The sound of my wife, choking on her coffee caught my attention. I looked up in time to see the end of the new Queensland teachers union commercial. When she had regained her composure she, who is usually very kind, simply said, "they wouldn't like that".

She was, of course, talking about their claim that they want to be payed what they are worth. As a professional, working around, & with teachers for 18 years, she has some idea of what that is, & it does not require any increase in pay to achieve it.

I found the bit where they complain about their being the second lowest paid, in the country a bit strange. I would have thought that, being the second lowest achieving teachers in the country would be quite likely to attract just such a level of pay. Obviously our teachers have some other criteria on which they base their evaluation of their worth.

If they were to start to try to impress us with the superiority of their efforts, I'd be out there shouting for them, but while their union puts most of its effort into trying to hide the incompetent, & plain lazy amoung them, they loose my vote.

League tables may be a start, but to get some equity back into our schools requires q full blind marked, external exam, to rate students for matriculation & uni entrence. Not only would this be much fairer & transparent, It would give us a chance to get rid of the 10% of totally incompetent teachers hiding behind this lousy system, & union.

I had 2 kids who went through a large [1650 kids] near city high school. they were both serious students, wanting maths B, & C, & Physics for their future studdies.

The school had 2 year 12 classes, [52 kids] for physics, & 2 classes [46 kids] for maths C. Unfortunately the school had only one teacher capable [& qualified] to teach these subjects. Instead of having this bloke teach all the kids, in 2 sittings, so to speak, half of them copped, first a lady from the subcontinent, who could not have passed a grade 10 exam, then a nice asian lady, who although reasonably competent, spoke english so with such a heavy accent, that most of the kids could not understand a word she said.

It gets worse. The one master was a union delegate, &/or officer, & spent, the year we kept records, just under 15% of his time out of the school, on union business.

Most of those poor kids, the pick of their year academically, had no chance of getting a good OP. I felt really sorry for those kids whose parents did not have enough education themselves, to be able to see what was happening to their kids.

My kids only got there by spending every saturday at QUT, getting Physics & maths coaching. They had over 3 hours traveling, plus hours of saturday schooling, at more than a little expense, to make up for the incompetence of the teachers, & the sysyem.

At least with an outside exam we would soon see which so called teachers were useless, & perhaps get rid of them, before they ruin the chances of any more kids.

Hasbeen,
The teachers in QLD should not be getting any pay rise.

Recently the QLD state government gave every teacher a free laptop, and the teachers themselves made a choice of what programs to install on their free laptops.

They chose 28 programs, and all 28 programs came from the US.

Although the laptops were paid for by the QLD and Australian taxpayer, no QLD or Australian content was placed on the laptops.

If the teachers want a pay rise, they can get it from the US government, because they are more American than Australian (and the US education system isn’t all that tremendous either).

Vanna

I am not sure of the source of your information about teacher laptops and programs.

Laptops were allocated to Schools by Education Queensland [EQ], as part of the department's Computers for Teachers program. The integration of technology-based teaching and learning is a key component of EQ policy.

The laptops are loaned by Schools to teachers for School-related work.

While the teacher remains at a School, the teacher has use of the laptop.

When the teacher leaves the School, the laptop, and the data on the laptop remains at the School.

Access by a teacher to a laptop allows a teacher to be able to access "OneSchool", the Education Queensland database for student performance and behaviour, a valuable, but time-consuming, tool.

All reports of outstanding positive, and all inappropriate, behaviour is reported using OneSchool.

All academic reporting to parents is completed using OneSchool.

Access to a laptop also allows a teacher to use in-class data-projector presentations to provide information that is not available in textbooks.

Access to a laptop allows a teacher to search the Internet for the information, images and videos, required for the data-projector presentations, in order to provide more-up-to-date information. VERY time-consuming.

The benefit to the students is as great as, if not greater than, the benefit to the teachers.

Neither I, nor any of my teacher colleagues, were consulted in relation to the programs that were installed on the laptops. I can only assume that decision-making happened at a higher level.

My son met four Mr Chips in his public school experience. If I had the money I would have elected to send my son to a private school, but he objected when I could have got him a bursary because he was diabetic with specific learning difficulties, as he felt he would be socially rejected as I was a sole parent on a pension. And would be rejected by his social mates all public school students. Nor was he a sportsman of repute, although he tried. One can't win.

I don't think public schools cut the mustard in some ways, especially
with students who are not exactly considered disabled, but those on
the borderline with specific learning difficulties, ie. dyslexia.
But have an above average IQ? Or have chronic disabling diseases like
Type 1 diabetes that can present with emotional and concentration ups and downs. Took years to explain this to educationalists circa 1985 onwards. One bush school told me my son was intellectually challenged because he was tested in reading and numeracy, (age 6 yrs) while he was an undiagnosed dyslexic! And had an IQ of 60! Years later under supervision he gained 140 IQ. Too late then he thought himself 'dumb or dumber'.

I reckon Private schools say - You can do it, now stop pondering and
work for it! I'm sure some public schools do the same, but some of these small bush schools have no ambition for their students, and show it. And are socially prejudiced.

If your Dad is prominent in local society you'll do OK just, or you might not be favored unless you are absolutely fantastic at sport. But what happens later, eh! I was told by one teacher, I had to take a stick to my son, or he would end up in jail, because as a sole parent I couldn't hope to succeed bringing him up. That's just before
he was diagnosed as dyslexic. By then he was 11 years of age, been
diabetic since 2 1/2 years old. He still has a poor opinion of education services.

It would seem that the simple solution here is to quantify the downward slide in the motivation and intent to learn among young Australians and find a suitable set of shoulders to lay the burden on.

This may seem to be a rather grandiose comment but the intention is to remind the reader that the burden of a teacher is simply to educate a student, not to raise them. If a student enters the classroom with a predisposition which is opposed to the common schooling system then educating inevitably becomes re-educating. You can lead a horse to water etc...

Perhaps the greatest problem associated with the proposed school failure index is that it will undoubtedly lay most of the blame at the feet of teachers, a group who are without a doubt one of the most overworked and unappreciated in the country.

Teachers, despite the common perception, do not work short hours. It is not uncommon for teachers to work non-stop nine hours a day, five days a week; far more during assessment periods. When one adds an 'office' crammed with thirty or so teenagers to this equation the stress levels under which our teachers operate becomes clearer.

The simple fact is that if teachers were able to operate under ideal conditions, with all required facilities and a comprehensive behavior management and counseling system in place, then we would achieve the literacy, numeracy and teacher retention rates we desire. At present this is not the case

Perhaps if some of the funding that is to be directed towards this proposed failure indexation for schooling was redirected towards increasing available resources for both teachers and parents then the right of parents to choose a 'suitable' school would require nothing more then a bus timetable and Google Earth to be satisfied.

Sadly, until funding and staff support reaches equitable levels across the board the issue will remain the subject of politicking and blame gaming.