I have a gifted child in the local public primary school. Our area is very multicultural, with 94% of students from a NESB, and it’s not a wealthy area (the Geek and I probably have the highest household income in the suburb — he’s a software developer and I’m a librarian). We have a 3-days-a-week teacher to support disturbed children in addition to a 3-days-a-week school counsellor.

In NSW, the principal is responsible for the accommodation gifted students receive (therefore, complaints to the Minister on the topic will invariably fail! I am aware of the problems of this system). But we’ve fallen on our feet. English and Maths are taught in ability groupings, and homework is ability-grouped too. Now I must say that my son is not one of the real outliers of the Terrence Tao kind — this method has been quite successful for the Twig, but would not be adequate for a Profoundly Gifted child.

But what I wanted to point out was that our school has a lovely atmosphere. It is warm, accepting of difference, and bullying is just not an issue. I know that the tone of the school is something that the staff work hard to achieve, but it can be done, and the principal is the driving force. I have seen the firm but loving treatment received by a disturbed child in my son’s class; a few years on you wouldn’t know the kid. And this is happening in a state where, frankly, the lines of communication between Education, DOCS, Health and so on are nowhere near what they should be.

Spana, is your principal letting you down?

However it’s all in the detail and degree. When we say disruptive, are we talking about a kid hitting other kids in the head with a metal ruler, or just being cheeky, breaking a few incidental rules and getting up the nose of an overly-controlling teacher?

We can’t just dump kids out in the ether, and while I agree with Spana to a degree that they should just be left to their devices in the worst cases, there needs to be something- a well resourced, specialist program with teachers trained to do what is, absolutely, part of the teaching job- to send them to.

When I read the apologia from that Principal in Caroline Springs minimising the unbelievably vicious bullying carried out on the blind kid, I find myself baying for blood along with the rest of the Herald Sun readers. The bully who picked on him should be receiving psychiatric treatment right now.

In most areas, it is meaningful and fairly easy to look around and see who is getting the least provision and call that the minimum. At least it would stop us from backsliding.

In LOTE (Languages Other Than English), that is not an option because of the huge number of children currently receiving nothing at all.

We do not have, and will not conceivably have, enough LOTE specialists to provide every child in Australia with one.

Furthermore, even if we could, it would only be investing more in the ‘model of provision” which DEST recognized was “unlikely to succeed regardless of the amount of money invested in it” in 2002.

The model of provision that works in primary schools is for generalist primary teachers to teach young children in frequent short lessons. Our ultimate target languages are too difficult for teachers to deliver in this way, much as calculus is beyond many primary teachers who nevertheless deliver the arithmetic and other bases which allow specialists to teach calculus effectively later.

In a similar way, primary teachers can teach bilingualism and intercultural perspective using a new program “Talking to the Whole Wide World”. Once the children have overcome the ‘monolingual mindset’ identified by Professors Michael Clyne and Joseph Lo Bianco as the principle barrier to Australian multilingualism, they are prepared to make much more efficient use of the scarce supply of quality language specialists in high school.

This is a meaningful offering for all Australian students which also solves the tricky challenge of providing a broad intercultural education along with an uninterrupted cumulative LOTE education, whichever state we’re in.

According to OECD statistics, nominal government spending (both state and federal) on upper secondary education grew by 7.8% in 2002, 8.6% in 2003, 4.4% in 2004, 5.4% in 2005 and 9% in 2006 (the last year for which there is data in the OECD database. These are all well above inflation in those years, so education spending was growing significantly in real terms during that period. For lower secondary, the growth rates are lower, but also well above inflation, and for primary, spending growth, was, on average, similar to that of upper secondary. Note, that over the 8 years from 1998 to 2006, total enrollment at the upper secondary level fell by just over 6%, while total enrollment at the lower secondary level increased by just 3%. So, public funding for public schools increased significantly when calculated on a per pupil basis at a secondary level.

Now, this data includes all types of government education spending (salaries, capital works, etc), so doesn’t give the complete picture, and we know that public funding for non-government schools has increased significantly over that period, but it is simply not true that public schools, on average, have failed to see real spending growth per pupil over the past decade.

It seems unlikely to me (considering the empirical evidence) that the problems in some public schools are primarily due to inadequate aggregate funding.

As for the national curriculum, it would be nice if the IB were more widely available, but that is a qualification suituable for only a small proportion of total secondary students.

Suez, I found your remarks interesting. How confident are you that what is eventually implemented will resemble the learning approach you described? A deeper and more analytical approach to teaching science sounds better than the current approach, but what proportion of science students do you think will be able to grasp what are actually quite difficult and complex ideas? And do you think the current stock of teachers will be equipped to teach those ideas? Thinking back to my own education experience (yes, only an anecdote) I could imagine only a small proportion of the teachers I had being capable of undertaking such a task well.

Also, is a national curriculum required for such a change? It sounds like the sort of thing that could have been implemented at a state level.

The thing that worries me most about a national curriculum is that it separates policymakers and the governments responsible further from students, parents and teachers. I worry that it will the process more bureaucratic and the system less responsive to the needs of the people most affected. Perhaps that concern is misguided.

Overall, I wouldn’t describe the reforms in train a revolution – that was always just a rhetorical device used by Rudd to a) play on the concerns of those that didn’t think the existing system was working well that change was on teh way and b) give the impression that the changes were more fundamental than they in fact are.

Social problems in state schools are growing while schools are underfunded. Go figure.

The problem with your view is that it condemns the majority of decent kids to a mediocre education in an aggresive atmosphere. I don’t know where you teach but in my area aggression, gangs and bullys would run the show if theu were accomodated. I will not have decent kids lives being ruined by bullys and thugs. You would sacrifice the majority to accomodate the thugs. I will not. I believe that a kid attending a rough school in Logan has the right to the same level of respect and education as a kid in Grammar.

As for where they should go, there are a number of issues. I have been involved with the union for campaigning for increased behaviour schools where these kids aggression can be dealt with without ruining other kids lives. So yes, I have been up in arms. I just will never allow bullys to set the agenda and ruin other kids lives. In past societies 13 year olds had vast responsibilities. Excuse making and pandering to thugs just creates immature and foolish young people. Show them some respect and treat them like adults.

Go where exactly?

Again, if you don’t respect your class, there will be no respect in your class. I’ve had students others have said were unteachable that just need to be not spoken down to.

I wouldn’t teach in the private system, let alone send my kids there.

I guess we come from different ends of the spectrum. Probably because I’m young and haven’t been disillusioned yet, but I believe in the transformative and equalising powers of education.

They are not meant to be places where all the problems of society are solved. There are not able to solve serious behaviour problems.

Actually, I’d argue that’s exactly what a large part of the job entails. Who else is going to help these kids? Their parents certainly aren’t. You clearly don’t respect these kids, why should they respect you? If you take the time and effort (something lacking amongst far too many teachers, but that’s what you get for the money) to find out why a kid is chucking chairs, you may be able to do something about it. Kicking them out of the classroom is just palming the problem off onto the rest of the school/society.

School should be about giving everyone the best opportunity to succeed, not instilling a sense of entitlement amongst a select group of elites. We have the rest of society to do that for us.

Jaques, spoken like a libertarian most definitely not as someone with any experience of education departments and the people who actually set curriculum. These are not idiots; these are highly qualified people typically very plugged into the latest research both nationally and internationally.

Education policy enacters are typically dealing with the shitty shitty hands they are dealt with. It’s very easy for us to cast stones, but we should remember that we are an elite, and the bulk of the public does not seem to care for better education at the price of higher taxes. Likewise, calls for an IB system are again putting the needs of the elite above the needs of the majority.

I feel the same about teeth gnashing for gifted kids. I went to a country high school and would have given my eye teeth to go to a specialist high school like Kelvin Grove or Fort St in Sydney. Or even a school that offered ancient history ffs. Frankly, however, it’s not kids like me that need any goddamn help; I was fine, went to university, got reasonably good marks etc. It’s the kids who can’t read, who will be woefully underprepared for either a vocational life with basic skills or the low-end degrees (ironically like education degrees nowadays) that *need* and deserve the help.

Truly, I worry that selective schools do promote education ghettos, particularly in areas like where you teach spana, that are already disadvantaged. I would much prefer extension classes or the like.

Where’s Brian? I would be very very interesting to hear his perspective as someone who I believe has worked on both sides of the fence.

1) Is there necessarily a problem with having trials of innovative curriculum under a nationalised system?

2) Is that sort of thing working well as it is, with the system we have?

2.5) If not, why not?

Again, if we insist on having a system that has as its priority social work and getting everyone through despite their attitude then the top kids will continue to be neglected whilst the thugs and bullies take all the teachers’ time.

ifdef RANT

If they’re lucky, handed a book (or, these days, pointed at Wikipedia) and asked to be quiet.

#endif

Wouldn’t it be good if reducing the size of our underclass was a formal goal of government?

Schools cannot solve the problems of social dysfunction. Yet, too many people want the majority of good kids to have their education ruined by teenagers and parents who simply don’t care less about anyone else. I bet if your own smart child was forced day in day out to sit in a room where chairs were thrown at other students, where smart kids were mocked or where resurces were vandalised you might change your mind. I can safely bet that you would never send your child to the school where I work because you would not want them putting up with these things. So why do you condemn other kids to it? Why do you imply that a teacher’s main job is to cater to the bottom end and ignore the rest or let them teach themselves. No way mate. The well behaved and smart kids deserve better.