[peking homunculu...]

No but to be honest that is because education can't replace cr*p parenting. Most parents turn up to parent teacher interviews (they have to do them over 3 days/nights to fit them in at our school). However there are a small number who can't be bothered to do things like the kids reader at nights (probably same parents who wonder why their kids need to be in reading recovery which the p & c has to fundraise for).

You are right. However, my problem with the current education system is that instead of helping to bridge the gap between kids who have families who care and those who don't, it actually makes it worse. The gap compounds through education.

That's not right, and that's what we should be working towards changing.

There are heaps of examples of public schools who have turned things around and changed the way they do things and as a result have improved outcomes. One of the panel members on tomorrow's Insight is Gus Napoli who is the Principal at John Fawkner College in Melbourne. He and his school were featured in the 4 corners story on Quality Teaching. Another is Cherbourg State School in Qld. They have a big Indigenous population, and Principle Chris Sarra was able to make a huge impact on the students there.

it's not impossible to achieve significantly better outcomes for kids who come from difficult family backgrounds.

[Guest_Retro_Mumma_*]

Sadly no.

[KristyMum-]

no

and

not necessarily. (I say 'Independent' anyway )

[MummaDiva]

A Teacher friend of mine was complaining a while ago at the lack full-time positions. She had an ongoing part-time position at a particular school without the promise of being made permanent. Surely this kind of management impacts the personal commitment to that particular school the teacher can have? How can we ask the Teacher to be personally invested in those children when the Education Department isn't allowing that commitment to be reciprocated.

This is actually a huge problem at many small schools. My DDs school is a small school catering to quite a few low SES families, and houses a big SE Unit. Only about 60% of the teaching staff is permanent. Teachers last two or three years then take some sort of leave, get sick / stressed, transfer to a regional position, take long service leave or whatever and leave massive holes in the staff roster that are filled by temp / contract teachers straight out of Uni (which can actually be a good thing in terms of teacher quality) or the position is not filled at all, and the class is then taught by a roster of casuals / or broken up and put into other classes for a few days a week. The result is a teaching body that doesn't have a vested interest in the school.
I personally believe that if a teacher needs to take a long time out of their allocated school for whatever reason, and that school is smaller than a certain size, say 10 teachers, so that their absence will obviously have an impact on the teaching outcomes of the school, they should be taken off the roster, their position filled by someone permanent, and the leave-taker put into a pool of "floaters" that can choose an area and have first dibs on any position that comes up in the general area when they make up their minds to return. I think as it stands, in many cases they have to legally have "first dibs" at the exact same position that they left, so the school is kind of left hanging for a couple of years while they make up their mind whether to come back or not - and more often than not it is a "not".

Also, schools in these types of areas should be allotted social workers that can take on the pastoral care work that bogs the teachers down. If DOCS opened a mini-office in the school, a hell of a lot more teaching would get done.

This post has been edited by MummaDiva: 03/04/2012, 12:39 AM

[LockedKey]

No but life isn't fair and this is one of those things that will always be unfair.
If your unhappy with your local schools move, save your butt off to get them into a private school or send them to boarding school. There is always other options available.

[MummaDiva]

No but life isn't fair and this is one of those things that will always be unfair.
If your (?) unhappy with your local schools (punctuation required?) move, save your butt off to get them into a private school (punctuation required?) or send them to boarding school. There is (?) always other options available.

Yes, because Centrelink pays sooo much these days.

And since market farmers will now be required to send their children to private / boarding schools (since they are always better at teaching the basics like spelling and punctuation, obviously), you city folks'll be paying $40 for a head of lettuce.

No, there ARE not always other options available.

FWIW, I personally DO have other options available, but I realise just how incredibly lucky I am. I also realise that the reality for a LOT of people is that they DON'T have the choice. Unless Tony decides to subsidise nannies AND private school for the working class masses.

[LockedKey]

Yes, because Centrelink pays sooo much these days.

And since market farmers will now be required to send their children to private / boarding schools (since they are always better at teaching the basics like spelling and punctuation, obviously), you city folks'll be paying $40 for a head of lettuce.

No, there ARE not always other options available.

FWIW, I personally DO have other options available, but I realise just how incredibly lucky I am. I also realise that the reality for a LOT of people is that they DON'T have the choice. Unless Tony decides to subsidise nannies AND private school for the working class masses.

It's the early hours of the morning where I am so please excuse me while I completely ignore and discard whatever you were critiquing from my post.

Yes there are always other options available; whether people are willing to work and sacrifice for them or not is the question.
My children go to school with kids whose parents work 4 jobs to make sure their children have the best start in life, not surprisingly most of them seem to be immigrants from less fortunate countries who know what an actual hard days work and poverty is and want to do everything they humanly can to insure their children never know it.

The main problem for most of "the working class masses" as you called them I know is they are stuck in a rut - the majority of them are lazy and self-entitled. Every single necessity of life is or can be provided for free in this country; Education? Free, Health care? Free, Having a baby? you get paid to do so, and then you have the audacity to complain because it's not enough for you. These are things few other countries on this planet provide but hey you want more, hell, you deserve more then 90% of the rest of the human race and how dare they not budget, during these tough economic times, to improve an already superior puplic,free educational system.

Seriously, If your unhappy with your kids puplic education get off your bum and go do something about it. A homless teenage mother got into Harvard a couple of years ago, don't tell me your situation is hopeless.

[L&E]

Yes there are always other options available; whether people are willing to work and sacrifice for them or not is the question.

Wow lockedkey that's a pretty sheltered statement. There are not always other options available. And, until your posts, this was a discussion about lessening the gap between the haves and have nots, since we are talking about the education of children here. Last time I checked, children don't get to choose the financial status or values of the family they are born into, nor do they have the option to just "work harder" to pay private fees for themselves.

[somila]

April girl, how does Finland do it?

Finland has a fairly homogenous population both socially and economically, and doesn't have any "tyranny of distance" issues. Good on them for their excellent public education system (I don't think they have any private/independent schools) but everything that works for them won't necessarily work for us.

[Guest_Dinah_Harris_*]

Short answer is no. We should move to the model used in Finland which often produces the best educational results world wide. But we won't .......

What is the Finnish system? I'm very interested!
No there is no equality. I went to a public high school in a small regional town. It was common knowledge and widely practiced that the teachers there were biding their time before applying to work at the private schools in the larger city about half an hour away. The town culture itself did not value education. Most of my classmates graduated from high school and the girls were happy to get a job at the pharmacy, Coles or as a secretary. The boys at least often would go down the apprenticeship path. I'm not suggesting there is anything wrong with these jobs, but my problem lies with the culture of the town, where higher education is not valued.
The school did not cater well for either gifted students or struggling students.
Only a handful of us left the town to go to university. None of us would ever go back to live in that town.
Unfortunately, this experience means that I will probably seek out private education for my children.