I would love to see a performance based pay for teachers, but I agree with Pelican, it would be very hard to do fairly. In fact I feel it would probably suffer from favouritism to a great degree. Still, it may be better than nothing. I wish I were smart enough to devise a good system.

I could never agree to increased pay for teachers, unless that came with an agreement of performance based sacking, of the incompetent, & dead lazy as well. The good ones are never going to get the respect they crave, while they let their union protect the no hopers, & dead beats in their midst. Come on Otokonoko, start the process.

Unfortunately, you are in the minority in your after hours work ethic. My wife, who just happens to be a librarian, through the P&C, & with a lot of help from that great head master, established a text book hire scheme. This scheme not only saves the parents money, but has put over $140,000 a year into our high school, for over 15 years.

You would be amazed how much chasing it takes to get the various heads of department to get off their buts, make some decisions, & then tell us what new text books they want for next year. Without this info, we can't do our budget, place our orders, & be sure of having the books, when required.

Jewely, I recently saw a TV program highlighting the work some schools are doing with young school girl mothers. I hope someone will come up with the info on which ones are doing it.

Whay ever the answer for our education system, & teachers, it most definately is not going on strike.

Recently, my wife gave a presentation on teaching method's during the morning of a professional development session for a Qld school. Her comment was that the whole afternoon was to be taken up with talks on filling in the latest batch of forms! (PD takes place in the teacher's own time.) She doesn't know how much time these school teachers spent filling in forms but her own experience in another section of the education system has the paperwork for some commonwealth funded courses taking up to one hr per teching hour! (This for a very organized person who is good at understanding administrative procedures.) In addition, testing time takes up 10% of her time with the students for some courses.

Before we start critising teachers it would be smart take the time to find out how much teacher's time is wasted by filling in forms and other time wasting, demoralizing crap. (Often justified by our obsession with "accountability".) Find out too what else should be done to help teachers teach more effectively and then put the heavies on our politicians to fix the problem.

While you are at it it may be smart to have a godd think about the magic "performance pay". Do you really want teachers to give priority to coaching your children to give their teachers and school a good performance score? Or would you prefer them to concentrate on preparing your child for the future? How much teacher time do you want devoted to teacher evaluation? Do you really think that a system that is sen to be unfair will inspire teachers to work better?

My best teacher during senior high school was the german teacher. He was one of those teachers who opened windows to new ideas and had a long term positive effect on my life. However, my grade in german was lower than than my grade in most of the other subjects. How should he have been measured?

My mother worked in a school for many years and there were some awful teachers and some very dedicated ones as you would expect.

Teachers no longer just teach. They have to be business people, social workers, bureacrats and financial wizards, and worst of all they have to conform to whatever current politically correct experiment is taking place at any one time. As a parent I've known many wonderful teachers who get overlooked because they don't 'play the game' no matter how much good they do in the classroom.

Anyone remember the open plan experiments of the 70s/80s or the idea that corrections were bad it is only the idea that counts.

Who ever said that 'teachers' had the interests of their students at heart?
Most can't teach.
A fair few are emotionally flawed by what's been mentioned above - the hate they cop from their employers in the job - the dead boring syllabus they need force down their poor victim's necks - garnished by their student's resentment at having to endure that regime of 'compulsory education' – all topped off by their need to hold on to that one very insecure job.

At the end of the day the citizens of this fair land need to work out how they’ve been dragooned into lifetime slavery by indoctrination through compulsory education.
A few moments reflection might have them consider why they’d ever want their kids to be exposed to the same.

Please regard.
Do you ever believe the children of the wealthy have to put up with what state school kids have to endure?
Or put that another way.
If you are a parent with any reasonable education and a rapport with your own kid/s –
Then why not educate them yourself at home or by private tutor?

Okay.
I’ll tell you why.
Firstly, you’ll cop repeated hell from our government. You won’t even have time to teach them the five times table.
Then despite your having the funds, connections and energy to fight them off your”Mensa’ kid will never, ever, gain meaningful occupation.

Why?
‘Cos your child will not have been ‘indoctrinated’ into the modern state system.

In closing I send this out to parents who might desire their kids to be something more than Lemmings.

Since no-one else has anything to offer Jewely, I'll say this...
J', spend some time and effort, with the girl in tow, explore all the local schools, then go further afield if you need to. Two of mine chose schools that required them to spend more than three hours per day in travel, yet excelled. It would be harder for her, true, yet with the right school and the right support.., cometh the hour, cometh the woman.
I have seen quite a few apparently air-head girls brought to Earth, and land running, and succeed well, when put to the test by a child, sometimes that extra little bit of pressure, i.e. travel time, can be the making of a person.
There can be ways found, if you try hard enough, and yet make sure she feels in control, she's going to need that in the years ahead, whatever way it plays out.
Hope that helps a little.