restore collegiate professional judgment in the running of schools.

Frankgol, I think you have been too harsh on HRS - I do not usually agree with him, but from his number of comments I believe that he is genuinely interested in what will improve the education students achieve.

It is obvious that having the best teachers will make a significant difference in the results of students, but paying them more will have zero effect on this. However if money is provided for them to stay in the classroom and assist others through mentoring it will be money well spent.

It is probably not rocket science, but a student is also disadvantaged by being with a new, inexperienced teacher (on the average, that is - some teachers begin brilliant) and this also came out of Andrew Leigh’s study. Here is another job for the quality teacher

Nor would I dismiss Andrew Leigh by saying he is an economist. Over the last few years he has made a great contribution to raising the level of debate in Australia on a variety of issues (check his website www.andrewleigh.com) and in his article he has used the intricate mathematics of economics to grapple with some of the complex issues of teacher influence on student results.

Of course, how politicians will use or abuse this for their own ends is another matter.

To Chris – I find your comment about returning to History fascinating – I am just working on an article on the shortcomings of SOSE-like courses, In NSW the Labor Premier, Bob Carr brought in four years of compulsory history in the Junior Secondary curriculum – two years of world history and two of Australian history since Federation (with the earlier period covered in primary school.

Ian Keese

Chris C,
As I said originally, you have to combine the data from tables 5, 6 and 7. Also Table 5 has 11% unemployed, so that % has to be excluded to find the average work hours.

If you are trying to find the avg hours worked in the country, then I think you will find that some people can’t find enough work, while other people elect to work only a few hours each week. So a reliable average can only be determined for groups of people who work close to their preferred hours of employment, which you will find in that paper.

In regards to tutors teaching study skills. Tutors probably became tutors because they have a high level of teaching skills (and can charge fees accordingly). But the teachers at the high school of my daughter were not teaching the students what the tutor was teaching. So the teachers certainly don’t get the same amount of money as the tutor.

Also because the students at the high school were not being taught effective study and learning skills, the teachers at the high school would probably have more trouble teaching the students any type of subject material.

So this is now very much the point. If teachers at a school improve their teaching methods, then the students would gain, the teachers would find it easier to teach, (and there wouldn’t be a need for tutors).

But until then, the teachers get less money from the tax payer, and any extra money a taxpayer may have for their children’s education can go to tutors.

Frankgol
I just regard your language as being profane. Have you thought of a summer school to help improve your self-expression.

HRS

Apologies for what you call my profane language. Now what did you think of my ideas?

Yes I have taught for 40 years so I think I should know a reasonable thing or two. I believe teachers work 24/7. They dream about their work and think about incessantly. Rarely do I get the privelege of taking my mind completely off what I have done today or what I will do tomorrow.I teach over 200 students a week and need to know each of their names. I teach a language other than English. I have taught classroom and P.E and Library and special Ed etc the lot. Only thing I have not done is Music so yes I agree that teachers do a lot so please be more understanding.

Giulia,
If a teacher is working 24/7, then I think they may need some type of project management software. There is a large selection available at minimal or no cost from here
http://www.project-management-software.org/

I could also recommend some type of AI system. Teachers can pool their knowledge and it is stored in some type of configured database. If a new teacher wants some information regards some aspect of teaching, they can search through that database.

I was involved in developing an AI system for a factory that helped teach new employees about the operation of various stations in the factory. Each station was quite complex with equipment worth many millions of dollars, but if a station was not reaching target figures, a new employee could ask the AI system and it would suggest a number of possible reasons why the target figures were not being achieved, and also suggested a number of ways to get back on target.

The information in that AI system often came from people who had worked at the factory for a number of decades, and we often incorporated knowledge from people who were about to retire. In that way their knowledge was not lost, but was made available for any new employee.

If you had been at that factory for 40 years, we would have spent quite a lot of time with you searching for information to go into the database, as you would have been a very valuable employee.

I see no reason why an AI system could not be developed for teachers, or if they were not interested in AI systems, they could pool their knowledge at a summer school.

HRS

Teachers' do pool their knowledge.

By the way, teachers' tutor as well. It's good money.

Liz,
If teachers are organised and efficient and do pool their knowledge, then why is there such a demand for tutors?

Perhaps that’s a dumb question.

Its most likely due to bad parents.

Actually, parents that recognise if their child requires intervention and are prepared to fork out the money are good parents. I've had my daughter tutored in the past.

Most tutors are teachers.

I've tutored before. The money is good.

Kids benefit from the one-on-one that a teacher cannot give in a classroom of 30 students.

Many teachers provide after school or lunch break tutoring session one day a week. They do it voluntarily.

There's a plethora of websites for teachers to share lesson plans, educational ideas and knowledge ... using databases to do so.

Databases have been around for some time HRS.

Another newsflash for you HRS ... study skills ARE taught in schools, by teachers, at the beginning of each semester.

Liz,
So I’m probably one of the “good parents”, because I sent my daughter to a tutor.

But the study skills that were taught to my daughter by a tutor (and I paid a lot of money for) were definitely not taught to my daughter by any teacher she had at her school, and she had 7 different teachers in grade 8.

It could be a case that the more effective study skills are being kept for those who are prepared to pay money to learn those skills.

But I still can’t understand why there are now so many tutors when teachers are so efficient.

Education has now become so confusing, and very difficult to understand.

Yes HRS, if you saw the need for tutoring, then you're a good parent.

I think you are failing to see that the great majority of tutors are actually teachers.

Our school starts every semester teaching study skills. Many schools do. They do this in orientation week.

Liz,
Of course study skills are very important skills, as without those skills the student's won't learn much.

But according to my daughter's tutor (a semi-retired ex-principal of a primary school with a masters in education and so on), the study skills being taught in the schools were not good enough.

Perhaps the orientation week at the schools should be heavily reveiwed at the end of each semester to see how effective they were, and then improvements made.

It would be better than blaming the parents, or the students, or the government.