Surely, vanna (and The Blue Cross), if P & C organisations are overrun by teachers (which, from my limited experience, they are not), the logical response would be to encourage more non-teachers to attend? One minute we're accusing teachers of apathy, then getting upset when the teachers are the only ones who show an interest in the running of the school. Along the same lines, I think it's a bit far-fetched to say that the militant teachers who have overrun these P & C committees victimise the children of other members. From the parents, teachers and students I have known, there is simply no evidence that this is true.

Vanna,

Having spent a fair amount of time in Finland I am fully aware of how the public school system works there, and the attitude of the Finns to education.

http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Koulutus/artikkelit/pisa-tutkimus/index.html?lang=en

"On all school levels, teachers are highly qualified and committed. They require Master’s degrees, and teacher education includes teaching practice. As the teaching profession is very popular in Finland, universities can select the most motivated and talented applicants."

As a society competence is expected, and a teacher that does not met the grade would not survive. While league tables are not published, the level and depth of evaluation of teachers and school performance renders this redundant.

While children only start grade 1 at 7, child care is free, and some education occurs here too, such that most children's education is well under way.

This level of focus and results is equalled only by the private schools in Aus.

I would be happy to forgo the league tables if the Finnish model were applied, but I think the high level of scrutiny would not be tolerated by the teacher's union.

Otokonoko, thanks for bundling me in with Vanna, but I do not believe that teachers hog the P&C, in my experience. They do 'gather' when a contentious issue that might disturb the status quo arises though, or when the principal needs support to put down a desire from the P&C members that upsets their powerbase, but on the whole, they happily keep away- and why not?

Like Shadow Minister, I'd support a Finnish-like model here but far too many incumbent teachers would have to be tolerated for years until the new version of teaching took over.

And SM is correct about the scrutiny not being tolerated. Certainly within Ed Qld there is a total absence of scrutiny, a failure to implement the most basic of EQ policies across the state, and a 'fools gold' approach within EQ senior managers towards what they are actually achieving.

There is a 'first response' mode within EQ, which is based on total denial of the 'bleeding obvious', as well as large doses of well developed 'Nelson's Eye' syndrome.

You know the line, it was practised by Howard and his chums 'Oh, no one told me that', or 'Oh, I was not aware', when everyone else knows and everyone else is well aware.

When private school results are praised though, as with SM, should we be even more cautious? Certainly here, in a town overrun by private schools almost in a canetoad fashion, anecdotally at least, I know as many parents fed up with silly rules, poor management, bad teaching and other similar complaints as come from the state schools, plus parents have to pay a fortune for a not-much-different system.

Private schools 'buy' success with lower fees and scholarships, and parents self select making the demographics hardly comparable, and giving something of a free kick when it comes to 'being better'.

In tutoring students at university, it is not possible to pick which schools people attended, execpt for the ragtag religious extremist schools where students are brainwashed into the silliest and most unproductive of 'thinking'.

Those dodgy establishments we could all do without.

Sorry, TBC - I didn't mean to bundle you in with anyone. I just drew the connection that both of you are disenchanted with P & C organisations and thought that, if these bodies had more vocal or passionate members like the two of you, they might achieve something beyond a 'rubber stamp' status.

Back to league tables, though: I've said it before and I'll say it again - I have no real objection. I would like to see tables that represent facts and allow parents to make their own comparisons, though. Grouping of 'like schools' is problematic - I can state with almost 100% certainty that my workplace is one of a kind. Without giving details which may reveal identity, several factors make my school exceptional. To compare our results with schools of a similar size would be misleading; to compare our results with schools of similar ethnic makeup would also be misleading.

Realistically, I think league tables need to be used as rods with which to whack the department, rather than as rods for the department to use to whack the schools. Where we fall down, the department needs to explain how they will pick us up. Staffing, budgeting and other factors come from above the school level - we can do little to fix those problems. My department's annual budget sits at less than $10.00 per student per year - and students (and parents) wonder why we are still in the process of replacing novels that have been hired out to students every year since 1980. And the average age of teachers in my department is 24 - far from the 44 statewide. With that level of experience released from Brisbane by EQ, what hope do we have?

Thanks for that clarification. Whilstever schools actually resent parental engagement and parents and students are treated as unhelpful distractions to the easy life in a school, there will be no progress in creating improved relationships and any form of productive 'partnership'.

It is impossible to 'whack' the central managers because they pass all decisions to the local level and take no responsibility for what happens in individual schools- they simply blame the principal.

The other side to your, and our, out-of-date books is that politicians refuse to be honest and explain to we dimwits that taxes are needed to be able to buy the books, and are always keen to pretend that we can live in a 'world class' (whatever that empty phrase means) society and create a 'smart state' or the equally gormless 'knowledge nation' while also living in a 'low tax state'.

Tables or no tables, the real problem is that education is not valued, because it's not valued, and it won't be valued until those who run it understand that they are running it badly and for no real purpose, other than to provide acquiescent employees to the factory-fodder consumerist industrial base we all so need and love.

Without going down the Senator Bill Hefferlump path of abusing Gillard for not having children, I do think it would help to have an itelligent Minister, as I believe Gillard must be, who had also struggled with schools as a parent if they were going to have any chance of understanding first hand just what schools do, and do not, do. And, of course, it would be good to find an ALP politician who still sent their children to learn with the hobbeldyhoys in state schools, unlike Rudd and all the others.

“but I do not believe that teachers hog the P&C, in my experience. They do 'gather' when a contentious issue that might disturb the status quo arises though, or when the principal needs support to put down a desire from the P&C members that upsets their powerbase, but on the whole, they happily keep away- and why not?”

Exactly “The Blue Cross”,

I have seen a “contentious” issue raised at a P&C meeting by an unsuspecting parent, and that issue was tabled for discussion at the next meeting.

About 30 teachers turned up at the next meeting, outnumber the parents by about 5 to 1.

Unfortunately a parent may not know what will be a “contentious issue” or not, so best not to attend at all.

A parent is unlikely to learn much at a P&C meeting, other than what a principal wants them to know, and not what they should be told.

There is a difference.

Properly implemented league tables would give a parent much more information about a school than the information provided by a school principal.

Also Finland is not the be all and end all of everything. Finland’s economy crashed out more heavily than most other European countries recently; mainly because of the fact that its economy was so heavily dependent on banking and service industries