Posts Tagged ‘Education’

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Swim for Good Grades

November 3, 2010

Researchers from Griffith University in Australia are in the midst of a study to find out if swimming helps children to become smarter. They say children who learn to swim appear to be smarter than children who don’t.

The study looked at over ten thousand children in Australia from five years of age and older.

Professor Robyn Jorgensen, of Griffith University said “Anecdotal evidence found swimmers tended to be more confident than same-age, non-swimming peers.”

Imagine the reaction from parents if my response to the question, “Should I get a tutor for my child,” was, “No, not a tutor – but a swimming coach would be great”?

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The Education Debate Continues

November 2, 2010

The debate between Private and Public schools is nothing new, and has been the subject of much interest this week.

The group, Save Our Schools, says their figures show that Australian governments spend about $15,000 a year on students at independent schools but only $10,000 on those at government and Catholic schools.

The Australian Parents Council, a group that represents students who attend non government schools disagree with the figures.  The groups says it’s actually private schools that seem to lose out.

The executive director Ian Dalton points to the “… latest available figures put out by the ministers for education throughout Australia, that demonstrates that around about $12,500 a year is spent on students in government schools across Australia and around about $10,500 on students in non-government schools and that includes all non-government schools including sort of low fee Catholic and Christian schools and high fee independent schools.”

So who do we believe?

I feel that the Public vs Private debate misses the point.  Both Public and Private schools have a great importance and should be given every opportunity to flourish.  I haven’t got a problem with Public schools asking for more funding, but pointing the finger at Private schools is wrong.

We in the Education industry need to support and foster both the Private and Public schools and not turn them against each other.   Funding Public schools should be about the needs of the students not about drawing attention to Private school funding.

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Does the NAPLAN Have Any Friends?

November 1, 2010

Professor Brian Caldwell, a former dean of education at the University of Melbourne, is the latest epert to criticise the NAPLAN testing.  Speaking to a Senate inquiry into National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), he said that the program, and website, should be phased out.

“Essentially, I propose a sunset on current approaches to NAPLAN and My School and adoption of benchmark practice.”

Professor Caldwell proposed that a survey based on a sample of students would be enough to yield national information, rather than testing all students.

As a teacher, I believe that while it is important to monitor schools against a set of national benchmarks, the NAPLAN tests works against the natural instincts of the standard harworking teacher.  Principals instruct their teachers, not to teach for learnings sake, but rather to teach the skills and content covered in the tests.  So even though I taught a unit on persuasive writing in Term 2, my school wants me to cover it again in Term 4 because they heard it was the writing genre selected for the NAPLAN.

Shouldn’t the NAPLAN promte real teaching instead of depriving teachers from going about their jobs the way they should?

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Happy Teacher’s Day

October 29, 2010

I would like to wish all my fellow colleagues a Happy Teacher’s Day!  May you continue to make a difference to your students.  I am very blessed to be in a profession with so many wonderful, tireless and selfless colleagues.

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Are We Failing Our Boys?

October 28, 2010

I read an interesting article about boys struggling at school.   This quote caught my eye:

Danbury deputy superintendent William Glass believes the issue is much bigger than boys’ literacy skills.

“He blamed the accountability movement. Math and reading tests that determine school performance were brought into the lower grade levels and to perform well, schools reduced other subjects and that’s played havoc with child development.”

I often get told by female teachers that there are not nearly enough male teachers in the system, and that the boys really need male teachers.  I’m not sure they need male teachers, I think they just need good ones.  This article provides some possible reasons for the disparity between girls and boys academically.

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NAPLAN vs Core Values

October 28, 2010

The wife of Tasmanian Governor Peter Underwood, Frances Underwood, who trained as a primary educator in 1980 delivered the 2010 William Oats Memorial Lecture last night entitled “Nourishing the Spirit in the 21st century: a Challenge for Education.”

Mrs Underwood says that education must get back to core values.

“The real challenges and opportunities for education in the 21st century will only be met by re-assessing our obsession with performance testing being the only measure of educational success and by enabling well-educated passionate and creative teachers, who are at the forefront of knowledge and skill, to fire up the imagination and motivation of students,” she said.

Test like Naplan clearly put a great deal of pressure on teachers and students alike.  Whilst I think it holds lesser teachers to account for their sloppiness, it complicates and stifles the average, hardworking teacher.  Whilst I’m not sure about what “core values”really means, performance testing seems to be quite problematic.

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The Inconvenient Truth About the National Curriculum

October 27, 2010

So the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority reportedly has said An Inconvenient Truth has a place in modern history studies and English.

In my opinion the new Australian Curriculum is a very flawed document and needs to be fixed from its current draft state.  My biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t just tell us what topics to cover, but also what angle to use.

An example of this is climate change.  The word ‘consensus’ which has been bandied around lately does not belong in the classroom.  The classroom is best served by looking at all sides of an issue and letting the students come to their own conclusions.  Instead, the National Curriculum wants teachers to teach climate science with a clear and unambiguous position.

In a recent unit on Weather, I played an excerpt of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.  I think it’s an interesting movie and has a place in the classroom. However, the curriculum should encourage teachers to present opposing views.

Perhaps the film could be shown together with the recent documentary Cool It to present both sides of the argument.

Provide the tools, and let the kids decide.

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It’s About Spending Wisely

October 26, 2010

The Chief Executive of VECCI Wayne Kayler-Thomson, calls for “strategic investment in education and skills …  from primary school onwards.”

His other recommendation include:

  • Meeting the target of 90 per cent of students attaining year 12 or an equivalent;
  • Schools that achieve NAPLAN results routinely below the state average need initiatives to close the gap, such as hiring specialist teachers, retraining existing teachers or exploring alternative methods of teaching numeracy and literacy;
  • Linking teachers’ pay to student performance and rewarding outstanding teachers will help drive improvements in the classroom; and
  • Getting teachers from varied backgrounds into the classroom through a scholarship program could help address the shortage of teachers in key skill areas, as well as broadening the types of teachers that students interact with.

Nothing new here, but still food for thought.  I find the term “strategic investment” quite amusing.  It seems to infer that the money beings spent on Education is largely going to waste or at least not spent wisely.  I couldn’t agree more.

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Sell Chocolate and Save Our School!

October 24, 2010

Another scare campaign from the unions!  This time they are targeting chocolate.  The Australian Education Union’s President claims that ”Public schools are so poorly funded, they rely on Caramello Koalas to pay for basics …”

I have a number of points to make about this:

1.  Where does all the school funding go?  Education Minister Peter Garrett, claims, “This is a government that has provided almost double the investment that we have seen previously in education since 2007 – over $60 billion that we are investing in education, right around Australia.” Surely there must be a huge misappropriation of money if  schools cannot afford to buy the essentials without chocolate drives.

2.  School fundraising is an institution.  It will go on regardless of increased funding and it is not confined to just public schools.  Private schools also fundraise, and always will.

3. I wouldn’t be surprised if the chocolate reference is a sneaky device to link funding with childhood obesity (an issue I am very passionate about and draw upon in my unpublished novel, “My Favourite Comedian”).  The title of the article above (which was not written by the union of course) clearly belittles the important issue of childhood obesity.

4.   I have no problem with the union taking an interest in public school funding, but not at the expense of private school funding.  Both sectors should be given priority.  It is not good enough to prop up the public schools if it is in any way at the expense of private schools.

If we are going to improve our schools we have to avoid the petty private vs public debate.  It’s distracting and juvenile.  Private education saves State Governments incredible amounts of revenue, which is then spent on vital services and infrastructure.  What we should be vocal about is where is all our taxpayer dollars going?

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