Today Monday the 13th 2010, the VCE results came out. The students that I was teaching for the year 2010 weren't my sons, daughters, cousins or nephews. The weekend went by like I was waiting for a year because I just wanted Monday to come quickly so I know what enter score my students got. Monday came and I rushed to the school then I was surprise that we were not allowed to get the results before Tuesday. I was wondering, who doesn't trust us, the government or the school? My friend is a doctor and he says he has the right to access any information about any of the patients immediately. Are teachers really so scum people that they haven't the right to access their students results. If the answer is "YES", so why on earth they are trusted us to hold their future between our hands. If the answer is "NO, they are not scum", so the teachers will feel bad and they will start changing their attitudes from "Yes we care for our students" to "Hey we don't care for those students coz they are not related to us". Can you get the idea, you people who are not teaching why the level in our Australian Education System is going down and down and down. Come on Government, start your investigation and you will realize if I am making this up or not.

"Can you get the idea, you people who are not teaching why the level in our Australian Education System is going down and down and down."

I'm afraid some people reading your post could conclude that they have quite a clear idea of why educational levels might be falling.

Considering the vast array of problems that most educators are currently grappling with - inequitable funding for example, lack of progress on class sizes, narrowing of the curriculum, to name but a few - having to wait an extra day for test results hardly seems to be a priority issue.

Bronwyn says:

"I'm afraid some people reading your post
could conclude that they have quite a clear
idea of why educational levels might be falling."

Bronwyn can be very diplomatic. She is also good at understatement.

It is good to see that after eleven months to the day Bronwyn has returned to her keyboard on OLO.

Watch and learn, rumrum4.

Well put Bronwyn and I'll also add a welcome.

I spent Thursady last week at my children's schools - both of them. I was there because the teachers at both schools had allowed ny children to rack up over 30 days of absences each without once raising the alarm with me. Most of the absences occurred on a Thursday or Friday and nearly all were authorised by their mother. The teachers seemed to think that meant they were off the hook, but Education Qld doesn't: it says that teachers should be very concerned at just 20 days of absence.

Perhaps if teachers were more concerned about their students and less about covering thier bums there's be more respect? As it stands, I was reasonably satisfied with the response of one of the principals, who offered to ring their mother, but the other is the subject of a Departmental complaint for negligence. The same principal took the trouble, only a few days before the end of school, to ring me to tell me thet she was very cross because my 12 year old sone had failed to attend a couple of minor detentions for the heinous crime of giving a teacher "the finger" behind her back, only to be caught out by another teacher from through the window.

Personally, I think this illustrates very nicely the sort of person she is - prepared to hold a 12 year old boy to a higher standard than herself.

Did I mention the "Girls can Do Anything" and the "Girls: Building the Future" stickers plastered everywhere? Not a single boy was handed a prize at the Year 7 graduation ceremony, except a couple who got "effort" awards.

The biggest problem with teaching is simple - the men have been largely driven from the profession. At my son's school there is one deputy head who is male and two male teachers in a school of 800 children. At the graduation the only teacher cheered by their class was one of those men.

If teachers want respect they can earn it - it's not a right.

Ah, Antiseptic, didn't realise you were a banana bender.

Your school experience is not the only one, here in Qld.

Putting aside individual classroom teachers, a varied bunch from 'very good' to 'should be shot', the management of our schools here in Qld is VERY poor, at the school level, and right up through district, regional and Mary Street offices.

Our schools are run by incompetent careerists, selected from a monoculture of gormless nitwits, devoid of any inmagination, skills, or any sign of basic intelligence.

Our childrens school also feels able to send home 'days off' on the report without ever once thinking to say anything at all to parents.

However, the 'days off' are not 'actual' at all. If a child gets to school late, and misses the checking off moment, they are 'absent' for the day.

But at each lesson a classroom register is kept, consuming teacher time to no purpose.

The two sources of 'present' 'absent' are never to meet, so although the child can be 'absent' from school all day, they can also be 'present' in every class that day.

I have long since ceased to cooperate with the school, since they make no effort to review their processes.

They also suspend students for not coming to school!

What Dills they are.

Then there is the open-door policy to all the Baptists and Pentacostal's who invade our schools spraeding 'hope' where the teachers leave only despair, presumably.

There is absolutely no 'education revolution' going on in Qld, apart from taking our schools back to the stone age.

I can only speak from my own experience with teachers. And I have to agree with what Bronwyn posted. Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task. Schools, however, cannot survive on miracles. Every teacher deserves effective tools and skills. Many teaching problems hopefully will be solved in the next few decades. There will be new learning environments and new means of instruction. One function, however, will always remain with the teacher: to create the emotional climate for learning. No technology, sophisticated as it may be, can do this job. Having to wait an extra day for exam results may be frustrating - but a teacher has to learn to deal with all sorts of situations. Children present problems which don't disappear, even when the teacher believes in democracy, love, respect, acceptance, individual differences and personal uniqueness.
These concepts though great, are too abstract and too large. They're like a thousand-dollar bill - good currency, but useless in meeting mundane needs such as buying a cup of coffee, taking a taxi or making a phone call. For daily life, one needs coins. For dealing with students teacher need psychological small change. They need specific skills for dealing effectively and humanely with minute-to-minute happenings-the small irritations, the daily conflicts, the sudden crises. All these situations call for helpful and realistic reactions. A teacher's response has crucial consequences. It can affect a child's conduct and character for better or for worse. Making a fuss over exam results - is it worth it?

Not all is lost!

Sadly, a retiring school principal.

If only there was one like this somewhere within Education Qld:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2010/3092006.htm

Lexi, you say "One function, however, will always remain with the teacher: to create the emotional climate for learning", which, to the extent that the teacher controls the classroom, I agree.

But sadly, our community has abandoned that group task of nurturing the environment-for-learning, and reduced it to an unwholesome race for a mythical commodity.

Also, in part aligned to the community abandonment of 'education' as a worthwhile community fulfilling objective, parents have also failed in their responsibility to generate such a climate within their home environment.

I do like your small change metaphor though, very to-the-point, and how far from the manner in which our Qld schools are run, like sausage factories where each child is to conform, 'or else!'.

Until our politicians take note of Judy King, Chris Bonnor, Jane Caro, Phil Cullen and people like the UKs Ken Robinson, and abandon their Lemming-like support for 'faith' and independent schools, and refund public schools, we are doomed to yet more years of 'edufailure' as the ever-increasing 'results' focus passes more power to media organisations to shape our schools, and less to thinking-parents, and none at all to students.

TBC:

It's very disappointing for me to learn about the schools in Queensland. I've always thought of Queensland as a very progressive sort of place - full of people who like Californians, didn't fit into the box, but were really individualistic in their thinking - and therefore more creative. I thought that the University of Queensland, for example, was extremely advanced, and of course I just assumed that school teachers would be ones that would produce many "Aha" moments for their students. Teachers have a unique opportunity to counteract unhealthy influences in a pupil's early childhood. They have the power to affect a child's life for better or for worse. A child becomes what he experiences. While parents possess the original key to their offspring's experience, teachers have a spare key. They too can open or close the minds and hearts of children. What a shame,
that I was so wrong about Queensland.

Quite so Lexi, just imagine how hard it is to live here, with mediocrity being the highest ambitions within Ed Qld.

UQ, thankfully, is not run by EQ, so probably deserves its reasonable reputation, but our 'new' uni's, the Dawkins hangover drones, are not quite as well thought of.

In fact, many of them have such poor 'education' faculties that they are as much to blame for the parlous state of our school teachers as EQ is.

Most regional uni's simply exist to plunder the pockets of overseas students of good money, and to provide them with Australian citizenship as a payoff for their degree 'investment'.

Yes, never mind the 'invasion' by boat, there is a very healthy invasion via our uni system.

Maybe there is an Ed Qld teacher on the forum who'd like to speak up for their employer, and tell us how they are all engaged in 'good works'?

TBC:

I'm not so sure that rural Universities have such a bad reputation. Do they really? Of course I don't know Queensland as I said previously. However, Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, NSW - is supposed to be excellent, as is the one in Armidale NSW, (New England?) and I'm sure there's heaps of others. It would be great to hear from others as you suggested - and get a few more opinions on the state of education in Australia. I had always thought that we were head and shoulders above the US - (simply because Aussies are so welcomed and employable in other countries).

Lexi, yes, you are right. Not all regional unis are the same.

I wasn't thinking beyond Qld.

And, true enough, there are variations here too.

Between and within unis here.

Suffice to say though, there is significant room for doubt as to whether or not our education faculties are up to the task.

One of my children has just finished engineering at a regional uni.

Most staff he had are non-English speaking, and ill equipped to teach in English. Managers had been there for years. Courses were not reviewed for years. Tutors and lecturers were slack, frequently not fronting up to class. High failure rates are the norm. Low results cause the levels to drop to allow students to pass.

He got 1st class hons, but whether that compares against a UQ result of a similar standing is a moot point.

He tried to relocate to UQ but half his units he'd passed were not recognised by UQ in their course, and adding another couple of years was not an option.

Presumably, these days, a degree is merely a 'ticket' and not worth a great deal.

TBC:

I'm sure that when your son goes job hunting he'll find that his degree will hold him in good stead. Afterall - the mere fact that he actually completed a field of study should say a great deal about his character to his employer. He started something and finished it - which is no small achievement in itself! Bravo to your son!

Well, as a former EQ teacher I'll let the 'former' in that title tell my opinion of the state system.

As for universities, I wouldn't be so quick to defend UQ. It has wonderful facilities, a beautiful setting and a terrific ability to rest on its laurels. Where Griffith and QUT have come ahead in leaps and bounds, UQ has sat smugly in its idealistic little world using its reputation to buy research funding and students.

I once studied law at QUT, not because I didn't get into UQ but because after extensive research I came to the conclusion that the UQ program was a tired one - great for meeting influential people, terrible for building skills. When I went into teaching, Griffith was my choice and I am eternally grateful for that fact. While UQ does produce the occasional gem (or, probably more likely, fail to destroy a gem), when I worked in a school with a high staff turnover (EQ, of course), it was easy to pick the UQ graduates by their complete ineptitude and detachment from the real world of schooling.

To be honest, I'd point much of the blame for the quality of school education in QLD squarely at UQ, its failure to prepare graduates and its propagation of a UQ old boys' club at the middle and top end of the EQ hierarchy.

By the way, returning to the thrust of the original post:

I don't think the issue is solely about VCE scores being delayed by a day. I think it is more about the way teachers are so frequently isolated from the information they need to do their jobs. If Victorian schools are run as ineptly as Queensland schools, then I understand.

In my last school, teachers were given information on a 'need-to-know' basis, but the people who decided who needs to know were clearly dullards. Important information (a kid's mother has just died, the child has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the student has severe anger management issues and may snap at any moment) is withheld. So we read 'Stop All The Clocks' in English, or make predictions about the workplaces students will enjoy in the future in Futures, or are totally bewildered when a student brutally bashes another for not lending him a pencil. We are asked to reflect on our pedagogy in light of our students' performance, but are denied access to information about how our students have performed.

I think that may be more the thrust of the original post.

I could be wrong.

Otokonoko:

Thanks for providing us with extra insights in this discussion. It's most helpful to learn from someone who's actually experienced things first hand. Much appreciated - gives a different slant on things!

No you are not wrong Otokonoko. That's why I started this discussion. Bronwyn thought I am talking about one or one an a half day. NO NO NO people try to think more in depth. Bronwyn listed some of the things that affect the learning of our students and Bronwyn didn't realize that I can list 50 more. But imagine Bronwyn if you are a teacher and you want access to the results which absolutely belong to you coz you are running the school and you are told that you are not allowed to get them till tomorrow when the students get them. Well if you don't get offended that's fine, but I can tell you that 70% of the teachers got offended and you know what they were telling me? well from now on we don't care about those kids as long as the school doesn't care about them by not giving us the information that we have been waiting for as part of our duty of care so we are not going to teach the same way next year as we were teaching this year. You don't trust me, I don't trust you.

In contrast, within the private system, the Year's Co-Ordinator or appointed staff member, contacts the primary carer or parent on a student's file to notify them within an hour of being absent on the same day.

One of the benefits of paying those exorbitantly high private school fees.

Next, a note is requested as to the reason/excuse for that student missing 'one' day of education.

No following up existed when my daughter attended a public high school despite a dozen more clerical staff and more teachers employed than the private high school my son attends.

The previous comments directed to Antiseptic regarding his childrens absences and not being notified.

TBC:"the management of our schools here in Qld is VERY poor, at the school level,"

I'd have to agree based on my experience of the way my children's schools have been managed, although I must say that the immediate past priincipal at my son's school was a lot better than the current one, despite being on the downhill run to retirement.

As some will know, I have a small business milling timber. I supply several schools with their timber needs. At the last school function I attended, the principal at my daughter's school made a speech about how much money needed to be raised to do certain things around the school, including replacing some of the seating and benches, so I approached her afterwards and said "tell me what you need in the way of timber and I'll donate it". She was effusively thankful, but I haven't heard a thing since and the school has rcently got new benches from somewhere, no doubt paying through the nose. Next time I get told they need something I'll tell them to go jump in the lake.

I had a similar experience at my son's school when both my kids were there. The Uniform shop needed some shelving, which I offered to donate. "No thanks", I was told, "we prefer metal shelves" so a fund-raising drive was engaged in, along with lots of exhortations in the school newsletter. It took nearly 6 months to raise the funds while stock was left in piles on the floor. I never bothered to offer again.

I also agree with TBC about the chaplaincy rubbish. My children are atheist, as am I and their mother. My daughter has at her school a "guidance officer" who is also the chaplain, so if she has a personal matter to address at school she has to allow herself to be subjected to religiously-based mumbo jumbo. And no, that person didn't bother to contact me about her absenteeism either.

we are unique, I went to a private school where I boarded. In 5 years of high school I missed no more than about 2 months due to illness, including a couple of broken arms and a busted nose thanks to sport, a bout of chickenpox in grade 10, and a predisosition to URTI in grade 8 and 9, having been brought up in the tropics and not being used to the Brisbane climate.

I don't know what the policy was as far as notifying the parents of day students about absences, but for boarders the rule was very simple - school is compulsory and every excuse will be carefully examined.

It should be impressed upon every teacher that they are in loco parentis whilst the children are in their care and they should act as though the children were their own. I doubt that the teachers in my children's case would regard 30 days of absence as reasonable for their own kids.

"well from now on we don't care about those kids as long as the school doesn't care about them"

What a remarkably mature attitude: punish the kids
for the bureaucratic ineptitude experienced by teachers.

I hope that rumrum4 isn't one of my children's
teachers, particularly in English.

Antiseptic

You raise a very disturbing and very important issue when you tell us that, in typical Ed Qld style, they have imposed Mumbo onto the role of 'guidance officer'.

This is a very clear conflict of interest, and should be challenged immediately via the drongo Minister, Wilson, who is, of course, a screaming fundie.

The NT Ombudsman's report is very clear. Chaplains are employed to be chaplains, not counsellors, not sports teachers, not camp aides, not teacher aides, just 'chaplains'.

It is impossible for an EQ employee to also be a chaplain.

Do scan through this document:
http://www.ombudsman.nt.gov.au/publications-reports/public-reports/

If you decide to write to Wilson, it is worth knowing that Blight has a COB response rule of constituents getting a response in 15 business days.

Make sure you demand a COB in that time frame.

When they a) fail to supply a truthful response, b) fail to answer you at all, send a complaint letter to the Qld Ombudsman immediately.

There is every chance that the Qld Ombudsman's office is no more on-the-ball than Blight's other staff, but it is part of the system, so has to be utilised.

I'd send an email to that mob who are calling for a reintroduction of 'secular' into Qld public schools, they may well be able to use your story to advantage: http://www.australiansecularlobby.com

In the meantime, you should have filled out a chaplaincy consent form. If you have said 'no contact with the chaplain', then this has to be adhered to.

So EQ are in a real dilemma. Their guidance officer is the chaplain, but students without permission to see the chaplain are denied seeing the guidance officer.

The school principal is in real trouble here.

So, s/he will get a promotion, and the Wheel of EQ Incompetence will roll on again.

TBC, I hope I have my facts straight. I had no idea it was such a serious matter. The mother may have signed a consent form, I certainly didn't.

Before I get too far down the path of complaining about the chaplain/guidance officer issue, I'll make sure I'm right. I have no concern about the person being a paedophile or associating with paedophiles, I should add.

However, in general I don't much like the idea of chaplains in State schools anyway and I quite like the ASL idea.

You reckon school management id bad! Well what would you expect.

It is well known that if you promote your best salesman to sales manager, you not only loose a good salesman, you get lousy management to go with it.

What do we do with education. We promote people trained [often not very well] as teachers, to school management.

To start with these people are too close to the teachers they are supposed to manage, they see things through the eyes of a teacher. In management this is disastrous.

Then for gods sake, we promote from this management group, to head office, & state management.

We now really have that old one of the institution being run by the inmates.

To get good management we should draw all management from the private sector, but only for short terms.

One year observing, to find the main problems, three years managing, then get out, before they get too close to the organisation, & become part of the problem themselves.

Why anyone would think that 10 years teaching qualified someone to manage I can't imagine. Why anyone would expect someone with the ability, & inclination to manage would go off & do teacher training is a complete mystery to me.

Long time no squabble Bronwyn. Welcome back. Hope you hang around.

----

Could the biggest problem of all in our education system be just the same problem as with many other services and infrastructure?

That is; funding not keeping up with rapidly increasing demand.

For all the increases in funding being poured into education, and all other services, our rapidly increasing population is just overwhelming it. We are basically just pouring money into the expansion of education services for ever-more people, without increasing the quality for the existing population.

When things start to become stressed and appear ominous, we start to get all sorts of inequalities appearing, with people looking for other ways to fund themselves, some of which might be a bit unsavoury.

I’d suggest that if we were to reduce immigration down to a very low level and head towards a stable population, our education system would start to come good, simply because the money being poured into it would then have a real chance of resulting in improvements, instead of tail-chasing.

If we just continue to accept that the demand for education services will rapidly increase with no end in sight, then there is little that we can do to improve the whole system. The best we could hope for is some improvements in some places, in a totally unequal manner, which would only lead to greater tensions in places that get left out.

Ludwig, there is more to it than 'overpopulation'.

I agree with Chris Bonnor's take here:

"How did we get here? We are almost three decades into creating a lopsided free market of diversity, competition and choice - the legacy of Milton Friedman, his early apostles Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and their descendants, including Tony Blair and Bill Gates.

"The free market was supposed to deliver quality for all because parents could vote with their feet and underperforming schools would lift their game. The My School website is largely built around these assumptions.

"It hasn't worked. True, we have a wide choice of schools - at least for those with the resources to choose - but school competition has not delivered any significant increases in quality. Nor has it delivered better schools: when all other factors are equal (which they aren't), PISA shows no significant difference between government, Catholic and independent schools. What a let-down - we have invested years extolling the virtues of one type of school over another, now to discover it would not matter if we were not creating clusters of advantage and disadvantage."

See the whole lot:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/misguided-schools-market-sees-us-slip-down-the-ranks-20101208-18pq0.html

But Bonnor omits Hawke-Keating, Beazley, Latham, Rudd, Gillard and the entire ACTU from that charge of being Friedmanites, which I would add in.

I agree with all of your viewpoints Antiseptic and regarding your wonderful donation gestures [this happened to a trades girlfriend/Mum of mine when my kids were in primary school] too.

She offered to fully landscape the school and build necessary items to benefit 500 school children and their teachers. All offers refused and years passed whereby nothing was done thereafter.

As for teachers, some exceptional most giving intelligent teachers with common sense, others should not have chosen the vocation or realised down the track to exit.

Forrest

"It is good to see that after eleven months to the day Bronwyn has returned to her keyboard on OLO."

Ah, dear Forrest, it's good to see you're still in such fine form!

And you too, Antiseptic and Ludwig - still both masters at manoeuvring the discussion to accommodate your pet topics I see!

Thanks for the welcome though guys - and yes it's nice to be back.

Lexi

Lovely posts - a familiar style - mmmn ...

The Blue Cross

Loved hearing Judy King on RN the other day too. I agree, we need more leaders of her calibre in education today.

"Yes, never mind the 'invasion' by boat, there is a very healthy invasion via our uni system."

Bit concerned at the use of the term 'invasion' here.

Agree with many of your observations on education in Queensland though. Are the education systems in other states really any different I wonder.

Many good points made in this thread.

Hasbeen

Glad to see you have all the answers as usual. Nothing has changed.

Yes, fancy thinking that decades of teaching might actually qualify someone to manage a school. How silly is that.

we are unique, I have wondered about the schools' reason for not accepting the donations. Perhaps they have some policy or other that I'm not aware of, but if so, it seems pretty poorly considered.

I will make a correction to something I said earlier. The chaplain at my daughter's school is not also the guidance officer. Apparently my daughter was approached by the chaplain a couple of times to offer her his services but she has not taken him up on it. I met the chaplain at a parent/teacher night and I may have misinterpreted some of his remarks on the night. Sorry if I gave anyone conniptions.

Ludwig, I don't think the problems with education have much to do with population size. The original poster made a far stronger case for the culpable role of teachers with his/her outburst in their second effort. What a revelation of character that was. When added to the minimal literacy displayed by the same poster, what chance would a child have of receiving a high-quality education? Obviously the contributions of other older, wiser teachers like otokonoko show that there are dedicated people around, but they tend to be swamped by the careerists and the time-servers in my experience.

Bronwyn, I prefer to think of myself as raising subjects of personal interest within the context of the discussion. Soemtimes those personal interests strike a chord with others; other times, sadly, they don't.

Still, I don't mind being a master at maneuvring, as long as it's not the maneuvre of running away with my tail between my legs.

Antiseptic, good to get to the bottom of the dual roles.

However, you still raise serious issues there.

You clearly had no information on the chaplain, their role, and whether or not your child should have access to them.

Chaplains are not to tout for business as you described.

You must find out if a consent form was ever issued and signed.

Probably not, but that is a requirement.

My school knew nothing about them, so I wrote my own very clear one and sent it to the principal and regional office.

Next thing they were issuing consent forms about three years after the policy requiring them to.

Bronwyn, there is an invasion of our public schools going on, via Kids Hope, a Baptist program bought from the USA, designed to worm xtian 'mentors' into schools to work with lone students, particularly the 'halt, lame and infirm' as the Book says.

On top of that crew, there are all the Hill$ongites who creep around our children, talking up Jesus and taking girls off to 'Shine' parties at the local churches.

This is how Bligh and Gillard see the future of education in this state, poorly trained teachers, untrained principals, brain dead HQ managers supplemented by the church and parachurch bodies, on the cheap, in exchange for opening the doors of our public schools to the recruiting teams of evangelisers and proselytisers.

Plus the school chaplains, a bunch of untrained people who refuse to follow any policies.
You may well approve of that run down of education, I do not.

The Blue Cross

"Bronwyn, there is an invasion of our public schools going on, via Kids Hope, a Baptist program bought from the USA, designed to worm xtian 'mentors' into schools to work with lone students, particularly the 'halt, lame and infirm' as the Book says."

Aaha ... is that the 'invasion' you're referring to? All is now clear, and I must say I totally agree with your condemnation of the evangelising influx occurring in our schools.

No wonder I was a bit confused though - you hadn't even mentioned proselytising or religion in the paragraph containing your 'invasion' reference. The statement I queried actually followed a sentence about overseas uni students. I can see I'm going to have to do a bit of mind reading here. Never mind, it's a good mind to read I can see that. :)

Now that we've cleared that up - in relation to education at least, perhaps you can now justify your "'invasion' by boat" reference, because until you do I will be of the opinion that you have pet themes you like to insert at random - a bit like others here, but in this case most unhelpfully.

Not knowing you, my first impression on reading your negative linking of overseas uni students and boat people was that I could be reading the words of a racist bigot. I hope I'm wrong.

Bronwyn,

Here it is:

"Most regional uni's simply exist to plunder the pockets of overseas students of good money, and to provide them with Australian citizenship as a payoff for their degree 'investment'.

"Yes, never mind the 'invasion' by boat, there is a very healthy invasion via our uni system."

That alludes to the new role of universities, now they are corporate entities designed to make a profit rather than any pretence to 'educate' the nations aspiring leaders.

The uni's encourage thousands of fee paying students to come here. They really do not care if the students can speak English. The students are here to gain points in the ladder-of-approval for residency afterwards. Many are ill-equipped to do the work required. The economic imperative to pass them is very high.

This is not another version of the Columbo scheme, it is a money-making scam, run by uni's, condoned by politicians from all sides.

I have no problem with people coming here to live, study, work and stay as a new citizen, from any of the countries that send students.

I am appalled at the unethical nature of how this works though.

The term 'invasion' is indeed an emotive one, and one that Australia likes to use not just from time to time, but frequently.

The 'boat people' are painted as an 'invasion' but the legal arrival of tourists who then overstay and seek sanctuary is never spoken of as an 'invasion'.

The doubtful process of funding uni's through scamming the students manages to bypass all scrutiny, because funding the uni's is 'in the national interest'.

I used 'invasion' to highlight the doubtful use of uni's as immigration schemes while 'boat people' are seen to deserve all the bad press they get.

Obviously, not all students come here to slide in to the nation to live here, but a staggering proportion of those I've met, and marked, do.

Yes Bronwyn, years teaching should qualify one to manage, just the same as years filling pot holes in the roads would qualify one to manage the transport department.

That you can't see this simple fact, shows how the rot sets in to the whole system. No one will ever see that the house needs painting, while sitting inside. You need perspective for that, not staff room scuttle but.

Apologies for writing 'Columbo', not the fault of any teacher, I did mean 'Colombo'.

Hasbeen has a good point, so I believe from my Qld experiences.

Within Ed Qld there is a single pool of labour for high office, the classroom teacher.

They go on to become specialist teachers, HODs, deputies, heads, into district office, regional office, head office.

All from the same monoculture.

I liken it to the sunflower paddock.

Heads east at sunrise, west at sunset, with no one deviating, lest their career be stopped.

Whereas, say, in Q Health, the managers come from a range of streams, doctors, nurses, allied health and administrative backgrounds.

Sure, all from 'health' but all with quite different perspectives.

I recall the uproar when an Emergency Services AO dared to transfer at level into EQ.

But what a breath of fresh air when the books were opened and a non-EQ approach was embarked upon, one that was happy to listen to suggestions from others.

Dare to suggest an improvement within EQ and you are immediately ostracised, rebuked and frowned upon.

This may not happen elsewhere, but we do live in 'the smart state' so we must be at the cutting edge of edumacation I'd say.

Hasbeen

"That you can't see this simple fact, shows how the rot sets in to the whole system. No one will ever see that the house needs painting, while sitting inside. You need perspective for that, not staff room scuttle but."

The best leaders in schools are always the ones that stay close to their teaching roots and understand life at the coalface. The last thing EQ or any other education system needs foisted on it is private sector managers with business rather than educational backgrounds.

It's the increasingly top-down managerialist culture that is very much part of the problem currently besetting education. Endless measurement and comparison is taking teachers away from their core role of teaching.

People like Judy King who understand education and are aware of the increasing inequity in the system are the type of leaders we need - not brash young things fresh out of business school who haven't lived long enough to realise they don't have all the answers.

Bronwyn

Judy King first came to my attention in the SMH, speaking out against the NSCP scam.

Few, if any, school leaders still in-harness did that.

Chris Bonnor is another leader, but not working in the school.

These two are rare as hens teeth.

They certainly do not reflect the norm here in Qld, but may well be more common in NSW, I have no idea.

Our primary head was a similar character, keeping the tides of folly at bay, then he retired, and the school was washed over by waves of stupidity and careerist nonsense.

I have doubts about young business people running schools too, but, frankly, they could be no worse than what we suffer from now.

Ideally, teachers would be given sabbaticals away from the classroom to pick up new skills, including attending proper management training not just being dumped into a job with a new school and limited experience.

But, of course, when politicians feed the clamouring for 'lower taxes' all the time, there is a shortage of funds, hence the privatisation of schooling, and the dumbing down of school administrations.

<< Ludwig, I don't think the problems with education have much to do with population size. >>

Antiseptic, I was making the point that a constantly growing population exerts constantly increasing pressure on our education system.

It’s not population size that matters in this instance, but the constant increase in the need for education services and the constant need to spend millions on education and the infrastructure and teachers and all the rest that goes with it just to break even for ever-more people, and that while we are spending our money on this we are NOT spending money, or anywhere near enough money, on real improvements!

We KNOW that this same constantly increasing population pressure is a critical factor with water supplies, transport, energy and many other basic quality of life factors.

It is no different with education.

This is enormously important. It is as important as everything else put together that affects the quality of education in this country.

Hmmm, I missed half that post when cutting and pasting! Here's the other half ....

We are just simply not going to get a significantly increased standard of education, and one that is equally distributed, until the expansion of our population stops or greatly slows. When this happens we will actually be able to allocate a much larger part of the education budget to the development of real improvements across the board, and not just in highly unequally distributed pockets, instead of on ever-more basic facilities and underpaid, poorly resourced and stressed teachers.

It really does dismay me that those who care so much about education seem to either gloss over this all-important factor or just not appreciate it at all.

<< But, of course, when politicians feed the clamouring for 'lower taxes' all the time, there is a shortage of funds, hence the privatisation of schooling, and the dumbing down of school administrations. >>

Yes Blue Cross. A shortage of funds is an enormous factor. But it is not the existing tax base or amount of tax that we are all paying that is the main problem, it is as I have said, the constant demand for our tax dollars to be spent on just trying to providing the same quality of service for ever-more people.

For as long as this is the case, you bet we’ll continue to get a dumbing down of administrations, and students, with there being practically no chance of any across-the-board significant improvements and probably a steady worsening of the whole education standard.

Ludwig, I grasp your point, but I disagree. It is only a problem insofar as it means that kids in outlying areas have less well-developed schools than those in more established regions. The actual quality of pedagoguery should not be at issue unless the training being provided to teachers is also inadequate.

My kids both attend well-established schools in reasonably affluent areas - my boy's school celebrated its 40th birthday this year and has 800-odd students. The facilities are excellent, despite one building being destroyed by arson earlier this year.

I think that your analogy with power, water reticulation etc is fundamentally flawed. These services are universally required and the more people live in an area the more pressure is placed on infrastructure. Managing existing infrastructure more efficiently can do a little, but not much. It costs a great deal to produce another power station or dam and these are large fixed costs that must be fully paid before the first drop of water or watt of power can flow.

Education is not like that at all. A shortfall of teachers can be addressed by realtively simply and cheaply increasing the availability of training or importing teachers from another place, as well as moving teachers from areas of low need to high need locations to plug gaps. Similarly, resources are relatively cheap and easy to expand piecemeal.

Yes, I'm sure that growth creates challenges for the department, but surely this is why the bureaucrats earn the big bucks?

Thanks Anti for entertaining some discussion on the all-important point that I was making.

<< I think that your analogy with power, water reticulation etc is fundamentally flawed. >>

Well, without going to great length to further make my case, I’ll just say that we have a fundamental disagreement here.

Just a few comments:

These services are not mutually exclusive with education in terms of funding. If there was less of a requirement to struggle to uphold basic power, water, road infrastructure and services, there’d be more chance of a significantly increased education budget.

Sure, all manner of improvements are potentially possible within a stressed budgetary regime. But they would be much more possible with a much bigger budget. It’s as simple as that.

Or, with the same budget redirected into real improvements instead ever-more duplication of basic infrastructure and service delivery.