Tuesday, July 11, 2006

THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY DISCOVERS MERIT

Ministers will tell schools this week that they must identify the brightest children in their classrooms and do more to nurture their talents. A new national register will track 11-19 year-olds who come in the top 5% in England for academic test results. Schools minister Lord Adonis will write to every secondary school with details of the register when he launches the new drive on Tuesday.

The campaign is designed to target bright children from poor families and ethnic minorities who too often fall behind at school. Some bright children are at risk of being left to fend for themselves at school because teachers do not think they need extra help, according to officials.

Lord Adonis said: "The register is a key part of our education reforms to ensure that we build a school system where every child can reach their full potential. "The new register will ensure that these children are spotted early and don't slip through the net. "It will also step-up efforts to find those pupils whose ability may have been masked by social disadvantage, low aspirations or lack of opportunity."

The Department for Education will encourage schools to use a range of methods for identifying the brightest children. These include making more use of teachers' judgements and direct "observation" of children's work, as well as data from national tests and cognitive tests.

Source






Best Australian teachers and schools to get Federal cash bonus

Individual teachers and schools who turn out high-achieving students will receive cash bonuses directly from the Federal Government under a plan that could help keep the best teachers in public schools. The proposal from Education Minister Julie Bishop is designed to make state governments and public school teachers accountable for their performance. But she said yesterday it could also address the loss of good teachers to private schools that offer better pay and conditions.

Ms Bishop yesterday accused the states of complacency in accepting low standards, particularly in literacy and numeracy, and proposed an incentive fund that would bypass the state and territory governments to lift educational standards. "I'm looking at ways of rewarding individual schools and teacher performance, to shift the balance away from the state bureaucracies and state teachers unions and try to get accountability through an incentive-based approach," she told The Australian. "I'm concerned there's an acceptance of lower expectations, particularly in literacy and numeracy."

Ms Bishop said teachers were one of the few professions not accountable for their performance and it was "high time" they were not only held responsible for their students' achievements but also recognised for outstanding results. In state schools, teachers are generally remunerated on the grounds of seniority.

She said every classroom in the nation should have a highly qualified teacher, particularly in those schools where the need was greatest, which are generally state schools. "We don't serve teachers or students well by putting the least experienced teachers in the most challenging schools," she said. "We need to encourage better teachers into state government schools, have them performing well and then reward them for their results."

Under Ms Bishop's plan, existing federal school funding would be broken into base funding, paid to the states, with a percentage set aside for an incentive fund. Ms Bishop said the reward scheme would form part of the next round of funding negotiations with the states and territories, which start next year. The Howard Government, under the previous education minister, Brendan Nelson, tied federal funding to key policies, such as the introduction of simpler A to E report cards and a common national test for literacy and numeracy benchmarks.

But keen to stamp her own style on the portfolio, Ms Bishop wants to break away from threats to withhold funding, preferring to offer rewards for high-performing teachers and schools. "I'm not talking about rewarding people for what they should be doing, but rewarding them for outcomes that are over and above expectations," she said. Ms Bishop has set national consistency and high standards as a priority for schools, but earlier yesterday she ruled out the federal Government taking over control of schools. "I believe the commonwealth has a significant role to play. After all, we invest some $33 billion over a (four-year) funding period in Australian schools so the states must be accountable for that money," she said on Network Ten's Meet The Press. "At the end of the day I think public education should be in the hands of the states ... but harmonisation of standards is a good thing." Ms Bishop pointed to Belfield Primary School in Melbourne's eastern suburbs as proof that extraordinary results were possible.

Belfield was one of the lowest performing schools in literacy and numeracy, with a high proportion of disadvantaged students from low socioeconomic backgrounds - unemployed, single-parent, indigenous and non-English speaking families. In 1998, only 35 per cent of Belfield's Year 1 students had 100 per cent accuracy in literacy and numeracy tests. Five years later, 100 per cent of the school's Year 1 students had a perfect score, while in similar schools to Belfield, only 26 per cent achieved the top score. Ms Bishop said the tragedy was that the principal who oversaw the change in Belfield's students had since left for a non-government school.

Teachers in the bigger independent and Anglican schools are paid between 3 and 8 per cent more than a teacher at a state school, as well as having access to better facilities and resources, support networks and professional development. Students are also choosing non-government schools in greater numbers.

Source







Your government will educate you: Sort of

Many public high schools in Australia are in such a state of disrepair that they should be bulldozed or rebuilt, an education expert says. Professor Brian Caldwell, former dean of education at Melbourne University and author of a new book, Re-imagining Educational Leadership, warns that the drift towards private schools will continue. Professor Caldwell outlined issues facing the nation's secondary school system, saying many problems are being "hushed up". He conducted 14 workshops in Australia, Chile, England and New Zealand last year, and begins a seven-week tour of Australia tomorrow.

Professor Caldwell said private schools would continue to take in more students unless state governments addressed teachers' pay, building refurbishment, literacy and innovation. He said the problems with teachers' pay, building refurbishments, literacy and innovation were so serious that most high school students would be in the private system within the next 10 years. "The fact is the public is being duped," he said. "Many government schools now simply have to be bulldozed or rebuilt. We have teachers working in government schools based on the factory model of schooling from the 19th century."

Highlighting a recent study, which showed 70 per cent of parents would prefer their children were educated in private schools, Professor Caldwell said high fees were the main reason why more students were not already in the private system. About 40 per cent of senior secondary students, 37 per cent of junior secondary children and 30 per cent of primary school children were in private schools, he said.

He said teachers were avoiding public schools, and he knew of cases where senior teaching jobs carrying a salary of more than $90,000 had attracted only a handful of applicants.

Professor Caldwell believes secondary schools in Australia should follow models of countries such as England, with only 8 per cent of children are in the private system, where the government is planning to rebuild or refurbish 85 per cent of secondary schools during the next 10 to 15 years. Partnerships with business, better pay for teachers and giving schools more autonomy to hire staff would help state schools improve, he said. Professor Caldwell noted that NSW had gone some way to rectify the problems, with 19 schools built through public private partnerships.

Among his other key ideas for reform are for low-performing schools to be paired with high-performing schools to boost their achievements, and for schools to specialise in areas such as science, technology or music.

Source

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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.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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