Literacy Educators Coalition

If you want to contact your Federal or State politicians, a full listing is provided at:
www.aph.gov.au/whoswho/index.htm
Information, and hints on how to get politicians' attention, is given at:
www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/lobby.html

31 Oct 2011	Denise Ryan SMH	How we're hooked on hard lessons from America It's hard to understand why federal Education Minister Peter Garrett bothered meeting American educators in Washington earlier this month, unless it was to demonstrate what Australia does better. ... Despite both countries yearning to match Finland's success, neither is prepared to pay the price.
31 Oct 2011	Andrew Stevenson SMH	Broader tests will benefit students The headline of this article is misleading. The most significant thing reported is that a leading US authority on testing has said that NAPLAN tests were of little benefit as a diagnostic tool for individual students. He has also said that testing only literacy and numeracy has narrowed teaching and learning.
20 Oct 2011	SMH	The problem with what we're teaching children It's not so much what's missing from the curriculum as what it's jammed packed with that has some public teachers worried they're actually turning children off learning.
	NOTE	From 28 September until 23 October -- the administrator of this website will be working (and holidaying!) in the US. It will not be possible to update this page during that time.
27 Sept 2011	truth-out.org Henry Giroux	Corporate Media and Larry Summers team up to gut public education: Beyond education for illiteracy vulgarity and a culture of cruelty The rich corporate power brokers and right-wing cultural warriors in the USA have realized that education is central to creating a viable populist movement to serve their interests. In the name of 'reform,' they are dismantling public education and turning it over to hedge-fund managers and billionaires. It could happen here.
24 Sept 2011	AlterNet.org	What does Rupert Murdoch want with America's schools? Murdoch has made it very clear that he views America's public schools as a potential gold mine. But having a multinational corporation in charge of assessing kids' reading skills shows that "decision making in education is so far removed from people who have anything to do with kids." Can it happen here in Australia?
21 Sept 2011	Paul Adrnetto SMH	Let's skip the platitudes and learn to pay teachers what they're really worth Premier Baillieu promised to make Victorian teachers the best paid in Australia, but that was before the election.
19 Sept 2011	Dan Haesler SMH	Payment scheme draws doubt The Gillard government's proposed performance-related payment scheme is not being welcomed. It might have something to do with the fact that only a small percentage of teachers would qualify for the payments; the threat to staff morale posed by such a system; or the government's proposed methods for identifying good teachers - methods described as frighteningly stupid.
16 Sept 2011	SMH	Lack of funds leaves students lost for words and teachers at breaking point More than 50,000 children in NSW, including some fo the state's most disadvantaged students, are missing out on vital English language teaching because of a lack of funding, the government has conceded.
14 Sept 2011	Sarah-Jane Collins The Age	Australia lagging on education funding Experienced Australian secondary teachers are getting paid less than the OECD average, but they are spending more time in the classroom than teachers in almost all other comparable countries. Teacher salaries did not increase in real terms between 2000 and 20009. Australia also lags behind the OECD average on overall edcuation funding.
7 Sept 2011	Anna Patty SMH	NSW Public preschools to charge fees The NSW state government will begin charging fees at publicly owned preschools from next year. Prof Vinson (University of Sydney) says it will disadvantage families in poor areas and he cannot think of a more destructive and short-sighted policy. (Added note: Have the Ministers forgotten the pledge they made in the Melbourne Declaration?)
5 Sept 2011	Caroline Milburn The Age	In search of new money deal Four independent research papers are helping the school funding review. Elite private schools are being pressured to take more struggling students. Disabled students are the most costly students to educate but the ACER report shows that 80% of disabled students are in public schools. Struggling children from poor families are mostly in government schools too.
2 Sept 2011	Chris Bonnor The Age	Radical change needed to make school system fair for all The Gonski funding review has already changed the debate about how we should provide and support schools. It has established beyond doubt that our public/private framework of schools is sick and that inequity of student outcomes is the lingering symptom. Radical surgery is needed.
28 Aug 2011	ABC News	Private school profits 'totally unacceptable' Private schools are continuing to receive government funding while posting multi-millon dollar profits. Geelong Grammar made a $10.7 million profit last year while receiving $4 million of federal funding. Melbourne's Scotch College says it has $70 million in the bank. The private school funding system needs to be overhauled.
27 Aug 2011	Andrew Stevenson SMH	Poor teachers set students back years Teachers who always give their students time to ask questions, who ask challenging questions themselves and who tell students how their work will be judged can dramatically improve literacy performance.
24 Aug 2011	Dan Harrison SMH	Garrett counts cost of school funding deal Peter Garrett has strongly criticised Howard era deals which deliver millions of dollars more to some private schools than they wuld be entitled to if the federal funding formula was strictly applied.
19 Aug 2011	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Victorian Schools hit by $12 million funding cut Some schools may be forced to scrap the vocational education option for year 11 and 12 students after the Bailieu government slashed $12 million a year from the program. The cuts could lead to a reduction in the number of students who complete year 12.
13 Aug 2011	Justine Ferrari The Australian	It's never too early to start teaching our kids Some children come to school knowing their alphabet. They can count to 10, write their name, tell you their favourite book and are read to every night. For other children, the first time they see a book is the day they start school. Many will have to learn English while they're learning to read.
12 Aug 2011	Anna Patty, Kim Arlington SMH	Harder the job, better the pay for school heads NSW Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli, said yesterday the Department of Education would begin consulting school communities about the best way to increase their autonomy. The State government wants to link the salaries of school principals to the difficulty of their job, not just student numbers.
10 Aug 2011	Anna Patty, Andrew Stevenson SMH	Decision to delay new curriculum irks Garrett The decision by NSW to delay the introduction of the new Australian Curriculum by at least a year has been met by widespread support from education stakeholders - with the exception of the federal Minister, Peter Garrett.
1 Aug 2011	Justine Ferrari The Australian	My School site warned off suing media Legal advice provided to ACARA says the grounds for suing media organisations for breaching copyright are tenuous. ACARA says it does not have sufficient grounds to take legal action against any newspaper at this stage, despite the publication of detailed tables ranking schools from top to bottom. The failure of governments and ACARA to prevent league tables makes a mockery of the My School terms of use.
29 Jul 2011	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Private schools escape scrutiny Private schools will not be forced to divulge their assets, trust accounts and profits on the My School website next year, despite Peter Garrett saying he wanted it done. The authority responsible says there isn't time to include the extra financial data! The decision has angered public education advocates. Melbourne Grammarhad a $7.7 million surplus and $130 million in net assets in 2010, but received $4.67 million in state and federal funds. Geelong Grammar made a $10.7 million profit and owned $119.7 million in net assets, and received $7.1 million from governments. [This, while many government schools are falling apart.]
28 Jul 2011	edweek.org	Teachers converging on Washington for 4-day schools rally Today kicks off a gathering in Washington DC, organised by teachers who say they are fed up with test-driven accountability. Thousands of teachers and supporters are expected to attend the rally on Saturday. [Comment: When will it happen in Australia?]
26 Jul 2011	Andrew Stevenson SMH	Elite schools reap solid profits - with the help of public funding Many of Sydney's most prestigious private schools posted multimillion-dollar profits last year, with their financial positions greatly enhanced by federal and state funding.
26 Jul 2011	Caroline Milburn The Age	Push for funding to tackle decrepit schools A $40 billion program should be established to tackle the appalling condition of Australia's public school buildings. Malcolm McComas, an investment banker and company director, says he was shocked by the dilapidated standard of public schools when he and other members of the government's taskforce visited 85 primary schools last year.
25 Jul 2011	Bernie Shepherd SMH	Selectivity widens the learning gap Inclusive schools with students of varied aptitudes and backgrounds create better outcomes for all.
22 Jul 2011	Fatima Measham National Times	Intelligent voters are made in the classroom High-stakes testing has become the norm for our students. Learning has become defined as a set of quantities in literacy and numeracy, produced for online publication. Pedagogy is now more about retaining discrete information. In other words, our education system has become analogous to the dirty-coal economy from which the government is trying to shift us. It belongs in the 20th century. Instead of promoting inquiry, we give primacy to giving correct answers the first time, at all times. We underestimate how paralysing this is for young people.
20 Jul 2011	Dan Harrison SMH	Background of classmates defines student success, educators say The backgrounds of a student's classmats have a significant impact on that student's chances of success at school, regardless of their individual circumstances. NSW argues its analysis demonstrates the weaknesses of "voucher" systems that attach funding to individual students, because each student's level of need varies according to those of their fellow students.
18 Jul 2011	David Sirota salon.com	How Finland became an education leader Harvard professor Tony Wagner explains how the national achieved extraordinary successes by de-emphasizing testing.
18 Jul 2011	Dan Haesler SMH	Old ways curb young minds The Australian Curriculum is in danger of clinging to short-sighted methods, write Dan Haesler. Is Australia about to be locked into a model based on yesterday, when what we need is one that will be flixible enough for tomorrow's learners to thrive?
15 Jul 2011	David Zyngier SMH	Here's a lesson for Australia's education policymakers: failure begets failure Australia should look to Finland for its national education policy. Most of the policies and reforms adopted in Australia over the past 50 years have been copied from failed projects in the US or England. Neither of these countries is at the top end of the OECD Program for International Student Assessment rankings.
14 Jul 2011	Reid Sexton The Age	Victorian State Government plans to slash library funding Victoria's public libraries could face shorter opening hours and cuts to internet services and other projects after a Baillieu government decision to slash funding. Opposition spokesman Richard Wynne has warned it will punish some of the poorest people in Victoria.
14 Jul 2011	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Row over tests and teacher bonuses The NSW Coalition government is fighting to exclude student test results from being used to reward teachers under the federal government's bonus pay scheme. Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said that basing the bonus payments on test scores was an "inaccurate and incomplete way" of identifying which teachers to reward, and would undermine the educational purpose of the national literacy and nmeracy tests.
8 Jul 2011	David Sirota www.salon.com	Nations like Finland are getting better results by de-emphasizing exams Why are we doing the opposite? Testing 4-year-olds isn't the answer.
8 Jul 2011	Bernard Lane The Australian	High-stakes testing always carries associated risks Corruption leads to closure of Curtin University's IELTS English language testing centre following a corruption scandal.
6 Jul 2011	Paul Kelly The Australian	Lower standards in higher education Governments have allowed the tertiary sector to become a political afterthought. Public funding per student in Australia is about 25% below the average of rich nations. How crazy is this when productivity is the name of the game?
6 Jul 2011	Aaron Cook SMH	Nation turns deaf ear to children most in need Australia is failing its most vulnerable children and has made little progress in five years to improve the protection of children's rights, the chief executive of UNICEF said.
5 Jul 2011	Dan Harrison SMH	My School data 'inaccurate' Independent schools have told Peter Garrett that the next version of the My School website will include inaccurate financial data unless changes are made to how the information is collected and reported.
3 Jul 2011	Kim Arlington SMH	Public schools pass the test They receive more than twice the funding of their public school counterparts but students from independent schools perform no better on literacy and numeracy tests, a new analysis reveals. Independent schools at the top end of the advantage scale were found to have an average annual income of more than $19,000 per student, compared with an income of about $8200 for each student at a government school. But when their NAPLAN scores were averaged and converted into a scaled index, government schools on 567 edged out independent schools on 566.
28 Jun 2011	Dan Harrison SMH	$47 million tick for NSW effort in English and maths NSW will get $47 million from the Federal Government as a reward for its efforts to boost literacy and numeracy. But states set their own targets. Victoria's targets were more ambitious so fewer we achieved and they will get only $9.4 million. [Comment: What kind of a system is this?]
23 Jun 2011	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Schools to foot bill as programs cut Victorian schools have been asked to help pay for literacy specialists and ultranet coaches next year out of their own budgets after the government axed the programs as part of widespread cuts. [But the government found millions for private schools recently.]
19 Jun 2011	Michael Bachelard The Sunday Age	School claims bullying over religious education The Education Department has warned a Hawthorn primary school council not to survey parents about religious instruction because to do so would be "provocative". [Comment: Schools Councils are required to represent the schools' parents. The Education Act empowers a Council "to inform itself and take into account any views of the school cmmunity for the purpose of makng decisions." This is incredible interference, by the department, into the operations of the school council.]
17 Jun 2011	Dan Harrison SMH	Kirby urges greater justice for public education Former High Court judge Michael Kirby has urged a review of federal school funding to recommend cutting the aount for private schools, provie more money for public eduction and eject chaplains from government schools.
15 Jun 2011	Erik Robelen Education Week	Frustrated educators aim to build grassroots movement Thousands of educators, parent activities and others in the US are expected to convene in Washington next month for a march protesting the current thrust of education policy which relies on test-based accountability. [When will Australian educators and parents reach this stage?]
14 Jun 2011	Dr Joanne Orlando Sydney Morning Herald	Money for scores rewards only bores NAPLAN is not only a standardised test but an ideology working its way through the Australian education system. It transports classrooms back to the 19th century when rote learning and the regurgitation of rudimentary facts were rewarded above all else. So when Julia Gillard says the government will reward quality teachers - and that NAPLAN test results are one of the criteria - it sends a shiver down my spine.
13 Jun 2011	David Sirota Salon.com	We need to fix the economy to fix education Prof Diane Ravitch's position gains support from a new study that suggests job losses affect student performance. Ravitch argues that larger social ills such as poverty, joblessness, economic despair and lack of health negatively affect educational achievement. Those on the 'other side' want to privatize education under the premise that the main problems are bad/lazy teachers and 'unaccountable' school administrators.
13 Jun 2011	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	US National Research Council Fails Test-based Accountability Programs A decade or more of test-based accountablity programs in the US has had little to no effect on student achievement according to a report just published by an expert panel of the US National Research Council. The report is a devastating indictment of the focus on testing in US education policy and, by implication, Australian education policy which now closely follows the US model.
10 Jun 2011	Andrew Stevenson SMH	Just shut up and listen, expert tells teachers John Hattie has spent his life studying the studies to find out what works in education. His advice to teachers? Just shut up. Teachers need to stop spending 80% of their time in class talking and start listening.
8 Jun 2011	Dan harrison The Age	Schools may be 'gaming' tests The man charged with monitoring efforts to boost literacy and numeracy has expressed concern schools may be "gaming" the system by asking low-performing students not to sit tests. (Maybe he doesn't understand that it's often parents who decide their children will not do the tests. See "Parents Boycott NAPLAN" above.)
2 Jun 2011	Justine Ferrari The Australian	No checks on $165m given to private schools Private schools receive about $165 million a year under a federal program for disadvantaged students without any oversight of how the money is spent or whether it is effective.
31 May 2011	Peter Garrett The Australian	Quality education demands fair funding policy Brendan Nelson has now admitted the funding model he inherited was a stepping stone and that he always intended to "wean" private schools from the arrangements that maintained their funding at old levels. By far the majority of submissions to the review of school funding being conducted by David Gonski refer to the need to substantially reform the existing funding system.
26 May 2011	Leading-Learning Blog	For too long we have submitted to Ministry C.R.A.P. (Continuously Revising All Policies/Programs) and taken their untested advice, usually picked from other countries, while ignoring the ideas we know have worked in creative schools and classrooms.
26 May 2011	Dan Harrison The Age	Promises to private schools top $700m The cost of preserving funding levels of more than 1000 private schools will climb above $700 million next year. Education Minister Peter Garrett has described the current arrangements as "indefensible" and "in urgent need of root-and-branch reform."
25 May 2011	Andrew Stevenson, Anna Patty SMH	Report outlines public school 'funding cuts' Federal support for public schoolswould fall as much as 6% inreal terms over the next three years. In the same period, funding for private schools would rise by 11%. Outrageous!
21 May 2011	Catherine Keenan SMH	Nurture young imaginations through creativity not tests Chief education advisor to the US president has said that standardised testing in US schools had done a disservice to children. It had narrowed the curriculum, among other things, and the US was about to move away from it. She expressed concern that Australia appeared to be moving in the other direction, toward standardised testing.
16 May 2011	William Mckeith SMH	Heavier crowns good for performance Greater principal authority and autonomy, with pay to match, is required for public schools to progress. ...Leadership is the key to getting the best from the teachers and, in turn, the best from our children.
14 May 2011	SMH	Will bonus payments for teachers improve children's education? Jane Caro: No. Business has been walking away from performance pay and incentive bonuses for a while now. As a device to improve employee performance, they have fallen from favour. They can distort work performance and create a range of unfortunate, unexpected and unintended consequences. Dick Shearman: No. One-off payments do nothing to assist long-term goals of attracting and retaining the best and the brightest.
11 May 2011	Sarah-Jane Collins The Age	Schools test still troubling students Children across the country sat the first of three NAPLAN tests yesterday, as parents publicly questioned the system. Gail McHardy, from Parents Victoria, said money for the tests would be better spent on education programs and that time was wasted on tests that had not improved standards. Victoria has the lowest participation levels of any state.
11 May 2011	Anna Patty SMH	Parents pull children out of NAPLAN tests to avoid My School ranking Parents at a small private school in the Blue Mountains staged a boycott to ensure its results will not be reported on the federal government's My School website.
10 May 2011	Dan Harrison, Leesha Mckenny SMH	It does compute: push to take national tests online ACARA is investigating the possibility of putting NAPLAN tests online. However, many schools will lack the facilities to have all their students online.
9 May 2011	Jenny Dillon Education Editor, The Telegraph	NAPLAN slammed as 'napalm' The NAPLAN tests which begin this week have been re-named "napalm" by many teachers because they claim it destroys everything in the classroom.
9 May 2011	Adele Horin SMH	Land of the fair go gives a fairer go to some A study, published by the Smith Family today, shows that the children in the richest 20% of households had on average about three times the after-tax household income (about $40,000 a year more) than children in the poorest households. The study challenges Australia's image as the land of the fair go.
9 May 2011	Anna Patty SMH	Top teachers, not money, the key to good schools Terry Moran, Secretary of the Dept of the PM and Cabinet, says the key to improving education standards is not in spreading more money on schools "like Vegemite". Rather, a targeted invetment in teacher quality and innovative school leadership is needed.
8 May 2011	Albert & Logan News	Parents boycott NAPLAN 114 Year 9 students at Carbrook's Kimberley College will not sit the NAPLAN tests, with parents opting to join a mass boycott of the exam. Principal Paul Thomson said, "Everybody has a right to withdraw their child but very few parents realise this."
8 May 2011	Trevor Cobbold, Save Our Schools	NAPLAN has taken over the classroom NAPLAN results determine school reputations and affect the careers of teachers and principals. Preparation and drilling took over the curriculum in the first part of the year.
7 May 2011	Dan Harrison The Age	Agency behind My School warned against data use ACARA cautioned against using NAPLAN results to award financial bonuses to schools, warning the data was likely to be unreliable. Also, documents obtained under freedom of information reveal that ACARA noted that attempts to track the improvement made by students over time was volatile. [Does the government care?]
3 May 2011	Anna Patty SMH	Teacher bonus pay won't help students, educators warn Education leaders fear federal government plans to deliver high-performing teachers a one-off bonus of up to $8100 after the next election will divide the profession and do nothing to raise student performance. The government had no clear plan for how it would evaluate teachers. "Getting valid reliable evidence on more than 100 standards on 250,000 teachers by 2013 will be no more than a tick-a-box exercise which could lead to a class action lawsuit against the allocation of those funds," said Professor Brian Caldwell. There is no evidence that such bonuses have any impact on improving student learning.
3 May 2011	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Schools reject offer of teacher bonuses Teachers believe that paying a small number of teachers one-off bonuses is counterproductive and divisive. The Victorian Education Department could not get 25 schools to join the pilot.
2 May 2011	Anna Patty SMH	Is Australia on the right path to education reform? No Finland and Korea lead the world in numeracy, literacy and science. They don't have standardised testing for students until year 12, they don't segregate children into different school systems and they respect teachers. The big question is why Australia would want to emulate a country like the US where academic performance standards are much lower.
2 May 2011	Anna Patty SMH and The Age	NAPLAN-style testing has 'failed' US schools NAPLAN-style testing and reporting has failed in the United States by narrowing the curriculum and corrupting education standards, says a chief education adviser to the US President.
30 Apr 2011	Dan Harrison The Age	Students from migrant families topping the class in most tests Students from non-English-speaking backgrounds do better than their classmates in writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy, but not in reading.
29 Apr 2011	Diane Ravitch NPR	Standardized Testing Undermines Teaching Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education in the USA, was once an advocate of their "No Child Left Behind" policy, which relied on standardized testing for data. Four years later, after seeing the damage caused by inappropriate testing, she changed her mind.
27 Apr 2011	Alfie Kohn Education Week	How education reform traps poor children Love them or hate them, the proposals collectively known as "school reform" are mostly top-down policies (they're all about funding, testing, pitting schools against one another, ...) Policymakers have paid much less attention to what happens inside classrooms.
25 Apr 2011	Dan Harrison Sydney Morning Herald	Garrett in firing line over website Two internal audit reports obtained under freedom of information laws, expose problems behind the scenes of the latest changes to the My School website. The reviews say ACARA is "inwardly focused" and fails to plan effectively.
21 Apr 2011	Crikey.com.au Andrew Crook	The kids aren't alright: budding journos struggling with English Australian journalism courses are enrolling international students with faltering English that filas to meet minimum standards. Some journalism schools desperate for income are under growing pressure to pass students.
19 Apr 2011	ABC News	Reading, writing improving in schools The COAG Reform Council has found the literacy and numeracy performance of students around the country is improving.
15 Apr 2011	Washington Post Valerie Strauss	The myths of standardized testing Refers to the new book by Phillip Harris, Bruce Smith and Joan Harris: "The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why they don't tell you what you think they do." Explains why high-stakes standardized tests (such as NAPLAN) are less objective than many people think. They don't adequately measure student achievement, they distort the validity of the assessment system, and they lead young people to become "superficial thinkers."
13 Apr 2011	The Australian	Gillard was concerned schools prepared for NAPLAN tests Gillard raised concerns about schools "teaching to the test" to get ahead in national literacy and numeracy exams when she was education minister in 2009.
10 Apr 2011	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Tested on several fronts, Dixon draws on lessons of teaching As new Education Minister in Victoria, Martin Dixon hasn't found things easy. The new government's education credentials have already been tested on several fronts. An election promise to make Victorian teachers the best-paid in the country has been dumped and a tight budget is looming.
9 Apr 2011	The Age	Schools funding logic doesn't stack up Letters to the Editor regarding private school funding.
7 Apr 2011	Dan Harrison, Sarah-Jane Collins The Age	Pyne backs status quo on school funding Coalition education spokesman Christopher Pyne has promised to continue the controversial school funding arrangements that provide more than 1000 private schools with more funding than they are entitled to.
6 Apr 2011	Prof Lyn Yates, Melb Uni. SMH	New curriculum will ultimately mould our national identity Is our hypnotic fascination with tests taking priority over what we teach our kids? ... The substance of what children are actually learning, directly and indirectly, is left off the political agenda.
5 Apr 2011	The Age	Schools' neglect has real-world cost Governments have a bad habit of denying problems until the problems become undeniable. Schools are struggling with the consequences of long declines in the pay, conditions and status of teachers. The Baillieu government is the latest to baulk at restoring pay levels to at least those of other professions with which teaching was once comparable. 50% of secondary schools have placed teachers in subjects they were unqualified to teach. The State's response is inadequate. How bad must the problem get before governments invest fully in fixing it? Australia is already feeling the pain of this neglect.
1 Apr 2011	ABC News	My School prompting shift to public schools The NSW education department says the MySchool website has helped deliver an unexpected increase in the State's public school enrolments.
29 Mar 2011	Education Week	Thoughts on the failure of merit pay Diane Ravitch provides valuable insights into the problems with merit pay.
29 Mar 2011	Save Our Schools	Private schools make a brazen grab for more resources Major private school organisations have conceded that their &700 million a year over-funding bonanza is dead in the water in its current form. However, they are unrepentant. They want another arrangement to guarantee their privileged funding.
29 Mar 2011	Associated Press	Obama says to much testing makes education boring Pres Barack Obama said that students should take fewer standardized tests and school performance should be measured in other ways than just exam results. "Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools."
23 Mar 2011	Michael Stuchbery The Age	Low-road debate sells our children short Young people can only work with what they have – in order to make decisions, theyhave to use the information they've gleaned from the world around them. ... If we give them fast-paced, reactionary discourse, free of critical reasoning and considered commentary, what does that mean for the future of public policy when these children become our leaders?
23 Mar 2011	Ben Jensen The Australian	Language skills vital in an Asia-led world Australia's future economic prosperity depends on our ability to embed ourselves in Asia's continued economic growth. However, our education system fails to prepare our students to succeed in this new world.
17 Mar 2011	Laurence Strangio letter to The Age	High ground on tests IT CONCERNS me that low participation rates in NAPLAN tests are being viewed by some as ''evidence'' of attempts to skew school results (Education, 14/3). It is implied that students are discouraged from sitting the tests to advantage their school. From my experience as a parent and member of school council, I believe that the intentional withdrawal of students by parents from NAPLAN testing deserves to be understood as a legitimate protest against a wasteful and pedagogically unsound process. What is of greater concern, and equally worthy of investigation, is the skewing of My School results by schools that focus on teaching to the test, rather than providing a more well-rounded education.
17 Mar 2011	John Watson The Age	Ted Baillieu's non-core promise Baillieu's promise is broken. He's now saying any pay rise above 2.5% depends on an increase in productivity. Here's a productivity justifcation: teachers in the top 16% for effective teaching raised each student's lifetime earnings by $20,000 (according to Stanford University). If equipping students for higher-value jobs is not a productivity increase, I don't know what is.
17 Mar 2011	The Australian	Education is an industry Academics hate anybody saying it, but education is an industry. The poor written and verbal lanuage skills of foreign fee-paying students and locals from non-English-speaking backgrounds do not stop universities passing them.
16 Mar 2011	Andrew Scott Prof of Politics, Deakin SMH	Nordic nations show the way to lift children out of poverty If they can do it so can we, and taking action now will save a whole lot of grief later. It is scandalous that more than half a million (one in eight) Australian children continue to live in poverty. Cutting child poverty in Australia would be a genuinely bold reform deserving of support.
15 Mar 2011	Caroline Milburn The Age	Does national testing pass the fairness test? An issue is starting to upset principals: some neighbouring schools have big differences in the percentage of their students sitting the NAPLAN tests used to rate the schools' performance.
14 Mar 2011	David Campbell The Age	Tough talk, but Baillieu squibs on teacher pay An earlier promise becomes "a commentary that we made in the past." Now that Baillieu is premier, he is backing away from his promise to improve teacher pay.
10 Mar 2011	Steven Stern SMH	My School fails vital test The way My School calculates groups of similar schools is fundamentally flawed, writes Dr Steven Stern, Associate Professor of Statistics at ANU.
8 Mar 2011	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Anger over league tables Principal associations and teacher unions have written to Garrett demanding he take action over the (illegal) publication of league tables using data from the My school website.
6 Mar 2011	Michael Bachelard The Age	Is this school incredibly good, or just incredible? The "gobsmacking" NAPLAN score of one disadvanted Melbourne primary school has raised fresh questions about whether schools are manipulating the literacy and numeracy tests to gain an unfair advantage.
5 Mar 2011	Farah Farouque The Age	Parents choose to give test a rest In a metaphoric thumbing-of-nose at the system, 86% of eligible students at Spensley Street PS last year were withdrawn by their parents from national literacy and numeracy testing. Parents want their children to be broadly educated, not taught to the test.
1 Mar 2011	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	What is Equity in Education? Achieving equity in education is a demanding goal given existing inequalities in outcomes. It will require a substantial boost in funding for government schools because they enrol the vast majority of low SES, Indigenous and remote area students.
28 Feb 2011	Jewel Topsfield SMH	Gillard needs gumption on schools The federal government needs to introduce an equitable funding model, even if this means reducing funds, in real terms, to some non-government schools.
28 Feb 2011	The Age	Catholic schools overfunded to the tune of $39 million Wealthy Catholic schools in Melbourne's eastern suburbs are allocated millions of dollars more from the federal government than they are entitled to.
25 Feb 2011	The Age	Private school finances to be revealed All but a handful of private schools will have their financial data published on the federal My School website when it is relaunched next week. The site was meant to go live on 3 December last year, but after complaints from private schools, the government delayed the launch. (We wonder if the government would have delayed the launch of the site if government schools had complained.)
19 Feb 2011	Tony Wright SMH	Read to your babies and the word will prevail Read to your babies. In all the studies concerning the genesis of a love of words, this remains the single most compelling finding: start at the start, and all the rest follows.
14 Feb 2011	Timothy Slekar in the Huffington Post	Rejecting Standardized Testing A father's plea for his son and his story about what the test-crazy schooling system is doing.
14 Feb 2011	Anna Patty The Age	Do we have fairness in funding for Australian schools? There are too many inconsistencies in the way public funding is being dished out to schools. Public funding for private schools has increased much more than for government schools.
12 Feb 2011	SMH	Can we afford to continue funding private schools? The battle for scarce education resources is always hard fought. Four experts discuss the options. Worth reading.
11 Feb 2011	Dan Harrison The Age	My School set to relaunch despite data doubts The next version of My School will go live in three weeks despite concerns by schools that their financial data and rankings are still inaccurate. ... A report from Deloitte identified 23 issues which could lead to data being misstated or which were likely to prevent fair comparisons between schools.
11 Feb 2011	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Official quits at school's test results spike A senior government bureaucrat has resigned from the Education Department over his concerns about the extraordinary improvement in NAPLAN test results achieved by a disadvantaged primary school in Broadmeadows, Melbourne.
9 Feb 2011	SMH Richard Gill	Focus on national tests robs children of true learning I want to make my stance very clear: NAPLAN tests and My School have nothing to do with the education of a child. This abhorrent and insidious method of assessing children, teachers and their schools needs to stop now. Principals, teachers and parents need to stand up and be counted and resist this unnatural activity. Richard Gill is the music director of Victoria Opera.
8 Feb 2011	The Age	Victorian Liberal Government to cut $338 million from government schools, but to give $240 million to private schools Readers say what they think in Letters to the Editor.
5 Feb 2011	Dan Harrison SMH	Numbers don't add up - My School fails its maths test My School a Failure A confidential report from accounting firm Deloitte has cast further doubt on the reliability of the financial data to be published on the revamped My School website. The report identifies 23 issues that could lead to data being mis-stated or which are likely to prevent fair comparisons among schools. How can the government push ahead with My School?
2 Feb 2011	Chris Wheat Teacher SMH	Lessons about teaching after years at a school of hard knocks Simplistic recipes for making better teachers ignore the reality in class. ... Good teachers seem to be those in good schools; bad teachers are those in bad schools. We are all the cumber for this simplicity.
26 Jan 2011	Anna Patty Education Editor SMH	Private school students win bigger share of funding Increased enrolments fail to account for the doubling of federal funding for Sydney's richest private schools over the past decade.
17 Jan 2011	Jewel Topsfield The Age	School drift sets alarm bells ringing The head of a review into the controversial school funding model has stressed the need for every student to be given the opportunity to reach their potential. The funding model, introduced by the Howard government, has been pilloried because about half of the private schools receive more than they are entitled to, costing taxpayers an extra $800 million a year.
16 Jan 2011	Natalie Craig The Age	Our richest schools raise fees by 91% Taxpayer funding to private schools, intended to help keep fees down, has failed. Fees at 10 top schools have soared by an average of 91% in the past decade, compared with inflation of 37%.
7 Jan 2011	Chris Middendorp The Age	Why should the public fund private schools? Chris Middendorp, who attended a private school, argues that State schools must be the government's priority in education.
7 Jan 2011	Sian Watkins The Age	Teachers adrift in failed system PM Gillard want to entice the best and the brightest to join the teaching profession. The challenge lies not in attracting smart, personable people to teaching, but in retaining them. 18% of Victorian teachers are on short-term contracts with no guarantee of work to follow.
5 Jan 2011	Anna Patty SMH	Just perfect: pupils show the US who's the boss One Sydney school produced three students who achieved the perfect score in the International Baccalaureate, outperforming the entire US, which produced just one top scoring students. (The Age newspaper has also reported that four students in one Melbourne school gained perfect scores.) Note: We might ask why PM Gillard is still blindly following US policy. We out-perform the US in the International Baccalaureate, but we out-perform them in the PISA results too!
4 Jan 2011	Trevor Cobbold, Save Our Schools	Pisa study shows that school autonomy is no silver bullet The Gillard Government's claim that giving schools greater responsibility for budgets and hiring teachers will improve student achievement is repudiated by the latest results from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). A report analysing cross-country results shows that schools which have control over budgets and the hiring and firing of teachers do not achieve better results. However, the report does show that education systems in which schools which have greater control over curriculum and student assessment do achieve better results.
3 Jan 2011	The Australian	Struggling schools If state schools are to become autonomous with full control over finances and the hiring of staff, then presumably the existing teacher transfer systems will have to be abandoned. How then will schools that are currently difficult to staff because of either remoteness or challenging clientele get anything approaching the Australian ideal of a fair go?
2 Jan 2011	Ann Bibby Care2.com	Four Reasons Finland's Schools are Better than ours This article refers to the USA, but is equally relevant to Australia. A short, easy-to-read article clearly stating some important points.
28 Dec 2010	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Delay to national syllabus spreads The two most populous states will delay teaching the national school curriculum in classrooms until 2013. Only ACT schools will meet the government's preferred timetable of introducing the courses next year. Victoria will join NSW and WA in delaying the implementation until 2013, declaring further changes will be made.
18 Dec 2010	Adele Horin SMH	Just a teacher? Vital job deserves pick of the crop The baby boom teachers will be retired by 2015 and we will need to replenish their ranks. Some top achievers will put their hand up, but we need more. In Finland the top 10% of university graduates go into teaching, and the results show in their students' outstanding achievements in international tests. Teachers get maximum autonomy and can shape the broad curriculum to their liking and are not constrained by "teaching to the test". They are highly respected. No one is "just" a teacher in Finland.
18 Dec 2010	Anna Patty SMH	Private education fees rise despite federal billions The existing Commonwealth system has allocated more than $27 Billion to private schools over four years. The Howard government said the funding method was designed to limit fee increases, however, increased public spending on private schools has not made them more affordable. In fact, private schools have increased their fees.
17 Dec 2010	Helen Pitt SMH	More to a school than good results A journalist's experience regarding school testing and the effect it had on the Californian town where she used to live.
14 Dec 2010	Australian Policy Online	Challenges for Australian Education: results from PISA 2009 Despite being one of the top 10 countries in reading, the reading literacy of Australian 15-year-old students has fallen sharply over the past decade.
11 Dec 2010	Anna Patty SMH	Private schools excel at gaining extra assistance for HSC students UP to one in three students at some schools received extra exam time, assistance with writing and other "special provisions" for this year's HSC exams in NSW. 26 of the state's wealthiest private schools received more than twice the proportion of special provisions as public schools. It appears that many private schools have learned how to exploit the system to gain unfair advantage.
11 Dec 2010	John Garnaut, Beijing. The Age	Parents take aim at China's school daze Shanghai's schoolchildren may have proven themselves to be top of the class in science, maths and reading (according to test scores) but that hasn't stopped parents from pouring scorn on the Chinese education system. "What you learnt has nothing to do with your work in the future. ... Our kids can't create and they are turning into idiots." Employers are complaining that highscoring children do not necessary make for well-adjusted employees. China's system is reviled at home. "Students hate it, parents rave against it, principals complain about it and even the Minister of Education is far from happy with it." [Comment: Is it where our governments want to take us?]
9 Dec 2010	Chris Bonnor On Line Opinion	My School 2.0 – the never-ending saga My School was first launched in January with all the language of transparency, accountability, choice and quality. It was also accompanied by more than a few misleading claims about its accuracy and how we can apparently compare schools. The PM started unveiling My School 2.0 a few weeks ago but promptly veiled it again in response to complaints, from private school groups,about the accuracy of the financial data. It's remarkable how My School 1.0 has been allowed to run all year with its fraudulent school comparison mechanism. We know who gets to push the right buttons in Canberra! With My School 2.0, government school income will apparently include amounts paid for school excursions or funds held in trust. The income shown for non-government schools doesn't include anything from trusts, foundations, share and property portfolios. Once again we are not comparing apples with apples.
9 Dec 2010	Heath Gilmore SMH	Wealth overrides fairness in school results The performance of Australian students is more dependent on the wealth and resources of their family than in other countries. As a result, the PISA report says that Australia has only average equity for educational opportunity.
9 Dec 2010	Dan Harrison SMH	Not bad, but there's room for improvement Australia's overall performance in the PISA tests has declined in maths and reading, but remains among the highest in the world.
9 Dec 2010	Chris Bonnor SMH	The free market has done little to improve how our children learn The PISA reports for 2009 (released 8 Dec 2010) tell us we have high averages but declining results. The free market approach to education (commenced by John Howard and perfected by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard) has not worked.
8 Dec 2010	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	PISA results demand a massive increase in funding for government schools The new PISA report shows that Australia's education system continues to let down the most disadvantaged in our society. It shows large and growing achievement gaps between rich and poor. This is a national scandal for a society that prides itself on a "fair go" for all.
8 Dec 2010	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	Education Quality and Inequity is Worsening in Australia The latest international test results show that Australian education is still a high quality, low equity system, but that quality is declining and inequity is increasing.
6 Dec 2010	Dan Harrison The Age	Pyne seeks My School scrutiny The Gillard government will come under increased pressure over its revamped School website when Christopher Pyne writes to the Auditor-General to ask him to investigate controversial changes to the site.
2 Dec 2010	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Uproar over My School rankings A Montessori school in north-east Victoria that is struggling financially was ranked the third most advantaged school in the nation on the revamped My School website, raising serious concerns about the site's accuracy.
27 Nov 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	National curriculum in doubt Confidence in the national education agenda was unravelling yesterday after independent schools called for the ACARA board to resign over "inaccuracies" in information to be published on the My School website. Education leaders also met ACARA yesterday, trying to resolve widespread concerns about implementation of a national curriculum.
27 Nov 2010	Dan Harrison & Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Disclose or lose funds, say senators Labor senators have argued that private schools should be stripped of their public funding if they refuse to fully disclose their financial resources. The new version of the My School website will provide some financial details, but resources held by schools in trusts, fundations and investment portfolios will not be reported.
24 Nov 2010	Phil Cullen	Compulsory Schooling - a sick joke Phil briefly outlines the failing system in New York and then describes how Australia is following the same recipe for failure because Julia Gillard, as education minister, was fooled by New York chancellor Joel Klein.
23 Nov 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Why are private schools afraid? Independent schools are screaming the loudest about changes in the way their level of social advantage is measured. And you have to ask why. This year's version of the My School website used student enrolment data to calculate social disadvantage. Last year, it used census district data. ... Public schools believe the enrolment data has provided a more accurate picture of disadvantage. Perhaps some private schools fear they may lose funding if their true level of social disadvantage is revealed. ... This year's ICSEA scores are more closely linked to student performance than they were last year. That brings home a sobering message about the gross inequity in the Australian education system. Social advantage continues to be the greatest determiner of a child's performance at school in this country, more so than many other developed nations.
22 Nov 2010	Kenneth Davidson The Age	Real problem with schools is the gap between rich and poor Government schools, on balance, are bound to perform poorly because they now take almost twice the proportion of low-income students, most of the students with learning disabilities and most indigenous students. ... ... the worst aspects of My School remain. The ''red flagging'' of schools will continue to publicly name and shame schools and their students, it remains systematically biased against government schools and continues with misleading and unreliable measures of school performance. The publication distracts from the main issue, which is the achievement gap between students from low and high socioeconomic status (SES) families.
20 Nov 2010	Paul Kidson, Principal, St Paul's Grammar. Sydney Morning Herald	Let's set our My School sights to above average The new My School website will report the average improvement of a school over the past three years. Vive la Revolution! Let us focus on "average" achievement, flattening any notion of useful understanding about student or school growth. Let us hide the growth of students at the top for fear of acknowledging and celebrating their achievement. Let us fail to identify individual growth of students at the lower end of the range for whom there is cause for joy when they improve. Let us collate the achievements of dozens or even hundreds of individuals in any one school into a single number,regardless of whether it shows the school in a good light or not.
18 Nov 2010	Heath Gilmore & Louise Hall Sydney Morning Herald	Challenges to My School rankings risk lauch delay Up to 300 schools are challenging the ranking given to them under the revamped My School website,raising doubts about its launch date. The schools, mainly independent and Catholic, have asked for a review of the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage number. The independent school sector has launched a sustained attack on the new formula used to calculate the ICSEA score. They fear the ranking will be used to determine government funding.
15 Nov 2010	Kenneth Davidson The Age	(Victorian) Labor cosies up to the rich and influential Last week, Premier Brumby announced an extra $200 million a year for non-government schools on top of a net increase of $100 mllion a year announced last November. Thus, Melbourne Grammar (attended by both Brumby and the opposition leader) would receive an additional voucher of $968 a year for each student. What will it do with the money? It has net assets of $128 million and generated a surplus of $8.2 million last year. ... The system is corrupt. In 2007-08, total per capita spending on government schools was $9858, Catholic schools $10,031 and independent schools $16,605. Brumby has compounded the existing crisis in public education, which educates 60% of Victorian schoolchildren.
15 Nov 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Teach teachers so students can learn Until we concentrate on enhancing the quality of our educators, there will be no significant improvement in our system. [Comment: Invest in teachers, don't bash them!]
13 Nov 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Call to delay My School data amid 'wild' swings Independent schools have complained about sudden swings in their social disadvantage scores to be published on the new My School website early next month.
12 Nov 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Claytons national curriculum Is the Gillard government delivering a real national curriculum? Education Ministers will be signing off on little more than 'core content' for English, maths, science and history. NSW has made it clear they won't be adopting and entire national curriculum, and will stick to it sexisting allocation of teaching hours. Nor will NSW adopt ACARA's curriculum structure. The Board will stick to its existing model which sets out the curriculum across blocks of two years and not one,as suggested by ACARA.
12 Naov 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	School chiefs reject parts of curriculum A letter signed by NSW education chiefs threatens to derail the implementation of the national curriculum. ... Amongst other things, the letter says NSW will structure the curriculum in 2-year stages rather than single years.

.....more "daily news" following the Table below:

PROBLEMS WITH NAPLAN:

	In August 2010, with the release of NY test results for 2010, the claims of Joel Klein (New York City) came crashing down. Klein was invited to Australia and his claims fooled Julia Gillard. (Read article here in today's Washington Post.) However, both Labor and Liberal parties have education policies aligned to the New York City model. It's a disaster! They don't understand that teaching improves learning, not testing. They don't understand that you invest in teachers, you don't bash them. Why look to NY for the way to go? The USA isn't even in the top 15 countries (see OECD Program for International Student Assessment). Australia is always in the top few countries! (Evidence here)
Prof Margaret Wu Assessment Research Centre University of Melbourne	NAPLAN Results for the Layperson "The Australian federal government's education transparency agenda should begin with providing the layperson with clear guidelines for interpreting the NAPLAN results." Professor Wu's key points: (1) a student's NAPLAN score might vary by 12%. ie. A student's score of 70% on the test might vary from 58% to 82% on similar tests! This uncertainty makes the results unreliable for comparisons. (2) The growth measures based on two 40-question tests have an error margin greater than one year's growth! (3) A teacher can expect his/her class average score to vary by around 10% from year to year due to random fluctuations of student cohort and inaccuracies in test scores. If we use the class average to judge a teacher's performance, the average could be higher or lower to some extent depending on a teacher's "luck" of whether the current students are relatively better or poorer academically. (4) NAPLAN results alone CANNOT show, with confidence, which schools are more effective and which schools are less effective. (See also, Prof Steve Wilson's letter below.) Submission to Senate Education Committee In this submission, Professor Wu argues that "publication of NAPLAN results on the MySchool website should be deemed as providing false information to the public." Compelling reading.
	Putting NAPLAN literacy testing to the test The 2010 NAPLAN tests of language conventions reveal inherent design flaws. .. The major weakness of the tests is that they lack order and coherence. The range of questions is limited. The tests do not address the many errors that characterise students' written work throughout their schooling, and which are most detrimental to fluency. Some items appear to be testing multiple points simultaneously. Other questions are written in ways that rely on native speaker intuition, or common sense and logic, rather than a solid grasp of how the English language works.
Prof Brian Caldwell	"A Principled Stand on National Testing" In this article, Caldwell (former Dean of Education at the University of Melbourne) argues that a boycott of the national testing would be a principled one. "It is hard to conceive of a more educationally reprehensible approach to assessment and reporting."
SOS Save Our Schools	SOS (Save Our Schools) Calls for MySchool to be Scrapped In Submission 262 to the Senate Education Committee regarding NAPLAN, 'Save Our Schools' calls for the MySchool website to be scrapped. The link above will take you to their 3-page summary of their careful analyses. The submission argues: (1) Publication of school results and league tables does not improve student achievement. (2) Publishing school results and league tables harms education. (3) Published school results are misleading and unreliable. (4) Like-school comparisons are no answers. (5) Other government claims for publishing school results are defective. (6) There is an alternative. Issues in using enrolment data to measure Socio-Economic Status of schools October 2010 - new paper critical of intention to use enrolment data to determine "like schools" on the My School website.

11 Nov 2010	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Victorian Lib plan to give principals power Education Department bureaucrats would be stripped of their control over schools under a Liberal government. Principals have complained that they feel lost in the paradigm of a narrow literac and nmeracy agenda that increasingly has its focus upon NAPLAN, My School and the data sets inherent in the School Level Report. ... Principal network meetings would be held by principals, not the Education Department.
8 Nov 2010	Editorial Manawatu Standard, NZ	National Standards crisis looming The mounting backlash from schools in New Zealand against National Standards is shaping as a crisis for the government. The Minister either knows better than the thousands of teachers, principals and educational experts who are telling her she's wrong, or she is sticking to her National Standards guns because backing down is politically impossible. [Do Australian teachers have a lesson to learn from their Kiwi colleagues?]
28 Oct 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Drama high as curtain falls on English course NSW: A former HSC examiner has made an impassioned plea for the challenging English extension 1 course for top students to be preserved, admid fears that it may be lost under a national curriculum. ... Last week the headmaster of St Andrew's Cathedral School, Dr John Collier, wrote to ACARA on behalf of more than 100 private schools (see below).
21 Oct 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Independent schools lament return to rote learning in new curriculum Independent schools in NSW and ACT have joined the chorus of criticism against the new national curriculum, leabelling it a 20th-century document. A letter from over 100 private schools sets out their concerns.
20 Oct 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Firth slams rules hiding private school assets The NSW Minister for Education, Verity Firth, has criticised federal government plans to hiade on the My School website how much private schools accumulate in surpluses and assets. (Some are accumulating up to $8 million.)
20 Oct 2010	Sean Nicholls Sydney Morning Herald	Labor to defy churches: ethics classes likely to start next year Students in NSW will be offered ethics classes as an alternative to scripture classes by next year. Education Minister Firth said a report wold be available for public comment before a decision was made.
18 Oct 2010	ABC News (online)	Salvos call for national child poverty strategy The Salvation Army is intensifying its push for a national child poverty strategy, releasing a report which shows 12% of Australian children live in poverty.
18 Oct 2010	Dan Harrison The Age	Website will foil attempts to rank schools The controversial My School website will be revamped to provide more information about schools and make it harder for third parties to compile rankings. ... Ministers are also expected to approve changes to the index used to group schools with similar student populations.
15 Oct 2010	Anna Patty Education Writer Sydney Morning Herald	F for Fail: 'overcrowded, incoherent' national curriculum panned The new national curriculum has been comprehensively paned as overcrowded, incoherent, inadequate and lacking depth.
15 Oct 2010	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Overhaul for national curriculum after criticism The proposed national school curriculum will be overhauled after complaints that it made maths and science too difficult and under-emphasised recent Australian history.
14 Oct 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Education: fair go or fare go? Australia now ranks third-last (26th out of 28th) in terms of government school funding among OECD nations and fourth-highest in terms of non-government funding. ... How is it right that teacher-to-student ratios are so skewed in favour of private schools? That when government schools sell off assets they are consolidated, but when non-government schools do they are reinvested? Or that students from government schools receive, on average, a quarter less than independent private schools?
9 Oct 2010	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	History course 'cobbled together' History teachers warned yesterday that the national curriculum was being "cobbled together" through a flawed process of "ad hoc" decisions. The History Teachers Association of Australia has joined the chorus of concerns raised by professional and academic geographers, scientists, visual artists and principals that the rush to finish the curriculum by the end of the year is compromising the quality of courses.
8 Oct 2010	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Debate rages over arts curriculum Proposed changes to the arts curriculum have been slammed by visual arts teachers, who warn it will "dumb down" the curriculum and significantly downgrade the number of hours devoted to traditional arts subjects in schools.
4 Oct 2010	Madonna King ABC ONline	Teachers, tests and cheating: where do we draw the line? Questions are being asked in the wake of revelations in Queensland over this year's NAPLAN tests. ... The tests have not been supported by many teachers, who believe the catch-all assssment is a worthless indicator, that education is not a competition and that state differences - from curriculum to school starting ages - rules any results invalid.
3 Oct 2010	Natalie Craig The Sunday Age	Site revamp lets private schools shield their assets The new versin of the controversial My School website will not force private schools to divulge their true wealth. The omission of assets from the new financial section of the site could deceive parents and taxpayers about the extent of private schools' wealth, and therefore their entitlement to government grants (which are currently under review).
2 Oct 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Garrett pushes for new curriculum to be ready by December deadline "...given how important it is," Mr Garrett said, "I reckon it is in the country's interest for us all to put our shoulder to the wheel on this one." (If it's that important, it needs more time!)
27 Sept 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Will NSW students go backwards under a national curriculum? State Labor governments are under pressure to fall into line with the new national curriculum. ACARA wants any obstruction from the states to stop. ... Before the federal election, the order for silence had come from above. But the NSW Board of Studies is blunt in its criticism of the draft curriculum.
21 Sept 2010	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Focus on basic skills blamed for decline in reading standards The reading abilities of Australian 15-year-olds have declined significantly in international comparisons. Barry McGaw, head of ACARA, says, ''The reasons for this are not immediately evident from the data, but it [is] at least clear that it is due to schools focusing more on basic achievement levels and not so much on the development of sophisticated reading of complex text.''
21 Sept 2010	Jewel Topsfield & Dan Harrison The Age	Principals fail national curriculum The national curriculum is "not up to scratch" and will not be ready to be introduced in Victorian schools in 2012, according to Victorian principals.
20 Sept 2010	The Australian	Barbarians breach the halls of learning Do we undervalue education when we regard its ends to be skills and jobs? The decision to split education into three portfolios has attracted criticism. You can't doubt Gillard's passion for education, but governments across the world have increasingly treated education as a matter of economics and there is a danger when education is seen so narrowly.
17 Sept 2010	Lucas Walsh and Barbara Lemon ON LINE Opionion	Australia near bottom of the class in government school funding Data from the latest OECD 'Education at a Glance' report highlights the dangerous trajectory on which Australina public education is heading in relation to its OECD counterparts. Australia is ranked 26 out of 28 countries in terms of direct public expenditure on public schooling.
13 Sept 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	New curriculum slammed by studies board The Board of Studies (NSW) has unleashed its criticism of the draft national curriculum in a scathing review. The criticism threatens to delay the implementation of the Australian Curriculum as scheduled in schools next year.
12 Sept 2010	Natalie Craig The Age	Elite Private Schools rake in profits Victoria's richest private schools made profits of up to $14 million last year, with financial reports showing taxpayers contributed ore than half of some schools' gains. ... Scotch College which boasts facilities including a diving pool, 18 tennis courst and an observatory, had a profit of $14 million last year, but it still received $4.7 million in yearly government grants.
5 Sept 2010	Natalie Craig The Age	Literacy tests 'full of flaws' Parents should not trust the results of the NAPLAN language test, out this week, because students were asked misleading, ambiguous and ungrammatical questions, a new study says.
1 Sept 2010	Jewel Topsfield The Age	National testing results in truancy, dropouts, expert says The national testing system in English schools has not improved overall student performance and also led to increased truancy and school dropouts, a leading British educationalist says. Prof AlanSmithers will today warn a confernce of Catholic principals that national tests should not be used as a measure of schools' or teachers' performance.
30 Aug 2010	Caroline Milburn The Age	Pressure at the top a principal concern State School principals will be taught to beef up their resilience using psychological tools and skills training commonly used by captains of industry and other corporate high-flyers. The strategy is part of a Brumby government overhaul of training for public school leaders after numerous studies revealed high exhaustion levels among principals and a drought of applicants for the top job in schools.
26 Aug 2010	Heather Gilmore Sydney Morning Herald	Universities have knowledge but lack wisdom Steven Schwartz (Vice-chancellor of Macquarie University) claims that universities are neglecting the teaching of wisdom and that higher education was now focused on money and teaching practical skills necessary for a career.
Aug 2010	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	Abbott's education rebate will give a backdoor funding increase to private schools A Liberal/National Party government will provide another boost to private schools with a tax rebate on school fees. It will provide a backdoor funding increase for private schools and shift more student to private schools. It will further damage public education in Australia and increase social segregation between the private and government school sectors.
16 Aug 2010	Prof Richard Teese	Suffer the children left behind It is hard to think of a time when the two major political parties agreed so much about education policy. that could be a good thing if the policies were good. ... Labor, like the Coalition, has been careful to protect those parts of the feudal regime that are truly medieval. ... Neither party sees that the harder they drive the privatisation agenda, the weaker they make the public sector. We want schools that care for all,not just for their own.
15 AUG 2010	The Age	School policy fractures Greens The Australian Greens are internally fractured over their policy to remove millions of dollars in funding from private schools. ... The party has come under intense attack from the very powerful private school lobby.
10 Aug 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Lacking in real vision Proposed changes to how the arts are taught in schools risk dumbing down the curriculum. Kerry Thomas writes about implications of the new Australian Curriculum for the arts.
9 Aug 2010	Kenneth Davidson The Age	Public schools sacrificed for a win at any cost The basis on which school education is being financed is unsustainable. Apparently, the leaders of both major parties are prepared to destroy public education if that is the price of winning government. ... The funding formula is not being applied when it would result in a decrease in funding for private schools; they are therefore getting $800 million more than their entitlement. ... The system is a scam.
5 Aug 2010	Dr Peter West On Line Opinion	Academic apartheid PM Gillard has told us she expects great progress in the next few years. Let's see how Australia will be "moving forward" in education in the next 20 years or so. How are we moving toward academic apartheid?
3 Aug 2010	NYDailyNews.com	School report cards, millions in bonuses, undermines by 'phony' test scores Our politicians are following the NY model, a city that has awarded teachers and principals millions of dollars in bonuses, and ranked schools based on phony test scores. No tests can ever provide the data needed to rank schools.
26 July 2010	Heath Gilmore SMH	Rocketing autism numbers met with education shortfall Austistic children are being forced into mainstream classes because of a lack of places in specialised learning groups.
21 July 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Coalition risks brawl over tests The Coalition is chancing a campaign brawl with school principals by promising to hold national tests every year from Years 3 to 10. (Note: Christopher Pyne clearly hasn't read the criticisms of the current national testing by Prof Margaret Wu.)
21 July 2010	Heath Gilmore Sydney Morning Herald	Teachers overwhelmed by special needs students One in 10 students in NSW public schools are disables or have special learning needs and teachers are struggling to educate them.
16 July 2010	Sarah Wise Sydney Morning Herald	F for failure as our disadvantaged children struggle at school While the current review of school funding seems to have rekindled some hope of a "re-valuing" of education, the real test is whether any progress can be made to substantially lift the education outcomes of the most vulnerable children.
15 July 2010	Jack Keating The Age	School funding's political realities need acknowledging The extended process of the Commonwealth Government's review of school funding, which is to continue until the end of 2011, is an indication of the political sensitivity of the issue. ... The core issue is that non-government schools receive public funds yet also charge fees, and can decide which students can enrol and which can be asked to leave.
6 July 2010	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Principals in stress payouts Irate parent,s vilent students and growing workloads have led to millions of dollars in stress payouts for principals, with some so worried about being attacked they have designed office "escape doors" to use when aggression escalates.
5 July 2010	Kenneth Davidson (senior writer for The Age) Sydney Morning Herald	Gillard ranks as a failure on education It is appalling that the Howard-era school funding model remains. ... One of Gillard's first decisions as education minister in 2007 was to announce that the government would extend to 2012 the reprehensible funding system for non-government schools. (It was due to expire in 2008.) Resources for secondary students at Geelong Grammar equate to $30,000 per student; government schools students get $11,407. Government schools are under-funded compared to their non-government competitors.
27 June 2010	Kelly Lane Sydney Morning Herald	Parents, teachers fear 'robot' school reports Software that allows primary school teachers to produce student report cards without writing a single word has raised concerns with parent and citizens groups.
21 June 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Outstanding teachers fight for recognition Teachers are recognised as potentially the biggest influence on a student's academic achievement. But what separates top teachers from their lacklustre couterparts is not exactly clear.
17 June 2010	Dan Harrison Education reporter Sydney Morning Herald	Nice shelves, pity no books Schools will be unable to get full value from billions of dollars worth of new libraries because of long-running declines in staffing and book budgets, teachers and librarians warn. (There is an estimated shortage of teacher librarians of between 2500 and 3000 according to the Australian School Library Association. Most government primary schools have no librarian at all.)
15 June 2010	Diane Ravitch Education Week	The great accountability hoax The evidence continues to accumulate that our "accountability" policies are a great fraud and hoax, but our elected officials and policymakers remain completely oblivious to the harm caused by the policies they mandate. Instead of better education, we are getting cheating scandals, teaching to bad tests, a narrowed curriculum, lowered standards, and gaming of the system.
14 June 2010	Jim McAlpine Outgoing Head of the NSW Secondary Principals' Assoc. Syd Morning Herald	Let the principals take charge Outgoing head of the NSW Secondary Principals' Association has learned that the greater the authority given to a principal, the more likely a school will flourish. ... Despite Gillard saying that principals should have more autonomy, she is centralising and controlling the curriculum, funding programs that require principals to meet dictated criteria, determining how schools will report on their students, and using sweetheart deals with education ministers so appointments to the boards of ACARA and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership are from bureaucracies, not form schools.
11 June 2010	Dan Harrison The Age	Principals 'face sack' over test results Principals face the sack if results don't improve and Year 3 and 5 teachers have requested a change of year level. ... A meeting of education ministers endorsed several changed to the contorversial My School website: schools must now provide financial information, proportions of students with disabilities and those from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
11 June 2010	Dan Harrison Sydney Morning Herald	Principals complain their positions are at risk Principals have been threatened with the sack if their schools do not improve their results in national tests, says the Australian Primary Principals Association.
5 June 2010	City Journal Vol 20, No. 2 Sol Stern	Can New York clean up the testing mess? This article shows where we could be heading with our national high-stakes testing.
2 June 2010	Teacher Magazine	How testing hurts disadvantaged kids A report from the US 'Teacher Magazine' showing how high-stakes testing is hurting disadvantaged kids.
25 May 2010	The Australian	Historian Stuart Macintyre slams school course The lead writer on the national history curriculum has criticised the development of the school course as an unwieldy and frustrating process, with four groups of experts making changes without consulting one another.
25 May 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Streamline teacher sackings, say parents Parents want the state government to speed up the process of sacking underperforming teachers from schools.
22 May 2010	Dan Harrison Sydney Morning Herald	Family data plan for My School The agency responsible for the My School website is examining the possibility of collecting information about income, occupation and education levels of students' families to make more valid school comparisons.
21 May 2010	Dan Harrison Sydney Morning Herald	Teachers fail Coalition plan for $3b in cuts School principals and teacher unions have attacked Coalition plans to cut more than $3 billion from education funding.
15 May 2010	Heath Gilmore Sydney Morning Herald	Universities fight back at devalued 'drive-through- education Students are spending less time on campus and more time working part-time. The average student now works 13 hours a week, and study hours have dropped to 15 hours a week.
15 May 2010	Heath Gilmore Sydney Morning Herald	All the poorer for it The rich and rewarding experience of university life is now the domain of rich, dumb kids.
14 May 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Tests 'must bring change not teacher bashing' Prof Richard Teese (Melbourne University) said that NAPLAN data could be useful if governments acted on the results instead of just blaming teachers for failures. "Most disadvantaged schools don't have parents that can vote with their feet. ... They aren't going to march up to their local primary school to demand change. They rely on the active role of government."
13 May 2010	Ally Forward Sydney Morning Herald	NAPLAN fails the Torchwood test The MySchool website is open to have its data misused, and for a narrow and simplistic view of a school's performance to stigmatise both the school and its students into the future. Schools are not ranks on the level of community involvement, or how successful their art or music programs are. They are not ranked on how many of their teachers offer extra class time to help struggling students. Critically, they are not ranked according to the amount of money their school receives.
12 May 2010	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Schools cheating on national tests Education experts warn that "high-stakes" tests, and the use of the results to create league tables, can force schools to hide problems and manipulate data to improve their results.
11 May 2010	The Age	Leave those kids alone Many teachers call NAPLAN napalm, because of what it has done to schools. There is plenty of research telling us that high-stakes testing and league tables have not worked elsewhere.
10 May 2010	Kevin Donnelly ABC online	NAPLAN denies kids an education revolution While previously arguing in favour of tests like NAPLAN, I have changed my mind about the vaility and value of standardised testing. After a visit to NY last year, discussions with experts and monitoring events in England (from where Julia Gillard has copied national testing and league tables), I now believe such tests are counter-productive and educationally unsound. (Great that Donnelly now understands this, but there has been plenty of evidence about the problems with standardised testing for many decades!)
6 May 2010	Annta Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Have they no shame? Class war as high schools raided NSW Dept of Edn officers have swamred on scores of schools without warning to remove boxes of NAPLAN tests. Principals were shaken by the exercise. "A lot of goodwill between principals and the department has now been destroyed," said one principal. School on national partnership funding are being told that they are going to lose it. That amounts to students in the most disadvantaged schools being penalised by governments.
5 May 2010	Anna Patty & Heath Gilmore Sydney Morning Herald	Top schools join teacher ban on NAPLAN tests Selective high schools including some of the state's top performers, will join other Sydney schools in supporting the teacher ban on NAPLAN tests next week. ... Ms Treskin, principal of the school which consistently tops the state, said she believed that most parents don't want the school curriculum to be narrowed to NAPLAN tests. "I think they understand the curriculum is about growth."
2 May 2010	Carly Hennessy & Daryl Passmore The Sunday Mail	Teachers face fines - Picket lines considered to prevent relief staff supervising Queensland teachers will this week consider mounting picket lines to stop casual and relieft staff being brought in to supervise the NAPLAN tests.
2 May 2010	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	School Funding Review Compromised by Overwhelming Conflict of Interest The appointment of Mr David Gronski, Chairman of Sydney Grammar School, as head of the school funding inquiry has compromised the independence of the review.
1 May 2010	The Australian	National survey ranks our best classrooms Money still busy the best education in Australia, with elite schools in NSW and Victoria dominating a list of the nation's top 100 schools. (Note: All Ministers of Education signed the 2008 Declaration on Educational Goals" and they promised action to promote equity. Where's the equity?)
1 May 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Backpackers to take over schools tests The NSW Education Department is preparing to send in emergency strike breakers, including backpackers, after teachers decided to ignore an Industrial Relations Commission order to lift their ban on supervising national literacy and numeracy tests. (Note: they will be at work, so not on strike at all.)
29 April 2010	Fatima Measham On Line Opinion	Why a NAPLAN boycott must happen It was hoped that Minister Gillard could be brought to the table to negotiate. However, she has not truly engaged with concerns from teachers, principals, academics and - yes - parents, regarding the flaws in determining grouping of "like" schools, the use of My School figures by the media to create simplistic rankings of local schools, the promotion of a culture that teaches to a test, and the creation of an adversarila relationship between parents and teachers.
18 April 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Furore over 'inaccurate' schools index Public school principals have identified flaws in the way the federal government compares school performance and social disadvantage on its My School website.
12 April 2010	Kelsy Munro with Jewel Topsfield Syd Morning Herald	Parent outraged by strike-breaker plan The NSW Parents and Citizens Association has expressed outrage at a plan by Gillard to recruit parents as strike-breakers. Lawyers warn that parents could be legally liable if students were injured under their watch.
9 April 2010	Phil Cullen On Line opinion	NAPLAN tests unnecessary, immoral, costly, unreliable and destructive of curriculum spirit
8 April 2010	Jewel Topsfield Sydney Morning Herald	Errors in social rankings The social disadvantage rankings of more than 650 schools were changed before the launch of the My School website after an internal review revealed they had been wrongly categorised. ... Many believe it's just the tip of the iceberg.
7 April 2010	Annabel Astbury Newmatilda.com	How much can kids learn in one week? The new national curriculum has everyone talking about what kids should be learning, but is there actually enough time in the school week to fit it all in?
31 Mar 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Rudd's new challenge: fix schools Ross Gittins warns the current approach to funding could see government schools turn into under-resourced ghettos. He supports the approach proposed by McMorrow and Connors at Sydney University.
30 Mar 2010	Anna Patty Education Editor Syd Morning Herald	Evaluation of My School pushed aside, say critics Confidential minutes reveal that state and federal education ministers agreed in 2008 to identify any adverse effects of reporting national school comparisons, but the Federal Government has been accused of blocking the development of the evaluation strategy.
27 Mar 2010	ABC Online	Greens Leader Bob Brown announces million-dollar education plan The Greens have announced a $350 million public education plan to increase the number of teachers and student support. The AEU welcomes the plan and reminds us that teachers are about to retire in very large numbers.
26 Mar 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Economic status key to success at school Peter Hill, CEO of theAustralian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, is saddened that students on the whole performed only as well as their family background allowed. This admission by Dr Hill shows quite clearly that any so-called low or high test scores are caused by poverty or wealth and NOT by poor teaching or good teaching. It is unfair and immoral for the Federal Government to demand equal outcomes while remaining silent about equalizing the resources that create the opportunity to learn.
26 Mar 2010	Judy Molland Care2	US Reading Report Card: D- The results are in, and the news is not good. Scores haven't improved despite a mandated program (Reading First) which required emphasis on phonics and did nothing for comprehension. Reading First was both corrupt and ineffective. (Australian teachers note: Julia Gillard is following the USA way.)
25 Mar 2010	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	More Evidence of the Failure of Choice and Competition to Improve Student Outcomes The latest national reading test results for the US show that school choice, compettion and accountabilitymeasures have had little impact on student achievement. They have failed to increase average reading scores or reduce achievement gaps. .. Despite the weight of evidence, Gillard continues with her agenda of reporting school results and increasing competition between schools. It is doomed to fail as it has in the US and England.
25 Mar 2010	The Washington Post	NAEP reading scores (USA): Bad news was sadly predictable We are not surprised that the implementation of No Child Left Behind filaed to do what it was chiefly aimed at accomplishing: Improving reading scores. When are the people who write the laws every going to learn? (NOTE: Julia Gillard is following America's failing path. When is SHE going to learn?)
25 Mar 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Funds should focus on teaching needs, say educators School funding should focus on improving the quality of teachers and less on the wealth of student families, according to professors from the University of Sydney. The current system has created inequity and distortion.
24 Mar 2010	Dan Harrison Sydney Morning Herald	Principals reject My School site Parents may approve of the My School website but principals have given it a fail in a survey of more than 1000 school leaders.
23 Mar 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Principals reject report on national funding of private and public schools An independent group of school principals opposes the proposed introduction of a national model of fundingbased on the need of each student, regardless of whether they are in the public or private system. They say the APPA proposal would increase the money going to private schools.
22 Mar 2010	Phil Cullen On Line Opinion	The death and life of a school system Diane Ravitch has written The Death and Life of the Great American School System. It has already sold out. This is because she has done an "...unabashed 180". She has completely reversed her views on the way educational reform is handled in the US -- the way being cloned in Australia! (Let's hope Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard read her book.)
22 Mar 2010	Elizabeth Grant & Fiona Mueller On Line Opinion	What is actually being tested by NAPLAN? An analysis of the 2008 and 2009 NAPLAN papers reveals contradictory messages.
21 Mar 2010	Neroli Colvin Sydney Morning Herald	New philosophy to make up for the syntax of the past The needs of people and the economy are changing. Is boring old grammar the answer? Well, not really. It's a modern approach to grammar that's being introduced ... it's not a return to the 50s.
17 Mar 2010	The Washington Post	Teacher Accountability The arguments in this article apply to NAPLAN and teacher assessment in Australia.
12 Mar 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Teachers give poor marks to national curriculum NSW teachers believe the new draft national curriculum represents a step backwards for NSW students in science and English, little improvement in maths and is unworkable in history.
8 Mar 2010	Sydney Morning Herald	Could do better: the verdict on curriculum This article provides a verdict on the new national curriculum drafts for English, mathematics, science and history, and encourages teachers to provide feedback via www.australiancurriculum.edu.au
7 Mar 2010	Chris Berg, Institute of Public Affairs. Sydney Morning Herald.	Schools should be free to teach what they want Until the government gives control of the curriculum back to schools, parents and students will always be somewhat unsatisfied with what Australian children are taught.
5 Mar 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Curriculum no return to 'golden age' Peter Freebody, who wrote the English curriculum "shape" paper on which the draft national curriculumwas based, said literacy standards were poorertwo generations ago, when grammar was taught more intensively in schools.He said the back-to-basics approach to grammar was not about returning to 'a golden age where everyone was literate'.
2 Mar 2010	Steve Inskeep npr	Former 'No Child Left Behind' Advocate Turns Critic Former Assistant Secretary of Education in the US, Diane Ravitch, has changed her mind about the US program, "No Child Left Behind." Her reasons are relevant here in Australia.
2 Mar 2010	Libby Tudball Sydney Morning Herald	Curriculum's narrow focus leaves students bereft of big ideas Australia needs an innovative, world-class approach to school curriculum, but it isclear from the "back to basics" national curriculum draft that we have a long way to go yet.

Note: The administrator of this website was working interstate and overseas from early February until early March.
It was not possible to keep this page up-to-date during that time.

8 Feb 2010	Miki Perkins The Age	My School website a 'crock', says top educator The principal of Victoria's top-perfoming government school has slammed the Federal Government's My School website, describing it as a "crock". Jeremy Ludowyke, the principal of Melbourne High - which last year was the top government school in the VCE - said selective-entry schools like his that stood to gain themost from published league tables should be the loudest critics against "this nonsense".
8 Feb 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Reading, writing and number crunching My School aims to raise standards, but the idea is a huge gamble. Gillard's technique has failed to improve literacy and numeracy skills in the US and Britain. Even worse, she may be encouraging a system that corrupts the way these skills are measured.
7 Feb 2010	Prof Stephen Krashen (letter sent to The Australian)	Test-Prep: Higher test scores without increased learning Trying to raise test scores by teaching test-taking strategies won't help children. ... Raising test scores through test preparation is like claiming you have raised the temperature of the room when all you have done is light a match under the thermometer.
7 Feb 2010	Natalie Craig The Age	Fast learners They're young and smart and they're being thrown into the classroom after six weeks of teacher training.
4 Feb 2010	John Passant	Teachers' union is right to oppose school league tables Many former advocates of publishing school results are now opposed because of the damage it does to education. Even Kevin Donnelly, a former Howard government advisor, admits that school reporting of this kind in Britain and the US has failed to raise standards. Gillard however, has ignored all the evidence, as well as protests from a wide range of teacher and parent organisations.
3 Feb 2010	Dr John Collier Headmaster of St Andrew's Cathedral School Syd Morning Herald	Ranking by NAPLAN results rates a fail NAPLAN resulta cannot validly carry the weight of community judgment of each school. Parents and society in general need muchbroader measures to make such judgments. This is a problem for politicians who want quick, measurable achievements within an electoral cycle.
2 Feb 2010	Trevor Cobbold Australian Teacher Magazine	Gillard's case for publishing school results is based on faith not evidence None of Gillard's arguments for publishing school results withstand scrutiny. Even the head of ACARA, Pter Hill, admits there is little evidence to support his Minister's claim.
1 Feb 2010	Chris Bonnor On Line Opinion	The launch, the crash and the recovery of My School To create the Index of Community SocioEducational Advantage (ICSEA) ACARA used the socio-educational characteristics NOT of each student's family, but of their census collection district (including households with no kids). In trying to account for differences between schools ACARA is already off to a shaky start. But it needs to get everyting right: when you et into the business of comparing schools, there can be little margin for error - too much is at stake. The biggest problem is that 70% of the differences between schools are due to which students each school enrols,not what they actually do as schools. No less than Prof Barry McGaw,the head of ACARA, has repeatedly stated this.
31 Jan 2010	Stephanie Peatling Sydney Morning Herald	Teachers slam index comparisons Some of the most elite private schools have been classed as comparable to regional public schools on the controversial My School website in a move teachers say is another sign that the website is deeply flawed.
30 Jan 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Funding details not included on site, say teachers The My School website failed to reveal the wealthiest private schools each received up to $8.5 million in annual government subsidies and up to $42 million in private income. This data is vital for juding their performance.
30 Jan 2010	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Tests just child's play for top-performing school Read further down in this article. It quotes a mother from the top-performing Catholic primary school: "There was enormous pressure at the school on both teachers and students from day one of term one to achieve good results. The preparation for the tests was intense, with extreme pressure to practise through regular class time and heavy-duty homework. Many children felt overwhelmed and stressed by the level of work and the performance expectations. ... Publishing these tables proves what all the critics had feared, that schools will be judged primarily on the results of one academic test alone rather than all-round performance and their ability to nurture young individuals to achieve their potential."
29 Jan 2010	Miki Perkins & Dan Harrison The Age	Top schools lagging on reading, writing tests Some of Victoria's most prestigious schools are underperforming on national reading and writing tests when compared with similar schools.
29 Jan 2010	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Focus falls on big-fee schools as parents get reality check Some elite private schools charging tens of thousands of dollars a year in fees scored lower on the national literacy and numeracy tests than neighbouring public schools. ... Public Primary Schools, in particular, performed well compared with their private counterparts in some of the nation's most affluent areas. ... Some of the national's most exclusive schools could face some tought questions from parents, who in some cases pay $20,000 a year or more in Year 12.
29 Jan 2010	Dan Harrison Sydney Morning Herald	Rich or poor? Gillard plans to put it all online this year The financial resources of every school in Australia will be on public display in the next version of Julia Gillard's My School website, due later this year.
29 Jan 2010	Chip Le Grand and Justine Ferrari The Australian	Site comparisons just don't add up Dargo PS is an abandoned building. Last year it had one student. this year is has none. Yet according to My School, it is statistically similar to privately operated Camberwell Grammar, with 12,055 enrolments in Melbourne's inner east. ... Geelong Grammar, which has the most expensive school fees in the nation, has been grouped with Kangaroo Ground PS, a small government school of fewer than 150 students on the semi-rural outskirts of Melbourne. ... Another high fee school, Haileybury College, is grouped with the Cleveland St intensive English HS in inner-city Sydney that caters for new migrants who do not speak English. (Does that make sense to anyone???)
28 Jan 2010	Samantha Maiden The Australian	Public schools in wealthy areas outperforming private colleges Public (government) schools in wealthy areas are outperfoming some the nation's most expensive and prestigious schools, according to the new My School website.
28 Jan 2010	Mike Williss On Line Opinion	Gillard's "best practice" mantra This article outlines three flaw in formulating "best practice" and accuses Gillard of "overconfidence bias" (the belief that very thin NAPLAN data will lead to "best practice").
27 Jan 2010	Lucy Carter for 'The World Today' ABC News	My School website 'biased' Independent policy think-tank the Grattan Institute has added to growing criticism of the Federal Government's My School website, saying it will not give an adequate assessment of a school's performance.
27 Jan 2010	Prof Richard Teese Melbourne University The Age	The transparency myth The transparency Julia Gillard talks about may only serve to divide parents and split both cultural and professional resources across schools. ... Neither transparency nor choice strikes at the roots of failure in our schools. Both have aggravated the problem. Transparency has been used to injure the schools of the poor, and choice to strengthen the schools of the rich.
27 Jan 2010	Tim Hawkes, Headmaster, The King's School, Parramatta. Sydney Morning Herald	Ladder of opportunity rises above league tables Evidence from overseas, particularly from Britain, indicates this sort of public information is quickly turned into "league tables" to the detriment of many schools that may not rank well despite doing many wonderful things in education. Educators should be outraged.
27 Jan 2010	Dan Harrison & Heath Gilmore, Sydney Morning Herald	Principals rally troops to combat new website Principals will enlist parents and former students to counter any negative publicity stemming from the launch of the My School website tomorrow.
27 Jan 2010	Cathy Hooke letter to Sydney Morning Herald	Remove yourself from my class, Ms Gillard If Julia Gillard wants parents to tell off deficient teachers, then teachers and principals must also be able to complain about poor parenting. Are parents ensuring their children get enough sleep, read regularly, limit time spent on mindless computer games and learn some manners and respect?
27 Jan 2010	Dan Brown letter to Sydney Morning Herald	Publish names and addresses of parents My fellow teachers and I would like to enshrine in law our right to publish the names and addresses of those parents whose delinquencies have resulted in their stupid, troublesome children interering with the education of those who really want to learn.
25 Jan 2010	The Australian	Richest and poorest schools ranked The Rudd government has ranked the richest and poorest schools in Australia to develop the new MySchool website but will not be releasing the findings to the public. (Why not?)

TESTING & lEAGUE TABLES (articles from 2009)

Prof Margaret Wu Assessment Research Centre University of Melbourne	NAPLAN Results for the Layperson "The Australian federal government's education transparency agenda should begin with providing the layperson with clear guidelines for interpreting the NAPLAN results." Professor Wu's key points: (1) a student's NAPLAN score might vary by 12%. ie. A student's score of 70% on the test might vary from 58% to 82% on similar tests! This uncertainty makes the results unreliable for comparisons. (2) The growth measures based on two 40-question tests have an error margin greater than one year's growth! (3) A teacher can expect his/her class average score to vary by around 10% from year to year due to random fluctuations of student cohort and inaccuracies in test scores. If we use the class average to judge a teacher's performance, the average could be higher or lower to some extent depending on a teacher's "luck" of whether the current students are relatively better or poorer academically. (4) NAPLAN results alone CANNOT show, with confidence, which schools are more effective and which schools are less effective. (See also, Prof Steve Wilson's letter below.)
Assoc Prof Steve Wilson Letter to Editor Sydney Morning Herald 13 Nov 09	No commentary + no context = no good Your story illustrates why many are so opposed to the publication of these results. You have lined up the results of three schools. You have not provided informed commentary or contextualised them, making one of the schools, Macarthur Girls High, look comparatively inferior. This is not the case. ... Macarthur Girls High School was recently confirmed as the first centre for excellence under National Partnerships funding for its outstanding record in building its students' achievement. My university is the academic partner for Macarthur Girls under this program. We are proud to be associated with a school that takes girls from many parts of western Sydney, many from families where English is not the primary language spoken in the home, and provides them with such a successful education. If you are going to break the law by publishing school results in future, please consider how to do so fairly and responsibly. Associate Professor Steve Wilson, Head, school of education, University of Western Sydney
Australian Education Union	See Website page: Stop League Tables Check out the latest news Read the background information and research Sign a protest letter

Jackie Schneider Guardian.co.uk 1 Dec 09	Underperforming league tables must go Parents aren't stupid – we can tell if a primary school is good or bad. It's time to stop wating teachers' time on this charade.
Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald 17 Nov 09	Schools unite against rankings Six peak national groups representing parents, teachers and principals from public and private schools have signed a letter to the Federal government asking it to prevent the publication of "misleading and damaging" league tables. The letter says NAPLAN test results provide only a snapshot of academic achievement and provide a statistically unreliable basis for comparing schools.
Farah Tomazin The Age 16 Nov 09	Gillard may give ground on schools report Julia Gillard may give some ground to principals on the new schoolsreporting system, admid fears it could result in league tables that name and shame underperforming schools. Ms Gillard has promised to examine what other items the Government could include on the website.
Telegraph.co.uk 11 Nov 09	UK Exam Factories One of England's most senior examiners has suggested schools are being turned into test-fuelled "production lines" which are potentially damaging children's education. He blamed the pressure of official league tables and (the) inspection regime. It represents a hugely damaging blow to the Government. His comments follow repeated criticism from academics and teaching unions who claim that the growth of "high-stakes" exams, targets and league tables force schools to "teach to the test" to get the best results.
The Age 8 Nov 09	Principals say national ratings will not take the whole mix into account More than half the students at Meadow Heights Prmary cannot speak English when they first take their seats in class. Some are refugees whose first day at school is as a Year 6 student, unable to read or write. It's no surprise that some do not score well on national literacy and numeracy tests.
The Daily Telegraph 28 Oct 09	The minefield that is school league tables PETER HILL ADMITS: LACK OF EVIDENCE THAT PUBLISHING SCHOOL PERFORMANCE DATA IMPROVES STUDENT OUTCOMES. Peter Hill, chief executive officer of ACARA, was asked what evidence there is that publishing school performance data improves student outcomes, he had to admit that there is not much evidence at all really.
Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian 12 Oct 09	National literacy and numeracy tests 'not reliable' NAPLAN TEST RESULTS UNRELIABLE; CANNOT BE USED TO COMPARE SCHOOLS The results from the national literacy and numeracy tests are unreliable and cannot accurately compare compare a school's performance from year to year or track the progress students make as they go through school. With aberrant results, "it is difficult to have confidence in the overall NAPLAN 2009 results," says Prof Margaret Wu. "...the government is going beyond the accuracy and the validity of the NAPLAN results. It basically means linking NAPLAN results based on student performance with teacher performance. That link is conjecture."
Prof Margaret Wu The Age (Letters) 1 Oct 09 http://www.theage.com.au/ news/opinion/letters/ prejudice-not-faith/ 2009/09/27/ 1253989823564.html? page=2	Professor Margaret Wu, a statistician with the ACER, has written a letter to The Age: Like with Like Professor Barry McGaw asked if it is fair for parents not to be told how badly a school is doing. As a statistician, I ask: ''Is it fair to accuse a school or a teacher of not doing their job when they are?'' NAPLAN results have large error margins. This can be shown statistically. But common sense will tell you that if we ever change the VCE to be based only on a couple of tests with 40 questions, there will be an outcry on the lack of reliability in the results. So how can NAPLAN results be used to assess school and teacher performance, when the performance of students is not measured well? When schools are grouped into ''like'' groups, we need even more precision in the measures to detect differences between schools. It will be easy to demonstrate the difference between a high-profile private school and a low socio-economic government school, but it will be more difficult to determine significant differences between two high-profile private schools. NAPLAN results just do not provide the precision to do that. Linking low student performance to school performance is at best a conjecture.
ABC News 27 Sept 09	School league tables 'deepen inequality' The AEU says the proposed new reporting system will do more harm than good. International research is clear: league tables narrow the curriculum and deepen inequality.
Farrah Tomazin The Age 26 Sept 09	Backlash at schools ranking The Rudd government is headed for a showdown with principals and teachers about grouping schools according to the backgrounds of their students and ranking them on academic performance.
Prof David Berliner Harvard Graduate School of Education 14 Sept 09	The need for a moratorium on high-stakes testing There is a growing movement in the US to abandon high-stakes tests because they don't work as anticipated and are costly. School accountability systems based on high-stakes have proven to have no effects or negative effects on the achievement and the attitudes of the children.
Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald 14 Sept 09	Parents don't want schools names and shamed: poll Close to two-thirds of parents want new laws to prevent the creation of school league tables according to a national poll.
Justine Ferrari The Australian 10 Sept 09	Progress 'key test of good school' Peter Hill, incoming chief executive of ACARA, said the assessment of school performance had to move away from simply reporting test results to measuring the progress and improvement students made at school. He admits there could be difficulties and mistakes.
Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald 22 Aug 09	Private school's league table fear The prestigious Sydney private school Cranbrook is inclusive rather than academically selective. However, it will be compared with others which are selective - including Sydney Grammar. Cranbrook is proud of its open enrolment policy, but league table comparisons will be unfair.
Joe Kelly & Justine Ferrari The Australian 14 Aug 09	Thumbs down from the coalface Phil Walker, Primary School Principal, views league tables as a misleading indicator of school performance ... a school shouldn't be judged on three days of testing in literacy and numeracy. "You've got to look at the whole picture."
Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald 11 Aug 09	League tables can play to fears of parents Dr Ken Boston, former director-general of NSW education, has warned that national testing results should not be used to construct school league tables. Dr Boston address principals in Sydney yesterday, and said that league tables had damaged the curriculum in England and could not be relied on to provide fair and accurate comparisons.
Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald 7 Aug 09	Tables will compare rich, poor schools New league tables would compare the performance of schools in the same local area, so that rich private schools will be compared with poor government schools in the same area. eg. The Scots College in Sydney will be compared with public schools in poorer suburbs such as Eastlakes. Geelong Grammar in Victoria (one of the nation's richest schools) will be compared with schools in disadvantaged suburbs such as Corio and Norlane. This, depite the PM saying he doesn't want to see Geelong Grammar compared with the school where he went because of its circumstances!
Elissa Gootman & Robert Gebeloff The New York Times 3 Aug 09	Gains in tests in NY schools don't silence critics In NY, standardized test results are used for ranking schools, making or breaking their reputations, determining which schools will go out of business, grading students, determining principals' bonuses. But the validity of the tests is being questioned and the exam techniques the students learn are poor substitutes for understanding of key concepts.
Lex Hall The Australian 14 Jul 09	Strike threat over school rankings NSW teachers are planning an intense campaign of industrial action and of lobbying MPs to block the publication of school league tables. They are threatening to refuse to carry out next year's national assessment tests.
Farrah Tomazin The Age, 9 Jul 09	League tables carry risk of 'unfair comparisons' The man hand-picked by education ministers to develop a new online report card detailing the resources and results of each school admits that the project could be damaging if schools are unfairly ranked through leagues tables. (The comparisons are made on incomplete data.)
Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	The Fudging of School Results Begins Far from improving transparency and school results, school performance reporting leads to manipulation of school results, greater opaqueness and complexity. It misleads rather than informs. It fails to achieve real improvement in student outcomes at school. (The future for Australia can be seen in recent US reports which are referenced in the article.)
Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools 15 July 09	New League Table exposes hollow assurances It is clear that Education Ministers cannot ensure that school results will not be misused. 'Save Our Schools' National Convenor, Trevor Cobbold, has called for an inquiry into the harm caused by league tables.
Geoff Masters, Glenn Rowley et. al. (ACER)	Reporting and comparing school performances Nationally comparable data about school performances should be reported to the public, but should NOT be used to create league tables. Instead, ACER proposes provision of information in the form of school profiles or comparisons of 'like' schools. School profiles allow an almost limitless range of information to be presented, while still allowing schools to be sorted by factors such as geographic location, school fee structure or religious affiliation.
Chris Bonnor 24 June 09	League Tables - Why just for schools? Why not for doctors, milk bars, car servicing? How do we choose amongst these services when we move into a new neighbourhood? Why doesn't the government monitor doctors and give them marks for having healthy patients? Why not pay higher scoring doctors more?
Prof W. James Popham University of California Los Angeles	Is assessment literacy the "magic bullet"? Most accountability tests are NOT capable of evaluating the quality of schools. These instructionally insensitive tests tend to measure the socioeconomic composition of a school's student body, not the effectiveness with which those students have been taught.

Date	Author(s)	Title
4 Dec 09	Education Week	Motives of 21st-Century Skills Group Questioned Questions are being raised about whether the push for 21st-century skills is anattempt by technology companies to gain more influence over the classroom.
3 Dec 09	Teacher Voices	Scoring the Testing Industry Selected responses are cheap to administer; they can be scored solely by machine and the results obtained quickly. But many think we need more. See Todd Farley's book, "Making the Grades: Why Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industy."
2 Dec 09	Justice Michael Kirby Sydney Morning Herald	Stop bagging public education I am fed up with media, and some politicians, criticising public education in Australia. I am fed up with suggestions that public schools neglect education in values. I am fed up when I go to wealthy private schools and I see the neglect of the facilities of famous public high schools. (Justice Kirby gives many reasons for being proud of our public school history.)
30 Nov 09	Caroline Milburn The Age	Shows promise – rating the revolution The Education Revolution may be a snappy marketing phrase but it is apt in one respect: audacity. No other recent administration has tried to overhaul the nation's early childhood services, the school system, and universities.
30 Nov 09	Adele Horin Sydney Morning Herald	Children young for grade do less well Children who start schoolyoung for their grade perform less well than their older peers by the second year of school (research by Australian Institute of Family Studies).
28 Nov 09	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Poorer schools outshine the rest Data released in Victoria highights the greater improvement made by students in disadvantaged schools cmpared with their more affluent peers.
28 Nov 09	Mary-Ruth Mendel Sydney Morning Herald	First languages first, the English First languages provide the linguistic clues that assemble the mosaic of sound patterns and word knowledge needed for English literacy preparation.
27 Nov 09	Debra Jopson Sydney Morning Herald	Talking 'bout their generation comes last Remote students siply don't have the advantages of urban students, yet we expect the outcomes to be the same. (Some remote students have dirt-floored classrooms with no walls, and they hear English only when their teacher visits three days a week. National tests compare them unfairly.)
26 Nov 09	Aden Ridgeway The Age	Language is power; let us have ours Language goes to the heart and soul of one's identity and gives connection to family, country and community. Yet the NT and Federal governments have mandated a requirement that all Aoboriginal children in all Territory schools must learn in English for the first 4 hours of learning, sidelining education in indigenous languages.
25 Nov 09	Jessica Mahar Sydney Morningn Herald	Lend a hand for literacy Only one in five children in remote indigenous communities can read to the minimum standard. The "Hands Accross the Nation Indigenous Literacy Appeal" will ask people to raise their hands if they care enough to want to help the most marginalised Australians become literate and numerate.
23 Nov 09	Angelo Gavrielatos Sydney Morning Herald	League tables don't tell a school's whole story Julia Gillard has, on many occasions,acknowledged the damaging impact of school league tables. But so far, we see nothing being done about it. Without action,Gillard risks the education system having unintended but devastating consequences for students, teachers and parents.
18 Nov 09	Catherine Deveny Sydney Morning Herald	Watch those grammars - Private School Values Two private schools show an astonishing lack of insight and values that need scrutiny.
17 Nov 09	Sydney Morning Herald	Teaching isn't only about test results Education Minister Bronwyn Pike's confirmation that national literacy and numeracy test scores will be used as part of a trial next year to determine teacher eligibility for bonus pay will be of concern to many of Victoria's teachers. In August, she said the system "is not about rewards for results. I'm interested in rewarding people for passion, commitment and professional competency." So, what has changed?
17 Nov 09	Sydney Morning Herald	Learning to read English is hardest – brain expert A French brain expert believes English is "the worst" language to learn to read. (However, he seems to be defining reading as the ability to turn letters into sounds.)
16 Nov 09	Caroline Milburn The Age	Early signs of success Australia should try to learn from Britain's mistakes in rolling out its plan to give all 4 year olds access to kindergarten. If programs are low quality, it's better if the child stays at home. Currently, Australia has the second lowest level of investment in early childhood education among industrialised countries.
14 Nov 09	Miki Perkins The Age	Victorian teachers take note: Primary English test 'a waste' Victorian teachers slammed a new English test undertaken by thousands of primary school children, saying it produced wildly inaccurate results and was a waste of time. Principals have reported Prep students shown as performing at Year 5 level -- "flattering but impossible."
9 Nov 09	Nigel Hoffman Sydney Morning Herald	A higher education worth having Most Year 12 students see university primarily as vocational preparation. Most would be surprised to hear that a main task of universities was once to educate the souls of students, to help them come to terms with questions about life. ... The sense that some height and depth was missing in their "higher education" was behind student revolts in the US and Europe in the 60s. It's almost impossible to imagine such revolts taking place today.
5 Nov 09	Andrew Leigh Online Opinion	Boosting education in the downturn A government that's serious about an Education Revolution doesn't let university places shrink in hard times.
2 Nov 09	Brian Caldwell Sydney Morning Herald	Education revolution fails grade The much vaunted "education revolution" is heading for failure because it has not adopted key strategies that international experience tells us are important for success.
1 Nov 09	ABC News online	Weapons maker funds school curriculum An Adelaide public school has come under fire for reaching a deal with the world's largest manufacturerof guided missiles to fund a new curriculum.
26 Oct 09	Caroline Milburn The Age	Call to schools: open your books Parents of government schools are used to transparency, where parents are elected to school council and audited financial reports are available. A parent of Wesley students finds that this is not the case. Meanwhile, a larger battle about transparency and accountability is being waged at the national level. The Federal Govt will make all schools publish information about their performance on a national "My School" website. However, reporting of income will be missing because the main players can't agree on how to report details. Principals are urging the government to delay the website's introduction until funding categories are included.
26 Oct 09	Sydney Morning Herald	Principals have their say at education forum Julia Gillard will bring 150 principals to Canberra next month to discuss how the government can help them lift educational standards.
24 Oct 09	Sydney Morning Herald	Elite schools splash out on property deals One of Sydney's wealthiest private schools squirrelled away funds for years to pay $35.2 million for an historic estate this week. It still receives more than $4 million annual funding from state and federal governments!
19 Oct 09	Patricia Edgar Sydney Morning Herald	Childhood policy straight out of fantasyland The Federal Government's anti-obesity guidelines want to ban television for children under two, and limit viewing to one hour for two to five year olds. Such recommendations emanate from a fantasyland where officials never seem to learn from the past or understand the real world where most of us live.
19 Oct 09	Dan Harrison Sydney Morning Herald	We can learn from US on schools, says Gillard But others say it's bizarre to look to the US for ideas on education. Trevor Cobbold (Save Our Schools) says, "Why would you sign a memorandum of understanding with a country that's so far behind us on average results and on dealing with low socio-economic students and minority students?" Australia should instead look to Finland, which outperformed both Australia and the US.
13 Oct 09	abc.net.au Prof Brian Cambourne	See hear Cambourne counteracts recent claims in "The Australian" newspaper with evidence that teaching intensive phonics actually interferes with children's ability to construct accurate meaning.
11 Oct 09	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Schools lack basic funding: Labor MP Federal Labor MP Jennie Goerge has criticised her Government's "education revolution" for failing to address the urgent needs of public schools.
5 Oct 09	unesco.org	Build the Future: Invest in teachers now! Globally, 10.3 million teachers (1.3 million each year) need to be recruited over eight years (2007 to 2015) just to provide universla primary education by 2015.
5 Oct 09	Dan Harrison The Age	Not measuring up New research has raised doubts about the reliability of results from controversial national literacy and numeracy tests. Principals have urged the Federal Government to post information about the margin of error of the tests on its website of school profiles.
26 Sep 09	Horace Lucido Fresnobee.com	High-stakes testing makes teaching bleak The author argues that those pushing the high-stakes testing think they know and think they understand, but they don't. He uses a sports analogy to make his point. "Why is it so difficult for so many to see the tyranny of high stakes testing? The answer is simple; they are not in the classroom."
23 Sep 09	Marion Brady Education Week	National subject-matter standards? Be careful what you wish for Buckminster Fuller, the visionary thinker and inventor, says: "American education has evolved in such a way that it will be the undoing of the society." Do we really want to go that way? Brad aruges that national standards will fail because they will be driven by data derived from simplistic tests keyed to simplistic standardskeyed to simplistic, obsolete, 19th-century curriculum.
16 Sep 09	Dan Harrison Education Correspondent Syd Morning Herald	Gillard urged to publish funding details Primary Principals and the education union are calling on Julia Gllard to abandon plans to publish individual schools' results in national tests until she can also publish how much funding each school receives.
14 Sep 09	Stephen Lunn The Australian	Kids 'treated as fodder for production' Australia's children are increasingly being raised as 'fodder for productivity', trained in skills we want them to have as adults at the expense of allowing them a proper childhood.
12 Sep 09	Oprah.com	The best ways to teach kids to read A miracle: 'Harry Potter' helped learning-disabled students improve their reading more than three grade levels in under two years.
10 Sep 09	Economist.com	The more help children get, the worse they seem to do Research commissioned by the Dept for Children, Schools and Families in Britain suggests that support staff may be holding children back.
9 Sept 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Private schools' cash boost Victoria's wealthiest private schools are set to receive massive increases in federal funding. Hailebury College will get more than $52 million, Penleigh and Essendon Grammar will get more than $39 million, Carey Grammar $20 million and Scotch College $16 million. Government schools can only dream of getting that kind of money.
7 Sept 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	'Four hours of English' strategy doomed to fail, say academics A new strategy to improve the literacy of Aboriginal students in the NT is doomed to fail and will threaten the survival of indigenous languages and culture.
4 Sept 09	BBC News	Pupils receiving help 'do worse' Pupils who receive help from teaching assistants make less progress than classmates of similar ability because they spend less time with the teacher (a study by the Institute of Education in London).
2 Sept 09	Justine Ferrari The Australian	School stimulus plan fails test for neediest The neediest high schools in Australia have been denied funding to build science labs and language centres after the federal government ignored its own guidelines and redirected $200 million to help pay for a blowout in its primary school building program.
31 Aug 09	Kirsty Needham Sydney Morning Herald	Uni lecturers prepare to stop work in four states Staff express their frustration with increasing workloads and a shift towards casual teaching and fixed-term contracts.
24 Aug 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Rudd's $26b funding gift to private schools The Rudd Government will deliver an estimated 32% increase in funding to private schools despite a review which uncovered entrenched inequities in the system set up by the Howard government.
22 Aug 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Teacher pay plan to offer $7000 bonuses A "rewards" model will be piloted in Victorian schools next year. Education Minister Bronwyn Pike says, "This is not about rewards for results. I'm interested in rewarding people for passion, commitment and professional competency." Hmmm....will be interesting to see how that's done.
19 Aug 09	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Rudd increases funds for Brethren schools The federal govt was criticised yesterday for increasing funding for Exclusive Brethren schools to an estimated $62 million over the next four years. In 2007, Rudd referred to the Exclusive Brethren as an extremist cult and sect.
15 Aug 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Report card gradings score F, says expert ACER chief Geoff Masters has called for a dramatic rethink in the widespread practice of reporting school achievements as A to E grades.
4 Aug 09	Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools	Performance pay schemes are unreliable and misleading A major new study from Princeton University challenges the assumption that teachers' salaries can be successfully linked to 'value-added' factors in student achievement.
4 Aug 09	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	Schools 'call kids disabled for for cash' The number of children diagnosed with behavioural or emotional disorders is soaring, driven by funding programs that give schools extra money for students with disabilities.
4 Aug 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Dud teachers caned by union The NSW Teachers Federation says more needs to be done to address teacher quality and has conceded that underperforming teachers should leave the profession if they fail to improve.
3 Aug 09	Sydney Morning Herald	A persuasive push all the way to university A breakthrough mentoring scheme for indigenous secondary students.
29 Jul 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Teacher scheme takes off Hundreds of university students have applied for the Australian adaptation of the Teach for America program. By the end of the year, about 60 graduates from non-teaching courses will be chosen. They will get 6 weeks of intensive training and then teach for two years in some of the most disadvantaged schools in Victoria.
27 Jul 09	Peter Singer The Age	We must nurture the humanities Australian Universities need to do much more to fulfil their most important role: teaching students to think for themselves. ... Leading American universities cherish the ideal of a liberal arts education that in Australia seems to have been overwhelmed by vocational and professional training.
25 Jul 09	Adele Horin Sydney Morning Herald	An education revolution does not compute without quality teachers The Rudd Government's education revolution will amount to little if it fails to lift teacher quality.
24 Jul 09	Natasha Bita The Australian	Teachers' work is worth $100,000 Teachers will demand six-figure salaries to rival accountants and lawyers in a national pay push to start next year.
24 Jul 09	Greg Whitby Sydney Morning Herald	Teachers key to improving the education system The greatest influence on the future of quality Australian schools will not be the Federal Government's school building program or the national publication of league tables. It will be the collective wisdom of a teaching profession and community committed to shaping educational policy based on professional integrity and intellectual rigour.
20 Jul 09	Peter Martin Sydney Morning Herald	Rudd's laptops send standards backwards An American study finds that children in homes with computers tend to do better than those in homes without, but those homes also have a lot of other things other homes don't have (and often more educated parents).
17 Jul 09	Andrew Leigh ON LINE Opinion	When small isn't beautiful Few education policies are more popular than class size reductions. However, if the education budget is not increased, smaller classes translate into pay cuts for teachers. Since the mid-1980s, average teacher pay has fallen by about 10% (relative to other graduates). In the same time, student-teacher ratio fell by about 10%. Teachers have bought class size reductions from their own wallets!
15 Jul 09	Andrew Fraser The Australian	Queensland joins NSW in truancy blitz The Qld government has followed NSW in taking a tougher line on school truancy.
7 Jul 09	Alexandra Smith Sydney Morning Herald	Rees turns tables on O'Farrell over release of school results Labour Premier of NSW, Nathan Rees, will reintroduce league tables legislation to pressure Liberal Leader (Barry O'Farrell) to back down from his decision to block the publication of school results. O'Farrell maintained it was not Liberal policy to "stigmatise great teachers or great students" and parents could obtain sufficient information on a school's performance through annual reports.
6 Jul 09	Adele Horin Sydney Morning Herald	First three years key to school success: study How children are faring before they futn four is a strong guide to early school success. It is more important than what happens to them in the year immediately before they start school.
3 Jul 09	Stephanie Peatling The Age	Child care to get young school-ready All child-care centres will be required to begin baby learning and child development programs as soon as possible to make sure children are ready to learn when they start school. (Really?)
3 Jul 09	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Literacy and numeracy problems among indigenous students Government programs and school interventions are failing to narrow the gap in performance bwtween indigenous and non-indigenous students.
3 Jul 09	Sydney Morning Herald	Tables stance is right: O'Farrell NSW Liberal Leader, Barry O'Farrell, has defended himself against a growing chorus of Liberals who have criticised his opposition to school league tables.
2 Jul 09	Tony Moore Brisbane Times	'One class size does not fit all' Abandoning the flawed philosophy of 'one class size fits all' would lift literacy and numeracy standards.
30 Jun 09	Brisbane Times	Would-be teachers put to the test Aspiring teachers will have to pass literacy, numeracy and science tests before they can be registered in Queensland from 2011.
30 Jun 09	Sean Cavanagh Education Week	Top-scoring nations share strategies on teachers Singapore and Finland have risen to the top in very different ways, but in both countries, only the top applicants get in to teacher education courses. In Finland, all teachers must have a masters degree. In Singpore, recruits are taken only from the top third of graduating classes. In both countries, teachers are held in high esteem.
30 Jun 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	School data 'not wanted by parents' The Federal Govt insists parents want the ability to compare the results of similar schools – but a new survey suggests most private school families don't actually care for such information.
30 Jun 09	John Kaye Sydney Morning Herald	School league tables must be stopped Julia Gillard does not want school league tables. Neither does NSW Education Minister Verity Firth. Brian Caldwell (former Dean of Education at Melbourne University) urges "agitation on an epic scale" against them. The NAPLAN tests were not designed to rank schools so league tables would be false and misleading; this is what happened in New York.
29 Jun 09	Jennifer Buckingham Sydney Morning Herald	School-reporting policy in league of own as Greens get their clause into it School-performance reporting and league tables are NOT the same thing. The former, done properly, can provide useful information about a range of school characteristics. League tables, on the other hand, are lists of schools based on a single indicator, without reference to context or location. They are misleading.
27 Jun 09	Laura Clark Mail Online	Central prescription of literacy hour scrapped in England The 'literacy hour' which prescribed synthetic phonics in English classrooms has failed (no change in standards since the 1950s). Now, in a stunning U-turn, schools are being freed from central control.
27 Jun 09	Nicolas Perpitch The Australian	Language fund risks being lip service Without the staff to teach languages, the Rudd government's $500 million injection into school language centres could be pointless. New language teachers need to be trained, and the language centres need to be interactive so students can engage via the internet with native speakers in other countries.
25 Jun 09	Tim Matthews Sydney Morning Herald	There is no excuse for funding private schools Tim Matthews, vice-captain at Caringbah High School, argues that public funding of private schools in unconscionable. "Julia Gillard claims Australia suffers from a 'serious educational equity problem'. The irony seems apparent to most but the minister herself, for it is not the schools failing the children of Australia but the irresponsible distribution of government money.
24 Jun 09	The Australian	UK's school exam system fails to pass test An independent think tank has condemned Britain's examination system.
23 Jun 09	Andrew Trounson The Australian	Teacher training 'needs fund boost': Field Rickards Funding for teacher training needs to be boosted to the levels enjoyed by nursing to allow more intensive in-school training, according to Melbourne University's dean of education.
20 Jun 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Wealthy schools win cash bonanza from grants Sydney's wealthiest private schools are being given as much as $3 million each from the Federal Government's school building program while making annual surpluses of up to $3.6 million. The bonus is on top of the $13 million in government funding some already receive.
19 Jun 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	NSW Minister lifts ban on schoo league tables NSW introduced a bill to lift its 10-year ban on the creation of school league tables.
18 Jun 09	Nicolas Perpitch The Australian	Spend money on teachers as quality education needed in revolution Leading academics believe Gillard's education revolution lacks focus on improving the quality of teaching.
18 Jun 09	Henry Grossek Principal's edited letter to The Australian	Schools' pride felled by bullying bureaucrats The School Council found the Victorian Edcation Department negotiators to be provocative, insulting and heavy handed, and Federal government MPs expressed outrage about siphoning off vast sums from government schools to private schools.
18 Jun 09	Rick Wallace The Australian	It's a bungle out there, says Berwick principal Principal Henry Grossek has given an insider's account that paints a murky and disturbing picture of the Victorian government's blungling and bullying as he reveals how an upgrade to his school was mishandled.
17 Jun 09	Carol Nader The Age	Mental health issues soar among children Hundreds of children aged 10 to 14 are being hospitalised after harming themselves, and the rate has grown by 35% in just under a decade.
17 Jun 09	The Australian	Good teachers given no incentive Efforts to improve school performance are being undermined by a failure to recognise good teachers.
15 Jun 09	Caroline Milburn The Age	Taking the language leap Every Wednesday after lunch at an inner-Melbourne primary school, the students make a mental leap and stop writing in English and spend the rest of the week learning in Mandarin or Vietnamese. The curriculum doesn't change; just the language.
15 Jun 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Mixed response to curriculum plans History teachers are concerned about lack of detail for the senior years, but English teachers are confident that a balance will be achieved.
13 Jun 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Principle has been abandoned, say principals Education Ministers are no longer committed to avoiding "harm" to school communities in the publication of school league tables.
12 Jun 09	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Revolution shapes tale of contrasts There's much to recommend the school building program, but money is distributed according to number of students at the school. As a result, the nation's richest schools are receiving the maximum grant as if they had no existing facilities, resources or income.
11 Jun 09	Nicoloas Perpitch The Australian	Adviser slams $14.7bn school cash as a 'missed opportunity' One of Rudd's hand-picked infrastructure Australia board members has slammed the government's $14.7bn education revolution program, claiming it has missed a generational opportunity to build environmentally sustainable schools across the nation.
10 Jun 09	Natasha Bita The Australian	Labor's largesse to private primary schools Elite private schools that boast of their superior facilities were handed hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for new libraries, halls and refurbished classrooms yesterday.
9 Jun 09	The Age	Gillard to unveil $1.4bn school works program Victorian Primary Schools will receive $1.4bn under the latest instalment of the Federal Government's stimulus spending.
9 Jun 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	NSW Education Minister moves on school league tables NSW will change the Education Act to allow school league tables. Greens MP Kaye said she will find herself isolated in a battle with principals and unions across every education sector.
5 Jun 09	Jane Caro Sydney Morning Herald	High-stakes tests run on the cheap I am not against transparency, information or data. However, there are two things we need to be ever-vigilant about when it comes to data: how it is collected and how it is used.
4 Jun 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	School progress to appear online Every Victorian school will have its performance and programs published in a new state register.
2 Jun 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Public school's $700 plea to parents A North Shore public high school is pressing parents to make "voluntary" contributiions of up to $700 a year to make up for a shortfall in government funding.
1 Jun 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	A league of their own A principal explains the devastating effects when his school was "named and shamed" as a result of one measure which wasn't a true measure of the quality of the education they were providing.
1 Jun 09	Tanya Chilcott Courier Mail	Universities failing our teachers Universities are under attack from fellow educators for failing to produce teachers ready for the classroom.
1 Jun 09	Caroline Milburn The Age	Agent of Change As he oversees the reform of what is taught in Australian schools, Barry McGaw rides the storms with a Zen-like calm.
28 May 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	League tables slammed as a disaster Melbourne University Dean Brian Caldwell has accused the Federal Govt of being "hell bent" on creating league tables ahd has urged parents to boycott national tests. He says Australia is entering an era of "unprecedented centralisation in the control of public education" with state and federal leaders paving the way for potential disaster in the push for schools to be more accountable.
28 May 09	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Prof Barry McGaw hits back at critics who claim phonics syllabus backdown
26 May 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Stand-off looms over high school league tables High school principals are threatening to withhold results of tests from the Federal Government to prevent the creation of school league tables.
26 May 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Schools threaten testing boycott The Federal Government is on a collision course with principals who are considering boycotting the national literacy and numeracy test.
25 May 09	Philip Riley The Age	Tested by a test too many The National Curriculum Board has decided that all students will now be judged by a single standard every year -- a one-size-fit-all approach. Teachers will adopt a "teach to the test" instruction method because their job and promotion prospects will rely on these scores. This approach has failed in the US.
22 May 09	Karen Dreher The Age	Testing, testing ... a teacher's perspective A single test won't tell us a story about where we are in schools. It will provide a benchmark for limited achievements. It's usefulness must be questioned.
22 May 09	Richard White (former Dean of Education, Monash University) The Age	A view through the keyhole Before continuing to spend money on mass testing of children, the minister of education should think about two questions: 1. Will the results of the test tell me what I need to know? 2. Will the tests have a good effect on what happens in schools? (Answers: 'No' and 'No')
22 May 09	Neil James Sydney Morning Herald	To teach grammar, get to the point Everyone wants grammar back in our schools. Not surprisingly, that's as far as the consensus goes.
20 May 09	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Vague school syllabuses in the firing line The incoming head of the NSW Board of Studies has declared the days of the vague curriculum over, saying syallbuses have to specify precisely the knowledge students should be taught.
18 May 09	Maureen Douglas (retired principal) The Age	New assessment program can only fail students Testing such as NAPLAN testing has made neither Britain nor the US leaders in education.
18 May 09	Angelo Gavrielatos Sydney Morning Herald	League tables will not improve choice, just cause damage Pitting schools against each other over performance is not progress.
14 May 09	Emma Tom The Australian	Rebels without a clause Traditional grammar is like hardcore porn. We may struggle with definitions, but we know it when we see it.
14 May 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Independent schools ask for a fair result Independent schools fear unjust public comparisons of their income with that of government and Catholic schools in school reports to be released later this year.
13 May 09	Martina Simos & Callie Watson Adelaide Now	National literacy tests are only all write Students who took national literacy tests yesterday had mixed feelings. Some battled nerves and stress but still found it "easy".
12 May 09	Tim O'Dwyer ON LINE Opinion	The newly illiterate A glance at a handout for a Year 10 English class revealed appalling expression (careless, clumsy, ungrammatical, unintelligible and unworthy of any Year 10 student, let alone whoever wrote it.
12 May 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Teachers will boycott standardised schools tables Teacher unions have threatened to ban national literacy and numeracy testing if school league tables are pubished from data in national report cards.
11 May 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Schools face ranking to help parents choose Parents would be able to sue university entry scores to compare high schools under a new national system of reporting to be recommended to education ministers.
9 May 09	The Age	Beyond the cane High expectations and firm discipline are givens at every successful secondary school.
8 May 09	Justine Ferrari The Australian	National English curriculum to include grammar guide Barry McGaw, who is expected to remain head of the new Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, said yesterday that the draft grammar guide would set out a scope and sequence for teaching grammar.
8 May 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Principals afraid of report cards Principals fear reports that rank schools according to pupils' test results will ruin their reputations, encourage test results rorting and lead to intensive coaching. The APPA will call on the Federal Government to safeguard public report of the results. It also wants to ensure the retention of a balanced curriculum.
8 May 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Cyber bullies run amok at top school Interesting for literacy educators to know that this school also introduced the Spalding Method some years ago!
8 May 09	Rowan Callick Australian IT	IBM in Asian literacy push Across the country, 87,000 students learn Chinese but by Year 12 almost all have dropped out. With our future economy depending on Asia, big businesses have established the Business Alliance for Asia Literacy.
7 May 09	ASCD SmartBrief	Four comprehension programs don't help students Four programs used widely in the US have failed to increase comprehension scores. More evidence that programs don't teach - teachers teach! Invest in teachers, not programs.
6 May 09	Kerry Jones ON LINE Opinion	Civics education for a vibrant democracy Australia is recognised as a vibrant democracy, yet we suffer from a lack of interest in issues of international and domestic importance, and our politicians are lowly regarded. Despite millions of dollars spent on civics and citizenship programs, reports continue to show no improvement in understanding.
5 May 09	Sydney Morning Herald	School teachers the victims of bullying Almost all school teachers have been bullied in the workplace, often by senior staff or the principal.
2 May 09	Paul Austin The Age	$1bn for schools as Labor boost its education credibility About $1 billion will be spent upgrading Victorian government schools as the Rudd and Brumby governments seek to bolster their education credentials and create jobs.
1 May 09	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Teachers give ground on performance pay NSW teachers have opened the way for quality teaching to be rewarded with extra pay, signalling an end to their long-standing opposition to so-called performance pay.
27 Apr 09	Margie Smithurst ABC News	The silence epidemic: NT kids can't hear, can't learn When indigenous children turn up at school, they often can't hear what the teacher is saying.
22 Apr 09	Farrah Tomazin and Carol Nader The Age	Cash to narrow gap between rich and poor students Schools in Melbourne's poorest suburbs will get measures such as literacy coaches, breakfast programs and more teaching staff.
21 Apr 09	ASCD Smartbrief	Science should engage students and testing turns them off Students are being driven away from science by tests that encourage memorization and lack the excitement of science.
20 Apr 09	Caroline Milburn The Age	Testing times for reporting regimes Just as Australia is set to introduce a new method of reporting student and school performance results, a similar system in Britain has fallen into chaos.
20 Apr 09	Carol Nader and Farrah Tomazin The Age	Early learning is no game: it's a bumper start in life The pre-school years are so important, but a 2006 OECD report showed that Australia is at the bottom of the class when it comes to spending on pre-school education.
20 Apr 09	Karen Cruickshanks Sydney Morning Herald	Let kids be kids, homework can wait until later A parent complains about unnecessary homework and discovers there is overwhelming evidence that homework is at best wasted timed and at worst harmful to self-esteem and damaging to family relationships.
18 Apr 09	Farrah Tomazin and Carol Nader The Age	Poor children 'less likely to improve' Most students from Melbourne's poorest families struggle to improve in reading and maths ... State Government research shows that being rich or poor affects how well you can break the cycle of under-achievement.
18 Apr 09	Justine Ferrari and Corrie Perkin The Australian	Arts profile gets boost in national curriculum The status of the arts was boosted yesterday when education ministers decided to add the creative and performing arts to the second phase of the national school curriculum
17 Apr 09	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Parents to check schools via internet Parents will be able to compare their child's school with others.
15 Apr 09	The Australian	Power of narrative David Malouf recalls the power of a poem read to his class when he was in Year 4. Today's school children dqaully deserve to touch base with the most enduring aspects of Western cultural heritage in literature, music and art.
14 Apr 09	Phil Cullen On Line opinion	A view of school in Australia I don't take my motor car to a plumber for service, yet I have been witness to some extraordinary appointments in school authorities to senior postions ... we need people who know what they are doing, who have "been-there, done-the-hard-yards."
13 Apr 09	Sarah Dingle ABC News (AM)	NT educators responsible for Indigenous 'underclass' Dr Chris Sarra has just completed a review of education in the Northern Territory and says the education department has inadvertently created an underclass.
9 Apr 09	Jason Hill Sydney Morning Herald	Games 'valuable learning tool' Computer games can be a positive learning tool for children as young as three.
6 Apr 09	The Australian	Treasurer defends posh school grants The nations' most exclusive schools have received grants of up to $200,000 each. The posh King's School in Sydney got $200,000 to construct outdoor sporting facilities and student amenities! So did Scotch College in Melbourne.
6 Apr 09	Trevor Cobbald Sydney Morning Herald	Competition policies will leave only losers in our schools Not only has Labor maintained the previous government's privatisation and competition policies, but it is extending them by publishing tables of school results.
4 Apr 09	Australian Policy Online	What price the clever country? The costs of tertiary education in Australia Australia has the third highest university fees out of all OECD countries.
3 Apr 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Double standards in schools blasted Julia Gillard has delivered a stern warning to private schools, telling teachers she will not accept "double standards" - they must publish information like public schools regarding funding and results.
1 Apr 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Schools funding boost 'fails public system' A $14 billion Federal Government plan to bolster the economy by upgrading schools won't solve the gap between public and private education. Allocations will be based on school size, rather than needs. Last year, investment per private school student was $1774, but only $948 per public school student. This year, it will be $3020 per private school student and only $2470 per public school student. Astounding, and certainly inequitable.
1 Apr 09	Chris Bonnor (Co-author of "The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education.") The Age	Education is no place for a free market We need to dismantle policies that widen the gaps, policies that mock our rhetoric about equity and support for the poor. We must commit to funding on need and jettison policies that strip disadvantaged schools of their achieving kids.
1 Apr 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Isolation good for country schools Rural schools in NSW perofrm better in the HSC the further away they are from larger competing schools.
29 Mar 09	(name supplied) Personal communication	Letter to Brian Cambourne Support for basic teaching of phonics, in context, rather than extreme phonics approaches.
28 Mar 09	The Australian	Publicly ranking schools is essential to improve education Gillard made a case for standard performance measures.
28 Mar 09	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Gillard canes carping lobbyists Gillard carpeted the public education lobby yesterday for allowing a culture that accepted the underachievement of children and urged it to concentrate on implementing government reforms. She made no apology for the Government keeping the flawed model of private school funding.
28 Mar 09	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Government cut school days to save money NSW teachers ay the State Government has shortened the school year by two days to save money.
25 Mar 09	Nick Stone Senior Lecturer Melbourne University	Letter to 'The Australian' re lopsided reporting
24 Mar 09	Dan Harrison (Canberra) The Age	Gillard urged to ban league tables Teachers and principals are calling for new laws to prevent the media ranking schools in "league tables" based on student test results.
23 Mar 09	Prof Brian Cambourne	Phonics, Reading, Common Sense and The Dangers of "Readicide" It makes much more sense to teach phonic knowledge in the context of learning to write, than in the context of learning to read.
23 Mar 09	Sydney Morning Herald	Whole language approach to literacy reaps rewards There is an impressive wealth of evidence to substantiate holistic approaches to literacy.
18 Mar 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Male teachers shifting schools It seems that male teachers are shifting from public schools to work in independent and Catholic schools.
16 Mar 09	Margaret Cook The Age	Kinder surprise Where are we going to get all the preschool teachers needed to deal with the wave of new students?
14 Mar 09	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Different reading methods on trial in NSW The NSW government is planning a pilot study assessing a reading program that teachers letter-sound combinations as the first step in reading. (However, Justine Ferrari reports it with her bias, and lack of knowledge, evident.)
10 Mar 09	Heath Gilmore Sydney Morning Herald	Pressure on universities to attract poor Elite Sydney universities need to do more to attract poor students if they accept public funding.
4 Mar 09	Andrew Trounson The Australian	Massive shake-up of higher education funding The Federal Government is planning to link funding for tertiary places to student demand.
3 Mar 09	Yuko Murushima Sydney Morning Herald	Research, teaching funds paid for services Voluntary student unionism must be overturned immediately to free up money diverted from teaching and research, says Prof Richard Larkins.
1 Mar 09	Christopher Bantick The Age	To improve teaching standards, first improve teachers Vidtoria's Auditor-General has called for a stronger focus on educational standards.
24 Feb 09	The Herald Sun	Mobile phone texting may be good for literacy skills The research debunks fears that abbreviations were leading to an illiterate "underclass" language.
22 Feb 09	Minette Marrin Times Online (UK)	I'll spell it out: if children can't read, lives are ruined The biggest independent inquiry into primary school education in England for 40 years finds: a focus on literacy and numeracy and testing has squeezed out other learning and the children's education, and their lives, are impoverished.
20 Feb 09	Richard Garner The Independent (UK)	School children's lives are being impoverished Too much testing and too little learning in primary schools has let down a generation, says major inquiry. ARE WE HEADING THE SAME WAY IN AUSTRALIA?
16 Feb 09	The Australian	Kids' Lit seeks its laureate A children's laureate to chapion reading among kids will be appointed from next year under a program established by an alliance of authors, teachers, librarians, publishers, booksellers and arts administrators.
5 Feb 09	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Funding splurge fails to improve student results Victorian students' literacy and numeracy skills have barely improved - and in some cases, performance has slipped - despite taxpayers spending more than a billion dollars on school programs designed to lift results. CLEARLY THE VICTORIAN PROGRAMS ARE INAPPROPRIATE.
29 Jan 09	Charity Corkey Washingtonpost.com	It's Not the Books that are Dog-Eared A program called Paws to Read helps students with their confidence by having them read aloud to dogs. The program is said to be effective because chidlren do not feel that the dogs pass judgment on their reading abilities.
29 Jan 09	Farrah Tomazin and Dan Harrison The Age	PC program 'doesn't compute' Some of Victoria's most well-resourced schools are among the biggest winners of the Federal Government's contentious plan to provide computer access to all senior secondary students.
28 Jan 09	Andrew Trounson and Angus Hohenboken The Australian	Must try hard on education, Kevin Rudd told Two-thirds of voters do not believe the Rudd Government is investing enough in public schools, despite Labor promsies of an education revolution.
19 Dec 08	Jay Mathews Washington Post	How poverty influences learning, and vice versa One of the best books written about this topic: "Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America."
17 Dec 08	Australian Policy Online	Review of Australian Higher Education Australia is falling behind other countries in performance and investment in higher education. Other countries know that there are strong links between productivity and the proportion of the population with high-level skills.
17 Dec 08	Mark Davis Sydney Morning Herald	Sweeping reforms to fix universities Australia needs to spend billions more on universities. Bradley review says higher education has deteriorated as a result of inadequate spending.
15 Dec 08	Andrew Trounson The Australian	School scores fail uni test on picking best Universities are concerned that school results are too narrow and are failing to identify talented students who fail to make the grade, especially from among the disadvantaged attending under-resourced state schools.
15 Dec 08	Jane Caro Sydney Morning Herald	Letting parents vote with their feet on school choice doesn't add up Julia Gillard is going to allow parents to 'vote with their feet'. The trouble with choice is everybody tends to "choose" the same thing; in this case, the same "prestigious" schools. Marketers know that nothing is more desirable than the hard-to-get and nothing is less desirable than that open to everyone. This bears no relation to quality, it is simply how marketing manipulates human desire.
12 Dec 08	Duncan Fine Sydney Morning Herald	Don't blame Summer Heights High for turning kids into racists Scots headmaster avoids responsibility for students' racist comments on Facebook.
6 Dec 08	Garry Collins	Arrogant attack on critical literacy Read here the FULL response from Garry Collins ('The Australian' published only part of it).
6 Dec 08	Kenneth Davidson The Age	So, Ms Gillard, the education debate is about values. Whose? The clear conclusion re education funding is that the Federal Government is hell-bent on making government schools the residual system. ... The values that underpin the increasingly inequitable funding that is leading to a two-tiered education system can no longer stand the light of day in a civilised society.
5 Dec 08	Andrew Trounson The Australian	Senate inquiry dismisses left-wing bias in universities The inquiry ended as it began with government members dismissing allegations of left-wing bias at universities and schools, but with the minority coalition members deploring a biased "monoculture" and calling for academics to be more accountable to their students.
3 Dec 08	Jack Thomson Balmain, NSW (in The Australian)	Philosophical attack draws fire Luke Slattery (education writer for The Australian) is criticised for misrepresenting Thomson's work and the work of some of the leading philosophers of the 20th century.
1 Dec 08	Patricia Buoncristiani The Age	School is about more than tests The experience in America has shwon that rigid adherence to passing tests is not necessarily best for children and Australia should find its own way. Instead of talking with Joel Klein about New York's system, she should speak with some of the principals and teachers and parents - they would give a different picture.
1 Dec 08	Matthew Franklin The Australian	PM targets education inequality with $1bn handout Kevin Rudd will identify the nation's 1500 poorest-performing schools and flood them with $1.1 billion over the next 5 years in a front-on attack on inequality of access to education.
29 Nov 08	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	More funds for primary schools Primary schools will receive an extra $100 a student a year and schools in disadvantaged areas will have access to $1.1 billion over the next 4 years under the federal Government's schools funding proposal.
29 Nov 08	Andrew Trounson The Australian	University education still beyond the reach of many Wealthy students remain about three times more likely to go to university than those from poorer backgrounds.
29 Nov 08	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Aboriginal students make short work of success A school's investment in Aboriginal children is starting to pay off, with dramatically improved literacy and numeracy results.
27 Nov 08	Kenneth Davidson The Age	Ratings scheme for schools fails the test for improving them Joel Klein, corporate lawyer, is here to spruik the virtues of Gillard's wacky plan to publish a rating system for schools, but the results in NY do not stand up to any statistical analysis.
27 Nov 08	Angelo Bavrielatos & Susan Hopgood AustralianPolicyOnline	Joel Klein and the NY school accountability model Klein's model has not produced remarkable outcomes, and it will not address the issues of inequity and achievement in the Australian education system.
26 Nov 08	Shaun Carney The Age	The best of both worlds Australia's greatest living capitalist (Rupert Murdoch) and a flae-haired Melbourne left-winger (Julia Gillard) did more to redirect and re-energise education policy in this country than any two leading public figures for a very long time.
26 Nov 08	Sharon Beder Sydney Morning Herald	Big business dominates educational planning Joel Klein is in Australia to "spruik" his business-friendly school reforms courtesy of the Swiss bank UBX, the recipient of a multibillion-dollar bailout from Swiss taxpayers! Klein has also referred to children as cars in a shop, a collection of malfunctions to be adjusted!
25 Nov 08	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Don't mimic US school model: experts Eduation authoritis have warned the Federal Government against following the NY education model, saying it has failed to deliver reported improvements in student results.
25 Nov 08	Chris Bonnor Online Opinion	The Education Revolution – one year on The achievements so far, and the need to 'get back to the barricades and have another go'.
23 Nov 08	The Sydney Morning Herald Maxine McKew	Tackling a big learning curve A new approach to early education is already here and it looks promising. As Prof Frank Oberklaid and Prof Fiona Stanley keep saying, babies come out of the womb ready to learn.
21 Nov 08	The Australian Justine Ferrari	Schools debate misses the real issue ... funding A typical primary school receives less than $2 a week per student to buy teaching resources such as readers, maths equipment, pencils, crayons, paper, art materials and sporting equipment. Debates over league tables, accountability and public versus private schools miss the real problem in education -- an extreme lack of fudning.
19 Nov 08	Education Week Kathleen Manzo	No effect on comprehension seen from 'Reading First' The previous Federal Government's "Teaching Reading" report was almost totally baed on the National Reading Panel's recommendations in the US. The $6 billion US program based on these recommendations ('Reading First') has failed.
17 Nov 08	The Age	Outback schools need 'new themes' A revised curriculum for indigenous students is being mooted.
17 Nov 08	The Age (Gerard Wright in LA)	Brain wave: How technology changes our thinking The wonders of our digital age are affecting us more than we know.
14 Nov 08	Online Opinion Chris James	De-schooling Australia Kevin Rudd's heavy hand of authority could see his 'education revolution' become the deschoooling of Australia. (People on welfare will have their welfare cheques removed for up to 3 months if their children avoid school.)
11 Nov 08	The Age Dan Harrison	Gillard reassures schools Julia Gillard has reassured independent schools that the national curriculum will accommodate alternatives such as Steiner and Montessori programs.
6 Nov 08	The Australian Jennifer Buckingham	Brightest and Best miss out The OECD described Australia as a high quality, LOW equality country in 2000. Since then, there has been much talk about the long tail of educational underachievement.
1 Nov 08	Matthew Denhold The Australian	Gillard praises Tasmania for lead on school ratings Tasmania has become the first state to release ratings of every state primary and high school based on literacy, numeracy and other key performance indicators.
1 Nov 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Primary schools 'need more cash' Primary school students are neglected in education funding. Spending as a proportion of GDP on Years 3-6 was among the lowest of the OECD countries.
30 Oct 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Call to fast-track school reforms A 5-year project examining six countries has concluded that core issues such as teacher quality are the keys to achieving a genuine education revolution. ... Prof Caldwell and Dr Harris outline a 10-point plan, including "minimising or even abandoning plans for national testing programs."
29 Oct 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	History should be like a detective hunt, says author Carol Baxter A course in practical history allowing students to trace the stories of Australia's early settlers would revitalise the study of the colonial past.
27 Oct 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	School testing 'backfires' The federal government's policy requiring schools to publicly report their results in national tests was described yesterday as macho and populist by an international education researcher. He warns that testing regimes and 'league tables' are counterproductive.
27 Oct 08	Gerard Noonan Sydney Morning Herald	Avoid school league tabls, says experts A leading British education academic has warned Australia not to copy the obsession in Britain and the US with league tables and report cards for schools.
25 Oct 08	Gabriella Coslovich The Age	Uncovering history in black and whitewash An article about SBS's new television series First Australians. The author questions why Australia's colonisation history isn't taught.
25 Oct 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	A slow, steady learning curve National Curriculum Board chairman Barry McGaw says the draft outlines for English, maths, science and history released last week are intended to set out a broad direction before sniping begins over the details.
21 Oct 08	Stephen Lunn Social Affairs writer The Australian	Children don't come first here Australia's prosperity is masking an unpalatable truth - the health and wellbeing of our children lag unacceptably behind those of many developed countries.
21 Oct 08	Stephen Lunn Social Affairs writer The Australian	Education divide reopening, childhood expert warns Australian Institute of Family Studies director Alan Hayes said evidence was mounting that access to quality education, the key driver of outcomes for children, was being decided increasingly along class lines.
20 Oct 08	Matthew Knott The Australian	'Activist' academics black list under fire Academics names as militant left-wing ideologues in a black list tabled in federal parliament claim they are victims of a Young Liberals "witch-hunt".
19 Oct 08	Sarah Price Sydney Morning Herald	Eager readers rewrite the records Record numbers of students have completed the 2008 Premier's Reading Challenge (NSW)
16 Oct 08	Justine Ferrari The Australian	British history is not the whole story Call for British history to be the focus of school courses overlooked the importance of the values and traditions Australia inherited from Western Europe, historian John Hirst has said.
14 Oct 08	Farrah Tomazin and Dan Harrison, The Age	Review urges hands-on, relevant science Science classes will be revamped to place more emphasis on contemporary topics such as climate change, stem cell research and hybrid cars under proposed changes to the school curriculum.
14 Oct 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	History curriculum author defies his critics to find bias Historian Stuart Macintyre, the author of the draft national history curriculum and a controversial figure of the history wars, has chalenged his critics to find any political bias in the new curriculum.
13 Oct 08	The Age	Muddle in the middle, review finds The benefits of middle-school programs for students aged 12 to 16 are not backed by hard evidence, according to a review.
6 Oct 08	Caroline Milburn The Age	Upper pimary the 'forgotten' years Leonie Trimper (president of the Australian Primary Principals Association) says this years NAPLAN results reveal the extent of the problem.
6 Oct 08	Tom Worthington On Line opinion	Digital education revolution is not sustainable When Julia Gillard talked about a digital revolution, she mentioned "sustainability" - but in an economic sense, not environmentally or educationally.
4 Oct 08	Kenneth Wiltshire The Australian Higher Education	Worldwide shortage of teachers UNESCO estimates that 18 million more teachers needed for universal primary education, but author argues that teachers get less than top marks when it comes to status. He also argues that it was a big mistake to give universities responsibility for teacher education.
4 Oct 08	Jonathan Porter The Australian Higher Education	Ideological divide in state leaders' choice of schools State leaders are divided along party and ideological lines on the question of whether to entrust their most valuabl treasure - their children - to state or private education.
19 Sep 08	Anna Patty Education Editor The Sydney Morning Herald	Parents unite to learn the lesson Australian parent groups will explore the boundaries of parental expectations of schools after concerns that some parents become too pushy with teachers.
15 Sep 08	Jenny Allum Principal of SCEGGS Darlinghurst. Sydney Morning Herald	A national curriculum, a bad choice The principal of a well-known school in Sydney compares opportunities for consultation with the National Curriculum Board with the opportunities to consult with current State curriculum committees.
	NOTICE	Unfortunately, the person who maintains this site is overseas. The site cannot be updated until mid-September.
26 Jun 08	Erica McWilliam, Jennifer Pei-Ling Tan Australian Policy Online	Cognitive playfulness, creative capacity and generation 'C' learners A study of student engagement with new digital media technologies in a formal schooling environment to demonstrate the importance of playfulness as a learning disposition.
26 Jun 08	Harriet Alexander Sydney Morning Herald	Reading, writing and virtual reality Students grasp concepts better and are more engaged in lessons when teachers use digital technology such as interactive whiteboards.
23 Jun 08	Editorial the New York Times	Better-Qualified Teachers The US has a long and dishonorable history of dumping the least-qualified teachers into schools that serve poor and minority students. (And in Australia???)
22 Jun 08	Sarah Price Education Reporter Sydney Morning Herald	Boys climb aboard and sail into a good book Holy spirit Primary School, St Clair, has set up a fun 'Survivor' challenge that has helped boost participation from boys and reluctant readers.
20 Jun 08	Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne	Linking schools and early years services Addressing the low literacy levels of many children from disadvantaged backgrounds requires identifying and removing barriers these children face when starting school.
20 Jun 08	Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne	Rethinking school readiness Report on the importance of schools services and communities supporting children and families and providing the conditions and experiences needed to ensure that all children reach school able to take advantage of the academic and social learning experiences.
19 Jun 08	Paige Taylor The Australian	Behaviour of kids sending teachers packing The increasingly bad behaviour of children is driving many teachers out of the profession.
19 Jun 08	Denise Gelberg Teacher	Closing the Achievement Gap: Schools alone cannot succeed The author relies on years of classroom experience as well as data on the health and well-being of the nation's children to make the case that schools alone cannot address the gap in achievement between economically advantaged and disadvantaged youngsters.
13 Jun 08	Garry Collins President, English Teachers Association of Qld (ETAQ)	Some thoughts on grammar Garry Collins' response to articles about grammar in "The Australia"
11 Jun 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Fallacy of learning grammar by osmosis School English courses are based on the fallacy that students studying literature will pick up grammar and writing style by osmosis.
10 Jun 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	School English too hard: principal The head of one of the nation's elite private schools has questioned whether English should be compulsory for the senior years, saying the courses being taught are beyond the intellectual ability of most students.
9 Jun 08	Sydney Morning Herald	New way of knowing to bring results Different cultures have their own ways of knowing or ways of creating knowledge. For aboriginal students, holisitc knowledge is the cornerstone of a unified world view.
8 Jun 08	Sarah Price Education Reporter Sydney Morning Herald	A good book converts kids into a captive audience Debra Oswald, playwright and author, reads to children and reminds us that good books captivate kids.
6 Jun 08	Jill Rowbotham The Australian	Seven unis take a bite of Apple site Seven universities in Australia and New Zealand will make a great leap into online lecturing today when American computer giant Apple launches a local iTunes U education site.
6 Jun 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Test results for basic school skills delayed The results of the national literacy and numeracy tests conducted last month will not be given to schools and parents for four months, when schools are about to finish Term 3.
5 Jun 08	Linda Jacobson Education Week (edweek.org)	Long-term economic payoff seen from early-childhood education For every $1 spent on children of low-income families, almost $10 is returned by age 25 in benefits to society or to the participant in the form of higher earnings.
5 Jun 08	Prof Ray Fisman Columbia Business School	Why giving poor kids laptops doesn't improve their scholastic performance If we really want to help poor kids, we may want to focus on approaches that provide structured, supervised access through after-school programs or subsidies that bring technology into low-income chools. But just giving kids computers? Might as well just ship them PlayStations.
3 Jun 08	Ralph Catts and Jesus Lau UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Australian Policy Online	Towards information literacy indicators There is a tendency to focus almost exclusively on the technology, yet the real interest lies in monitoring the impact of these technologies (not simply access to them).
3 Jun 08	Louise Doyle and Regina Hill Australian Policy Online	Our children, our future: achieving impoved primary and secondary education outcomes for indigenous students This report covers eight interventions aimed at improving education outcomes of Indigenous children and young people.
2 Jun 08	Caroline Milburn The Age	Canberra urged to take charge of teacher training Teacher training should be taken over by the Federal Government, says business.
1 Jun 08	Sarah Price Education reporter Sydney Morning Herald	Well-read students out to prove who knows the story Avid readers at two Sydney schools are engaged in a battle of the brains to see which has more bookworms.
31 May 08	Stuart Rintoul The Australian	Leg-up to the top Joe Ross, chairman of the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program, imagines children of a different dreaming.
31 May 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Meeting aims to 'reclaim' literature Literature has lost its place in school English courses, pushed aside by the focus on practical skills and the social theories imposed on the subject.
30 May 08	Lee Borkman Letter to Sydney Morning Herald	You don't dictate what we debate, Ms Gillard By all means dispense with the divisive public/private, religious/non-religious, selective/non-selective debates. The real issue is inclusive-versus-exclusive. Schools that are segregated along economic, religious or academic lines teach appalling lessons. Why can't all of our children just go to school together?
30 May 08	Anna Patty Education editor Sydney Morning Herald	Private schools hog funding Private schools serving the wealthiest families are overfunded by as much as $3306 per secondary student.
29 May 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Scheme rewards top teachers The NSW government yesterday unveiled its verion of performance pay for teachers.
29 May 08	Julia Gillard Sydney Morning Herald	No more public v private debate For too long in Australia debates about the quality of education have revolved around public versus private schools. We need to leave these old-style debates. We need a conversation about a transparent, high-quality, well-funded education system for the 21st century.
26 May 08	Morag Fraser The Age	An ear to the classroom door Open letter to Julia Gillard from Prof Morag Fraser, La Trobe University.
26 May 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	No excuses for indigenous students The indigenous community has to discard the misguided notion that gaining an education makes them less Aboriginal. Dr Chris Sarra, a respected indigenous educator, has called on the Aboriginal community to ensure children take their rightful place in the Rudd Government's education revolution.
25 May 08	Sarah Price Education Reporter Sydney Morning Herald	Youngsters tough critics, says award-winning author Literature for children and young people is just as challening to write as adult fiction and the critics are just as tough, says award-winning author James Roy.
25 May 08	Roger Highfield Science editor telegraph.co.uk	'Formal play' better prepares children for school Children aged around four can be much better prepared for school by using "formal play". The TOOLS OF MIND curriculum has been tested for the first time. Conclusion: it would be cheap and effective.
23 May 08	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	States holding back shools, warns Julia Gillard The Federal government has effectively put the states and territories on notice over the reporting of school and student performance, saying they are hampering efforts to raise standards.
22 May 08	Darren Devine Western Mail, Wales	Texting is actually good for children's spelling Prof David Crystal, an internationally-known linguist, says texting helps literacy standards simply because it means children are spending more time reading and writing.
22 May 08	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	Board disigning first national curriculum wll rule on teaching methods The National Curriculum Board will act as a clearing-house for education research, informing teachers of the best methods to use in the classroom.
19 May 08	Prof Brian Cambourne Principal Fellow, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong.	Letter to Julia Gillard, Minister for Education A study just released by the US Department of Education casts serious doubt on the evidence to which the Minister refers.
19 May 08	Mem Fox	Letter to Crikey.com re Julia Gillard's comments on phonics So Julia Gillard has been kissed by the phonics fairy.
19 May 08	Simon Breakspear Online Opinion	Re-branding education as a career choice The key to an "education revolution" is the attraction, development and retention of a new generation of quality teachers and educational leaders.
19 May 08	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	International research to guide teaching methods The federal government will provide direction on the methods used in the classroom, as part of its plan for the national curriculum. (But whose research has Julia been reading? Let's hope it not from the US or the UK, where the so-called 'research evidence' has proved to be shonky.)
19 May 08	Jeff Thornton Broken Hill (letter in SMH)	These tests are a farce Having just spent a week supervising the national numeracy and literacy tests, I've realised what a joke they are. (The link takes you to all the SMH herald; you need to go to page 4 for this letter.)
18 May 08	Sarah Price Education reporter Sydney Morning Herald	Students suffer in teacher shortage A severe shortage of casual teachers means almost two-thirds of NSW schools cannot find one when they need one.
17 May 08	Janice Creenaune Sydney Morning Herald	School league tables will test common sense The possible use of results form recent literacy and numeracy tests in schools may prove to be an increasingly interesting journey. The possibility of league tables, it seems, is real.
15 May 08	Maralyn Parker Daily Telegraph	Flawed tests a waste of time It was more than Kevin Rudd's first budget day yesterday, it was also the first day of the nation's school standards testing regime.
15 May 08	Suzanne Rice Curriculum Leadership (reported in Australian Policy Online)	Getting good teachers into challenging schools There have been calls to give top teachers salary incentives to work in disadvantaged settings. But is money the only answer?
14 May 08	Ben Eltham newmatilda.com	Viva La Evolution It's a far cry from a "revolution" but the budget has been good to education.
13 May 08	Peter Jones On Line Opionion	Reversing the trend In a multi-lingual world, yet one where languages are dying out every month, it is essential for Australians to speak a second language. It is hoped that the Rudd Government will reverse the trend of the last decade when language teaching was run down.
12 May 08	Maureen Douglas Principal of a primary school. The Age	We're teaching children, not fattening pigs A well-respected principal says it's time for Australia to be mindful of what has happened to teaching and learning in American and English schools since the introduction of high-stakes standardised testing.
11 May 08	The Age	Gillard hails start of new schools tests New literacy and numeracy tests being held in schools across the country next week for the first time will be good news for parents and government.
9 May 08	ABC News (online)	Teachers ordered to carry out national literacy tests The Industrial Relations Commission has ordered the teachers' union to scrap its plans to boycott national literacy and numeracy tests. Teachers are concerned about how the results could be used.
9 May 08	John Roskam The Age	Missed chance to really shake up education The announcement by the Brumby Government in Victoria that it will hire the best school principals, pay them up to $200,000 a year and sendthem to improve the state's worst government schools is an important reform. The next step is to expand it to include teachers. Our best teachers should be working in our lowest performing schools and they should be paid accordingly.
8 May 08	John Stapleton The Australian	Rein plays role in literacy project Therese Rein demonstrated yesterday she will be quite different from her predecessor, Janette Howard, when it comes to public speaking. The wife of PM Kevin Rudd has become the patron of the Indigenous Literacy Project.
7 May 08	Jim Goodnight Business Analytics The Australian	Hi-tech children tuning out Education is stuck in the days of the horse and buggy to the detriment of schoolkids who live in a world of virtual gaming, YouTube and Google.
7 Apr 08	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Shake-up targets bored teachers Bored teachers would be moved out of the classroom and parents would get unprecedented information on how schools perform under a proposed shake-up of Victoria's education system.
2 Apr 08	David Hursh FairTest	Testing: the real crisis in education Article based on the book, High Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning: the real crisis in education, by David Hursh. Are we going the way of the USA?
2 Apr 08	Alexandra Smith Sydney Morning Herald	Jail parents of truants, says Iemma Education and welfare experts have ridiculed Morris Iemma's plan to send parents to jail if their children repeatedly miss school.
1 Apr 08	Sid Marris The Australian Higher Education	Gillard tells states to act in good faith Julia Gillard has warned the Labor states not to hinder the Rudd government's $1 billion computers-in-schools program.
31 Mar 08	Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter Sydney Morning Herald	Indigenous students flock to medicine The University of NSW recorded its biggest intake of indeigenous medical students this year, with eight young people on the path to becoming doctors.
29 Mar 08	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Funding alarm over private school's $2m fraud A private school principal sacked for defrauding $2 million says he is not alone in rorting the controversial Commonwealth funding scheme. ... He said the (Howard) government had not audited his school in the 16 years he was there.
29 Mar 08	Inside Higher Ed insidehighered.com	'Multiple Intelligences' launched 25 years ago Gardner launched the "multiple intelligences" movement 25 years ago and believes there is no single measure of intelligence. However, there are some who still believe in standardized tests in ways that Garnder finds both offensive and irrelevant.
28 Mar 08	Ewin Hannan The Australian Higher Education	Must raise bar for new teachers Aspiring teachers should be tested to meet minimal standards in English literacy, numeracy and science before they are registered.
27 Mar 08	Greg Toppo USA Today	Size along makes small classes better for kids New research showing that smaller classes DO help students.
		We apologise for the gap in news during March. Computer problems prevented up-dating.
1 Mar 08	Bridie Smith The Age	Exodus in State School attendance The exodus from Australia's battling state schools has grown. In 1997, 70% of students were in government schools. In 2006, it fell to 66.8%. In 2007 it was 66.4%.
29 Feb 08	Justine Ferrari Prof Barry McGaw The Australian Higher Education	National curriculum to rate performance Barry McGaw envisages a program that sets out different levels of student performance linked to the national assessment system. "...the standards might need to be reconfigured once the national curriculum had been produced."
28 Feb 08	McKinsey and company Australian Policy Online	How the best performing school systems come out on top Why do the world's top performing school systems perform so much better than most others? And why do some educational reforms succeed spectacularly while most others fail?
27 Feb 08	Andrew Dowling On Line opinion	Defining disadvantage Australia's annual 2 billion school funding system is in disarray and requires urgent reform to ensure that fair and adequate funding is provided to all of the nation's schools.
27 Feb 08	Dale Spender On Line opinion	Playing catch-up with digital realities A teacher's role used to be clear. But the realities of the digital world have changed the teacher's role forever. There are no tried and true models that teachers can follow to deliver an appropriate education for today's students.
27 Feb 08	Milanda Rout The Australian Higher Edn	Public school students missing out on uni offers Public school students more likely to miss out on university education as competition for places intensifies. ... There is also a decline in the number of students from a low socio-economic background getting into the prestigious Group of Eight universities.
26 Feb 08	Justine Ferrari The Australian Higher Education Prof Gordon Stanley	Academic questions multiple choices It is time to stop introducing change in the nation's classrooms without discovering whether students' learning improved as a result.
22 Feb 08	Howard Gardner Washington Post	The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading Reading will never disappear. But it may well change beyond recognition.
21 Feb 08	Stephen Hagan On Line Opinion	Offering educational opportunities The inducement of money to entice experienced teachers to remote communities is a step in the right direction but not if the home environment isn't also remedied.
21 Feb 08	Kevin McDonald, John Turner & Peter Williams On Line Opinion	Education: it's child's play Three retired, tertiary educated, senior citizens writing about the kind of education they want for their grandchildren.
19 Feb 08	Lawrence Ingvarson ACER On Line Opinion	Good teachers, excellent teachers There is widespread agreement that Australia needs to place greater value on teachers' work. Simply paying teachers more will not achieve this.
19 Feb 08	Harriet Alexander Sydney Morning Herald	Graduates 'sms' in job l3tt3rs University graduates using text message abbreviations and gaming slang inappropriately in job applications.
18 Feb 08	Ilana Synder Monash University Canberra News	Reading and writing in a cultural battleground A literacy agenda is rich with possibilities and the way to construct it is not in a highly politicised campaign of [public abuse of teachers but through civil open discussion and dialogue.
18 Feb 08	Geoff Masters CEO of the ACER On Line Opinion	An excdellent teacher for every child Providing every child with excellent teaching certainly will require an education revolustion. But can we afford anything less?
18 Feb 08	Lesley Lamb The Age	Children's learning flourishes in the right atmosphere It was the expectations of my teachers that really made the difference.
17 Feb 08	Simon Marginson Professor of Higher Education, University of Melbourne. The Age	Making the cap fit University of Melbourne Professor of Higher Education relates how the educational landscape has changed for students beginning university in Victoria this year. (Not all commentators would agree that the new American-style double degree will improve uiversity education.)
15 Feb 08	Susan Wight On Line Opinion	Education is too important to leave to schools The "education revolution" can not be just about schools.
13 Feb 08	Michael Hureaux & Robert Femiano Seattlepi.com	Teachers key to school reform It's time to stop blaming and start trusting teachers. Give teachers the ability to tailor curriculum to the learner.
13 Feb 08	Tess Livingstone The Australian Higher Education	Aussie girls beat US young physicists Three 16-year-olds from Brisbane have taken on the best in the US in physics – and won hands down.
9 Feb 08	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	How private schools owe taxpayer $2b Private schools have been over-funded by more than $2 bilion over 4 years and some will be overpaid by as much as $23 million each in the next funding cycle, the federal Department of Education reveals in a secret review.
8 Feb 08	Milanda Rout The Australian Higher Education	Australian unis ranked third in world by students Overseas students have ranked Australia as the third best country in the world for university education.
6 Feb 08	Jennifer Buckingham On Line Opinion	For a real revolution we need reform The central components of the Rudd education revolution include computers, trade centres, national standards, and a focus on the basic skills of literacy and numeracy. These are all necessities but are hardly transformational or visionary.
4 Feb 08	Dr Sue Thomson (Project Manager for PISA in Australia) The Age	Lessons to learn from high achievers The PISA results show that Australia has a world-class education system. ... The results of PISA 2006 show that Australia's performance is above the OECD average in scientific, reading and mathematical literacy.
4 Feb 08	Christopher Bantick The Age	Teaching is a calling more than a vocation Teaching has never been about the money. This year applications for teaching degrees in victoria are down by 6.8%. The question is why?
2 Feb 08	Tess Livingstone The Australian	Skills tests put students at odds Universal skills tests advantage certain groups of students and marginalise others.
1 Feb 08	MCEETYA	Reading, Writing and Numeracy Benchmark Results for 2006
1 Feb 08	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Stop holding back top students: curriculum chief Australia has fallen behind in reading because there is too much focus on lifting the results of struggling students, rather than also making our top students perform even better, says the man spearheading the Federal Government's first national school curriculum.
30 Jan 08	Teachers College Record	The Hidden Curriculum of Performance-Based Teacher Education Superficial demonstrations of compliance with external mandates rather than authentic intellecutal engagement.
30 Jan 08	Neil Hooley The Age	Students deserve genuine educational reform An articulate argument for inquiry based learning.
30 Jan 08	Catherine Deveny The Age	Teachers should strike for more pay John Brumby and his yes-men have manipulated opinion against our Victorian teachers. The teachers deserve more.
28 Jan 08	Philip Riley Monash University The Age	Keeping our teachers A genuine education revolution would ensure appropriate training and support for the profession.
28 Jan 08	Bridie Smith The Age	School year to start on a meditative note By 9:30 am, at the Reservoir Maharishi School in Melbourne, shoes will be off and all will be quiet. Breathing and pulse rates will slow as students quickly settle into their transcendental meditation. Benefits: reduced stress levels, no bullying, greater awareness.
28 Jan 08	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Victorian state schools struggling to find teachers Victorian state schools faced with teacher shortages are being forced to "wine and dine" job applicants, use unqualified teachers or poach staff from interstate.
27 Jan 08	Sarah Price Education Reporter, Sydney Morning Herald	Parents bear pain for private schools Half the Australianparents who send their children to private school are finding it a financial strain.
25 Jan 08	Milanda Rout the Australian Higher Education	Research council calls for transparent funding The ACER is critical of the current funding system. The $30 billion federal and state government funding system is highly political, inefficient, in disarray and needs to be urgently overhauled.
25 Jan 08	Anna Patty Education editor Sydney Morning Herald	Funds formula benefits private schools: report Private schools are becoming more advantaged and receiving greater amounts of Commonwealth funding because public schools are taking on a greater load of disadvantaged students.
10 Jan 08	Stephen Lunn Social affairs writer The Australian	Half of us lack modern world skills Study in eight countries. Switerzerland and Norway came out ahead of Australia, but the US ranked much lower than Australia.
22 Jan 08	Patricia Edgar and Barbara Biggins Sydney Morning Herald	Chidlren's media: clean the slate and start again The content provided by technology is banal, exploitative and damaging to children's wellbeing.
19 Jan 08	Anna Patty Education writer Sydney Morning Herald	Casualties of the literacy wars The shift to a more traditional approach to literature shows some capitulation to political pressure.
18 Jan 08	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Teachers' $50K bush bonus A program developed by Cape York Institute and Sydney's Macquarie University aims to raise funds largely from the private sector to install 500 high-quality teachers in remote schools. (How does such a program, with no independent evaluations, get this kind of support?)
16 Jan 08	Josh Gordon & Tim Colebatch The Age	Devaluing our teachers Principals in Wodonga have a serious problem: their teachers are crossing the Murray River every morning and taking jobs at schools in Albury. Why? Senior teachers in NSW are paid almost $10,000 more than their counterparts in Victoria.
16 Jan 08	Justine Ferrari Education writer the Australian	Teachers back merit-based pay Overwhelming support has emerged among the nation's teachers for merit-based pay, with a majority believing wages should be pegged to competence and qualifications.
16 Jan 08	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Classes combined as teacher shortage bites Close to half of all secondary school principals have been forced to ask staff to teach outside their area of expertise to cover shortages. 19% removed subjects from the curriculum when teachers were not available.
15 Jan 08	Josh Gordon and Adam Morton The Age	Students turn their backs on teaching Victorian students are turning their backs on teaching careers, with experts blaming poor pay and job security.
9 Jan 08	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Report into school funding revealed A report completed by the Howard government found that many private schools are receiving more than their fair share of taxpayer's money. Greens MP Dr John Kaye says it is outrageous that the review was conducted behind closed doors and that the report had been buried.
7 Jan 08	The Age	Melbourne: city of literature and literacy Melbourne has all the qualifications to be the Edinburgh of the south.
3 Jan 08	Prof Stephen Krashen California	Overseas Educational Research: Take A Closer Look Stephen Krashen corrects Kevin Donnelly's mis-readings of the research. (See Donnelly in 'The Australian' 3 Jan 08. He continues his constant, ill-informed attacks on education.)
30 Dec 07	Sarah Price Education Reporter Sydney Morning Herald	The never-ending story: reading in the holidays NSW government school program provides students with a reading plan as well as material to read. (US research found a drop of up to 25% in reading skills during a 5 to 6 weeks holiday.)
20 Dec 07	Geoff Masters Australian Council for Educational Research	A world class education system? Evidence from PISA 2006 At one level, Australia already has a world-class education system. However, there are fetures of the most recent PISA results that may be a cause for concern.
20 Dec 07	Bob Harris Australian Education Union (Source: Australian Policy Online)	Why ranking schools would do more harm than good Paper presented by Bob Harris from Education International and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD.
20 Dec 07	Dr Barry McGaw University of Melbourne (Source: Australian Policy Online)	International benchmarking of Australian Schools Assessment of Australia's recent performance against new OECD data.
19 Dec 07	Andrew Brennan and Jeff Malpas On Line opinion	Universities have been starved of support The OECD singles out Australia as the only developed country to reduce public spending on higher education in the ten years up until 2004 and shows that Australia devotes a lower proportionof GDP to the sector than the world average. There can be no education revolution without a revolution in higher education.
19 Dec 07	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Grammar tests return to classroom Spelling, grammar and punctuation will be assessed national for the first time next year with the introduction of uniform tests for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.
15 Dec 07	Tamara Davis The Australian Higher Education	Teachers 'bullied more' in public schools Teachers at government schools are bullied more frequently than their colleagues in the independent and Catholic sectors.
13 Dec 07	Emma Tom The Australian	Lettuce use grammar as ideas garnish Once again we need to face up to the fact that punctuation, spelling and grammar are just like brussels sprouts, zucchin and broccoli. Boil them into a soggy mush and ingestion will rarely be enthusiastic.
12 Dec 07	Tanya Plibersek Sydney Morning Herald	Love of reading opens up a world of possibilities Good fiction is not a waste of time. We want young Auystralians exposed to the best the English language has to offer ... because we want to develop the part of the brain that feeds creativity and complexity, that understands subtlety and wit, that allows high communication and an ability to see things from the perspective of another.
10 Dec 07	Peter West On-line Opinion	Making an education revolution happen The new OECD report: Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)
9 Dec 07	The New York Times	In Gaps at School, Weighing Family Life Schools are judged according to state standardised tests. But a US study has found that a lot of the low scores can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with schools.
8 Dec 07	Samantha Maiden Political correspondent The Australian	No education blank cheques Education Minister Julia Gillard has warned the states she will not be offering a "blank cheque" on schools funding without a guarantee of targets on transparency, literacy and numeracy.
6 Dec 07	Peter Freebody Australian Council for Educational Research	Literacy education in school: reserach perspectives from the past, for the future A false dichotomy has developed in literacy theory between 'code' and 'meaning-emphasis', ... This leads teachers of early literac to believe that they must choose between (phonics and whole language) when in fact effective teachers use elements from both.
5 Dec 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Australia slides down global reading list Australian 15-year-olds are slipping down the world literacy rankings, apparently because they are reading less. ... Six years ago, Australia was ranked second behind Finland. But in the latest study it has also been outstripped by South Lorea, Hong Kong, Canada and New Zealand.
15 Sep 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Aboriginal languages help more stay on Learning an Aboriginal language - in addition to English - will become compulsory in schools with large indigenous populations under a NSW State Government strategy to improve Aboriginal retention rates and literacy standards. The scheme was tested successfully at Bourke High School this year.
14 Sep 07	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Teachers need more than just a degree A Senate committee report warns that teacher training focuses excessively on teaching methods and behaviour management and neglects the disciplinary content of subjects.
14 Sep 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Rewards may split teachers Performance pay for teachers could create disharmony between colleagues and damage teaching quality,a federal parliamentary committee says.
10 Sep 07	Milanda Rout The Australian	Steiner school faces scrutiny Collingwood College, offering the Steiner method, is under investigation after more than 60% of the Prep students failed to meet state government standards for reading and maths.
7 Sept 07	Mercury (Tasmania) news.com.au	Shedding light on literacy Stumbling through this complex world without basic reading and writing skills is difficult but not impossible.
4 Sept 07	Maralyn Parker The Daily Telegraph	Money can't buy training Teacher training courses are in the spotlight and there is a push to regulate and improve quality. So the Federal Government provided funds to double the number of days in school (practicum). However, universities are already finding it extremely difficult getting schools to take student teachers.
3 Sept 07	Michael Clyne, Susy Puszka, Leonie Brown. The Age.	Why we must fear core values A move by principals to simplify the primary curriculum by concentrating on a smaller number of subjects has triggered a backlash from those who believe important disciplines will be devalued.
3 Sept 07	www.sciencedaily.com Association for Psychological Science.	Cramming doesn't work in the long term
1 Sept 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Educators round on English syllabus English teacing in schools is in danger of losing its richness and emphasis on literature in its growing obsession with improving student test results, a group of education leaders believes.
31 Aug 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	IQ at five foretells earning potential Quality day care and preschooling could help raise the intelligence levels of young children and were of greater benefit to their long-term future than later interventions. ... Governments need to provide more resources for preschools.
25 Aug 07	The Age	Principal adds value and makes the grade "A good school is one tha tturns the poor kid into an average kid, an average kid into a good kid and a good kid into an excellent kid."
23 Aug 07	Gerald Coles	What? Children's health has something to do with academic success? You're kidding! A study shows that children's health status when beginning school predicted third grade achievement scores and "children in poor general health had significantly lower achievement scores than children in good general health in third grade."
22 Aug 07	Melissa Jackson BBC News education reporter	Are school standards slipping? "We never had perfection in the past ad we are unlikely to get it in the future." (Institute of Educational Assessors) Einstein may have been dyslexic and Shakespeare survived without spelling well. However, we shouldn't judge evryone by academic ability. Some real people, including the David Beckhams and Sir Richard Bransons of this world have proved there are other routes to success.
22 Aug 07	Tom Calma Race Discrimination Commissioner	Recommitting to multiculturalism The federal government and all major political parties must recommit to multiculturalism. Fear and prejudice is a potent mix that leads to mistrust and social conflicts: we must recognise and celebrate the role that multiculturalism can and does play in breaking thses negative, destructive cycles.
21 Aug 07	Stephen Law ON LINE opinion	The war for children's minds If authoritarian political schools are utterly beyond the pale, why are so many of us prepared to tolerate the religious equivalents?
18 Aug 07	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	Labor 'winning' the education debate Former Liberal Party adviser and outspoken critic of the school curriculum Kevin Donnelly says Labor is winning the public debate on education and has presented a more persuasive vision of the reforms required to raise academic standards. ... By contrast, Education Minister Julie Bishop had a piecemeal approach to education reform that resulted in shallow policy.
16 Aug 07	Bruce McDougall Education Reporter Daily Telegraph	When your school is a place of fear and pain The parents of two children injured in bullying attacks in NSW schools have accused the State Government of failing to ensure bullies are disciplined.
15 Aug 07	Australian Primary Principals Association, AustralianPolicyOnline	Draft Charter on Primary Schooling The charter is aimed at assisting clarity about what is expected in the 'core' subjects of English, maths, science and history. It aims to restate the importance of a rich, vibrant classroom and of schools which focus on creative, cooperative and inoovative teaching and learning.
15 Aug 07	Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter Sydney Morning Herald	More than 100 degrees cost students $100,000 University students will be charged more than $100,000 for full fee paying places in more than 100 courses next year, and some will pay more than $240,000.
11 Aug 07	James Allan, Prof of Law, University of Qld. The Australia Higher Education	Performance pay scheme won't work As politicians consider the introduction of merit-based salaries for teachers, Prof James Allan is sceptical it would work.
6 Aug 07	Muriel Reddy The Age	Clear the chalk dust, learn afresh David Loader, former principal at two of Melbourne's private schools, says the system does not encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and establishes a pattern for later-life dependency.
Aug 07	Tara Ross The Press, NZ	Schools drop literacy tool Schools are abadoning NZ's internationally recognised literacy programme, Reading Recovery, opting instead to use unproven programmes and untrained teacher aides to help struggling readers.
1 Aug 07	Russell Tytler (ACER) AustralianPolicyOnline	Re-imagining Science Education Engaging students in science for Australia's future.
1 Aug 07	Jane Caro ON LINE opinion (Australia's e-journal of social and political debate)	The stupid country Almost alone in the OECD, Australia has a funding system that sets up one system of schools to succeed and the other to struggle. Caro, J & Bonner, C (2007) The Stupid Country: How Australia is Dismantling Public Education. UNSW Press.
30 Jul 07	Herald Sun	School recess in danger Morning recess could be cut from school timetables and children wold spend less tiem on key subjects under expanded literacy and numeracy testing to be introduced next year.
30 Jul 07	Adam Morton The Age	More school leavers failing to go on to uni The proportion of young Australians going to university has stalled despite Federal Government claims that it is tackling the nation's professional skills shortage.
30 Jul 07	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	Primary teaching doesn't add up People who are no good at maths but want to teach tend to end up working in primary schools, leading to a further erosion in numeracy skills among children.
28 Jul 07	Milanda Rout The Australian	Early concern about Steiner method Learning to read and write are delayed until adult teeth come through at age seven. ... (The) ban on computers and multimedia in primary school is in 'direct contradiction' to department policies.
26 Jul 07	IBN news	Plan for mass literacy tests "flawed": AEU The Australian Education Union has refused to endorse plans for a national literacy and numeracy testing program. The experience of other countries has shown mass testing was a flawed approach.
26 Jul 07	Bridie Smith & Farrah Tomazin The Age	Principals threaten test boycott Principals accuse federal Labor of "politicla grandstanding" over its contentious plan for schools to publish league tables comparing student performance.
26 Jul 07	Imre Salusinszky NSW Political Reporter The Australian	State 'fails' on school reports One in 10 state schools in NSW refusing to grade students according to A-E scale.
24 Jul 07	Prof Richard Teese (University of Melbourne) The Age	For the affluent, private is no longer the only schooling choice "...where public high schools serve better-off communities, they very ably exploit their freedom of action. The offer distinctive advantages, beginning with low fees and a favourable academic mix of pupils..."
24 Jul 07	Farrah Tomazin and Adam Morton The Age	Less choice, cash cause school drift Parents have accused the Victorian Government of failing to promote public education as aggressively as NSW.
23 Jul 07	Justine Ferrari Education Writer The Australian	Teachers launch election lobby kit The Australian Education Union has launched a federal election website with a kit for teachers to lobby politicians.
23 Jul 07	Peter Job The Age	Students must value dialogue about our past The recently leaked draft curriculum framework is conservative and arguably overly prescriptive, emphasising events and dates rather than themes and issues, but nevertheless leaving teachers scope to incorporate themes, issues and investigations into their courses in appropriate conjunction with narratives and events. That Howard finds even this conservative document unacceptable is an indication of how extreme and limited his vision for history teaching is.
23 Jul 07	Adam Morton & Farrah Tomazin The Age	Wealthy embrace state school system Parents in Melbourne's affluent eastern suburbs are increasingly turning away from private schools and returning to the public system.
18 Jul 07	The Age	Memo, parents: choosing a school is about your child, not you. You can't tell if a place is right for your kid simply by wandering around the corridors.
18 Jul 07	Dorothy Illing The Australian	Focus shifts to teaching Two universities, including a member of the research-intensive Group of Eight, are breaking with tradition by creating new academic positions that focus on teaching, not research.
18 Jul 07	Bernard Lane The Australian	Nelson rejects to be cited The long-held secret of which nine Australian Research Council grants were vetoed by former education minister Nelson may soon be out, with the affected researchers to be asked whether they want the details made public.
16 Jul 07	Milanda Rout The Australian	Students ignoring science a primary concern Students should be doing more experiments and hand-on investigations in scienc class and be made aware of science as a career option as early as primary school.
11 Jul 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	National testing reduces learning, says expert An international education authority, and professor at Stanford University in California, has warned Australia against introducing national testing in schools because it has lowered literacy and numeracy standards in the US.
10 July 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	School gap blamed for nation's stupidity Australia is on it's way to becoming "the stupid country" through neglect of public education and a widening gap between its best- and worst-performing school students, an influential principal has warned.
9 Jul 07	Australian Policy Online	Ten policy principles for a national system of early childhood education and care Experts at a national workshop agreed on the need for a new nationally coordinated, planned approach to an integrated system of early childhood education and care (ECEC).
6 Jul 07	Australian Policy Online	Official Spin: Censorship and the control of the Australian Press A creeping authoritarianism has been the hallmark of the past 12 months in the Australian press. A host of prominent Australian journalists and the Alliance reflect on the slow erosion of press freedom.
5 Jul 07	Guy Rundle Crikey.com	History is more than just recitative Howard seems to want a history curriculum from an earlier era, when the majority of students left school at 14 or 15 and sources of media and information were far more limited ... Education has changed because childhood has changed, not because sinister lefties have been developing curriculum bombs in basements.
3 Jul 07	Joe Tuccie, Janise Mitchell and Prof Chris Goddard, Australian Childhood Foundation. AustralianPolicyOnline Posted 3-7-07	Children's fears, hopes and heroes - modern childhood in Australia This report examines the experiences of modern childhood through the results of an online survey taken by a national sample of 600 children and young people aged between 10-14 years. Some key themes emerged (eg children's sense of their place in the world is under threat; children are particularly concerned about the environment; etc).
2 Jul 07	Simon Marginson Prof of Higher Education, University of Melbourne. AustralianPolicyOnline Posted 27-6-07	Missing the mark on national education policy Policy makers need to shun short-term politics for long-term vision, argues Simon Marginson.
2 July 07	Ian Anderson Prof of Indigenous Health, University of Melbourne.	Remote Communities: Unexplained differences Ian Anderson compares the federal government's response to the Little Children Are Sacred report with the authors' recommendations. None of the measures announced by Howard are to be found in the strategies recommended by the report. The "new paternalism" is in clear contradiction to the report.
2 Jul 07	Neil Hooley Lecturer, School of Education Victoria University	Indigenous education demands community learning circles If we have learnt anything about indigenous education in Australia, it surely concerns the total participation of local communities in school life. This is a democratic process, an acceptance that there is an indigenous frame of reference or state of being that is not the same as European understanding.
29 Jun 07	Guy Rundle Crikey.com.au	More on the history wars The Federal Government wants to deliver a socially conservative curriculum so tight that it wold leave a minimum of room for history teachers to raise questions about the interpretation. But curriculum design is about more than content - and just being a historian (Blainey) or a hack who thinks he's a historian (Henderson) isn't enough. The final result of this blatant political fixing will probably be unteachable.
28 Jun 07	ASCD SmartBrief Editorial (www.ascd.org)	Recipe for success A school in Rhode Island was designed to create education experiences for each student as a holistic person and it has a 95% graduation rate. Schools that engage students with challenging courses and personalized learning have higher achievement gains than schools that focus on results of tests.
26 Jun 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	For teachers, the future spells grammar All students learning to become teachers will be required to stud spelling and grammar and how to control classroom behaviour.
25 Jun 07	Bridie Smith and Adam Morton The Age	On your mark For these parents, federal Labor's pledge to publish statewide league tables, ranking schools on literacy and numeracy, is a real turn off.
25 Jun 07	Jewel Topsfield, Canberra The Age	Labor plans release of school rankings All states would be aswked to publish school league tables comparing student performances in literacy and numeracy under a Labor govrnment, in a move that continues the party's shift to the centre on education
17 Jun 07	Deborah Gough The Age	Radio king gives teacher pay plan an F One of John Howard's most public champions, radio personality Alan Jones, has taken a cane to the Government's plan to introduce a performance-based pay scheme for teachers.
13 Jun 07	Jack Waterford Australian Policy Online	Try Harder Minister I expect Bishop will fail, and for a simple reason. Performance pay systems based on bonuses for demonstrated extra performance don't work.
13 Jun 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Alarm at private funding of unis The commercialisation of universities has led to fossil fuel companies funding an increasing number of teaching positions and research positions, raising concerns about their independence. Report: "Universithy Capture - Australian universities and the fossil fuel industries."
12 Jun 07	Alex White	Merit pay for teachers has no merit An interesting blog site on merit pay.
12 Jun 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Conflict a step closer on teachers' pay model The Federal Government today invites consultants to develop a performance pay model for teachers, despite strong opposition from the states.
1 Jun 07	Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter Sydney Morning Herald	Unis under federal power may lose research control, academic warns
30 May 07	Barry Jones Former Federal Minister. Former Chair of the Victorian Schools Innovation Commission.	Our education failures In Victoria, our educational priorities have been skewed by managerialism.
30 May 07	Catherine Deveny The Age	It would take real guts for society to fund schools properly I want children to succeed on ability, persistence and merit. Not on some bizarre, anachronistic club that parents pay for them to join.
17 May 07	Anna Patty Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	School funding comes under fire Report shows Australia is the only OECD country to funnel a disproportionate level of public funding into non-government schools. This is helping to entrench social disadvantage in rural and suburban Australia.
16 May 07	Joanna Medelssohn Author of Which School? Beyond Public vs Private.	Education: On Schools, Bullies and Politicians The crucial nature of leadership in a school which successfully reduced bullying. ... If the Prime Minister wants to stop bullying in schools he will have to start by modifying his own behaviour and that of his subordinates.
15 May 07	Caroline Overington The Australian	Broaden student minds, unis told University students are too focused on learning skills that will enable them to get well-paid jobs and not on learning for its own sake.
11 May 07	Dorothy Illing Higher Education writer The Australian	Ministers accuse Bishop of bullying to control unis Bishop threatens to use federal corporations powers to seize control of institutions' financial management; accused by State ministers of bullying.
11 May 07	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Standardised tests fail students, say teachers National literacy and numeracy tests are invalid measures of students ability and they cannot measure much of what is important. See also Nichols & Berliner (2007) Collateral Damage: how high-stakes testing corrupts America's schools
11 May 07	John Garnaut & Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Bishop spends $53m on apples for teachers But head of NSW Secondary Principals Council says "offering bribes to teachers" would place principals in an impossible position.
11 May 07	Phillip Coorey Sydney Morning Herald	Rudd fires back in duel over schools Rudd promises $2.5 bilolion over 10 years to establish training centres in schools to encourage non-academic students to stay on and learn a trade.
10 May 07	Ronald Wolk Teacher Magazine Vol 18, Issue 5, p. 65	One size fits whom? The core curriculum stymies reform. If the main purpose of curriculum is to designate what every student should know, then core curriculum makes sense. If the purpose is mainly to provide an essential component in learning to think and solve problems, then specific knowledge is of secondary importance. ... It is arrogant and counterproductive to set grade-level standards and curricula that define what every student should know.
9 May 07	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Unis get their own future fund An overdue funding injection for tertiary education, but with strings attached. As Kerry O'Brien said on the 7:30 Report, universities will get the funds if they toe the government line.
8 May 07	Glynne Sutcliffe (for Australia Council of State School Organisations)	Hot stuff on little kids: Dr Mustard adds spice to the reading wars Fraser Mustard, Adelaide's Thinking in Residence until March, reminds us about the vital importance of early childhood.
6 May 07	The Age	One in eight young Aussies obese: study 13% of young Australians are extremely overweight, and most have piled on their extra kilos since childhood. (Adolescence is the defining period in the fat fight.)
4 May 07	Bridie Smith The Age	Parents pay for help as private schools fail test Parents are being forced to seek additional help from private tutors despite paying private schools thousands of dollars a year to educate their children.
3 May 07	Sydney Morning Herald - letters	A word on literacy Staff at the Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University (North Ryde) are concerned about the dismissive manner in which Miranda Devine has characterised literacy education, and her gross oversimplification of a complex issue.
3 May 07	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Teacher fury at rating website People are anonymously able to make comments about teachers but the site can't be shut down because it's based in the US.
2 May 07	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Schools are too left wing, says Stoner New NSW Opposition spokesman on education, Andrew Stoner, accused Labor of using schools as "a vehicle for left-wing indoctrination."
1 May 07	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	Public schools told: lift profile ACSSO wants government school principals to receive training in marketing and communications to combat the recruitment of students by private schools.
30 Apr 07	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	Schools still fail on reading And Justine Ferrari (reporter) fails to check her sources! Read Brian Cambourne's response to Ferrari's flawed article.
30 Apr 07	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Values push for public schools Labor's policy on values education.
25 Apr 07	Justine Ferrari The Australian	Labor plan for national exams in core school subjects National exams being considered by state and terriroty Labor governments.
24 Apr 07	Farrah Tomazin The Age	Back to basics: studies scrapped in curriculum revamp State premiers have vowed to scrap SOSE and replace it with the traditional disciplines of history, geography and economics.
21 Apr 07	Anna Patty Sydney Morning Herald	Labor promises primary school focus If the Labor Party wins the federal election it will look at ending an anomaly in schools funding that means it costs $2000 more a year to educate a high school student than a child in primary school.
17 Apr 07	Jewel Topsfield The Age	Languages languish in schools: report Foreign language teaching in schools has been neglected over the past decade as Federal Government rhetoric about Australian values and the "downgrading of multiculturalism" have turned the nation more inward.
14 Apr 07	Brian Hewat East Melbourne	Hidden results The influence that teachers have on students' lives can be hidden until years later.
14 Apr 07	Hugh Mackay Social commentator	Bishop fails test Julie Bishop's obsession with performance-based pay for teachers has raised serious questions about her judgement, her sensitivity and her grasp of reality.
14 Apr 07	Justine Ferrari Education writer The Australian	National model for schools Students will have to meet common standards in English, maths and science after education ministers agreed to develop nationally consistent curriculums.
14 Apr 07	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Bishop's proposals rebuffed States and territories may keep their own school curriculums and work together to develop more consistent standards instead of adopting the same national curriculum.
13 Apr 07	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	National school tests in doubt New national literacy and numeracy tests due next year are at risk because the states and territories say they cannot afford to implement them.
13 Apr 07	Farrah Tomazin The Age	School plan for battle of the bulge All year 5 students would be required to undertake weight and fitness tests under a contentious Federal Government plan.
12 Apr 07	Peter Hendrickson Principal, Sunbury College, Vic	Trying to measure the unmeasurable When outcomes are easily measurable (eg making motor cars) performance-based pay is probably useful. However, we cannot accurately and consistently measure student achievement.
12 Apr 07	Tony Thompson Teacher	Listen up, Julie, Kevin and Steve, merit pay is a bummer There is no reliable way to assess a teacher. Surveying students will be inconclusive, as student like and dislike teachers for a variety of reasons.
12 Apr 07	Jewel Topsfield The Age	States step up merit pay row The States have branded the federal proposal unworkable and ideologically driven.
12 Apr 07	Bridie Smith & Jewel Topsfield The Age	Labor plan to lift skills of teachers Under a Labor government, trainee teachers would sit literacy and numeracy tests at the start and finish of their university courses.
12 Apr 07	Ronnie Elgar Teacher	Not me, thank goodness Ronnie Elgar taught the same 36 Aboriginal students for three years and reflects on the implications of merit pay.
11 Apr 07	Catherine Armitage Higher Education editor The Australian	Bishop plan to cut unis Only room for "perhaps a dozen" fully comprehensive, generic universities says Bishop.
11 Apr 07	Farrah Tomazin Education Editor, The Age	Pay as you learn History shows that most attempts to introduce merit-pay schemes to schools have been fraught with difficulty and short-lived. ... A recent ACER report, designed to back Bishop's plans, highlights the massive difficulties of performance pay schemes and gives the States ammunition to oppose Canberra's plans.
11 Apr 07	John Garnaut & Mark Davis Sydney Morning Herald	Performance pay plan fails experts' exam The Federal Government's own report warns that previous performance pay schemes have not worked.
11 Apr 07	David Keyes Washingtonpost.com	Classroom caste system The No Chld Left Behind act in the US has created a gap in American education. Its pressure to raise test scores has caused many schools to give poor and minority students an impoverished education that focuses on basic skills.
10 Apr 07	John Della Bosca NSW Minister for Education in Sydney Morning Herald	Competitive pay does nothing for students Julie Bishop is trying to impose on the states a simplistic, ill-definted and unworkable proposition for individualised, performance-based pay.
9 Apr 07	Lyndsay Connors & Jane Caro Sydney Morning Herald	Parity's the question for teachers While performance pay might motivate a vacuum cleaner salesman to work harder, it's unlikely to have the same result when you're in a cage with the big cats (read 30 adolescents).
9 Apr 07	Letters The Age	Many factors contribute to success Several concerns about the current proposal for rewarding teachers by results.
7 Apr 07	Judith Wheeldon The Australian	Teacher perfomance model won't perform Julie Bishop's plan to improve school education through performance pay for teachers is no plan at all.
7 Apr 07	Letters to the editor Sydney Morning Herald	There's no simple way to assess how the best teachers do their job Measuring merit is not straightforward at all
7 Apr 07	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Plan for principals to set teacher pay Principals would be final arbiters of teacher salary increases under Federal Govt plans to intorudce performance pay.
5 Apr 07	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Research points the finger at PowerPoint Australian researchers have pronounced the death of the PowerPoint presentation.
5 Apr 07	Justine Ferrari The Australian newspaper	Literacy project attacked The federal government's program to combat rising levels of illiteracy has been condemned as being mired in the past and an embarrassment.
4 Apr 07	Des Treacy OAM (was with Queensland Education for 44 years) On-line opinion	Convenience of teachers or education of children? The author argues that bureaucrats have lost sight of education's primary goals.
4 Apr 07	Vaishali Honawar edweek.org	Curriculum-development group urges focus shift to whole child The definition of a successful student has to change
1 Apr 07	Prof Stuart Macintyre (President, Academy of Social Sciences; former dean of arts at Melbourne University.) The Age newspaper.	Learning's heavy load By all means ensure that the core disciplines are there in the school curriculum; but before imposing its dogma on the states and territories along with the compulsory national flag, the Commonwealth might first attend to its own responsibilities in higher education.
30 Mar 07	Kathleen Kennedy Manzo edweek.org	Dark themes in books get students reading Using recently published books to provide a more varied, and palatable, literary menu for students.
27 Mar 07	Justine Ferrari The Australian newspaper	Swamped schools need to send social welfare back home Primary schools are swamped by a cluttered curriculum that places equal importance on issues traditionally taught by parents, such as awareness of dog attacks and nutrition, rather than the core skils of literacy and numeracy.
26 Mar 07	Benedict Carey NY Times	Poor behavior is linked to time in day care Keeping a preschooler in day care increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive, a study found.
3 Mar 07	Carol Cruzan Morton (Focus Online, Harvard)	Child enrichment program still pays off after 15 years Well-designed experiences in a child’s earliest years can overcome certain environmental and biological disadvantages.
2 Dec 06	Adele Horin Sydney Morning Herald	Must try harder: Australia's inqeuitable education system What's really wrong with our system? It lets down youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds.
29 Nov 06	Melinda Houston The Age	The truth about boys By chasing 'masculine' ideals – subjects and careers – young males may be sabotaging their chances of excelling.
24 Nov 06	Kate Corbett The Daily Telegraph	Childhood nurturing crucial in poverty fight "The early years of a child's life determined literacy levels and thus their future." Dr Fraser Mustard.
8 Nov 06	Letters to The Age (Melbourne)	Teaching good manners in schools
6 Nov 06	Margaret Grove, Abbotsford Sydney Morning Herald	No financial woe Private school recorded surplus of $2 million when it received $4.3 million in government funding.
4 Nov 06	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Court rules against demand for A-E reports
31 Oct 06	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	Grading of young pupils given F by studies board - independent educational advice against compulsory grading of young children
19 Oct 06	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	No hint of Mao: HSC English cleared of bias The education research authority commissioned by the Federal Government to help shape a new national curriculum has found no evidence of political bias in the NSW HSC.
16 Oct 06	John O'Hagen The Australian	Left's dominance 'To ridicule left-wing thought by linking it to figures like Mao Zedong is no less fatuous than waving Hitler under the Right's nose.'
14 Oct 06	Adele Horin 'HSC mother' Sydney Morning Herald	At this rate, they'll grow up fast A to E reporting and HSC results may seem easier for parents to understand, but '...it will be personal qualities, like kindness, that will matter, not a few digits on a piece of paper.'
13 Oct 06	Carmel Tebbutt NSW Education Minister Sydney Morning Herald	A broad view is the key to the best education The public debate over school curriculums has descended to a farcical level. Bishop's comments belittle teachers and undermine students and their parents' confidence in schools.
11 Oct 06	Emma Tom The Australian	How public education failed me with no mention of Mao "It's depressingly common for people to brand others' opinions as insidious ideologies while insisting their own views are values."
10 Oct 06	Valerie Strauss Washington Post Staff Writer	The Rise of the Testing Culture A warning for Australia?
9 Oct 06	The Australian	Kennett slams national education plans 'Plans for a national education curriculum would deny Australian students the best education possible.' (Jeff Kennett)
9 Oct 06	Samantha Maiden (The Australian)	Reading tests for 5-year-olds
7 Oct 06	Anna Patty, Education Editor Sydney Morning Herald	World-leading educator denies standards are sliding Prof Barry McGaw, a world-leading education authority, says Federal Government claims that national literacy and numeracy standards are falling are wrong.
7 Oct 06	Harriet Alexander, Higher Education Reporter (Sydney Morning Herald)	Teens in top five out of 41 countries
7 Oct 06	Judith Wheeldon (The Australian)	Learning to lose our diversity Enforcing uniformity across the entire nation wold lose great strengths Australia enjoys now.
7 Oct 06	The Melbourne Age	Thatcher v Mao – what a week for ideology
23 Sep 06	Adele Horin and Anna Patty (Sydney Morning Herald)	Stop doing the homework, overzealous parents warned Parents risk damaging their children and robbing their self-esteem by rewriting their essays or trying to do their study for them.
23 Sep 06	Adele Horin (Sydney Morning Herald)	Ask those who judge best: students By middle primary school, students are reliable judges of who is a competent teacher.
22 Sep 06	Anna Patty (Education Editor, SMH)	Australia adopting a class-based model of schooling John Ralston Smith, award-wining Canadian author
18 Sep 06	Tony Thomson (Letter published in the Melbourne Age)	C is meaningless when assessing children The new reporting system will be easy, and utterly meaningless.
18 Sep 06	David Rood (Melbourne Age)	Teacher marks down A-to-E grading system A prominent English teacher will give all of his students a C if forced to use the new A to E reporting system.
10 Sep 06	Deborah Gough	Schools to revolt on federal report plan The Age newspaper, Melbourne, 10 Sept 2006
9 Sept 06	Adele Horin (Sydney Morning Herald)	Told to learn, denied the right The PM complained that some refugees fail to integrate or learn English, but he blocked refugees from the free English lessons we've provided for decades.
7 Sept 06	Jason Hill (Sydney Morning Herald)	Why learning is child's play Prof James Paul Gee, a highly respected academic, urges more use of games in education.
6 Sept 06	Ross Gittins (Sydney Morning Herald)	Teachers know money isn't everything (Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 2006)
6 Sept 06	Anna Patty (Education Editor, SMH)	School principals rank new grading system bottom of the class (Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 2006)
23 Aug 06	Tanya Plibersek (Member of Parliament)	A lot to learn about education (Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 2006)
21 Aug 06	Anna Patty (Education Editor, SMH)	Leading principal gives new reports system an E grade
11 Aug 06	Dr Paul Brock	Breaking some of the myths – again (Full monograph) Myth No.1 – Things were always better in the 'good old days' (link to an extract)
2 Aug 06	Anna Patty (Education Editor, SMH)	Report card stance risks school funding A-E grading causing much angst and confusion. Published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 2-8-06
28 July 06	Jane Caro & Lyndsay Connors	Smart phrases, but the outcome for education is none too bright Published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 28-7-06
12 July 06	Anna Patty (Education Editor, SMH)	Look who's talking when parents are seen, not heard The positive effects of parents reading to children and allowing them 'think time' and 'talk time.'
27 Jun 06	Deb McPherson	Lament No Longer Submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald, 27-6-06
23 Jun 06	Michael Doyle	New Reporting System is a Recipe for Failure Published in The Age, 23-6-06
23 Jun 06	Maria Tumarkin (The Age, Melbourne)	Telling Children a Dangerous Lie About Life School reports do not tell children, or parents, how they are doing.
13 Jun 06	Anna Patty (Education Editor, SMH)	Fears for English Syllabus under national test plan Published in Sydney Morning Herald 13 June 2006 It will be interesting to see Minister Bishop's response to the claims of "dumbing-down" in this article.
27 May 06	Dr Jan Turbill	A to E not as simple as ABC Published in The Age, 27-5-06
17 May 06	Prof Brian Cambourne	Beware of Hardline Ideologues Submitted to The Australian, 17-5-06
15 May 06	Prof Brian Cambourne	The Golden Whip Award to Donnelly and Nugent Response to articles in The Australian: Donnelly (13-5-06) and Nugent (14-5-06)
15 May 06	Mem Fox	Kevin Donnelly bores me stiff Response to Donnelly, The Australian, 13-5-06
10 Apr 06	David Hornsby, Marie Emmitt, Lorraine Wilson	No Kevin Wheldall, YOU have it wrong. Response to Wheldall's letter, Sydney Morning Herald, 10-4-06
10 Apr 06	Prof Brian Cambourne	Wheldall misinterprets role of phonics Response to Wheldall's letter, Sydney Morning Herald, 10-4-06
10 Apr 06	Dr Maureen Walsh	Puzzled by Wheldall Response to Wheldall's letter, Sydney Morning Herald, 10-4-06
17 Mar 06	Emeritus Prof Peter Rousch AM	Member of National Inquiry Panel Guilty Response to Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald, 16-3-06
16 Mar 06	Mark Howie President, English Teachers Assoc NSW	No sound logic in a simplistic argument Response to Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald, 16-3-06
1 Feb 06	Literacy Educators Coalition	The 3 Rs and Social Justice Response to Donnelly, Sydney Morning Herald, 30-1-06
1 Feb 06	Lorraine Wilson, Carlton	Education is a Journey, not a Commodity Response to Sunday Age article, 29 Jan 06

New assessment program can only fail students

Maureen Douglas (retired principal)
18 May 2009

Such testing has made neither Britain nor the US leaders in education.
I HAVE no doubt that politicians, policy makers, parents, carers and teachers all have a common goal for the students in our schools: they want the best, and that includes enabling them to develop those all-important literacy and numeracy skills.

But we are doing them a disservice if we think the Federal Government's impending testing program will improve performance in literacy and numeracy. Assessment is a highly complex process, yet we are being asked to believe that the National Assessment Program can be all things to all people, that it can, at once, tell parents how their is child performing, give teachers the information they need to plan programs to meet students' needs, and enable policy makers and politicians to judge the performance of schools and make meaningful comparisons between schools, states and systems.

It has become the single most important tool for judging achievement in literacy and numeracy and takes precedence over the ongoing assessment of teachers. Along the way, it risks taking the joy out of learning, and stifling our children's potential as dynamic and creative learners.

This year, the Education Department has held briefings for principals to stress the importance of the tests and to remind them to set time aside to prepare students. Emails have been sent to schools emphasising the importance of Victorian students performing well. Regions are issuing schools with lesson plans and hints to make sure students are "test ready". Clearly, schools are being asked to teach to the program, and therein lies a real danger for schools and, most importantly, our students.

Last year, I visited primary schools in two countries where high-stakes testing has dominated the education agenda for many years, the United States and Britain. I was struck by the effect of such testing on schools and students. Preparation for the tests dominates each day from the start of the year. This means students are streamed according to ability for the three core subjects: English, maths and science. Sadly, many students, particularly those for whom English is not their first language and those with learning difficulties, find themselves in the lowest-achieving group. This constant negative labelling leaves them despondent and many simply give up. And for the more capable students, there is little incentive or opportunity to use and extend their skills.

Arrogant Attack on Critical Literacy
Garry Collins (President, English Teachers Association of Queensland) 6 Dec 2008

In his piece, “Uncritical elevation of a loopy fad” (HES, 26/11), Luke Slattery asks: “Why, once the press had lifted the lid on critical literacy and exposed it to criticism, was it defended with such autocratic fervour by groups such as the English Teachers Association?” This prompts some questions in return.

Does Slattery arrogantly suppose that, just because he and a handful of other commentators (who don’t teach in schools) criticise an idea, thousands of English teachers across the country will obediently jettison what they consider to be a very useful element in their teaching repertoires? Does he assume that his pronouncements will automatically put a definitive end to debate on a professional issue about school English teaching, a profession in which he does not himself engage?

What constituency does Slattery represent? Who appointed him to attack critical literacy with “such autocratic fervour”?

A couple of other points are worthy of note. There is no single organisation in the country officially known as “the English Teachers Association”. Each state and territory has an English teachers association but the umbrella national body is the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE). In his opening paragraph, Slattery refers to “the new training document”. The relevant document recently released via the National Curriculum Board’s website is, in fact, called a “framing paper”.

It used to be that getting the basic facts right was considered to be important in journalism. Perhaps teachers are right when they refer to a crisis in reporting and comment on education and suggest that standards in journalism related to education have been falling for decades.

Some Thoughts on Grammar
Garry Collins (President, English Teachers Association
of Queensland)

One of the “rules” of traditional grammar that I had drummed into me when I attended primary school in the 1950s, that golden age when everything in education was apparently done so much better than today, was that it is not permissible to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as the word “and”. In today’s second editorial (“Silencing grammar, 13/6), this “incorrect” construction is to be found not just once, but twice.

Another of the “rules” that I was taught was that a sentence must contain a verb. At the end of a paragraph in the second column of the editorial we find, between the capital letter and full stop indicating sentence boundaries, the single word “Pathetic”. This word is an adjective, not a verb. Are we then to deduce that a leader writer for a major daily newspaper is unable to consistently write in complete sentences? The “split infinitive” in the previous sentence was quite deliberate since it serves to highlight another of the so-called “rules” of traditional grammar that is of no practical use.

It is interesting that what is condemned out of hand by the use of the comment “Pathetic” is the suggestion that students should apply grammatical concepts to material like TV guides that they might voluntarily choose to read in their spare time. I suppose the idea here is that grammar can only be character-building when it is confined to boring work-book exercises conducted outside of any meaningful context. That, after all, is how it was routinely done in the good old days.

In expressing outrage about some errors in the ETAQ journal, the editorial claims that a pair (both words in italics) is “a noun”. This is clearly incorrect. The second word is certainly a noun but the first is an indefinite article or what some authorities would classify as a determiner. The old adage about people who live in glass houses comes to mind. In addition, the fact that the word “a” is classified by some as an article and by others as a determiner indicates that some grammatical terminology is not as fixed and clear-cut as the editorial would suggest.

Yet another of the traditional grammar gems that I learnt in primary school was that it is incorrect to end a

sentence with a preposition. Winston Churchill’s comment on this dictum was that it was the sort of arrant pedantry up with which he would not put. No doubt Churchill would be chided by The Australian for his poor use of the English language. As quoted on the front page, even the erudite Emeritus Professor Rodney Huddleston commits this grammatical sin when he talks about “the worst published material . . . that I have come across.” Any dictionary will confirm that “across” is a preposition.

Traditional grammar, as it used to be taught in schools, includes a number of Latin-based notions that do not accurately describe how the English language actually works. Perhaps those who advocate a complete return to it should have the good grace to practise what they preach in their own writing.

When Kevin Donnelly asserts that, in functional grammar, nouns become participants and verbs become processes (“Class-based waffle”), he indicates that, while he may have heard some functional grammar terms, he does not really understand them. His ignorance is coupled with rather astonishing arrogance when he goes on to describe as “dense and arcane” some simple and very useful concepts solely because he has not bothered to understand them properly. To be consistent, he would have to deny the value of most human knowledge simply because he is not familiar with it.

Incidentally, I have taught secondary school English for twice as long as Kevin Donnelly ever did. It might also be worth remembering that, as far as I am aware, Professor Huddleston, for all his acknowledged erudition, never taught a single day at primary or secondary school level and never produced any materials that were useful in teaching grammar to school students.

In conclusion, I would like to thank The Australian for providing my 15 minutes of fame. To be the subject of attack in the pages of this newspaper is confirmation that ETAQ is making a valuable contribution to English teaching.

You don't dictate what we debate, Ms Gillard

Julia Gillard (Opinion, May 29) ignores a fundamental point about schools and learning. Learning does not simply take place in the classroom, but in the playground, in the school "community". By all means dispense with the divisive public/private, religious/non-religious, selective/non-selective debates, but do not ignore the wider issue.

The real issue is inclusive-versus-exclusive. Schools that are segregated along economic, religious or academic lines teach appalling lessons. Why can't all of our children just go to school together? Why do we have to corral them into educational ghettoes? Each and every school needs diversity within its walls.

Ms Gillard, you may be the minister in charge, you may even be the Deputy Prime Minister, but you don't get to dictate what should or should not be debated. Education is about so much more than service delivery, and the Julia Gillard we put into power knows it.

Lee Borkman Menangle

Letter from Brian Cambourne to Julia Gillard re phonics failure in the US

Why Has The Australian Media Ignored This Story ?

In her column of May 19, 2008, The Australian's education reporter (Justine Ferrari) implies there is clear scientific evidence that children need intensive phonics instruction before they can become effective comprehenders of what they read. Why has she ignored a study which casts serious doubt on such evidence? The results of this study were released by the US Department of Education about two weeks ago, and were reported in most USA newspapers well before she would have penned this piece, Why hasn't The Australian (or indeed any other Australian news media) picked up these results?

They clearly show that intensive "phonics first" approaches have failed.

The "Reading First Impact Study", presents a scientific analysis of Reading First, the federal program authorised by the No Child Left Behind Act to teach US children to read. The instructional model underpinning Reading First is based on the recommendations of a group of US academics appointed by the Bush administration as a National Reading Panel. This group argued that a heavy " phonics first" emphasis would raise reading achievement, especially among low-income students.

The Reading First Impact Study clearly shows that a after six years of intensive phonics-first instruction at a cost of $US6 billion, children enrolled in Reading First scored no better on tests of reading than children in comparison schools. Furthermore after six years of implementation Reading First has failed to produce gains in state or national reading tests.

The UK study Ms Ferrari cites to support her claims is equally as suspect. It is based on the results of a single study done in Clackmannanshire, Scotland. A careful reading ofthe study shows that children taught with synthetic phonics were not

“three years ahead of their peers in reading,” as is claimed in the reports in the UK media. They were ahead only on a test that asked them to pronounce words presented in a list. On a test of reading comprehension, which required understanding the text, they were only three months ahead of national norms when tested six years after their phonics experience. This is an insignificant advantage.The Clackmannanshire study confirms thatlearning to pronounce words through phonics instruction does not contribute much to the ability to actually read with understanding,

I am not anti-phonics. Explicit phonics instruction is absolutely necessary if children are going to learn to spell and write with power and fluency.

I am one who has spent the last f