RJohn,
In relation to a sustainable education system: - Companies have to earn a profit to pay tax to governments. Governments then spend some of this tax money on education. If businesses don’t make sufficient profits, then governments receive less money to spend on education.

If education systems do not generate sufficient wealth inside the country, then education systems become uneconomic and non-sustainable. So by asking for more money from “government”, the education system is actually asking the public to earn more money so that they can pay more tax.

For every dollar spent on imports by the education system, the public have to export more or there is an increase the trade deficit.

Computers in schools are an example. For every dollar spent by the education system on imported computer hardware and software, Australian industry has to export more or there is an increase in the trade deficit.

It is easy to spend taxpayer’s money on imports, it is not easy to export more.

Instead of nearly every item inside a classroom being imported, nearly every item inside a classroom should be Australian made, as this would encourage students to produce more, and not just import and increase the trade deficit.

In relation to teachers not wanting to do risk assessments or proper reporting, they will ultimately be falling further and further behind (the rest of the country and the rest of the world). Without proper risk assessments and proper reporting, the teachers will not be solving problems, but instead they will be spending their time coping with current problems that are never being solved.

In relation to the QLD produced science freeware on CNET:-

http://download.cnet.com/Calculator-for-Science-Students/3000-2054_4-10893276.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

http://download.cnet.com/Science-Data-Reference-System/3000-2054_4-10895955.html?tag=mncol

CNET staff gave both QLD produced science freeware programs a rating of 4 1/2 stars out of 5, making them one of the highest science educational programs ever rated by the CNET media network that now spans the world. It is ironic that the biggest media network in the US gave the QLD produced educational freeware such a high rating, when the education system in QLD will only use US software.

Will.m

When I said that kids are not held accountable, I meant that they were not held accountable for their own actions.

A friend of mine whose son had been at a public school and under achieving sent his son to a private school where his results improved dramatically. One comment of his was particularily telling when he said in surprise "at --- it's not cool not to do your homework" and he suddenly found that his peers measured him by how hard he worked and so he did.

Private schools have the luxury of choosing whom they will educate and whom they will exclude. This avenue is simply unavailable in state schools. As far as holding students accountable is concerned; the only true measure of this is the assessment made of their progress by their teachers and the schools administration.

Enacting an indexation system based on students results which has the potential to effect a teachers pay and job security would undermine any attempt to accurately measure student progress. If teachers and administrative staff had a vested interest in the results achieved by their students then the potential for corruption of the marking system would skyrocket.

Ultimately the accountability of students lies with their parents. This again raises the question of wider social and economic factors which impact on the growth of the student in their formative years. Schools in general seem to bear the brunt of blame allocated for social dysfunctions or academic inabilities which are more often then not a preexisting condition not relative to the environment in which they are educated.

Vanna

Thank you for the link to the software.

I thought that I would purchase the software from Dot Point Learning Systems, an Australian company.

On the Australian website, I discovered that the software can be purchased at a very reasonable price, in American dollars and Euros - but not Australian dollars.

A quick glance over the software suggests that, rather than being a learning resource, the software is an information resource, set out in tables. The information available is extensive. Some is suited to secondary School, with higher level information better suited to a tertiary environment.

will.m

I understand your angst at having to provide a rating for students who have not completed the core curriculum learning material in a unit, and have not submitted the assessment items required to demonstrate that they have attained the core skills and knowledge.

I gain the impression that "Not Rated" is no longer an acceptable result for students who do not complete any core learning in a subject.

I too have been told, that students ought to be assessed on work that they have submitted, without being penalised for uncompleted assessment.

I believe that there is strong evidence for departmental support of these practices, in public Secondary Schools, Years 7/8 to 10, around Australia. External moderation of Year 11 and 12 subjects discourages the practice from Senior Schools, except in significant extenuating circumstances.

Bush Bunny

Yours is a truly distressing story.

Regrettably, classroom teachers do not have the diagnostic skills of specially trained and experienced support personnel, nor do they have their detailed knowledge of the many types of learning difficulty and disability.

Where the option of referring a student for assessment to the specially trained support personnel is not available, students fail to gain the learning support that they need.

Sadly, some teachers fail to recognise learning difficulties because of their own lack of experience.

Teachers, and their unions across the country, have complained about, and campaigned for, issues surrounding availability of diagnosis, referral, support personnel, and support programs, for students with learning difficulties and disabilities.

We can always do better.

Will.m,

Most private schools have feeder junior schools, and as a result cannot be selective for the majority of their students. The scholarships offered are for a few percent. However, the parents of the children generally are making a sacrifice, and are more interested than most on their child's performance.

In countries where indexing was used, what was often found were that there were schools in poor areas with limited funding that did exceedingly well, and those in better areas that did poorly. This enabled the teachers in the well performing schools to be rewarded, and the poorly performing schools to be reorganised / retrained.

As the results were externally audited, with controls, bias was mostly ruled out.

The main benefactors were the children, whom I thought were the main focus of the schooling.

RJohn
You are saying that there needs to be specialty teachers to diagnose learning difficulties, while in QLD there is now talk of having specialty teachers to teach science to primary school students.

This brings into question what are teachers themselves being taught in teacher’s colleges? After 3-4 years of college, a teacher still cannot diagnose a learning difficulty or even teach primary school science (which is very fundamental).

Apart from asking for a pay rise or spending as much taxpayer funding as possible on imports, what else can they do.