When I first sat down to write a reply to Nelson’ Budget reply on education, I felt like one of the judges in the first round of So You Think You Can Offer a Cogent Critique of the Education System. The Marcia in me wants to pat earnest Dr Nelson on the head. The Dicko in me is forced to send him home to learn the words, and the music, and how to dance.
To be honest, I’ve sometimes enjoyed the laid-back, anecdotal style of Brendan Nelson’s testifyin’. Journalists call it “homespun”. Ain’t that sweet?
Well, the education section of the Budget reply speech crossed the line from homespun into fabricated. It was a grab-bag of myths and plausible-sounding but incorrect assertions that go straight for parents’ worry-glands and bypass the brain.
The first theme that Nelson explored is the ‘parents know best’ argument. This is true – ask any parent. The assertion wasn’t tied to any actual initiative or announcement, it was just a free-floating thought-bubble, a way for Brendan to tell parents he was on their side against that awful cardigan-wearing crowd who are preparing to do unspeakable things to their children – like teach them science (I owe The Onion for that last quip).
Mind you, since parents do know best, why isn’t the Coalition pushing for mandatory home schooling? You know it makes sense.
This is really going to bake Brendan’s noodle, but many, in fact most, teachers and education bureaucrats are parents too! Oh noes! Infinite recursion! Must. Stop. Program!
Nelson also lamented the demise of the Coalition’s $1 billion “Investing in our Schools” grants programme. It’s true that over 2005-8, this programme bought a lot of shade cloths, playground equipment and flagpoles for schools. And if $1 billion for school capital works was good, then the new $11 billion schools fund announced in the Budget must be 11 times worse.
Then there was this assertion:
The single most important influence in the life of a child – apart from a parent – is their teacher.
Well, numerous sociological studies have found that teenagers are more influenced by their friends than either their parents or their teachers. So why don’t we just let the kids to teach each other now?
The other major theme Brendan explored is to improve the standard of teacher training. Great idea! How much money will they provide to do this? Can you guess? Starts with “z”, ends with “ero”. That’s right, the Coalition are such superb economic managers that they can improve teacher education from Cairns to Perth, without any money! Brilliant!
He then presented several specific claims in support of this assertion, all of which are dubious at best:
Entry scores to teacher courses are too low and so they will mandate higher entry scores to teacher education courses. How high Brendan? Half of my graduate year had an entrance score above 90, and 90% of them had an entrance score above 80%. Drawing from the top quintile of the population ain’t a bad place to get your teachers from. Are you planning to second some astronauts?
They will require “relevant course content” to be set. Gosh, now there’s an idea. We’ve never tried that! Last year, I reviewed the course design of all 42 universities that offer teacher education. Every single one mandated study of the curriculum – in fact, state education departments won’t accredit a course unless it forces the students to get to know the state curriculum point-by-point. My course spent two years studying the NSW state curriculum in my subject areas. During this time, we did 20 – count them, 20 – assignments where we had to design school materials linked to different parts of the curriculum. Relevant enough for ya?
The Libs will also require that trainee teachers are “taught how to teach children to read using proven techniques, including phonics based instruction.” Now, everybody knows that teachers today are trained by holding hands and singing The Internationale. So it’ll come as a surprise to Brendan that I was introduced to dozens of different forms of literacy instruction, most of which included specific phonics elements, so I have a complete toolkit that I can tailor to different children in different situations.
They will require that education faculties appoint high quality teachers to their academic staff instead of “social engineers”. Well every single one of my lecturers was an experienced teacher of many years classroom standing. Some of them still taught part-time. And the real shock? Most of them, were, yes, you guessed it – parents! So according to Nelson logic, they know best.
Brendan also put a new spin on the merit pay angle –
…teachers should be rewarded and recognised on merit as assessed by their peers.
What’s this? Coalition policy supporting a nest of collectivist glad-handing? I’d love to see them argue that dock workers, police and public servants should assess each other for pay rises!
Finally, there was this zinger:
There can be no place for mediocrity when it comes to the future of the nation’s teachers, yet that is tolerated in too many of our teacher training institutions.
Which ones Brendan? Why don’t you name them? Tell us who the mediocre institutions are? You must have specific ones in mind, otherwise, why say it? No?
It’s just a nebulous canard that everybody who’s never visited a teacher training institute, never read the course content, never spoken with the lecturers, just “knows”.
Nelson’s assertions about teacher education are malicious fabrications, and that is all they are.
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Can the Libs please send in the next contestant?
“This gun is loaded. I’m a social engineer, NOT a teacher. Stop tryin’ to work out what I’m sayin’ fonetikally, or ya kid gets it.”
I’m heartened by Brendan’s luminous analysis. It demonstrates that the Libs are still so lost in the culture wars that obsess Miranda Devine and maybe 1% of the rest of the population that the chances of them doing any serious damage to Labor’s mildly progressive first term agenda are negligible.
No tax on alcopops or luxury cars and peer-reviewed salaries for teachers. What a winning policy platform for 2010.
I though Marcia and Dicko were on Idol.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1447202.htm
Well I guess we should be grateful for small mercies, at least Nelson isn’t following up on the teaching of intelligent design.
OTOH, plenty of mediocrity when it comes to those who aspire to high office through the Liberal party. Not so perversely, that’s something that is so easily tolerated.
Poor Dr Nelson, “God King and Country” has been subverted in Liberal party mythology into modernism, queens and lefties, and it’s those dirty rotten scoundrel teachers who caused it all. No idea at all about phucking phonetics and the eternal wisdum of the librul parti who will learn those rottun hunion teacha bullis a trik or too.
Given that Brendan is a doctor (bet you didn’t know THAT) I’m going to apply his principles to medicine and completely revolutionise the health system as we know it.
Firstly, I would estimate (based on my own experience, but who cares about actual quantifiable evidence nowadays?) that in 90% of cases I know exactly what’s wrong with me (‘the patient knows best’) and usually what I need (generally bed rest, a few G & Ts, and a medical certificate).
So let’s get rid of 90% of doctors and replace them with a computer in the waiting room. I can walk in, type in my symptoms and my requested treatment, the computer can check that my symptoms and the treatment match and then spew out the requisite medical certificate/prescription.
There can be a couple of nurses hovering around in case I need an injection or something and, if I need to see a ‘real’ doctor because I’m unable to work out what’s wrong with me by myself, I can then make an appointment.
The doctors made redundant by this self help system could retrain (why not? everyone else is expected to) as specialists, thus wiping out waiting lists within the next couple of years.
Everyone’s happy: most doctors would become specialists, on much higher incomes; I get to display the kind of rugged individualism beloved by Liberal rhetoric; Medicare costs will be drastically reduced; and ‘doctor shortages’ will vanish overnight.
You know it makes sense.
As a teacher for 16 years and now an education bureaucrat there are some concerns I have with the standard of many pre-service teachers coming through the education faculties. There are mediocre institutions. Many of the students are from the lower performing sections of their school cohorts, many have literacy and numeracy difficulties and many are passed by universities eager to keep their funds. Increasingly schools are passing prac students because the university doesn’t want to know about problems. Eventually if we are lucky the final school decides to tell the truth but that isn’t fair on the student who should have been supported earlier.
In terms of relevant course content I imagine Nelson was referring to the time spent on Sociology etc. Nearly every recent graduate who I have spoken to says that they wish they had spent more time on learning behaviour management strategies and how to differentiate the curriculum rather than on the problems in the system and how to alleviate poverty. They are worthy issues but not what students feel they need at that point.
If Nelson wants to make sure that the best and brightest are the ones becoming teachers there are other ways to go about it than directly cutting the lower-performing high school students out. How about, for a start, we pay teachers a decent wage rather than having them subsist on the table scraps wage which characterises their profession. If someone’s got the option of being an economics teacher or an economist, a little bit of extra pay wouldn’t go astray. At the primary school level, we’re entrusting teachers with the development of our children into functioning human beings who can read, write and analyse a text. Surely this is a worthwhile investment.
A higher teacher wage will lead to those who were considering teaching, but wanting to dine on something more elaborate than rice and lentils, enrolling in the course. Higher levels of enrolment from the top of end of the achievement scale will increase the quality of the cohort without actively pushing out the “dumb” students. If there aren’t enough places in the education degrees, it will be the ones at the lower end who don’t become teachers rather than the ones at the upper end for whom teaching represents a major pay cut.
Nelson’s railing against means-testing the baby bonus because every baby ought to be valued equally yet is willing to introduce merit based pay. Clearly, Nelson values babies more than the people whose job it is to help them become functioning members of society.
Fab! I was associated with a dude who was going to be a teacher. He had a half-baked education and his head was stuffed with all sorts of total bullshit. He was skeptical about things which were demonstrably true and had a total lack of skepticism about things that were bogus. A sloppy mind unfortunately attended by a huge ego born of a conviction that he was some kind of class A intellectual.
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This is an anecdote of course, not representative. But if this guy gets to be a teacher I don’t see him doing anything worthwhile.
How to alleviate poverty? Mmmm. Well how ’bout learning to read and write ey? There’s quite a few academics out there complaining that they’re getting undergrads who can’t do this competently. Now if you’re not literate or numerate and you’re at university what does that say?
Eet is only da skanky hoes in da Liberal house dat diss da Critical Literacy. Yo! Da honkeys dey scared o da relovituon when da main man Paulo Freeo Peg da doggie of da Ossprepsed comes to da skool near youse. We need don’t edjumakation, no fought control.
Da Sidni Uni Cultural Critical Education Studies tort by dat fine bitch Sara Maree will mean youse honkeys and da Queen of Eglnnd will need ta speek like us homeys and subalterns in Brazil and da favelas and Sowetos in Mutijulu and Everlee Street.
Wen we keep it reel wit da digital literacy and get some prints of the bitches sflashing some skin and gash den we will take back da means of reproduction. We bee been listenin’ to da AEU skanks get down wit da Deritta man. he d bomb.
Our HSC 4 Unit street graffiti for Vodafone and Pepsi be da weigh o da fewtcha.
“Well how ’bout learning to read and write ey? There’s quite a few academics out there complaining that they’re getting undergrads who can’t do this competently.”
Hehe yes I remember Harry Messel making headlines complaining about that very thing. I can’t recall if it was the 1950s or the 1960s … anyway I guess a decline in education standards under the Chifley Government would have been to blame. Bloody Labor … hopeless.
Actually Ken the decline in the clear language delivery is a marked feature of the past 200 years or so. Orwell addressed this in “Politics and the English Language”.
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Yo Che! N’uk, n’uk, n’uk.
marlin, Adrien, I’m afraid that unattributed, unspecified anecdotes like yours only serve to undermine the reputation of all the good teachers. How? Because unless you are prepared to blow the whistle and identify individuals, then all teachers are held in suspicion as a result of such nebulous comments.
I guess you’re suggesting one of two scenarios:
a) There are specific failures in specific institutes. In which case, name them and shame them. Blow the whistle. Put up or shut up. Which schools are you talking about? Which teachers? Which departments? If you can’t produce specific evidence against specific individuals, all you succeed in doing is tarring all teachers with the same brush, and insinuate systemic failure. I’m sorry, but that’s how public perception works.
Since nobody can tell which schools you’re talking about, the mud sticks to everybody. Most unfair and most undeserved.
b) There are system-wide failures that are undermining the quality of all teaching. In which case, like our man Nelson, you’re going to have to do a whole lot better than a few unspecified anecdotes.
And I’ll see your evidence and raise it a whole lot more that shows the system is robust. Did you know that as I write this, there are over 300 Australian teachers working as literacy consultants – that’s right – literacy – in more than 800 American schools? Heaven forfend, the Yanks are looking to us to ensure that No Child is Left Behind! Australian-trained teachers are in demand from the UK to Eastern Europe, China, Southeast Asia, Japan and the USA. If you want to hop on the teacher-bashing bandwagon with Nelson, be my guest. But a whole lot of other countries and administrations are quite happy to hire the teachers Brendan Nelson rejects.
What does that even mean? That black (?) people are to blame for poor literacy standards? Among teachers? Or that Derrida discouraged reading? Or that black people (in Australia) read Derrida too much? That too much Spivak is taught at a high school level? Or just that presenting an overtly racist, totally nonsensical “satirical” performance is much easier than any kind of argument?
Mercurius
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It is not my role in life to prosecute incompetent teachers. My comment was anecdotal as you say. I believe I acknowledged this when I said: “This is an anecdote of course, not representative.” I have neither the time, the resources nor the inclination to perform some survey of teachers who aren’t up to scratch. And in any event this is a general trend we’re talking about. I’m not saying every teacher is a fool, I’m saying there seems to be a problem. One of the exacerbating manifestations of the Left is that one is simply not even permitted to discuss such problems one is always met by NO NO NO. DO NOT CRITICIZE TEACHERS.
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Why the fuck not? Really?
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Sorry. It’s called free speech.
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But in answer to your request. Which schools? Let’s start with mine, science department: I had – 1. A chemistry teacher that actually dissolved his own roof by putting a sealant on it that reacted with the roof to, in his words, ‘put it into solution’. Not only was he enough of a moron to dissolve the roof of his house he actually told his chemistry class about it. 2. Another such teacher set fire to the laboratory on three separate occasions due to the neglect of rudimentary safety precautions. 3. And let’s not mention the parade of Creationist Biology teachers that never heard of Gould’s punctuated equilibrium thesis.
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But that’s anecdotal.
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On the other hand Marlin’s comment isn’t. It’s the perspective of a professional expressing serious concerns. I’ve heard many other teaching professionals expressing similar concerns. If there are problem with the basic literacy skills of teachers that is a problem. Sorry but it is.
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But feel free to stick your head back in the sand. I don’t tell people what to do. And I’d appreciate it if you lent me the same courtesy. I don’t really know whether our education system’s FUBAR. But I do know that in certain circles to even suggest such a thing is heresy. And that is FUBAR.
Black people do read too much Derrida. Particularly Indians. I really wish they’d lighten up on the Derrida and try some Iriguay. The speed of light is sexist doncha know.
OK, so Adrien. I invite you to blow the whistle, I practically demand it, and you say I’m sticking my head in the sand and avoiding criticism? Whatevs.
At any rate, you squibbed the question. You claim there’s a “general trend” that’s a problem, yet you haughtily disclaim from any intention of backing that up with anything but random anecdotes and hearsay.
So the question is important enough for you, by dint of a “general trend”, to impugn the reputation of thousands of teachers, but not important enough to get, you know, evidence for that?
I think I can safely put you in the hit-and-run column of free speechifiers.
You’re gloriously free to say anything at all, and utterly disinterested in taking any responsibility for contributing to the ceaseless denigration and undermining of their professional reputation that good teachers have to put up with every day and which only makes their job, and mine, more difficult. So how much courtesy do you expect me to lend you, exactly?
But you’re right about marlin. He is a professional in this area, which makes his unattributed, unspecified remarks all the more reckless.
Criticise away people, but for heaven’s sake make valid, substantiated criticisms, backed up with evidence. Remember; your speech is free, and worth every penny.
“I’m afraid that unattributed, unspecified anecdotes like yours only serve to undermine the reputation of all the good teachers. How? Because unless you are prepared to blow the whistle and identify individuals, then all teachers are held in suspicion as a result of such nebulous comments”
So unless I name every single individual teacher who struggles with literacy or numeracy I can’t suggest that there is a problem? That means any issue that has the potential to besmirch a profession is off-limits?
Your evidence of there being no problem with new graduates is that 300 Australian Literacy consultants are working in America? Some of my friends are among that 300 and they are very experienced and effective teachers. They aren’t 300 new graduates. I would suggest that isn’t evidence of there being no problem in our education faculties, rather the dire straits of the American education system.
“Many of the students are from the lower performing sections of their school cohorts, many have literacy and numeracy difficulties”
This is my unattributed,unspecified reckless remark?
I would have thought it was quite unremarkable. What evidence would satisfy you Mercurius? How many schools, staffrooms, prac students and recent grauduates do you deal with each day? Obviously they aren’t the same teachers attending my workshops to seek more expertise with their literacy and numeracy.
I should say workshops presented by consultants rather than “my” workshops.I should also spell graduates without an extra a when I am banging on about literacy and numeracy difficulties experienced by new teachers.I hope a typo won’t detract from the worth or otherwise of my unsubstantiated and reckless comments.
Marlin, this is a misreading of Mercurius’s position. As I understand it, Mercurius is stating that if you’re going to say that the system’s stuffed, or at least in need of significant change, you need to quote actual evidence. This seems quite reasonable to me. To date, I’ve seen no-one who’s engaging in teacher-bashing actually present evidence that can be used to argue that the education system is declining in quality. This is quite different from your suggestion that naming every individual teacher “who struggles with literacy or numeracy” is required.
Your desire for evidence is fair enough Alister.I’m not sure what evidence you would require. Given that no-one wants to give potential teaching students official literacy and numeracy tests prior to entry I’m not sure what evidence would be sufficient.
I don’t think that saying that many new teachers who are from the lower achievement rankings for university entry struggle with literacy and numeracy is teacher bashing.I am in fact arguing for them to be supported rather than automatically passed.
I am also not arguing that the education system is declining in quality. I’ve been specific in my points to refer to beginning teachers.
Is Mercurius or yourself arguing that everyone accepted into a teaching course is highly literate and numerate? If you think they are what evidence are you using to support that assertion other than pointing to the overall average health of the system which is mainly made up of experienced teachers?
This argument lacks data on both sides because we have no effective way of measuring teacher quality and the value they add. As a result we rely on our own experiences, as wide and as narrow as they are.I don’t think I have presented less evidence for my assertions than Mercurius has done for his assertion that “Nelson’s assertions about teacher education are malicious fabrications, and that is all they are.”
I can agree with the assessment of lack of data – as far as I am aware – but I am not sure that all added value can be satisfactorily measured (and this from an economist-in-training). I’d tend to assume that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, teachers are doing at least as good a job as they always have.
Personally, I’d not argue that “everyone accepted into a teaching course is highly literate and numerate” as this is an absolute statement. I’ve no idea what entry scores for teaching are, and can’t tell you what they mean. They would seem to be the starting point for making an assessment of literacy and numeracy of people enrolling in a course that, on graduation, allows primary or secondary school teaching. So there’s the potential for evidence, at least.
I see that a big part of the problem is that it’s seemingly difficult to attract people into teaching. This isn’t helped by Nelson’s reflexive non-factual critique of teaching training standards, and this, I think, is what Mercurius was going after. If it’s a problem, demonstrate how (which Nelson did not) and then demonstrate how you’ve got a solution (which Nelson does not).
Surely, Mercurius, the test of an education systems is outcomes – and the outcomes for Australian students, compared with the rest of the world, are consistently good. (Could be better, certainly, and I’m all for throwing money at it).
Teacher standards of literacy and numeracy are actually not good guides to their effectiveness as teachers. My sister is a chronically bad speller (she wants a reverse thesaurus; she goes to write a word on the board, realises she can’t spell it, so then uses an easier option). She uses her own spelling problems to explain to her students the various strategies they can put in place to tackle their own learning difficulties. The important thing, she tells them, is to recognise that noone is perfect, we all have weaknesses; acknowledge them and deal with them. To me, that’s brilliant teaching.
Another colleague, one of the best teachers I ever knew, was a poor performing student. She used her experience as a student to connect with kids who were struggling, and her classes were some of the most engaging I’ve ever experienced. I still use a lot of her techniques in the class today.
My entry scores beat hers hands down; she probably wouldn’t be allowed in if BN had his way – but she’s a far better teacher than I am.
Anyway, as I said to start with, the education system should be judged on outcomes, rather than component parts. Australians are highly sought after all over the world, in all sorts of occupations. Australian students consistently rank very highly internationally. Certainly the system could be better – any system could be – but it’s obviously very good.
Mercurius
As I said I’m not inclined to ‘blow the whistle’ on bad teachers. In fact I haven’t even said there are bad teachers. I’ve suggested that there might be a problem and drew on an anecdote from personal experience of someone who probably would be a bad teacher and would also probably qualify as a teacher.
Is that what you mean by ‘put up or shut up’? And also what does this:
Mean exactly?
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But anyway. You say that I am:
But I haven’t actually said anywhere that teachers are doing a bad job. I inferred they might be substandard and that I’ve heard there is a problem. This problem has been expressed, hah hah hah, by teachers. Your hysteria does nothing to dispell the notion that teachers are substandard.
I’m talking of a general trend of erosion in basic intellectual skills. The decline in literacy standards for example as I commented somewhere above has been noted by such as George Orwell. There could be many reasons for this such as television, declining funding, attention deficiency a general trend away from empirical standards. All of the above. None of it.
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Where I’m talking about teachers at all I’m talking of two things. 1. The possibility that in general they’re not up to scratch. I’m perfectly entitled to speculate about this and as Marlin has stated you yourself haven’t provided much by way of empirical demonstration in favour of your case. 2. The automatic attack that is visited upon one when they make a suggestion that perhaps the Right has a fucking point. Um-ah. If you can’t do better than provide hysteria that in no way addresses my points then you’re making my case for me.
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Also has it occured to you that I may not actually agree with Dr Nelson? Most of the ‘debate’ around education is rooted in the ‘Culture Wars’ which I find spurious, dopey and totalitarian on both sides. A war between competing advocates of differing propagandas. I think it pertinent to point out (again) that I’m not a Tory. Just because I find one political orthodoxy questionable doesn’t mean I subscribe to an other.
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Hint: in this life you are not required to subscribe to any orthodoxy.
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You really are taking this the wrong way. I’m not even saying there is a problem (altho’ considering the functional illiteracy of younger colleagues I very much doubt this) I’m simply asking the question. I have no wish to demonize teachers but as an essential service they’re liable to criticism. Actually everyone is. Your defensiveness does not serve you.
I don’t know that there is declining standards in literacy. Evidence please?
George Orwell died in 1950. I didn’t realise he’d done any work on contemporary standards of Australian literacy. Being a person of rigorous intelligence he’d be laughing in his grave at this invocation of his work.
I was talking about the decline in standards in the English speaking world. In Orwell’s case he was talking of a specific aspect of it – the use of language to convey meaning clearly, concisely, with brevity. There is a plethora of commentary on the ever increasing uses of spin and obfuscation in our world. Go to a bookstore.
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Decline in general capacities with language since the advent of the Industrial Revolution has been the subject of some research I was privy to as a post-grad. There are many reasons for this. One in partiuclar is that the education of a citizen of the developed world must now include a whole lot more than the use of rhetoric and the delivery of oratory (ie the purpose of the classical courtier’s education) hence a simplification.
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But I reckon this might make it interesting so I’ll try to dig it up.
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Y’know I reckon the Left’ll improve a whole lot when it learns the stratgeic disadvantages of sticking its fingers in its ears and singing ‘la la la I can’t hear you’.
I’ve always loved the way that, for Kulturkriegers, teachers are unable to instil basic spelling, grammar, other aspects of literacy, or arithmetic – yet they are devestatingly successful at getting across the finer points of Maoist dialectics and death-of-the-author nihilism.
I would love to see a teacher sacked for just being sit at their job – and for the union to say: yeah, fair cop, we don’t want to have losers like that in our profession. The absence of such means a) all teachers everywhere are as good as any other or b) it’s too damn hard to get the stats. I really loved the first half of Bonnor & Caro’s The Stupid Country, but when it came down to brass tacks about teacher performance metrics and/or how education funding works, it went all wobbly.
McKenzie said
“Anyway, as I said to start with, the education system should be judged on outcomes, rather than component parts. Australians are highly sought after all over the world, in all sorts of occupations. Australian students consistently rank very highly internationally. Certainly the system could be better – any system could be – but it’s obviously very good.”
McKenzie, I think your comment was in response to mine. I agree with everything you’ve said about the quality of the outcomes of the education system.
I think that a lot of the time the students results are in spite of some ineffective teachers rather than because of them. My comment was to provoke thought that one area of the system that had room for improvement was the area of teacher training.
Given that we should judge the quality of the system on its outcomes should any responsibility for good results be given to Nelson or Bishop or should it all be given to the teachers or the students or the parents? As we are falling behind some of our trading competitors in the latest PISA testing should any fall in quality also be the responsibility of the teachers? I don’t think we can have the credit but not the blame.
Alister said “Nelson’s…non-factual critique of teaching training standards”. What facts would you consider appropriate for a critique? I only have what people tell me and my own experience supervising pre-service students on prac and what those same students tell me about the many deficiences they feel about their training.
Nelson offered no evidence at all, just assertions.
It seems to me that Mercurius could make his argument while admitting that teaching training standards aren’t universally excellent, but still rebutting Nelson’s claims and also the ludicrous nature of his “solutions”. It might be helpful if Mercurius were to provide the evidence he was talking about in terms of the survey he conducted.
The standard of public school teaching is just outrageous these days…we need to lift our game…Western civilisation as we know it is collapsing into an illiterate
heap…fed on by nabobs & other scurrilous types…it is indeed the winter of our discontent, such risky flirtations with mediocre educators will only bring further shame to our good nation & hasten its inglorious end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMlOePl0aY
(Goodbye, Mr.Chips)
I bet it brings a tear to Brendan’s eye on a regular basis. Grrmph.
Mercurius said:
Maybe I’m being a nitpick, but I don’t think you can assume that because you you had an entrance score of 80% that you were in the top quintile of the population. For example, you don’t have half of the population scoring less than 50%. Even with moderation it may well be that 30% of the population scores more than 80%, or it may be 10%. I suspect its probably higher rather than lower though.
What may be a more appropriate measure is to compare the cut-off marks with other degrees (though this is tricky as well).
I don’t think the assertion is the parents know how to teach better than teachers, but they are better able to measure the effect of the teaching (ok this is disputable as well). But they often care more and perhaps should have the capability to do something about it (eg move schools, have input to the system as to what they think of the teacher capabilities).
To take your analogy with doctors – its not that patients are allowed or its though wise to self prescribe/medicate, but if they don’t like their GP they are able to go to a different one. Taking out private schools from the equation perhaps if zoning restrictions were removed from public schools and instead have a first come, first serve basis or lottery basis this would make things more equitable.
Is peer review as part of the input (not the only input) to performance such a radical idea still?
As education – and particularly, the employment of teachers – is a state responsibility, I’m happy to give credit to the States.
More seriously, though, I give credit to the teachers.
Most of the teachers I know have been employed for around thirty years. They’ve been through a lot of different types of government, both at a State and Federal level, but the job they’ve been doing has remained pretty much the same.
It has various window dressings and fads, and new technologies to master, but basically the same teachers have been sitting in front of the classrooms over that period. (My sister, who I’ve already referred to, recently returned to teach at the school we went to for our secondary education. She took over from the teacher who taught her the subject in HSC).
Unfortunately, what remains almost exactly the same is the infrastructure; they’re largely teaching in the same classrooms, bar a lick of paint, that they started in.
Apart from sticking posters on Australian values on the walls, making students sit a few extra tests and putting flagpoles on the lawn, the Fed government under Howard had little other contribution – other than trashing the good name of public schools, of course.
Kim – I’ve currently got 4 co-authored articles out for referral to journals on these matters – they’re reviews of teacher ed. courses, surveys of graduate teachers at various stages of the career, and similar. Better if I wait ’til publication.
marlin – some graduates complaining about some aspects of their course – has there ever been a time when this was not the case – about every university course? Squeaky wheels get the grease, but that doesn’t automatically mean their critiques have merit.
I too have heard quite a few graduates complain that, in effect, their course didn’t provide them with the answers from the book of “101 Effective Ways To Teach”. So what? You and I both know that book doesn’t exist. What’s more, if there were such a book, we wouldn’t need teacher education courses at all. They could read it over a weekend and hit the classroom.
I’ve actually sat in final year tutes where students, having been told for what must be the hundredth time over a four year period that “there is no magic book on 101 effective ways to teach”, reply with “yeah, but you still haven’t told me what to do in my classroom!” If those intellectually lazy students are coming to you and complaining that they’re struggling as teachers, then I’m really not surprised. Anybody that thick really shouldn’t be teaching!
Come now Brendan, there’s been great progress on the 3 R’s since you vacated office: republic, reconciliation and refugees. All tickety boo.
The entrance ranking thing is a complicated one. My profession, Accounting, is currently having the same debate, but in the opposite direction.
Australian accountants are world-class, but there are not enough of them, so the industry is contemplating lowering the entrance scores for Commerce degrees. It will mean more accountants, but they will be poorly apt.
Teaching is the same, you raise the entrance scores you’ll get better teachers, but then everyone will whinge that schools are too crowded and it is adversely affecting education standards, so we need to lower the scores to get more teachers, lol.
I don’t beleive the 80 to 90% entrance score claim you make though. I know quite a few teachers and none of them got anything like 80 to 90%.
Nelson also lamented the demise of the Coalition’s $1 billion “Investing in our Schools” grants programme. It’s true that over 2005-8, this programme bought a lot of shade cloths, playground equipment and flagpoles for schools. And if $1 billion for school capital works was good, then the new $11 billion schools fund announced in the Budget must be 11 times worse.
Thank you for that coffee through the nostrils moment, Mercurius!
The other major theme Brendan explored is to improve the standard of teacher training. Great idea! How much money will they provide to do this? Can you guess? Starts with “z”, ends with “ero”. That’s right, the Coalition are such superb economic managers that they can improve teacher education from Cairns to Perth, without any money! Brilliant!
Tsk tsk. Have you forgotten that funding anything besides fossil fuel research, woodchippers, Howard’s bro, ones’ porsche or private schools constitutes “throwing money at the problem”?
Did you hear Turnbull with Laurie Oakes this morning? HA! Bascially saying” we arent in government, so we dont need to cost anything, and can’t anyway”.
Nice to see that particular fetish of Howardite political culture coming back to haunt them.
marlin – I don’t dispute the truth of your account of your day-to-day dealings with graduates – but it’s in the nature of your job that you’ll be dealing every day with the struggling ones. I’d contend that this may negatively affect your view of the situation.
And Stephen Lloyd:
Well that settles that, then. The figures I quote are only based on surveys from 3 cohorts involving hundreds of teachers trained from 2004-2007, the results of which are being referred to international journals for review – whereas – some of your friends are teachers. I can’t beat that!
It’s like in the original post where I quote from the review of 42 teacher education courses on their extensive curriculum links. Or the fact the my own course contained dozens of literacy-building techniques, including, yes, bloody phonics. Oh no, Adrien knows better because he heard from someone that there’s big, unspecified, unsubstantiated, “problems” in teacher education. Rumours that he has a very important right of free speech to repeat.
I’d love to have access to the same fountain of knowledge where I just automatically knew more about the education system than the people who actually live, work and study in it.
It would be so much easier and quicker than doing research and finding evidence. I could just base everything on what I’d heard, or what my friends say, or what I reckon. Then like Dr Nelson I could make speeches in Parliament based on nothing at all, and lower the reputation of thousands of teachers to the level of my own standards!
In response to your demands for evidence Mercurius, please accept the following:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb353/is_200509/ai_n18828607
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Also in response to your assertion that selection standards for teachers are high here’s an article from Qld that says the opposite:
http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2008/jan/24/should-drop-outs-be-teaching-our-kids/?print
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Just an article in a regional rag to be sure but here’s a submission from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute which says that:
What say you?
From The Australian:
Masters says:
So it appears that there are people who feel that there is a problem. Contrary to what someone said above there most definitely is a correlation between the literacy standards of teachers and their success rate (why I even have to advocate this most glaring of common sense axioms is beyond me).
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That said I’m not sure teachers deserve the blame. There could be a range of factors. I’d even put forward an hypothesis that there’s a possible negative feedback loop at play where lower competence produces lower standards of students entering University, lower standards of graduates and hence lower standards amongst teachers which in turn produce even lower competence in the following generation of school students etc.
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But that’s only an hypothesis. There could be any number of factors. However I’ve been able to find at a glance reference to many studies that show decreased literacy and numeracy skills and not one that shows a trend in the opposite direction. Given that such fundamental skills are vital to the success of people in economic life and to the life of the economy this will have to be addressed somehow.
Mercurius said:
Do you happen to have stats on what the average cut-off score for teaching are handy? Would also be interesting to see what the distribution curve for entrance scores are as well (this sort of information doesn’t appear to be made easily publicly available)
Systems also do need to be built to handle the bottom 10% rather than just the average even if it seems annoying and awkward to the other 90%. Otherwise as wee see you end up with people like the butcher of Bega – the medical equivalent of what can happen when there is insufficient peer review…
All jokes aside, of course there’s a problem. You only need to have taught yrs 8 & 9 for a few hours to recognise that their meta-cognition skills & ability to problem solve is lacking. but having said that, many parents are obviously not doing their bit. They seem to think their contribution to their kid’s learning stops the moment they first drop them at the school gates. It also has a great deal to do with the focus on TV & computer games as a babysitting tool & educator. This is why introducing complex, less infotainment-based children’s shows & games is so vital. (think ABC).
From what I’ve heard some of the pre-service teachers coming through have admitted that they haven’t got a good grasp on spelling and looking back, they wish they had been taught differently. Interestingly, the middle school students coming through now, generally, are quite confident spellers…more so than the students a few years ago…at least in some QLD schools. However, there is a long way to go.
Let’s face it, English is a living language & it will be taught & spoken/written by individuals from different cultures & experiences and pretending that there is ONE dominant form is putting your head in the sand. That does not mean however that we shouldn’t have certain expectations that children can speak to one another & their bosses/parents w/out their being constant confusion.
I think one issue that needs to be addressed is the fact that teachers in primary schools are not specialists. There has been a move towards teaching the student and not the subject. However, this can lead to educators focusing on THEIR strengths & the topics they feel confident to teach…but if there is a weakness in how they understand that topic/concept then that will be transferred to the students who pick it up.
Consequently, if teachers don’t have good grounding in a key learning area/subject we have students turning out “bitsy” on knowledge & skills. I personally believe that having primary school teachers try to “cover all bases” & HOPE they are getting across the fundamentals of knowledge acquisition, problem solving & flexible thinking is gambling w/ these children’s future. There seems to be a bit of a mishmash of pedagogy. Probably has a lot to do w/ the mindset of older HODS competing for dominance & the political battles involved…and of course technological shifts.
Teachers in primary schools may have an interest in one particular subject but are then expected to focus on mathematical investigation, for instance. I think that primary teachers should be more specialized (I know this goes against the grain of much contemporary thinking) – they should teach either humanities, maths/science (there is a natural marriage), technology. This happens with HPE, music and languages in the primary schools so why not with the other subjects? That way, primary teachers don’t feel overwhelmed & compelled to fit in all the key learning areas. It can be exhausting…particularly w/ all the excursions, sports days & other hidden curricula (health & welfare).
I found that rote learning can be handy once you’ve got across a concept but there seems to be a problem w/ the use of this learning tool by way of relying on students to complete work sheets, even for H/W, where context is lacking. They need to change this ‘passive’ learning into a more ‘active’ pursuit. For instance, is it better to have a student learn the definition of a “hectare” by doing a worksheet…or going out on the oval and measuring it first and then bringing that back into the classroom?
Furthermore, this probably says a great deal about the time pressures educators are under…& lack of financing for one on one teaching/tutoring….not to mention, homework centres.
Our societies have become so inter-connected & generally sophisticated when it comes to REAL WORLD technological applications (think computer programming, engineering related to infrastructure, the Human Genome project) so the idea that a primary teacher can possibly construct a foundation for all these areas is unrealistic. Certainly teaching basic skills is fine…but obviously something is getting lost in the mix. Introducing more computer modules might help.
I haven’t had time to read the other comments. Intend to later.
Perhaps introduce a National Assessment based on the computer-based modules.
Adrien, USQ is hardly the most reputable university around. They’re a rural uni who specialise in distance education for students who don’t have access to the major unis (UQ, QUT and Griffith). USQ are cutting their maths department, for heaven’s sake; they are nothing more than a glorified TAFE.
To clarify, this isn’t an urban tier 1 university and what they do with their adjustments to their education degree enrolments is only going to affect a small number of enrolments. If the trainee teachers are useless, they probably won’t pass their classes let alone their pracs.
*snorts at QUT being a major uni*
I’m sorry. I find it hard to buy calling USQ a glorified TAFE and holding QUT on the opposite side.
Not that I have any knowledge to refute your claims about USQ, but I’m still bitter about my Arts degree.
[/tangent]
“Well that settles that, then. The figures I quote are only based on surveys from 3 cohorts involving hundreds of teachers trained from 2004-2007″
It’s easy to settle this argument rather than trade nasty anecdotes with each other — you can just look at the enter scores from here:
http://www.vtac.edu.au/common/entry_req.html#tertiary
Given how low the the enter scores are at many (most) places (and the fact that heaps of people are getting in under even the scores offered — something that happens in most courses — which means that the real enter scores are far lower), my bet is that nothing like half of all teachers had an enter score over 90 and far less than 90% had a score of over 80 (this I imagine is an observation from a top university, not most universities). In fact, its more than likely many people are failing year 12 and still becoming primary school teachers (of course no-one advertizes that anymore — but they did until the mid 90s if I remember correctly). Thus there probably are a lot of dull teachers out there (including those didn’t just recently graduate), but just saying that doesn’t really help anyone.
Hi Adrien, in response to the three studies you cited, I guess I’d add:
1) The ACER report doesn’t seem to be about the quality of teacher training, so I’m not sure what point you were trying to make. Regarding comparisons of literacy levels from the 1970s and 1990s, something about apples and oranges comes to mind.
Most education metrics geeks would know that, depending on which state you’re talking about there have been as many as four system-wide changes in the standards of literacy measurement during that time, and that the cohort of 15 years olds in schools today comes from a far wider swathe of the population bell-curve than the cohort of 15 year olds in schools in the 1970s. The methodological challenges in making comparisons across these changes are formidable.
Even though in theory 15 years is still a compulsory education age, I think you’ll also find that in the 1970s plenty from the bottom of the curve were not being included in such measurements, for various reasons to do with selection methods, alternative colleges, or just being basically forgotten about. Schools have gone out of their way since then to be inclusive of everybody, which is sometimes reflected in the numbers (especially when it comes to post-compulsory schooling results!)
Besides which, over the same period our international ranking haven’t changed all that much – we’re still bloody near the top of the world, still in the top tier, decade after decade…
2) Regarding the USQ course, I’m not familiar with Queensland’s university entrance ranking system – is 19 out of 25 a low mark? In percentage terms it’s only just outside the 80 entrance rank equivalent in NSW, which was the figure I cited as where 90% of the students in my course were above.
3) Regarding the final article, I’d say that “it’s just an article in a regional rag.” But seriously, and with all due respect to the Mathematical Sciences Institute, ‘they would say that, wouldn’t they’? I’m a languages teacher, want to try and guess my assessment of the amount of languages content in teacher training courses?
Sam said”If the trainee teachers are useless, they probably won’t pass their classes let alone their pracs.”
My belief is that they will pass their classes and most of the schools will pass them on their prac because the unis make it so easy to pass the classes and don’t want to know about problems on prac. I have taught in schools that had a reputation for passing all prac students and in schools that gained a reputation for rightly failing poor prac students. Guess which schools unis stopped sending prac students to?
“In fact, its more than likely many people are failing year 12 and still becoming primary school teachers”
I sincerely doubt this, conrad, but just to be sure I haven’t got you wrong, can you define ‘failing’?
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet, but I don’t think you had to have a degree to be a teacher back in the day, did you?
“I sincerely doubt this, conrad, but just to be sure I haven’t got you wrong, can you define ‘failing’?”
Yes, less than 50% overall. If you can find them, the entry score for RMIT primary school teaching in 1989 was less than 200 (Year 12 in Victoria was out of essentially 400 then). I remember this, because I was wondering what course to do and that was the lowest (along with physics and chemistry if I remember), which surprised me. If you dig through the VTAC list that you can get from the above link, the courses with the really low entry scores are sure to be still doing that, since the numbers published are not necessarily reflective of the real scores and there are lots of “special” entries in most courses where “experience” is taken into account. These account for a fair chunk of the students in many courses, especially those that people don’t want to do to the extent that they used to (like teaching I imagine) where essentially everywhere is offered a place — no department wants to lose staff members.
“My belief is that they will pass their classes”
My belief is that this is correct, although I’m not in an education faculty (but its true of almost everywhere else, so I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be in education). At my university, we _must_ pass a certain amount amount of students in every course, and if we fail more (perhaps because they deserve it), then we have to go through a process explaining why we did. The other problem is that most universities now have student appraisals. If you failed 20% of your course (for example), that would drag your mean way down (no students give good marks to people who don’t grade them well), and no one wants that either, as again, it causes you a lot of problems.
(Sorry – this is probably only of interest to those durn Southerners
)
There’s an on line conference coming up organised by Parents Victoria.
http://www.cybertext.net.au/pv08.htm
Participation is free.
Here’s a chance for people to really ENGAGE and perhaps ask some of the questions, or make suggestions, that have come up. I do hope many of the people who are supportive of teachers participate and not just the “Oh Noes teachers are all illiterate!” commenters.
comment no. 23 mckenzie
May 17th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Insightful comments. It’s important to relate to, and empathise w/, students. And understand your own limitations as an educator. Recommending tools to students that help(ed) you to solve problems & overcome hurdles can be effective. I agree w/ your sister’s approach.
All teacher’s need paid sabbatical… time to research & catch up on the latest developments in pedagogy…track down useful resources and materials…improve tech-based skills. Oh that’s right, they have longer holidays than most & long service leave…making up for the long nights marking/extra-curricula activities/laptopping to find work units & latest info.
But for some reason there is a drive to reduce these valuable sabbaticals. In a world where “tight-arsedness” & “emulate the Japanese work ethic” dominate there is little TIME for common-sense.
It’s better to burn out than make it thru the day…& the next day…& the next year…& next decade.
And whilst the teacher falls in the Auusie concrete jungle or bushland USA…& noone hears it…Brendan gets all the attention by yelling “back to basics!!!”…& acts like a WEEPING WILLOW as he fear-mongers over Unis that teach you how to care & teach higher-cognitive thinking STUFF…instead of just SHOW ME THE MONEY lessons…& “if you know this KEY HISTORY, SIGNS & WORDS you’ll get the keys to the KINGDOM provided you get down &…”
Still, compromise helps to appease the poll driven. Can your students spell
MARALINGA…?
I can’t really interpret those entry scores, as it’s outside of the Uni admissions framework that I understand (being before my time, and in another state). I’ll have to take your word for it.
In the context I’m familiar with – ie NSW, now – it is pretty much impossible to get below 50 marks in any of your HSC classes (to ‘fail’) and still get a UAI of 80+ (needed for most education degrees), unless we’re talking about some of the competitive extension courses – and in that case I’d dispute the definition of ‘failing’. Alternative admissions processes – like ‘mature age’ admission – may be different, but if those students go into degrees where they are competing against school-leavers from the top 1/5th, and consistently do as well as them, then we can assume the unis are usually making the right decisions on this front.
The NSW ones are here, although you’ll have to click on the individual ones:
http://www4.uac.edu.au/wap/mya8.aspx?method=exact&keywords=education&course_code=&university=
It works in essentially the same way as Victoria, although the scores look somewhat higher. However, some of them seem unbelievable (and are hence no doubt the subject of inflation versus reality) — for example, the University of New England has a supposed entry score of 75.0, but Newcastle’s top one is 67 (I know where I’d rather go). This is one of the problems of trying to interpret exactly who is getting into the courses — you need to rely on university marketing versus actual reality and the general trend is to report higher scores for most courses (which is why the Victorian page also has numbers for Year 12 leavers who got in under the score — but that still doesn’t take into account all the special entries)
“you need to rely on university marketing versus actual reality and the general trend is to report higher scores for most courses”
Yes, I can certainly see a problem here. The way in which universities operate now means that there is a lot at stake in clarifying these things (or not, as the case may be). Also, as you’ve suggested, there are real issues – university-wide, though less pronounced in some professional areas – with the imperative to pass students.
I wouldn’t want to draw too many conclusions in terms of conflating that with educational outcomes, or teacher ‘quality’, but I’m prepared to acknowledge some problems in universities that do probably need to be addressed no matter whether they’re having demonstrable effects in the wider educational field or not. As a tertiary educator, that much is clear to me. On questions of EC, primary and secondary education I’m going to have to watch this discussion and defer to the expertise of others I think.
marlin, when you see a fire, you really can’t resist pouring on the petrol, can you?
Can you get it through your head that your public remarks are immensely damaging to the reputation of good teachers and graduates in schools? That when you cast aspersions without specifying who and what and when, the vicissitudes of public opinion are such that they will suspect all? You have repeatedly made sweeping statements about unidentified schools that allegedly pass poor teachers on prac. What do you suppose a concerned parent is to make of such remarks? What are they now to think of the new teacher who is teaching their Jenny this year? How do you think your comments reflect on people such as myself who were out on prac only last year?
Frankly I’m starting to wonder if you actually are an education professional who helps teachers improve. I’ve not yet encountered anybody who, acting in good faith professionally, would go out their way as you have to damage the reputation and standing of young schoolteachers, and for what? To press home a point on an internet thread?
If you still think there’s a persistent problem in the quality of teaching graduates, maybe you need to turn some of that razor-sharp insight on how well you’re doing your job, which as you’ve explained it is to deal with and improve matters, yes? Why don’t you talk about that for a change? And if you can’t bring yourself to contribute anything positive to the situation, maybe you need to reconsider why you’re in that job at all.
Mercurius, re USQ, 18 is really low.
In my tertiary teaching career, I’ve found once the score drops below a range from 12-14, you get entrants who really really do struggle a lot.
I’d also point out that outside the sandstones, you don’t tend to get the phenomenon in my experience where the score may be low, but there are a lot of high scores among the cohort – you do when students are doing a combined Arts/Law degree, but when I taught for a few years in Education at QUT, the score for Education was lower than Arts for that reason.
I think, like some others on this thread, your animus might be a little misdirected. It’s possible to disagree with Nelson and agree that things are not rosy everywhere.
what is the evidence for the correlation of entrance scores to success at university to success in any given profession anyway?
anyway, aren’t entrance scores a factor of demand and supply? i.e. course has enough room for number of students X from a pool of applying students of size Y with set of matriculation scores [Z]. Algorithm is adjust cutoff[Z] until subset admitted A from applicants Y approximately equals places X.
isn’t that, like, how it actually works? so increasing uni funding for course results in lowering the cutoff (more supply) and increasing desirability of end profession results in increasing cutoff (more demand) and doing both results in more students with the same cutoff score. so if you just increase the score arbitrarily without increasing demand don’t you just teach less students resulting in funding cuts to the faculty resulting in less teaching resources?
excuse my apparent ignorance in these matters, these are genuine questions.
I haven’t looked at any research on the correlation between entry scores and success in a profession, but I suspect it wouldn’t exist because it would be difficult to measure “success in a profession” meaningfully. However there’s lots of research to suggest only a weak correlation between entry scores and success at university, though the lower the entry scores go the harder universities have to work to ensure that.
Arbitrarily fixing high entry scores is of course nonsense because it would, as you say, reduce the supply.
Can we talk about the elephant in the room here? If for example, we lifted the TER required to get into a teaching course, what would happen? why, the entrants with qualifying TERs would mostly opt for other professions with high TER requirements where they are paid properly.
Unless and until teachers are paid like professionals, you won’t attract a large number of high-achieving students, except for the ones with a super-strong sense of vocation – which is great – but we can see the situation now that we’re relying on such motivation, rather than paying them properly.
Word, Helen!
Mercurius said that my “remarks are immensely damaging to the reputation of good teachers and graduates in schools” and that I am going out of my way to “damage the reputation and standing of young schoolteachers”.
I don’t see what good teachers have to fear or feel defensive about. My comments that there seems to be, in my experience, a growing trend for education students to have literacy/numeracy difficulties and that the system often fails to support those students or weed them out weren’t, I thought, particularly controversial. Given that I obviously can’t name the individual schools, universities or students how can I avoid appearing to make generalisations? Otherwise it would make any conversation about a topic like this off-limits.
Mercurius said
“That when you cast aspersions without specifying who and what and when, the vicissitudes of public opinion are such that they will suspect all? You have repeatedly made sweeping statements about unidentified schools that allegedly pass poor teachers on prac. What do you suppose a concerned parent is to make of such remarks? What are they now to think of the new teacher who is teaching their Jenny this year? How do you think your comments reflect on people such as myself who were out on prac only last year?”
I have more faith that parents can see the worth of a teacher for themselves rather than tarring all teachers because of something I say on this blog. I think your are crediting me with too much influence.
Your sarcasm and gratuitous job advice may seem passionate but it doesn’t help your case to attack me personally and my motives. I could just as easily dismiss your points as defensive and extremely naive but that wouldn’t be fair either.
“a growing trend for education students to have literacy/numeracy difficulties and that the system often fails to support those students or weed them out weren’t, I thought, particularly controversial”
They might not be particularly controversial, but I doubt the literacy one is particularly correct either — At least for Year 10 kids, literacy levels have remained constant for quite some years, and thus I doubt those entering university are much different. Alternatively, given universities standards have gone down hill there might be some truth in the second half of your sentence. However, that’s not specific to teachers — its something generally true of most student groups (and graduated students, for that matter). This is also the same argument for numeracy (and science for that matter), which has gone down hill in high schools. It most probably is true of teaching students, but it’s also true of most other groups too. The main difference is that you can see the consequences easily with teachers, unlike many other groups.
Agreed Conrad. My belief is that there is a growing proportion of students entering teaching who aren’t as academically inclined or comfortable with literacy/numeracy. This may be the result of lower entry scores for education courses. Apparently this remark besmirches all teachers and therefore can’t be said. I am also glad you didn’t mention any other groups of students or professions because unless you could name individuals you would have Mercurius on your tail.
Marlin if you can’t name any faculties, how do you validate your belief. Your belief isn’t evidence.
And declining entry scores are a product of supply and demand for places at universities. So you either restrict supply of uni places (thereby resulting in a contraction of both academic resources dedicated to education, and a lesser number of actual teachers), or increase demand for places (for example, by making it a more attractive profession).
The point is that people are gettin’ dumber.
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As I’ve been at pains to point out more than once I am not interested in ‘teacher bashing’. (Except of course for that chinless Nazi taught me maths in yr 11 – wanker). Your rebuttal re methodology – essentially that more people stay at school now – is reasonable however I find it hard to believe that of all the studies that consistently demonstrate that we’re turning out kids that can hack the three Rs less and less well that they’ve failed to take this into account. Metrics geeks might be a little socially awkward but they know numbers. They’d understand the significance of proportion.
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I also believe those maths people were not talking about increased funding. They’re sayin’ people are functionally innumerate. And I’m sayin’ it too. Voice of experience. My life experience might not be statistically conclusive but I know the product of a half-baked curriculum when I meet one. And I’m meetin’ more and more.
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I also have to say that there is a little of “la la la I can’t hear you” about your stance. You’re not really providing any substantial (read empirical) counterarguments here. Except for ‘don’t say means things about teachers’ I’m not even sure where you stand. Do you think that literacy standards for example haven’t declined? You’re argument seems to be rooted in this notion that criticising the capacities of the current teaching profession is something we’re not permitted to do unless possessed of an arsenal of pristine data. That’s nonsense. And this sort of preciousness renders phlegmatic what could be constructive.
“This may be the result of lower entry scores for education courses”
I’m not sure of this — it’s probably true in the mining states, but I’d like to see the real numbers for Victoria & NSW. I don’t remember them being high for many years (they wern’t exactly high in 1990, for example), so I doubt they have gone down substantially. I think the main reason things look like they are getting worse is that the proportion of super good teachers is sure to be declining — but this is a cultural thing — lots of these teachers were females who started teaching at a time they were basically excluded from other jobs. Given these days are long gone and we’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg for losing these teachers, I think it is almost inevitable that standards will decline. It’s also the case that mathematics and science is declining across the Western world, even though policies are often quite different in different countries, as are social conditions and expectations of teachers, so its not at all clear what can be done about it.
“I have more faith that parents can see the worth of a teacher for themselves rather than tarring all teachers because of something I say on this blog.”
Teachers come in all shapes & sizes. As do governments. And teaching course tutors & lecturers. I reckon I would’ve enjoyed having Mark B…wide thinker. You inspired me Mark years ago when commenting on Troppo Armadillo.
Ironically, after graduation I found it extremely tough going under Wayne Goss… the bar was set very high to get into the Public Service…or get a F/T position in teaching (so anyone who thinks Rudd won’t expect HIGH STANDARDS is full of it).
As a “not as LOCAL as some, middle class sounding, but actually poor, mature(?) age, white guy” I found it tough to break thru for years here in QLD. Fair enuff I guess, there were plenty of my type w/ money & houses…but alas not me. A number of female teachers I graduated with were IN pretty quickly. And there were heaps of patriarchal males dominating the HOD positions. I guess they didn’t need another white dude charging up that hill…:)
Sure, i got some quality work…but it felt like slave labour sometimes…particularly trying to pay off HECS…& the thought of getting a house was way off because you couldn’t get a grant that let you use it as a downpayment.
Was bloody depressing actually…watching skilled tradesmen buying up houses left, right & centre but on my measly wage a curry dinner and a few drinks became the reward for my efforts…tho I did buy a stereo (gotta have me music)…and I reckon the energy & HOPE it swallowed contributed to my early retirement.
After 5 years of being shifted around, just like I was as a lad, it aged me no end. Once I did get a F/T position I never made more than 930 buckeroos a fortnight. And by that time govts. had changed and “Leading Schools” was the buzz term, at the expense of many students. Both govts. gave me a go in various ways & I thank them for that…but in the long run I probably didn’t fit either’s criteria. Politics sucks. So does a “wandering” brain.
I might add, I learnt heaps from my Uni lecturers…some were highly imaginative & inspiring…but i reckon they could’ve explained LESSON PLANS & WORK UNITS better. A teacher who took me under his wing during a prac session or two ensured I learnt some of the missing knowledge. He taught me how to empathise w/ students…& be practical. And I did smile before Easter.
Public sector, private sector…it’s full of individuals. It all depends on who you meet & how they assist you…& if you have the decency to return the favour.
Sure, some educators might have spelling & syntax problems…but they could also be inspiring, compassionate people who CHANGE your life. Albert M. was one of those characters for me. And Jenny. As was Norbert. And Lorna, Deputy Principal. And one super HOD out West who worked her butt off but still could manage time to lend an ear & motivate.
It’s PEOPLE who make the difference…not BARS that are lifted or lowered.
Agreed that TER’s are a symptom rather than a cause of the problem and in the long term you need to raise wages to change it. But it will take many years to see the change, just like its taken quite a few years to reach this point. The teachers who are doing a really good job should be paid a lot more.
One of the problems I have with the current debate generally is that if I’m to believe the teachers unions its impossible to reasonably and fairly measure a teacher’s performance. Which if true, implies it doesn’t really matter who ends up going into teaching because you won’t be able to tell the difference anyway!
I might add, I have a great deal of respect for the Beattie…& now Bligh governments in regard to their approach to education. Far more CENTRIST, fair & balanced…& organised…& providing opportunities for teachers originating from both private & public schools. Half-decent funding. And the pay & conditions are far better than they used to be…providing good opportunities for many new graduates.
Helen @ 62 that’s why we need to pay teachers more rather than lifting the scores required. Fiddling around with the demand for a degree by making it a more attractive career is better than fiddling around with the supply by restricting entry. Ideally, you want all uni degrees to be competitive so the best and brightest get in. To attract the best and brightest to a career you offer good pay and perks. Teaching is crap pay with very few perks. If we want better teachers we need to offer potential teachers more.
As for Qld’s OP scores, they’re bell-curved with a mean score of 13. 1 is the highest, 25 is the lowest and if you’re offering uni courses where you accept the lower half of school leavers you’re going to have a lot of dropouts. The exception to that being if it’s not a particularly challenging course. These sort of factors determine how much your degree is worth to your employer. Someone from USQ with a Physics degree versus someone with a UQ Physics degree being a perfect example.
As for QUT not being a major uni, it is probably the second best uni in the state for a lot of things. Other unis involve USQ (closing numerous departments and axing courses), Central Queensland University (who have got a bad reputation for overcharging foreign students and hiring casual academics with no specialty in the field they’re teaching), Bond, James Cook, University of Canberra’s Brisbane Campus, Southern Cross University, University of the Sunshine Coast and Australian Catholic University (they have decent courses in Nursing, Education and Business but not much else). The only one which could possibly challenge QUT for 2nd place is Griffith for their micro-electronics, Medicine and Law courses.
QUT’s not one of the best in Australia but it’s certainly one of the best in Queensland.
Sam: Like I said – I’m not necessarily arguing on a factual basis, I’m just bitter about my Arts degree.
That said: USQ (closing numerous departments and axing courses) If that’s an argument against USQ, you might want to take another look.
But hey, from a selfish level I can’t complain too much. If they’d kept my reason to stay in Brisbane open, I’d be doing Honours there rather than a Masters at ANU.
“One of the problems I have with the current debate generally is that if I’m to believe the teachers unions its impossible to reasonably and fairly measure a teacher’s performance. Which if true, implies it doesn’t really matter who ends up going into teaching because you won’t be able to tell the difference anyway!”
That’s a really interesting point. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I believe that you can’t take out all of the variables in order to measure the value-addedness of the teacher but your point makes sense. If I believe there are more effective teachers than others on what basis do I make my decision? I must be basing it on something. I have to do more thinking. Thanks for that.
That’s an overly-simplified misrepresentation: the teacher’s unions were criticising various proposed performance assessment models which were to be based purely on student test results but without taking into account which teachers had been assigned high-ability students and which had been assigned less academically able students etc etc. That’s a very reasonable criticism of such an overly simplistic performance rating system.
P.S. that’s without even getting into the whole ball of wax about the value of standardised tests in evaluating the effectiveness of education “delivery” anyway.
marlin said:
I’d be interested to hear what your thoughts are. Commonsense tells me that there must be a difference in teaching effectiveness and I would guess that in most cases peers at least intuitively know who are the really good and bad ones they work with. And many parents know which teachers their child responds to well and which ones they don’t.
tigtog said:
Yes in retrospect it was probably a bit inflammatory. My understanding was that there was just blanket opposition to performance pay because it is impossible to measure performance reasonably and fairly (among some other reasons) – am happy to be corrected if this is not the case! I agree the issue of performance is not straightforward – nor is it simple in many other professions, but people generally just accept that no system is perfect. Can you get a system that gets the measurement correct most of the time?
More generally I would be very interested to hear what they believe would be appropriate ways to measure actual performance (as opposed to just measurements based on training/qualifications or years of service).
Maybe you could get some baseline data fronm the national tests that the students have just sat and see the rate of improvement when they sit them in two years time because they are done in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Or maybe you can estimate what their rate of improvement should be based on averages or something (I don’t really know if that’s possible) and then see if they have made that improvement.
Maybe teachers could do extra training and coaching roles. In some states they are supposed to do that to get the extra pay but it’s really just considered another step on the pay scale and the accountability is less than rigorous.
I know that in America they have to write about their teaching, video a lesson, prepare documentation, get references from supervisors and colleagues.
I believe that something needs to be done because it’s not fair that you get paid the same amount for being a 9-3 teacher and yes they do exist, as the teacher who works extremely hard and gets great outcomes with the students. We can’t keep relying on the goodwill and work ethic of good teachers because eventually it will run out.
Disagree with a lot of what you have said, marlin, but that last paragraph just about nails it. The current system needs a complete overhaul, but where’s the motivation let alone the required goodwill?
Adrien #68
Is droppin’ your Gs a sign of the general deterioration of the education system?
Nah. More a sign that I’m a tosser. I can’t deny the charges.
TicTog -
That’s Tory hypocrisy. Liberals tend to talk about competition etc but they really want a return to the old days were you couldn’t get a degree unless you were in Strangely Brown’s cricket team. Such ‘criteria’ as you allude to is a glaring example of their bullshit. It would be much harder to treat some kid with severe problems how to be functionally literate then to do some faux Dead Poet’s Society schtick at St Leafygreen’s School For Tomorrow’s Oligarchs.
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The ‘performance pay’ thing was an excuse to pay teachers even less perchance? Or maybe just more parliamentary idiocy. It’s hard to tell.
Hi Adrien
In response, I see a lot of confirmation bias in your own pronouncements of teaching. I’ve actually throughout this thread provided a fair bit of current empirical measurement of what is going on in the system, if you’d care to register it. I haven’t cited things as an academic to be sure, but this is a blog thread, and the material I’ve referred to is in the published literature. But you continue to discount that against your anecdotal experience. It’s a pretty normal human tendency to do that, but it s***s me to tears because such perceptions are basically unshiftable. I know I’ll be dealing with them for the entirety of my teaching career, and no amount of contrary evidence will change the perception.
marlin, who works with teachers in need of remediation, can’t be relied to produce anything other than doom ‘n gloom either. I’m currently seeking work in a US school where most of the kids are about 3 years behind in reading age – but I’m not about to suggest that my experience with them relates to the whole country.
The trouble is, people do. They see one little line and generalise and extrapolate, and no amount of contrary data really shifts the perception.
And no, I don’t believe ‘literacy standards are falling’ because a few oldies meet some kids they think are illiterate. I refer you to the NSW Deputy Director General’s remarks of (I think) 1946, who declared in a departmental memo that the matriculating class of that year for the NSW leaving certificate were so woefully inarticulate and ill-equipped with decent literacy standards, that he didn’t see how they would ever amount to anything. Well, that was the generation that worked to build Australia’s post-war prosperity.
Whatever ‘preciousness’ I exhibit arises from the fact that I just spent 4 years in the company of hundreds of young student teachers, all of whom have busted their tails to get into teaching, all of whom when they started in first year seemed to me to be a bunch of clueless wannabees and nearly all of whom had, by the end of fourth year, through the grueling process of prac, study, dozens of assignments, working two jobs and eating two-minute noodles, had somehow magically transformed into fine, competent, knowledgeable, passionate and committed young teachers.
But all this counts for nothing against the wisdom and experience of yours and Marlin’s anecdotes, and all the other Statlers and Waldorfs out there. My ‘preciousness’ arises because when I think of what those young teachers have gone through to get their qualifications, and when I think of all the people who, from the comfort of an established career or semi-retirement, are quite prepared to s**t on them from a great height and declare them to be semi-literate dunderheads before they’ve even had a chance to get into a classroom and demonstrate what they can do – well, yeah, I do think that’s unfair and unethical.
I understand a thing or two about how public perception works from my previous career in marketing, I know that an untruth gets half-way around the world before the truth has got it boots on. All this collective hand-wringing about the terrible trouble that teachers are in just makes it harder for good teachers to do their job, and undermines them in the classroom. But what the hey, I’m whistling into the wind. Everyone says they support good teachers but they still focus all their time and energy and public discussion on ‘the problem’.
Just try this thought experiment: for every assertion you see printed about teachers in this thread, substitute your own profession in place of ‘teacher’. Little closer to home now? Anything strike you as unfair? Little harder to maintain a ‘cool and distant’ demeanour about it?
Marlin @ 79 you then have the problem of teachers teaching to the test to get better pay rather than allowing the tests to indicate which schools need extra resources. Teacher pay and school resources should not be traded off against each other.
Adrien:
Wasn’t that exactly what I was saying? I’ve read your comment over and over and I still don’t know whether you’re agreeing with me or attempting to rebut me. As a general rule I think that should be more easily ascertained from a comment.
Actually, forget the thought experiment. Allow me to demonstrate – here’s a little apocryphal tirade against accountants which I swear is all true anecdotes that happened to me and members of my family.
I’ll use all the rhetorical tricks that are used to discuss teachers. I hope you’ll see that this little spiel has a great deal of what Stephen Colbert calls “truthiness” and yet, somehow, is neither a fair nor accurate portrayal of the profession. And what evidence exactly could you use to counter it?
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Accountants? Don’t talk to me about accountants. The ones we have today aren’t a patch on 30 years ago. Now those were real accountants who understood what accounting’s all about. I wouldn’t trust today’s accountants with my grocery bill. Did you know one of mine mis-filed an ASIC paper and I copped a $900 fine for it? Of course, there’s no use complaining, it’s always somebody else’s fault. The trouble is that the young ones know nothing and the old ones are too burnt out to be any use. They just grumble away about “that’s not my job” and “give me more money”.
But what really worries me is that accountants are the people we entrust to ensure that our businesses are running properly. Our whole society is going to hell in a handbasket because today’s accountants are such a motley bunch of ne’er-do-wells.
They have all these laws that favour them, and then they complain that all the administration and regulations take all their time away from the real work of accounting. Whingers.
And try to find a good one? Forget it! You just have to rely on what your friends tell you about who’s good and who isn’t. Why can’t there be a way to compare them publicly? Rank them from best to worst? Who made how many mistakes on the tax form? Who filed the most papers last year? That way we could really see who’s doing their job properly. But of course, they won’t even agree to such a simple, reasonable performance measure. Because they’re unwilling to really be held to account. Ironic isn’t it?
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“I don’t believe ‘literacy standards are falling’ because a few oldies meet some kids they think are illiterate”
I think this anecdote vs. anecdote again. You could use the PISA as evidence that it probably isn’t true on entry to university. However, it would be very surprising if standards had not declined at the exit — most universities have 50% or so less staff per student than a decade or so ago, and hence students simply get helped less (and probably worse staff too given the decline of relative pay in that sector too). There are also other factors I could mention that making teaching worse at the university level, like more administrivia and complaince tasks (there used to be a nice survey on the DEST site showing how bad it was). There are also political problems due to lack of funding which means very few people get failed in any course (lest they leave, complain, or give you bad teaching marks. Note that no-one wants complaints as they take time to resolve). Its easy to see why at the most coarse level. Lets assume 25:1 staff-student ratios and lets assume each student does 10 assignments each semester (fairly realistic assumptions). This means that each staff member has to mark 250 assignments. If each staff member spent a mere 30 minutes helping each student on each assignment (e.g., showing them what they had done wrong etc.), then that means you would have 125 hours (i.e., three full weeks in 12) of simply helping students learn how to write etc. Given all the other priorities people have — many which come above helping Australian undergraduates (e.g., chasing money from here there and everywhere, doing science etc.) this simply isn’t going to happen. So universities are in a situation where they are not helping poorer students a great deal (some with quite reasonable TER scores) nor failing them or holding them back much (where I work, for example, which isn’t education, the number of people that do a course and meet all the submission requirements that get failed is probably less than 5%. The number of people I consider have serious basic literacy problems is probably around 30-40%. Many students also don’t expect to fail these days (nor for that matter do much work), and are often outraged when they do, and hence you get official complaints, threats, and so on — many people, myself included, find having to why deal with all this more problematic than simply passing people).
Sam @ 85. Fair point.
Mercurius @ 84. I think you’re being a bit tough. You counter my anecdote based on my experiences with your anecdote based on your experiences. I would think your experience as an education student would be at least as biased as mine working with teachers seeking to improve their teaching.
I also don’t think that saying there seems to an increasing proption of new teachers experiencing literacy and numeracy difficulties, perhaps because we are taking more students from lower achievement bands than we used to, is really the same as declaring all new teachers “semi-literate dunderheads”. I know you don’t think I should be allowed to same that because some people could infer that that means all new teachers are hopless but I think you should give people more credit. Once parents see the quality of a good teacher they will be that teacher’s biggest supporter.
“Everyone says they support good teachers but they still focus all their time and energy and public discussion on ‘the problem’.” I think there is more to supporting good teachers than refusing to admit that there are poor teachers and hoping no-one notices.
Mercurius said:
A few points:
- Although not made publicly available, accountants do often have their performance formally measured within the companies that they work which is a basis for their salary increases and performance pay. I don’t believe there is a call for individual teacher assessments (which should be a lot more than just results of standardised tests) to be made public. I think some performance information should be released – eg charities report on how much of the dontations are overhead and how much actually reaches the people they are meant to help.
- Imagine the situation for accountants where the government told you that you weren’t allowed to go to any accountant you wanted, but only those near where you lived?
Sam said:
I don’t see how its possible to really separate the two. The government really only has one bucket of money, even if they split it artificially into different lumps. Teacher pay gets traded off against nursing pay which gets traded off against investment for more public transport which gets traded off against tax cuts.
At some point you need to decide whether paying that extra dollar to attract/retain better teachers is more important than spending money on classrooms, books etc. And I think in most cases these decisions are best made at the school level.