I am fine with getting more teachers, as long as we get rid of the bludgers, addicts, thieves, pedophiles as well which should create some vacantcies. The employment conditions of teachers in Australia are not only some of the most generous of any worker in the country, they also rate very high to other developed nations as well.

Lets start with a proper attendence management scheme and the reduction of fewer public servants in the background, because at my daughters school which is not an isolated case, she had a teacher with more than two and a half years out of five off for medical reasons.

Our schoold could not permanently replace her for good becuse of the teachers union, so her replacement who was great lost her job after nearly five years as a temporary teacher. The month the teacher came back she resigned and the other teacher got a new job and we were stuck with another lemon straight out of school.

The sick teacher lost no entitlements and lives off a pension paid for by our children, which is a drain on the system and a cost that is returned to the children in their education.

Until we get rid of the bludgers or those unable to teach anymore because of medical reasons our education system will remain expensive and more peopl will move to the private system like myself.

Hi Kirsten,
If the Queensland Government wants to attract experienced teachers to remote areas, they need to provide single, motel-style accommodation for older single teachers. Teaching in some remote areas is a wonderful experience but the continual battles over shared accommodation drain your energy and your enthusiasm.

And recent UNE research suggests that as many as 99% of teachers are being bullied at work. Certainly that was my own experience.
It is much too easy for a good teacher to be maliciously bullied into ill health and out of work.
Teachers need to feel safe and supported at work if they are going to operate effectively.

The issues faced by teachers in rural and remote communities in Queensland are highlighted by the story in the following paragraph.

"Teachers at a School, in Queensland, will stop work for 24 hours, prompted by their grave health and safety concerns after their residences were ONCE AGAIN broken in to. This is the frightening reality that faces teachers in this rural location. The RISK TO PERSONAL SAFETY AND PROPERTY constitutes a disheartening start to EACH school year. Enough is enough. The teachers are stopping work to highlight the urgent need for the state and federal governments to effectively address problems with health, community facilities and programs, law, order and justice that exist in this location and a number of other remote communities. Teachers, police and other community workers must be resourced and SUPPORTED to make a real
difference in communities like these. All community workers must feel SAFE not only during their working day, but at every hour they spend in these communities – as should every law-abiding citizen."

Many dedicated teachers are committed to teaching in these locations, despite the disincentives they experience. I believe they would continue to teach there without extra incentive, if the disincentives were removed. I also believe that they should be rewarded for their commitment to work in support of students, in rural and remote areas. These students deserve the best, and they usually receive the best, who have immense commitment to their role in the communities. Please, encourage our Governments to reward them, and protect their safety. [a fellow traveller with the qtu]

The effects of education standards on a school system depend upon the ethos of the whole education and social system, as well as its fundamental values, concepts and aims. Instead of correcting the well-known failings of the education system, the standards or trends are directly focused on the broad privatisation of the school system. The very policies the governments have implemented in running down the schools in the less well off districts then discourage the better teachers. As well, the schools function to a degree or are becoming more directly a means of social selection—which is being carried to extremes and perfected – it is the authority that reinforces social origins at an early age. Rich schools are supposedly good and poor schools are portrayed as bad whilst the standards between the two increasingly widen. And who are we dealing with if not society’s most important asset—its children. Under the guise of raising standards and redressing education inequality, the Labor government in Victoria (1994) released a “Blueprint for Education” whose actual agenda is to facilitate further cuts to funding—while blaming individual schools and teachers for the deteriorating state of the school system. It also seeks to narrow the education curriculum and run government schools along corporate lines. All replete with pompous phrases and “buzzwords” to cover up the naked profiteering involved, increasing ugly banalities, crude inequality inherent and the stilted nature of education. The unstated goal is ‘to charge for less education as many times over as possible.’ The constant cry over many decades by the politicians “there is no money for education” does have deplorable but predictable results – society is so much the poorer from millions of children having their education reduced considerably. Rudd intends to accellerate the reactionary privatisation process - more of the same poison. Because education is coming more and more under the sway and rule of the dollar and profiteering - then it becomes dissipated, degraded and debased.

A thoughtful article. I need to read the pdf's before I say much more, beyond briefly guessing that many aboriginal children in remote communities arrive at school with a living non-English language and the cultural heritage intrinsic to their language.

This heritage needs to be nurtured. Maybe the first year teachers are, on the average, a better bet than the third year teachers - unless they have spent their three years in the milieu, mentored and supported by other committed teachers and the wider community.

No simple answers to this one. I do not se where "a computer for every child" fits in the scheme of preserving a community's relationship to its environment and its past. We need to focus on teachers and teaching, not computers and "computing".

Kirsten,

Yawn……….