Vanna's claim that teachers 'blame the parents' but 'seek no accountability for anything' is, ironically, another 'blame the teachers' rant.

Why is it the teachers who have to shoulder 'accountability' forced down from above (from accountability-denying politicians and bureaucrats) and up from below? When are the students going to be made accountable? If they are not 'accountable', why not? Is it just possible that their parents ARE to blame? Or are just as despairing of their children's behaviour and attitude as the teachers? If Vanna had ever been a teacher he/she might have had the common experience of seeing a parent crying at P/T night over the seemingly intractable problem of his/her child's attitude and behaviour - apparently the same at home as at school. Or of coming very quickly to an understanding of how a child had become a disruptive recalcitrant either through the ignorance of an overbearing or apathetic parent, or the parents' complete absence altogether for the umpteenth time from the P/T interview.

The complaint that teachers 'ask for more wages' is just plain churlish. They ask for higher wages no more frequently than other occupational groups, and in fact have suffered one of the most severe degradations, over many years, of their real wages. The attitude of people like vanna is in stark contrast to the deep and widespread esteem shown towards teachers in Scandinavia and Asian countries.

Rapscallion is right about teachers wage claims, they, like us, are entitled to get increased pay. But like Vanna's claims against teachers, perhaps Rapscallion is over-egging the problem in blaming parents for all ills.

As for the esteem in foreign-lands being shown here, there is much work to do before many Qld teachers receive that from our household.

Which is not to say that some do not already get held up as virtuous people doing good work, but there are far too many who simply should not be in the job.

My children did OK at school, but not as a result of the systems in place, the attitude of management, the classroom practices of more than a handful of classroom teachers, the science, English and maths texts used, the vengeful, petty punishment regime in place, or the over-enthusiastic support for evangelical fruitcakes, on staff and allowed to wander the school.

No, they came through the school via their own efforts, home support, mountains of reading, being involved in music and by ignoring the base behaviour of many staff.

There is not the space to even outline the crass stupidity of adults paid to 'educate' who prefer to obsess over sock colour, shoe shape, ear 'oles, and the like, while happily forcing students to sit in the sun and fry for hours, in the Land of Melanoma no less, or who would invest hours in designing 'levels' systems to 'measure' behaviour that even students can see through.

No, there is a desire here to respect classroom teachers and school managers, but simply no demonstrated reason to do it.

I've given up attending P/T nights, fed up with being treated like a nuisance in a 120 second burst with a teacher and learning absolutely nothing at all from the demeaning exercise.

I no longer attend any school functions, preferring not to be prayed-upon some some demonic evangelical 'chaplain', or to suffer hearing the staff heap self-praise upon themselves at every gap in the proceedings.

I am NOT impressed with what passes for 'education' in The Smart State.

The Blue Cross,

I suggest that you find a new school for your kids. If parent/teacher interviews at your school are limited to 2 minutes, there's something wrong. If the teachers are obsessed with heaping praise on themselves, there's something wrong. If there is a considerable amount of base behaviour on the part of the staff, there is something wrong. Luckily, of the five high schools in Queensland that I have experienced, only one could justifiably be accused of these things.

When you do find a new school, perhaps you could attend P & C meetings. This will help with your disgust at teachers' obsession with "sock colour, shoe shape, ear 'oles, and the like", as uniforms are determined by the P & C, rather than by the school. I suspect that the parents who put the effort into attending these meetings and working on these policies would be distressed if teachers simply ignored the rules they had laid out - then we'd be hearing complaints about teacher apathy.

None of this really addresses the issue of league tables, though. It does, however, indicate that a closer school/parent partnership may result in mutual respect and increased performance. Just as many like TBC and vanna show considerable disdain for teachers, I am ashamed to admit that many of my colleagues show the same disregard for parents. Where does this leave the kids?

There is nothing to be gained from parent, teacher or bureaucrat bashing – there are saints and sinners, and everything in between, in all groups. The point is how we can build on the strengths of each.

I have spent four years assessing teachers for Quality Teaching Awards in NSW http://www.austcolled.com.au/award/nsw-quality-teaching-award and the skills, commitment, dedication shown by the teachers who achieve these awards as well as the respect given by parents and students is very life-affirming. They never use parents, students or governments as excuses – they know they can make a significant difference.

Admittedly these high quality teachers are a minority, but even ‘ordinary’ teachers must be doing a reasonable job judging by international comparisons of our results. However one of the greatest lessons we can learn from Finland (see the references in Rapscallion’s links) is rigorous selection at the start – only a small minority of those who apply to be teachers are selected – and training is to a Masters Degree level. I would add to this high quality mentoring in the first few years when good teaching practices are established. A former policeman who then went into teaching observed that the selection procedure he went through for entering the police force was far more rigorous than that for being a teacher – they should at least be equivalent.

Well interpreted evidence on school results will be a help in the short term, so that governments can direct the resources to areas of greatest need, but increasing the number of very high quality teachers is far more important in the long run and for the teachers I know, respect and job satisfaction is far more important than salary – in fact teachers salaries in Finland in 2003 were three quarters of Australian salaries and less than half the OECD average.

I still maintain that ‘league tables’ that become in effect only a ranking of social disadvantage are a distraction from the main game.

Otokonoko, thank you for your sage wisdom and advice. Clearly you have never been in a P&C before.

But I am pleased that you agree 'there is something wrong'.

We have three state high schools here. Each believes that 'Qld- The Smart State' refers to crisp uniforms, white socks, all-black leather shoes, and girls frocks that scrape the pavement to protect them from the evil stares of 'the boys'...it also refers to 'staff in the shade and students in the sun'on sports day.

'Boys are bad-girls are good' is one of the the major underpinnings of EQ schools, at least outside of Brisbane where EQ cares not two hoots what happens.

The vast bulk of parents who attend P&C meetings are mutes, or put-upons who support whatever the school principal wants, and they love harsh and petty rules about uniforms, although the line about P&Cs making the rules is frequently used by staff uniform-Nazis who abuse their unbridled power while blaming the P&C for the rules, so I am well aware that that old trick, thanks very much.

As the author of this article says in his post above here... this is not about league tables, which I agree are a total waste of time as well as being a distraction from the real issues in our schools. These are very poor management, a broad acceptance of unprofessional conduct, a disengaged parent body, and students who try to make the most of a frequently very dull school life lived in an environment largely unaltered since Dickens was at school.

Even if we wanted league tables to guide decisions about what schools would deliver better education we would be frustrated for reasons that have nothing to do with teachers or unions. As distinguished researchers like the late Kenneth Rowe have shown the operational unit is the class not the school and variation between classes and amongst children is so great that tables only allow distinction of the very best from the very worst.

We have very good information indeed on why some children do not perform well at school and why others do. Finland has invested in the future of its children. Finland does not suffer from the locally funded school system in the US which condemns children in economically poor areas to out of date text books, rat infested classrooms, inadequately trained teachers and so on. US reforms because they have not paid attention to the research. In Finland if tests are used at all are used locally.

Research shows that about half of the inputs to the educational attainment is due to what the child brings to the school at the time of joining – which is influenced by early childhood education – and more than half of the balance is due to the instructional system, specifically the feedback the student receives from the teacher. The best systems involve teachers working together to a common set of goals in an environment with a high degree of autonomy in a community which respects teachers and understands the importance of teacher development as well as of special tutoring for those students who are having difficulty making the grade, and of parent support. Student performance is assessed frequently and used to re-orient the classroom instruction and highlight areas for further development.

People advocating approaches other than league tables and those who point out the difficulty of coping with socio-economic disadvantage are reflecting what is known, not just what one would like to believe because it is part of current political rhetoric!