Monday, January 14, 2008

Pupils to get lessons in good manners in one prestigious British school

The article below is from the Daily Telegraph so they retain the old British usage of calling private schools public schools! "Independent" school is the preferred modern British usage but readers of the "Tele" understand

A leading public school has launched a campaign to revive etiquette and manners by training its pupils in the art of polite dining and helping the elderly. Brighton College will educate all its new starters over the year with lessons in a variety of practical skills

As well as learning how to iron a shirt, sew on a button, boil an egg and write formal letters, 140 pupils aged 13 and 14 will be taught how to waltz at weddings, use cutlery and glasses and tie a bow tie. The year-long compulsory course, which consists of one 45-minute class each week, also covers erecting a tent, monitoring heart rates, making a pizza, using a cash machine and taking digital photographs. Pupils will learn to help the elderly and the etiquette of giving up seats on buses and trains. The headmaster, Richard Cairns, said the skills would make them more attractive to potential employers.

Last month, a survey by the Institute of Directors found that a quarter of company directors think graduates display "impoliteness and poor table manners". Mr Cairns said that after seeing the survey, the teachers made a list of 30 useful skills. He said the course was not a crusade to stamp out bad manners among the young. "Young people these days are polite," he said. "What has happened is that some haven't been told about what other people expect of them."

Source




Hope for educational sanity in Australia

In his first parliamentary speech as leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd tagged education as a key policy issue. In the months leading to the November federal election, the ALP released a series of persuasive policy papers that presented a coherent and convincing narrative about what needed to be done to strengthen Australia's education system. Much to the chagrin of those on the cultural Left who would prefer the ALP federal Government to advocate a new-age and feel-good approach to education - illustrated by Australia's dumbed-down, outcomes-based education model of curriculum - the incoming Government's education revolution involves computers, increased testing and accountability, rigorous standards and a back-to-basics approach.

Unlike previous Labor governments, which attempted to stem the flow of students from government to independent and Catholic schools by restricting non-government school funding, the Rudd Government has also accepted parents' right to choose where their children go to school and has guaranteed the funding formula introduced by the Howard government, at least until 2012.

Looking ahead across the next 12 months, will Rudd and Education Minister Julia Gillard be able to deliver? Given that the Council of Australian Governments and the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs - both federal-state-territory organisations - are now fully ALP-controlled and given the apparent goodwill on all sides, there is every reason to feel optimistic.

This is especially so given events at the state level during the past year or two. Tasmania has modified its OBE-inspired Essential Learnings approach to curriculum, the West Australian Education Minister has done an about-face and now argues that OBE fails to deliver, and Queensland has adopted a basics approach to English as a subject. OBE has disappeared from the educational lexicon, to be replaced by concepts such as content and performance standards and personalised learning.

Late last year, state and territory governments released Federalist Paper 2, which argues for the central importance of academic subjects, that the public has every right to know about school and teacher performance, and that the success of an education system should be measured not simply by how much is spent but by how well students learn.

On the level of rhetoric and, in some instances, in practice, it appears the tide has turned and that Gillard's description of herself as an educational traditionalist is not out of place. After debates throughout 2007 about falling standards, the impact of political correctness and postmodern gobbledygook on the curriculum, especially literature and history, and the best way to attract and reward teachers, it appears that 2008 signals a period where criticisms will be addressed and the system strengthened.

Optimism about 2008 should also be tempered by the fact that an education system, especially one suffering from provider capture, is similar to an oil tanker: it takes a long time to change direction and set a new course.

Rudd, in the ALP's election policy paper Establishing a National Curriculum to Improve our Children's Educational Outcomes, stresses the importance of an academic and rigorous approach to curriculum. Parents and teachers expecting dramatic changes this year in what is taught will be disappointed. Labor's national curriculum is not set for delivery until 2010 and the party has promised to give control of the project to bodies responsible for the parlous situation that exists.

When in opposition, Rudd and education spokesman Stephen Smith argued that teachers and schools should be held accountable for performance and that increased investment in education should be linked to improved outcomes for students.

While a national approach to rewarding teacher performance has yet to be agreed on, it appears any model put forward in 2008 will be of little value. Not only is there no intention to link rewards for teacher performance to students' results, as measured by improved learning outcomes, but the model being suggested is overly bureaucratic and onerous in terms of compliance and only available to a minority of teachers, thus doing nothing to alleviate the issue of teacher shortage.

There is also the additional concern that holding schools accountable for performance, while imposing a state-mandated, often dumbed-down curriculum and denying them the right to hire and fire staff, is unfair.

Fulfilling the election promise to give all senior school students access to computers and the internet, while superficially popular and in line with the mantra of becoming the knowledge nation and competing in an information technology-rich world, does nothing to address the most important issue: how best to attract Year 12 students to teaching as a career and how best to support and reward them when in schools.

The baby boomers, who make up the majority of the teaching profession, are rapidly heading for retirement and researchers agree that about 30 per cent of beginning teachers leave the profession after four to five years. Mathematics and science teachers are especially difficult to recruit and keep in the profession, and in some areas, especially Western Australia, many classes will begin this year without qualified teachers.

While some, such as the Australian Education Union, argue that the supposed bad press about teachers is to blame for the shortage, there are other factors that must be taken into account. In Victoria, for example, the ALP Government places many teachers on short-term contracts, denying them job certainty and any guarantee of continuity in their chosen profession. The quality of the curriculum and the rate and constant nature of educational reform is also significant in terms of teacher anxiety and burnout.

WA's adoption of OBE, whereby teachers are forced to implement a decidedly cumbersome, unfriendly and burdensome curriculum, as argued on the Perth-based People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes website (www.platowa.com), has led to teacher frustration and angst.

In Tasmania, the recently retired president of the teachers union, Jean Walker, argued that the state's adoption of Essential Learnings presented the greatest challenge the union had faced in protecting teachers' working conditions. In 2008, whatever curriculum initiatives are planned, care should be taken that teachers are not, once again, overwhelmed and that they are given a substantial role in what is being designed.

Generally, teachers are not well paid and it is ironic that across Australia, especially in Victoria and Western Australia, ALP-controlled governments are refusing to meet teachers' demands for better pay and conditions. Given the research suggesting that, along with the quality of the curriculum, teachers are the most important determinant in how well students learn, it stands to reason that they should be better rewarded.

Luring the right Year 12 students to teaching as a career is also vitally important. Many of the boomers now in the system are only there because of government-sponsored studentships that paid for their time at university and college. While moves to reduce the Higher Education Contribution Scheme payment by students undertaking teacher training in maths and science is a start, maybe it is time to re-introduce studentships.

A submission by the Australian Secondary Principals' Association argues that teacher training must better prepare teachers for the reality of the classroom and, based on a survey of beginning teachers, concludes that teacher training is"at best satisfactory" as a preparation for teaching and in "several areas it is clear that they (beginning teachers) felt that they were significantly under-prepared".

Much is on the agenda for 2008. The danger is that the attempted solutions are based on past practice, one where committees and bureaucracies work in isolation from schools, and governments impose initiatives based on short-term political expediency or whatever is the most recent education minister's plan.

The alternative? Give schools greater autonomy and freedom to best reflect the needs and aspirations of their local communities, as with charter schools in the US. Give more parents the ability to choose where their children go to school by introducing educational vouchers, a system in which the money follows the child to either government or non-government schools and there is a greater reliance on market forces to improve quality. Now, that would be an education revolution.

Source

No comments: