(Above: as someone once blessed by a nun with a dunce cap, I did like this 1972 photography by Arthur Tress, here).
Here at loon pond we occasionally take an interest in the education system, and the squawking and flapping that surrounds it.
Here's Kevin Donnelly doing a mea culpa in I was wrong on league tables for schools:
In 2002 I wrote an opinion piece in The Age arguing that schools should be held more accountable by publicly releasing information about results, standards and teacher performance. Drawing on overseas practice in England and the US, I argued that school data be provided by postcode and, instead of league tables, that only schools with a similar socio-economic profile be compared.
Just a couple of weeks ago, she (Julia Gillard) said: "I don't support league tables but I do support the full information being available". So much for logic.
Ms Gillard is not the only one against league tables. Angelo Gavrielatos, the president of the Australian Education Union, describes ranking schools as representing the union's "worst fears".
He has called on governments to "to stop the creation and publication of league tables".
Instead of defending the right of every child to an effective and rigorous education, it is clear that the AEU president is more concerned about protecting ineffective schools and under-performing teachers.
Ms Gillard is wrong. Instead of siding with the teacher union and keeping parents in the dark, school performance should be open and transparent.
One of the most important decisions parents make is choosing a school.
Ms Gillard is not the only one against league tables. Angelo Gavrielatos, the president of the Australian Education Union, describes ranking schools as representing the union's "worst fears".
He has called on governments to "to stop the creation and publication of league tables".
Instead of defending the right of every child to an effective and rigorous education, it is clear that the AEU president is more concerned about protecting ineffective schools and under-performing teachers.
Ms Gillard is wrong. Instead of siding with the teacher union and keeping parents in the dark, school performance should be open and transparent.
One of the most important decisions parents make is choosing a school.
Now flash forward to the back to the future present:
Given that the federal Labor Government, and Julia Gillard as Minister for Education, have adopted what I suggested eight years ago, readers would be forgiven for thinking I feel vindicated and that I support the new accountability measure.
Such is not the case. Gillard's rationale behind making school results public, and allowing parents and others to compare schools, is to raise standards and to lift the performance of under-achieving schools.
The track record, in both the US (under the president Bush inspired No Child Left Behind legislation) and England (where school league tables are published on an annual basis) is poor when it comes to new accountability measures raising standards.
Such is not the case. Gillard's rationale behind making school results public, and allowing parents and others to compare schools, is to raise standards and to lift the performance of under-achieving schools.
The track record, in both the US (under the president Bush inspired No Child Left Behind legislation) and England (where school league tables are published on an annual basis) is poor when it comes to new accountability measures raising standards.
Does a mea culpa get you off the hook? Especially if the information was to hand as you scribbled your thoughts in 2009, rather than seeking the safe habour of 2002?
Does admitting you've been a gherkin stop you from being a gherkin, or going on to do and scribble other gherkin things? Is breast-beating a kind of radical immolation and self-awareness raising device, or just pathetic attention seeking and contrariarian-ism?
Should attention at all be paid to Kevin Donnelly, even as he now scribbles this?
Government schools, unlike Catholic and independent schools, will be hardest hit as they lack the autonomy and flexibility to recruit and reward staff and to manage their own affairs to best reflect the needs and aspirations of their local communities.
Not only will schools suffer as a result of compliance costs and the adverse impact of testing on the curriculum (where subjects like music, art and physical education will be further devalued), but also the information parents receive will be of limited value.
As teachers and parents well understand, what should be most valued in education is impossible to quantify by using standardised, short answer tests like Australia's NAPLAN.
Well here's an amusing postscript to that particular farce, in Private school gain means public pain: report:
The Federal Government's decision to retain an unfair funding model will result in a $12 billion gap between private and public school monies by 2012-13, a report commissioned by the Australian Education Union says.
Despite Kevin Rudd's promise before the 2007 election of a digital education revolution at all schools, the report shows that the public school system is being shortchanged $500 million for computers and trades training facilities....
... Over the four-year funding cycle, private schools will receive $47 billion in total and public schools $35 billion for building, equipment and running costs. Public schools will receive 36 per cent of the schools funding, compared with 43 per cent for private schools. By the end of its term, the Howard government spent less than 32 per cent of its schools budget on public schools.
Just another union driven report I hear you cry.
Perhaps this is more to your taste - Brethren schools get $70m in funding:
Brethren schools must teach the normal curriculum, although reports say some novels are banned and chapters on sex and reproduction are excised from science textbooks.
Brethren members are taught to shun broader society. They do not use TV, radios and do not watch movies or eat in restaurants. They do not vote, are opposed to unions and other forms of association, except their own church.
Sounds great. No sex education, and no theory of evolution, and no media - no cash for Chairman Rupert and his minions - and none of any of that other modern new fangled nonsense like restaurants. Just the sort of old testament thinking any government would wish to foster for the children of the land. Get to it Chairman Rudd, get cracking, show us what you think of cults:
The Rudd government is handing more than $70 million to schools run by the Exclusive Brethren, a religious sect Kevin Rudd described as an "extremist cult" that breaks up families.
The sect's schools have secured more than $8.4m under the government's school building stimulus package and they will share in $62m in recurrent taxpayer funding.
Documents show a Brethren-run school at Swan Hill in northern Victoria was granted $1.2m for a library and $800,000 for a hall when its most recent annual report shows it had just 16 pupils and already had a library.
Grants data released by the commonwealth shows that Brethren schools in every state received funding under the $12.4 billion schools stimulus package. Despite the Brethren's past disdain for computers, figures show its schools have received more than 300 under the commonwealth computers-in-school initiative.
Brethren schools have also secured grants under the Schools Pride program. All up, the 2400 children in Brethren schools will each receive the equivalent of $26,127 in recurrent funding and $11,200 in stimulus funding.
With geese like Donnelly honking on about education, and Chairman Rudd and his minions handling the "education revolution" and funding it in such style, and with the likes of the Brethren (not to mention my favourite scientology school around the corner) lapping up the moola, is it any wonder education in Australia is just a long side splitting laugh fest? Unless of course you only laugh so you can avoid crying ...
Time for Maralyn Parker to get back on to the case. Since she's discovered how to tweet over Xmas, she's been idle, only recently returning to scribble a little about the local shadow minister for education (Political Testing Time).
As one of the few sane voices on education in the msm, and in a Murdoch rag at that, I'll read with interest what she has to say, in preference to the mea culpas currently floating like tawdry gossamer in the ether.
Here's a clue as she smotes mightily and the smitten suffer in her comments section:
Ellie yes the SES funding system is federal. There will be a review of it this year. It is an appalling con of tax payers where about 60 per cent of private schools are over funded even by their own scheme - and it needs to be fixed
As for someone actually knowing a lot about their portfolio - well in NSW the Labor government has made us all so cynical about the motives of pollies we need to be convinced anything they do is not just all about them.
John L no the answer is not to fund all poorly resourced schools with public money. That just encourages fringe religious loonies and cults such as the Exclusive Brethren to tap into the public purse.
Ah, the loonies. Friends of chairman Rudd and the education funding system and naturally at home on loon pond.
John L no the answer is not to fund all poorly resourced schools with public money. That just encourages fringe religious loonies and cults such as the Exclusive Brethren to tap into the public purse.
Ah, the loonies. Friends of chairman Rudd and the education funding system and naturally at home on loon pond.
Thank the lord I no longer have a child in the system loosely designated "education" and intended to prepare Australian children for the future ...
(Below: we do so love dunce caps- nothing like building esteem in a child by spending money on the already rich - so here's a few more. Settle, you deviant cane lovers in the corner).
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