Schools releasing student results is very important, as it increases competition between schools, which would eventually improve all schools.

However I have seen attempts by schools to hide the results from their boy students by combining together the marks from the boys and girls. If those marks were separated out, then many mother and fathers would not be sending their sons to that school.

A major cause of concern would be the declining retention rates of boys in schools and also the declining levels of interest boys have in school work. Even if a boy leaves school early and takes up a trade job, most trade work now requires continuous learning, and many jobs require multi-skilling.

To develop a highly skilled workforce, boys will have to be learning and undertaking courses right through their working life, so they would have to have an interest in learning and in education, but the opposite appears to be occurring.

I don’t believe Ms Gillard will have much interest in boy’s education. I have not heard her mention boy's education in the past, and is unlikely to do so in the future.

HRS lets have a reality check here. The parents of many boys are unable to evaluate their son's strengths and weaknesses with unbiased vision. Many boys are considerably less capable than their female siblings. Possession of a penis no longer confers "born to rule" status that middle class boys enjoyed in Australia in the 1930s.

As you so rightly pointed out even tradies have to be able read proficiently, use a spreadsheet, keep records for their accountant as well as the traditional skills of writing up a quote, writing invoices. Then they will have to keep learning to remain abreast of developments in their industry.

Unfortunately individuals who aren't capable of learning are destined to a lifetime of poorly paid manual labour.

The responsibility starts with parents who never say NO, who feed their kids processed rubbish and who their kids stay up late. Teachers face an uphill battle to engage tired, revved up or hungry pupils.

Billie,
Please don’t tell me you are a teacher.

“Many boys are considerably less capable than their female siblings.”

I have heard similar directly from teachers, where they have been allowed to develop a negative attitude towards boy students.

If a company develops a negative attitude towards its employees, the company will eventually get negative results from the employees in return.

Too many teachers have been allowed to develop a negative attitude towards boy students, and eventually they get negative results from the boy students in return.

But if schools were compared in the marks that their boy and girl students were getting, then I am quite certain that many teachers would quickly change their attitudes.

If the teachers were paid performance pay, then I am also quite certain that many teachers would quickly change their attitudes.

That is why most companies now have some type of performance pay system, and basing levels of pay on years in the job went out with the Ark.

Peter West says, "we have lost a lot of ground in grammar. Grammar faded from most schools in the 1970s and it has never regained that ground."

The fading of English grammar in the 1970s has been supplemented by a fading of foreign language studies ever since. We overlook this link at our peril: learning foreign languages at secondary school or as an adult involves learning formal principles of grammar in greater depth and detail than a comprehensive English (literature and language) class can hope to teach.

That is bound to be a reason why West finds that his foreign students are often more grammatically accomplished. (Respectful attitudes seem a far-fetched reason for knowing the names of tenses.) Similarly, teachers of foreign languages often note how the native speakers in their classes fare worse in grammar tests than the Australians who are new to the language.

There is a further reason why the foreign languages drop-off matters: failing language enrolments attack Australia's cultural awareness now and into the future. Sometimes that means we cannot spy on terrorists. Sometimes it means a whale gets shot in our waters. More often, it means we go and invade people for no good reason.

I am so sick of public school teachers winging about their pay, if it pays so good elsewhere please go there so we can replace you with a trained monkey.

Teachers enjoy some of the best conditions of employment in any workforce in this country,including generous sick leave provisions, dispute resolution process and over generous maternity leave of up to seven years.

There hours are fixed and their so called stress full jobs cannot be compared with real jobs like nursing or Police, who work longer and more dangerous jobs withour the generosity of the handouts given to teachers.

Pay them more but do reduce their conditions of service and especially remove the discriminatory act of seniority, as a parent of a school age child I would welcome performance pay/management in our school. This would finally help parents weed out the under performing teachers and those with attendance problems.

Pretty good article. I tend to think as the writer says, the media might be part of the problem. They were once the guardians of language. Now they're it's greatest corrupters.

I agree that boys are badly lagging, especially in literacy. To be able to write, first you have to be able to read. Grammar is only part of the problem and I don't want to open a can of worms that brings in the usual suspects on this.

Peter, trying to get academics, journalists and unions on side to do anything together is like cat herding. They're at cross purposes.

Fundamental changes to education requires fundamental changes to teacher training. Yet they're going to meet kids who know more about digital technology than they do. They're also going to face some very 'remedial' situations where they're not exactly teaching but rather taking some students back to the basics such as subject/verb stuff.

Ditto adult education. It's a mess but not totally irrepairable.