Billie you make good sense but the problem is if you believe Andrew Leigh's research from ANU published this month the the literacy is in fact decreasing despite rising educational levels of mothers. Do we want to wait a generation when it may not happen? (Similarly kids are getting fatter and fatter even thought mother's educational levels should mean the opposite but I will not go any further)

The reason is quite simple. Educational levels of mothers is not causative it is coincidental, just as SES status is. In other words mother's educational levels themselves do nothing. Mothers have to actually do something that influences their child. It is very simple. Everybody interested in education should be familiar with Betty Hart and Todd Risleys's work but Australia seems to ignore it is.

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/spring2003/catastrophe.html

Mothers of highly performing children talk to their children much more and speak to them much more positively. The difference is immense but if you hang around in a supermarket and listen to mother's talking or yelling at their kids (as the case may be) you soon you soon get the picture. This sets up the kids for school. "School readiness" I will now shut up. "Thank the gods" they say.

It is rather disapointing that fathers are not being mentioned, but perhaps in a feminist education system, fathers are now null and void.

HRS, your arguments need to become a bit more multi-faceted. Constantly crying about the so called deep feminist bias in the education system is not constructive. I can pretty much read your posts with a blindfold on.

bfg,
If you can read something with a blindfold on, then you must have had a very good education, perhaps even ethereal.

I was referring to some previous posts that mentioned mothers and the educational outcomes of children. Fathers were not mentioned, and I think that this is a sign of the times.

However most things go in circles.

To get more pay, teachers will (or should) have to improve the marks of both boys and girls, however irksome that may be to certain teachers currently in the education system.

I find sweeping comments like 'highly feminist education system', somewhat distressing.