As background... I recently visited my old high school. They have the same staff levels that they had when I was there, but less than half the students. The outcomes are worse however. Gang activity is now a problem. This is consistent with figures I have seen across the board of a doubling of per student real spending since I left school, while outcomes have deteriorated. Can someone enlighten me about the rationale of the Gonski reforms? I got onto the government's web site http://www.betterschools.gov.au/ and tried to derive some content from what is mostly PR hackery. What I managed to glean was: * More money will be directed to underprivileged students, with the objective of achieving more uniform outcomes across the social classes. * More detailed policy direction ("uniform standards") and reporting to Canberra (referred to as "accountability"). * Numerous mandates such as Asian languages; each school must be paired to a school in Asia, each school must have detailed policies about bullying, each student must have a "reading plan" etc. * A more politicized process for selection of trainee teachers (eg based on interviews and assessment of applicants' "community involvement"). * Make it harder to become a teacher by requiring more training initially (and ongoing), although there are some nods in the direction of providing more assistance to beginning teachers. * Teachers may **optionally** be assessed in part based on student performance but it seems this will generally not happen. Some of these policies may seem plausible but in social policy plausible solutions often produce no results, and often make things worse ("drugs are harmful so let's ban them"). Most notably, attempts to level the social classes by spending more on disadvantaged students - above a very moderate level - have consistently produced minuscule outcomes. As I suggested above, throwing money at the problem has been a miserable failure in the past, yet we seem to be embarking on an exercise of "if it doesn't work, then do even more of it ". In all my reading on the topic over the years, the one thing that seems to matter in student outcomes, once you factor in the student cohort, is teacher quality, specifically intelligence. Class sizes, within a fairly wide range, don't seem to make much difference (though they do affect teacher workloads). Yet teacher quality, including getting rid of under-performing teachers, is conspicuously absent from the agenda. There is no mention of paying teachers in in-demand fields more and trying to get a higher quality applicant. Can anyone reassure me that my hard earned tax dollars are being spent wisely here? Tim Josling
On Sun, June 16, 2013 9:06 pm, Tim Josling wrote:
Can someone enlighten me about the rationale of the Gonski reforms?
The ABC gives a fairly good coverage. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-27/whats-in-the-gonski-report/4219508 HTH, -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), MBA, GCertPM mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
On Sun, 16 Jun 2013, Tim Josling <tim.josling@gmail.com> wrote:
As background... I recently visited my old high school. They have the same staff levels that they had when I was there, but less than half the students. The outcomes are worse however. Gang activity is now a problem. This is consistent with figures I have seen across the board of a doubling of per student real spending since I left school, while outcomes have deteriorated.
Can someone enlighten me about the rationale of the Gonski reforms?
I got onto the government's web site http://www.betterschools.gov.au/ and tried to derive some content from what is mostly PR hackery. What I managed to glean was:
* More money will be directed to underprivileged students, with the objective of achieving more uniform outcomes across the social classes.
The more expensive private schools can pay teachers more than government schools do. It seems that if government schools offered higher salaries then they could compete for some of those teachers. But I don't think that would solve anything. There is a limited number of people who have the potential to be good teachers. Unless we start reducing visa requirements for skilled teachers from other countries (which is a real option) then we should focus on getting more effective work out of the teachers we have. I think that a large part of the solution to the current situation is in removing some students from the regular school system. I'm sure that everyone here went to school with some kids who never had a chance of going to university and probably weren't going to pass year 12. Having such students in school only make things worse for everyone else.
In all my reading on the topic over the years, the one thing that seems to matter in student outcomes, once you factor in the student cohort, is teacher quality, specifically intelligence. Class sizes, within a fairly wide range, don't seem to make much difference (though they do affect teacher workloads). Yet teacher quality, including getting rid of under-performing teachers, is conspicuously absent from the agenda. There is no mention of paying teachers in in-demand fields more and trying to get a higher quality applicant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCL-R The first thing that they should do in terms of improving teacher quality is making all teachers take the PCL-R. Teaching is the ideal profession for a psychopath who has some control over their impulses. They have an endless supply of victims who probably won't be believed if they even realise what's going on. There were two psychopaths teaching at the high school I attended. I recognised one of them as being a moderately evil person at the time - but he was quite good at teaching when he wasn't encouraging kids to hurt each other. The other appeared to be merely incompetent at the time, it was only when I met him years later and he gloated about the bullying that I realised what he was really like. Both the psychopaths were employed as teachers 6 years after I had left the school. They were working at another school and hanging out together. I guess that they had the same hobby of tormenting children. There's been a lot of talk recently about analysing phone meta-data. I wonder how good that would be for identifying psychopaths. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 1:17 AM, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCL-R
The first thing that they should do in terms of improving teacher quality is making all teachers take the PCL-R. Teaching is the ideal profession for a psychopath who has some control over their impulses. They have an endless supply of victims who probably won't be believed if they even realise what's going on.
I totally agree with this. It applies to a number of other fields too - anywhere people have total power over others eg nursing. This is one of the reasons I totally oppose the use of corporal punishment in schools. I saw far too many teachers who manifestly got their rocks off torturing children. Tim Josling
Hi All, On 16/06/13 21:06, Tim Josling wrote: ...
Can someone enlighten me about the rationale of the Gonski reforms?
...
Can anyone reassure me that my hard earned tax dollars are being spent wisely here?
... I've got a Graduate Diploma in Post-Secondary Education, and a Cert IV in Assessment and Workplace Training. I've also got over 17 years experience in teaching/training in the military, private, TAFE, and university sectors -- in 3 different countries. And I've got a Master's degree in Public Policy, where my research was on efficiency in the public sector -- plus qualifications and successes in private-sector general management. More details on the above (including a copy of my Masters' paper) on my company website (below). I've spent incredibly little time on the Gonski topic. But in general terms and my gut feel is that: It was a well-done study, by quite competent experts. It will be milked by the state and federal governments for all the political capital it possibly can be. Then it will be poorly implemented by high-level careerist hacks. Key caveats will be ignored. Flashy things will be over-done. Crucial fundamentals will be under-done. Compliance and reporting will be done to death. As soon as the dust settles, and the teachers in the classrooms have just about got all the bugs out & it's fairly well working: The new Liberal Federal Education Minister will have gotten his bearings, conducted a "fact finding study", have listened to some other equally-capable (but Right-leaning) experts, and demanded that everything be un-done and replaced by his "new, improved" programme... Thus "making his mark" and "justifying why the voters needed to toss out the last mob and elect us". Carl Turney Bottom-line Ownership and Management Services www.boms.com.au
Tim Josling wrote:
* More detailed policy direction ("uniform standards") and reporting to Canberra (referred to as "accountability").
A year or two back I saw Pasi Sahlberg on Lateline, who made a very convincing (to me) case that our education policies should mimic Finland's, not US's. I remember one of his key points was that instead of aiming for accountability (i.e. who to blame), we should be aiming for *trust* in teachers' ability to do their jobs. Wikipedia doesn't have an article on him, but a quick quack turned up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#cite_note-12 http://www.standupforkids.org.nz/g-e-r-m/
Tim Josling <tim.josling@gmail.com> wrote:
Can someone enlighten me about the rationale of the Gonski reforms?
This page appears to have the final report of the review available for download: http://www.appa.asn.au/gonski-report.php but I'm not sure about copyright... whether they're allowed to host it. I found pages on gov.au sites that apparently provide the report but I'm getting 403 errors when I try to access those.
Found it - the document you want to browse through is http://foi.deewr.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/review-of-funding-for-schooli...
participants (6)
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Carl Turney -
Jason White -
Lev Lafayette -
Russell Coker -
Tim Josling -
Trent W. Buck