LITERACY: SANITY BREAKING OUT IN AUSTRALIA?

A national inquiry into the teaching of reading in primary schools may be launched amid growing concerns that too many students are barely literate. The federal Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, says he is considering the review after 26 of Australia's leading literacy researchers wrote to him warning that children were failing to learn to read. They said the main teaching method in schools - "the whole language approach" - was ineffective for many children and had no scientific credibility.

And it appears many primary school teachers struggle with literacy themselves. More than half of 370 teachers and final-year trainees in a Queensland University of Technology study did not know what a syllable was. Three-quarters could not correctly count the sounds in words.

Dr Nelson said: "There are a lot of parents - it gives me great distress - who are finding out that their children at the age of eight and nine are barely literate. I am concerned that there are far too many children who are leaving primary school and secondary school who are barely literate for a variety of reasons." Almost a third of year 9 students lack basic literacy skills, the Australian Council for Educational Research says.

The signatories to the Nelson letter said the whole language approach immersed students in a rich variety of texts without specific teaching of letter-sound relationships, known as phonics. One signatory, Professor Kevin Wheldall, director of Macquarie University's Special Education Centre, said most schools, education departments and teacher training bodies failed to accept the scientific evidence that phonics was crucial for teaching a child to read well.


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HORRORS! EMPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY COMING TO AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

A push from Brendan Nelson, the responsible Federal government minister. HECS are the fees that students pay to enroll at Australian universities

Universities, says Nelson, need greater freedom to match changes in student demand with shifts in staff. This can be done with a broader mix of full-time, part-time and casual workers. And Australian workplace agreements. "I've discovered one of the reasons why the kids are jammed in like sardines in some lecture theatres when there's one nearly empty next door is that the current industrial relations climate in the sector makes it very difficult to shift [staff in response to demand]," he says.

But it is not easy to turn an astrophysicist into a Spanish historian in institutions built on highly specialised staff, although there are ways to get around the problem. Just ask Ian Argall. He's the executive director of the vice-chancellors' national industrial association, which has had its share of clashes with the academic union. Argall says universities are not like other industries where you can transfer employees as demand fluctuates. So another way to have staff respond to student demand is to shed them and hire new ones -- a process that is difficult with the current high level of industrial protection. "The flexibility to move staff in and out of areas of need either has to be done by making people redundant, sacking them for under-performance -- all of which are hard -- or hiring them on fixed-term contracts or casual employment so they're not locked in permanently," says Argall....

Chief executive of the Australian Industry Group Heather Ridout says the universities, like the manufacturing sector, are dominated by powerful unions. But they have gone a long way to find measures that reward talent. "And I think with the strictures of budgeting over the years they've had to look to more flexible modes of employment," she says. "They've felt the financial pressure on them. And the need to attract talent and retain talented people has forced them into a lot of arrangements which might look a bit messy."

Money is the big issue. Nelson has earmarked extra public money for universities through various schemes that kick in next year -- at least another $2.6 billion over the next five years -- though much of that is contingent on them meeting certain criteria.

Universities will have more opportunity to seek out private revenue. They are able to set their own HECS fees at 25 per cent of current levels and enrol up to 35 per cent of Australian undergraduates on a full-fee basis. For the first time, full-fee students will have access to deferred loans similar to HECS, a move that has already boosted dramatically enrolments in one private university, Notre Dame.

While the funding injection will lift the bottom line, it will still not stem the gradual slide in the proportion of funds that universities get from the public purse -- an amount that now hovers at about 40 per cent of their sector-wide total income -- placing greater pressure on them to find other sources of revenue. By far the biggest single source of private income is from international students, who bring $1.5 billion a year in fees to the sector. ...

For now the business of getting the systems in place to launch the Nelson agenda next year has university administrations working overtime. A number of senior administrators told Inquirer that although there was still much work to get the schemes up and running, the Government's intentions were sound. The head of the University of Melbourne's administration Ian Marshman says that in the end there will be more consistent information for students and greater transparency. "It clearly gives an opportunity for a greater level of co-ordination and planning of the higher education output," he says.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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