Hi, On 31/01/2014 11:22 AM, DanyJ wrote:

On 31/01/14 12:09, Rohan McLeod wrote: May interest some:

Author D Gillepsie,is on ABC conversation hour (Friday 11 am). may be on podcast also?

This is where the commercialization of the ABC sucks. Gillespie is anti-unions and most likely anti-ABC, but if he sells his books, then he should be happy "dancing with the devil" -- not that I think they are the devil; overall I am very positive about the ABC despite the major celebs earning very large salaries and being out of real touch with reality and IMHO actually leaning too far right in the politics regime than most people believe (possibly as a result or consequence of their inflated salaries). Cheers A.

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:21:01 Andrew McGlashan wrote:

Private schools are a lot like many other modern day "products", the money is in the marketing, so you pay more for the product and quite often get nothing better in return except a warm fuzzy feeling that you must have bought the best (or better at least).

I think that private schools do provide a better service than government schools. I've heard rumors of up-market McDonalds "restaurants" which have table-cloths and other trappings of real restaurants. I'm sure that they are better than regular McDonalds by many criteria (probably including food quality), but they are still McDonalds. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014, Peter wrote:

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014, Russell Coker wrote:

...

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:21:01 Andrew McGlashan wrote:

...

Private schools are a lot like many other modern day "products", the money is in the marketing, so you pay more for the product and quite often get nothing better in return except a warm fuzzy feeling that you must have bought the best (or better at least).

I think that private schools do provide a better service than government schools.

Australia's private school system breeds Australian politicians who run the country.o

It should be abolished immediately to prevent further damage

Okay, that's irony;-) Anyway, a bit offside this article about motivation: http://m.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/aleague-needs-to-get-out-of-the-comfort-... Private schoools can forster snobism and the feeling of entitlement. As everybody knows, motivation is an important factor in learning. Why bother if dad's money gives you a headstart? Students in China are "hungry" - education is their way out of poverty. School systems are forming people. I see a "can do" attitude amongst Australians who seem to get praised a lot at school (and sometimes just for doing the basics). It makes them confident. There is a good and bad in nearly everything. The author is focusing on learning results - and that may not differ that much regardless what yor school is like. But it may make you a different person. In this regard the school debate is more one about values than outcome. Regards Peter

On 31 January 2014 18:45, Peter <Petros.Listig@fdrive.com.au> wrote:

But it may make you a different person.

Yes. It may effect the amount and type of bullying students receive as well. I know someone that was attacked by another student at his private high school for having a gay friend. It was a very prestigious christian school. I encountered a student at uni that was from a well off family and went to a private high school that had less independence than I did at 12. I wasn't an anomaly at my school. Most of them aren't that bad, but many are noticeably spoilt and immature. I probably could have got a scholarship to a private school if I wanted to, but I wasn't keen on the culture of a lot of them. After seeing private schools influence my brother and some friends I'm glad I didn't. Bianca

On 1 February 2014 15:24, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

Another easy way of improving the school system would be to expell the students who have no hope of passing year 12 when they are 14 and make them work at McDonald's.

How would that be decided fairly? How would it avoid picking up a huge number of disadvantaged students? Would a better solution be to put under achieving students in different classes? I'm guessing you wouldn't want to actually force them all to work at McDonald's and that is just an example. Bianca

On 4/02/2014 3:05 PM, Russell Coker wrote:

It's an example. Any other employer would do. Some kids who do that would return to school the next year determine to study as hard as necessary to avoid a career at McDonalds, that would be a good thing. But the ones who just leave school and never return would be better off doing so at age 14 and cause less harm to those who stay at school.

I think that many people heavily under rate McDonalds as a job, my understanding (not from experience), is that they provide excellent training which could well lead to a great career. It's just a pity that their food is actually quite expensive for what you get. Especially the healthier choices, because, again, marketing a "healthy" option can generate more profit, if it sells. Most food sold at McD's is lacking in dietary value -- Supersize Me .... Unfortunately, the healthier food was priced too highly and didn't sell that well, so last I saw, they were going back to their staples (on the whole). A.

On Sat, 1 Feb 2014 07:39:50 PM Michael Scott wrote:

The difference between a class size of 20 and 40 probably depends on the ability of the teacher to maintain discipline in a class, until it comes to one on one tutoring. That will depend on the students...not on the class size.

My friends that teach in schools (public and private) all agree that roughly 90% of their time is spent on setting up activities, classroom management, getting students to line up, shuttling between rooms, conflict resolution. The remaining 10% they refer to as "the amount of time we actually get to teach". One of these teacher friends told me there was a study published showing that teachers spend about 90% of the day on the above areas, ie classroom management etc. I'm hoping to get a copy of this study. I don't think class size made much of a difference. The teachers do not get the chance to work with each child individually, before the bell rings and they have to move on, so learning opportunities are wasted. Many children need one-on-one teaching to accommodate different learning needs and a lot of it. The kids with learning disabilities or the bright kids are the ones who often miss out. faye -- Faye Coker faye@lurking-grue.org

On Sat, 1 Feb 2014 22:04:32 Daniel Jitnah wrote:

What it meant was that 1 teacher could focus on delivering the curriculum material to the class as a whole, while the other would focus on the classroom management stuff and also could provide 1-1 interaction to some extent. It meant that the curriculum delivery was less interrupted by other classroom activities, And the teachers would swap over the roles. I think you could probably increase the student-teacher ratio at the same time. 2 teachers in the same room with twice the number of students are more effective that 2 teachers in 2 separate classrooms with 1/2 the number of students each!

One option that is being tried by some universities is to use video lectures to cover the material and then have the staff just do the 1:1 stuff. There's no point in trying to get every teacher to give a great lecture on the topic while being interrupted when you can just get one of the best teachers the country to give a lecture in studio conditions and have the kids watch it on a tablet with headphones. Then the kids can pause and rewind as necessary and ask questions of the teacher in the room. Also if most of the class are watching the video then when one student asks questions it doesn't take time away from others' learning, this saves time and also encourages students who are less confident about asking questions. The first thing that we should do is reject all the ideas that are based on 1900's technology and look for ways of doing things better with modern technology. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On 04/02/14 15:02, Russell Coker wrote:

On Sat, 1 Feb 2014 22:04:32 Daniel Jitnah wrote:

...

What it meant was that 1 teacher could focus on delivering the curriculum material to the class as a whole, while the other would focus on the classroom management stuff and also could provide 1-1 interaction to some extent. It meant that the curriculum delivery was less interrupted by other classroom activities, And the teachers would swap over the roles. I think you could probably increase the student-teacher ratio at the same time. 2 teachers in the same room with twice the number of students are more effective that 2 teachers in 2 separate classrooms with 1/2 the number of students each!

One option that is being tried by some universities is to use video lectures to cover the material and then have the staff just do the 1:1 stuff.

The comment I'd make here is that this will work well in University-lecture situation. But in a school/classroom environment, teachers are not "Lecturers" - the classroom dynamics is vastly different to a lecture theatre one. Although in later yrs (12) this may work. I however acknowledge that the scenario described below can be very valuable. As a matter of fact I have myself experimented with that in schools previously. I had setup web material in various forms on my laptop (*) and had students sit in computer labs or library and go through them, while I was able to walk around and interact on a 1-1 or small group basis (3 or 4). That worked well, and I used that fairly regularly on late Thursday and late Friday classes when possible. However I think that if it was used too often it could lose its appeal. Cheers Daniel. (*)For info: I could do that easily because I have the IT skills to do it. I had everything on my laptop and included online quiz which they could do immediately and I could mark and grade these on the fly literally - I literally plugged in my laptop to the school ethernet (disconnected the teachers workstation) and had students http to the IP address of my laptop. Trying to get this setup using the school IT infrastructure was ... too difficult administratively! (Had to get Principal's approval, and I was told he would never approve it even though I'd never mention the word "Linux".) Your average teacher could not do that without a lot of (IT) support and thats not available as far as I know. I used my own personal laptop and never had a EDU Dept issued one, which I refused to have. ... and when I left the school they chased me for a laptop I never had, and needed some convincing that I never had one!!

There's no point in trying to get every teacher to give a great lecture on the topic while being interrupted when you can just get one of the best teachers the country to give a lecture in studio conditions and have the kids watch it on a tablet with headphones. Then the kids can pause and rewind as necessary and ask questions of the teacher in the room. Also if most of the class are watching the video then when one student asks questions it doesn't take time away from others' learning, this saves time and also encourages students who are less confident about asking questions.

The first thing that we should do is reject all the ideas that are based on 1900's technology and look for ways of doing things better with modern technology.

The difference between a class size of 20 and 40 probably depends on the ability of the teacher to maintain discipline in a class, until it comes to one on one tutoring. That will depend on the students...not on the class size.

In my understanding class size matters depending on the background of the students more that the ability of the teachers. If the kids have discipline or behavioral issues, come from broken homes or have insufficient nutrition than the class sizes should be smaller. In these situations there needs to be more one on one tuition and teachers aids in class. For classes without such situations the educational outcomes between class of 20 and 30 is minimal and above that outcomes start to deteriorate. The problem with Australia is that the schools with the most disadvantaged students who need more one on one work and smaller class sizes are not as well resourced as the schools with the most advantaged students. http://www.saveourschools.com.au/equity-in-education/disadvantaged-schools-h... Also the new liberal government has sabotaged the Labour Gonski model that was trying to redress this and has changed the funding arrangements to guarantee future funding increases to private/catholic schools and not public schools which enroll pretty much all disadvantaged students. http://www.saveourschools.com.au/funding/the-coalition-has-sabotaged-gonksi Tim.

On Sun, 2 Feb 2014 11:34:58 Peter wrote:

Which isn't surprising.. Go through all stuff Liberal does - you will find they benefit "well-off people" and hurt the rest.

I don't know why it is so impolite to talk about "class wars" - they are still on.

It's a strategy to avoid discussing things that would be unpopular if people thought about them.

Over the last 20 years Australia was lucky to have an unprecented mining boom so there was a "trickle down" effect for most.

Bad terminology there. Mining improved the Australian economy because there are a large number of people who get paid more for working at mines than for working in an urban area. That directly spreads money through the economy as most of the money is spent in suburban areas. "Trickle down" is usually used to describe tax cuts for the rich which result in them buying expensive things from other countries and the money just leaves the economy. The poor people don't even get a trickle.

I was pretty sure Abbott's time will be "wasted time" because it does not address any progress in economics. You can squeeze few per cent profit by union bashing but it does not help to steer Australia away from the reliance on two industries (mining and agriculture) which makes us so exposed to the volatility of the world's economy.

Union bashing is a short term strategy. Most Australian businesses depend on Australian customers. They need a strong middle class to buy their products. It doesn't matter how cheap labor is or how low taxes are, if there aren't buyers then the factories will close.

We have our home grown Tea Party here.

They tried to make a Tea Party here, but it didn't work. Even when they paid people to attend rallies they were lucky to get a few hundred. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On 2 February 2014 08:07, Andrew McGlashan < andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:

Teachers are required to make it a priority, in order to give the school "a good reputation", to provide specific training towards getting excellent NAPLAN results and identifying students for exclusion if those students won't benefit this cause. That is, they teach how to do NAPLAN, but not so much in other areas of the curriculum that are not so heavily judged and therefore won't reflect on the teachers or the school itself!!!!!

They are pushed to prioritise NAPLAN. Doesn't mean they all do so.

On Sun, 2 Feb 2014 08:07:47 Andrew McGlashan wrote:

...

Regarding class size, I think that to a large extent the best class size is determined by the skill of the teacher. Some teachers are simply incapable of keeping order in a class of more than 8 or 10 students. Others can keep order and usefully teach 50 students. Don't disregard that in a group of people (kids in this case), each has there own set of skills that are complimentary to others in the group. When one or more of the group is down on a subject, then there are one or more in the group whom could work with them and bring them up to the standard (without any direct teacher involvement). And given that the skills vary per topic, if the group is large enough, then the reciprocal can work for those helpers to become the helpees.

If that worked well then they could just sack all the teachers and have the kids just hang out and teach each other. http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/05/17/lord-of-the-flies/ I've blogged about this at the above URL. The TV Show Kid Nation is on The Pirate Bay if anyone is interested.

...

Regarding the violence in schools. The easiest way to improve things would be to make every teacher sit the PCL-R test. There's probably only a few psychopath teachers in each school (I know of two at the high school I attended) but it's enough to make a huge difference. That seems to be quite an obsession of yours, perhaps you should seek counseling over it.

No more of an obsession than any of the other ways that I've observed that society is badly broken and needs to be fixed. It's very sad the way some people seem to regard wanting to improve the world as a mental health issue. There are even a lot of psychologists who believe that.

...

Another easy way of improving the school system would be to expell the students who have no hope of passing year 12 when they are 14 and make them work at McDonald's.

You cannot know for sure that a 14 year old that is behind the others is not going to make it later. Sometimes it is a matter of the light suddenly turning on and that can happen at a different age and then that kid goes forward in leaps and bounds. You can't just say, you're dumb, get out of here!

No I can actually be quite sure of the result when a 14yo who is treated as an idiot because they can't keep up with the other kids and who gets further behind because they can't understand what is being taught. If it's a matter of them just needing to be a year older then spending a year working would be much better than repeating a year.

Another problem with today's schools is that they they pass every student almost every year, when some students need to be held back at least once to help them get up to speed and not to be forever behind everybody else.

That's a bad idea. It's an extra year to the prison sentence. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Tue, 4 Feb 2014 15:12:46 Andrew McGlashan wrote:

Students will also greatly benefit from peer learning, it develops the both the helper and the helpee and it can significantly reduce teacher workloads without a need for a significant reduction in class sizes.

You would need to do something significant about acoustic issues if you want to have multiple students talking at the same time.

...

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/05/17/lord-of-the-flies/

I've blogged about this at the above URL.

You've blogged, so that's all the answer there is?

I've blogged so there's no point writing it again.

...

The TV Show Kid Nation is on The Pirate Bay if anyone is interested.

Why Pirate bay? Would that be illegal content in this case?

Not illegal, just breaking copyright restrictions.

Perhaps this is a better option: http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/kid-nation/episodes-season-1/288040

Apart from being an iTunes video that requires enabling popups and probably Flash (I didn't even enable popups for it). How do those people think that they can compete with The Pirate Bay if they have to ask their users to reconfigure their web browsers?

...

If it's a matter of them just needing to be a year older then spending a year working would be much better than repeating a year.

Perhaps, perhaps not. There is a complete disconnect when you leave school and for many there is no going back.

Still better than being there and not learning.

teachers, both of them -- are you a mental health expert too, also an expert at everything else as well .. ;-) ???

Are you going to suspect me of being a reptoid next? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

Russell Coker wrote:

...

Another problem with today's schools is that they they pass every student almost every year, when some students need to be held back at least once to help them get up to speed and not to be forever behind everybody else.

That's a bad idea. It's an extra year to the prison sentence.

Citation needed.

Russell Coker wrote:

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:21:01 Andrew McGlashan wrote:

...

Private schools are a lot like many other modern day "products", the money is in the marketing, so you pay more for the product and quite often get nothing better in return except a warm fuzzy feeling that you must have bought the best (or better at least). I think that private schools do provide a better service than government schools.

The analogy he uses is "flying to London"; which seems to equate to getting one's kids into University. One can fly first-class (private schools) or tourist-class (state-schools); the facilities at the former are better; but apparently don't make much difference to the end result. He claims private schools can often look as though they are doing better; ie getting a higher percentage to university; but on closer inspection they are just selecting their students more carefully. What is really contentious is his claim that class size really isn't all that significant ether. It is this claim, plus his other claim that 'teacher quality' is significant; which really puts him at odds with the teacher unions and received wisdom. He even suggests 'teacher quality' is not strongly correlated with qualifications ! I haven't read his book, but the conclusions he reached seemed to be more than just opinion; ie he seemed to have done quite a bit of research. Which encourages me to check out his book ; though I will try to get a free copy ! regards Rohan McLeod

On 1/02/2014 10:12 AM, Bianca Gibson wrote:

My Mum's a teacher and was talking about this the other day. They are told that class size isn't significant, but that time spent individually with each student is. They will obviously spend less individual time with each student if they have a big class.

I think that if the class size is bigger, then kids can learn more from each other. There is also more exposure for everyone and that's got to help too. If a teacher can't do /enough/ one on one, then a classmate just may make up for it and be a better option in some situations. We learn from peers and self learning pretty well overall, teachers sometimes only need to lead the way; that is, to get the kids thinking for themselves. If you spoon feed every kid, just because you can give more one-on-one, then that is less likely to benefit anyone. Cheers A.

Russell Coker wrote:

On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:21:01 Andrew McGlashan wrote:

...

Private schools are a lot like many other modern day "products", the money is in the marketing, so you pay more for the product and quite often get nothing better in return except a warm fuzzy feeling that you must have bought the best (or better at least).

I think that private schools do provide a better service than government schools.

I did primary and high school in various state schools around the country, and matric in an early generation of IB at a Melbourne private school. The quality of teaching was *vastly* superior in the IB, but my strong impression was that the VCE students in the same school had things a lot worse -- hopeless teachers, much larger classes, and a lacklustre and bureacratic curriculum. The ancedotal evidence I've heard since suggests that now that IB has "settled in", it has been watered down a fair bit, too. Aside from the better quality teachers and smaller classes, there was absolutely nothing to recommend my private school experience over my state school experience. Well... if you want your kid to pass even if he shouldn't, then a private school is definitely the way to go. The private school I went to bent over backwards to ensure all their students passed, e.g. giving six month extensions on assignment due dates.

On Fri, 7 Feb 2014 07:05:12 Carl Turney wrote:

These studies pointed to many things, including the fact that private schools are no more effective at teaching students than public ones, ceteris paribus (all other things being equal).

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/01/08/nevada-offers-teachers-perso... There is the issue of budget for most things that are needed for education. The above URL is about teachers being offered PERSONAL loans to buy classroom supplies for the case where the school has no budget and their salary isn't enough to buy the supplies when needed. That sort of thing doesn't happen in a private school. How many government schools have a school orchestra? It takes a fair amount of money to buy a full set of orchestral instruments. A full orchestra requires close to 100 musicians and to run a school orchestra you need to have younger kids learning to play before they join the orchestra, so maybe you need 200 or 300 instruments. Then there's the issue of music lessons. If you have 300 students each getting an hour a week of personal music instruction you need 8 or 9 full time staff to teach them. A school swimming pool is also a good thing, it means that the students don't need to take much time off school for swimming lessons. It probably saves money in the long term when bus rental and public pool fees are considered but you need to have the land and the money in advance to build it. Do any government schools have a school owned vehicle for driving instruction at school? There are real benefits to private schools. School sucks generally, but if you are going to send kids to a school and can afford it then a good private school should be better than most government schools. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

Russell Coker wrote:

There are real benefits to private schools. School sucks generally, but if you are going to send kids to a school and can afford it then a good private school should be better than most government schools.

That's a very Melburnian mindset. In WA, the only people that go to private schools are religious wonks. In VIC, the entire middle class goes to private schools.

Hi Carl, On 7/02/2014 7:05 AM, Carl Turney wrote:

(Background: I've got > 17 years experience in teaching/training in the military sector, private sector, TAFE sector, and university sector. I've taught/trained in 3 different countries. And I've got a Graduate Diploma in education, a Cert IV in vocational training, and a Master's in public policy where my research was on efficiency in the public sector.)

During my teaching studies, I distinctly remember hearing of studies that were very large, very well controlled, and very thorough about co-factoring the issues raised in this thread (and more).

These studies pointed to many things, including the fact that private schools are no more effective at teaching students than public ones, ceteris paribus (all other things being equal).

Parents who want their children to be smarter, score better on tests, be more successful in adult life, make the "right" sort of social connections, =and= others, would best spend their money =this= way...

(a) Chuck the little darlings into public schools, plus (b) Personally enrol them in extra-curricular activities (music, rocketry, dressage, hang gliding, holidays in the grand-parents' old home countries, repertory theatre, amateur radio, or whatever else they like.)

Of course, many of the members of this list will have already made their minds up on this issue, so I've just wasted my time writing this.

Your entire email is gold, thank very much for contributing, I couldn't agree more on almost every point and your experience is a great asset and quite impressive. Russell, my old high school (public), was a /music/ school, they had a great hall for this. Everyone learnt basics in music and everyone had an opportunity to take it further IF they had the money for their own instruments and the inclination -- even those that didn't have the money (or their own instruments), they still had violins provided for those classes. The only thing we had to buy, music wise, was a recorder, but those are very cheap. These days, parents are expected to pay excessive /voluntary/ fees or the kids miss out on the basics. Cheers A.