Bernard Keane in today’s Crikey email: Continue reading ‘What’s up with Rudd?’
Tag Archive for 'education revolution'
Introduction by RM: After this rather brief post touching on the introduction of a national curriculum for Australian schools, Susan Zivcec has kindly contributed a piece on some important aspects of that curriculum. Susan is an environmental health and safety consultant, student teacher, and mother of two.
Leading education consultant Brian Caldwell has published an education scorecard based on a five-year study of school reforms from around the world. In this study, the Government’s education revolution scored well on only one criteria – the national curriculum for students in kindergarten to year 12. Whilst there are clearly a range of aspects impacting on education, this article explores the national curriculum and what is it aiming to achieve.
The national curriculum represents a shift in thinking from a “cram it all in & test” model of teaching to one which recognises that it is better to build a deep and comprehensive knowledge of fewer things. The idea is that by focusing on these few well selected “big ideas” we can teach kids how to think critically and make them self-reliant learners…people who will be able to apply their thinking and communication skills in the real world of work, home and university.
Continue reading ‘What’s going on with the National Curriculum?’
The comedy keeps coming from Christian Kerr:
WE not only have the “Education Revolution”. In good Stalinist style, we have the “Building the Education Revolution” plan. We also have a band of doubters and dissidents the authorities have decreed to be counter-revolutionaries.
And in true Stalinist style, these counter-revolutionaries must not just be punished for their thought crimes, but ruthlessly suppressed. Martin Amis used his chilling study of Stalin, Koba the Dread, to talk about the “typhoon of unreason” the tyrant unleased upon his nation.
Is this a new incarnation of Godwin’s law that I wasn’t previously aware of? Or is it just that Julia Gillard has interred 10 millions in death camps and let another 20 million starve to death while my back was turned? Thank heavens Hillary Bray is shining a light into this totalitarian abyss.
Apparently all that stands between us and being worked to death in a labour camp is the unstinting cry of freedom ringing from the Canberra press gallery:
All of Gillard’s huff and puff yesterday simply showed a typhoon of unreason building.
If she lets it grow Gillard will be swept away with the winds.
Whose career do you suppose is going to the gulag sooner? Hillary’s or Julia’s?
A bit of a shoutout to all the teachers out there on the intertubes – we love youse all!
Today is World Teachers’ Day. I’m sure there are very few of us who don’t remember teachers who made significant differences in our lives. It might be a neat way to celebrate to tell some of those stories on this post – you never know, your favourite chalkies might even be reading.
That might also be a useful corrective to the constant attacks in the political realm teachers have to confront – not to mention working conditions which are far from ideal, and having all sorts of social problems heaped on them to solve when no one else will apparently take responsibility. In Mark’s post the other day, discussing “Wicked Problems” in public policy, he mentioned Judith Brett’s consideration of this theme in her article in the current edition of The Monthly. Brett referred to education as one domain where a whole set of inter-related issues meet which make neat objectives like “better schools” almost impossible to achieve through magical policy transformations pollies of all stripes are in the habit of promising. In practice, whatever you think about the schools policy stuff announced by Julia Gillard recently (and I don’t think much of it), you should be able to agree that teachers are only one part of the educational policy mix. But – perhaps because unions are also a convenient can to kick for both conservative and “Third Way” style pols – they tend to get blamed for everything. I’m sure anyone who’s worked in the education game will agree that it’s a really demanding job, and one that takes a degree of commitment beyond most vocations. Let’s recognise that!
Although the AEU has been dismissed as one of the dreaded teachers’ unions by Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, some others have actually been looking at the evidence in the evidence-free policy of the Kevin Rudd “education revolution” narrative. And that’s some clever people who’ve actually been reading an evidence based report.
Because the Rudd Government promised to leave the funding formula unreformed during the next funding quadrennium ending in 2012, McMorrow projects that whereas another four years will see annual grants to the private schools increase by 3 per cent in real terms, real grants to public schools will fall by 2 per cent.
All this will occur while Rudd is pressing schools to publish far more information about their performance and encouraging parents to “walk with their feet” if they don’t like what’s revealed.
The state education bureaucracies and their unions have their own reasons for continuing to resist federal pressure to publish performance indicators. But Rudd is giving them a valid argument that his competition is biased against them.
The MSM is full of reports and commentaries praising Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard for taking on the teacher unions with their proposals for “a new national system of school transparency” based on publication of information and ranking of the performances of schools and those who work in them.
This proposal, and the prospect of a Federal Labor Government beating up on TEH TEACHER UNIONS, has attracted praise from Peter Hartcher, Michelle Grattan, the Opposition Organ and Terry Sweetman.
However, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has a different view. Its Improving School Leadership study finds that the kind of public reporting and ranking of school performance proposed by the Rudd government does not, on the evidence, improve school performances and may even be counterproductive.
Continue reading ‘OECD in league with communist teacher unions’
Club Troppo’s Don Arthur and I started a correspondence by email about some of the issues I raised in my post the other day about neo-liberalism and thinktanks, and the very rapid Blairisation of the Rudd/Gillard agenda (which has certainly become even more evident in the interim with the latest instalment in the “education revolution” and the momentum that some liberal and libertarian bloggers are correct to assume is building up towards vouchers in all forms of education). I don’t want to try to represent Don’s side of the discussion, but I did want to talk about a few things that I put to him, and thank him for the very stimulating opportunity to clarify my thoughts.
One argument that’s often raised by liberals in denying that talk of neoliberalism makes sense is the claim that the state is still large as a percentage of GDP, that Howard did redistribution, and so on. That’s a point that Andrew Norton often makes, in claiming that there’s a degree of social democratic consensus still embodied in the governing practices of the Australian state. John Quiggin has made the same, or a very similar point, from a different political position. There’s some truth in this, but only some. No, Margaret Thatcher didn’t succeed in rolling back the state very far. But expecting her to is to make a false assumption – that the ideological objective only has meaning insofar as it achieves its ostensible aims. What she was actually doing was building up a stronger state in some areas to contain the damage from its withdrawal from some areas. You need a strong state to attack the weak, basically.
Continue reading ‘On the futility of arguing about Hayek, or what’s in a name?’
Kevin Rudd’s address to the National Press Club yesterday (you can read it here) was notable as much for what he didn’t say as for what he did. I’d be very surprised indeed if the expectation that he would spell out a “narrative” wasn’t created by Labor types themselves. It’s not the sort of thing that journos just make up. But with his tick a box recital of what the government had done on education, he’s signalling that he’s not going to play that particular game – pragmatism rather than oratory is his weapon of choice. But like a lot of what Rudd has announced as PM, there’s very little detail to back up his various initiatives in the latest “chapter” of the “education revolution”. That’s ok, though, apparently for a usually sceptical media, because he’s representing himself as taking on the teachers’ unions.
As Bismarck commented on this thread, it’s an old trick. As old as Bill Clinton actually – who first trialled it in Arkansas when he wanted to demonstrate that he wasn’t a “traditional” Democrat. And, as we all know, Arkansas now has a school system that’s the envy of the world (ahem)…
Continue reading ‘Forget political narratives, here’s a media narrative’
The Age: Equality in education is a dying concept (Kenneth Davidson)
The imputation is clear. The Rudd Government education “revolution” involves continuing with the unfair funding arrangements of the Howard government. Why? This can be explained by a simple political calculus, which suggests that the Government has more votes to lose than to gain by a level funding playing field as operates in most OECD countries. This is where private schools receive public funding only on the condition that their total spending per student is no higher than for government school students.
It is not to denigrate government schools to point out that they educate most of the “at risk” students. It is irrefutable that each dollar spent on these schools will generate a much bigger pay-off in economic and social terms than a dollar spent on non-government schools, which are already better resourced than government schools.
Combine this failure to ensure a more level playing field with the fiasco enveloping the plan to give all school kids a computer and the current government’s education policies are looking more shambolic every day. I knew that this centrist government was never going to sort out everything on my progressive wishlist, but I thought they’d do better than this.
Rudd unwhacked
Newspoll came in last night with essentially a status quo result, with both parties one point up on primaries (and the 2PP changing one point down each way to 52-48 because of a measured fall in The Greens’ primary.)
I doubt that Kevin Rudd ever expected the ‘whacking’ in the polls he trumpeted. Rather, this was part of the rhetorical structure of the weekend of apologies – convincing the public that he’d already taken his medicine, and that they should think again about the government’s virtues (which he, and Ministers, have used the sorry-fest to remind everyone of) and think harder about the Coalition. A very similar line has been working wonders for Gordon Brown of late.
In other words, rather than offering the proverbial commentary on the polls, Rudd’s remarks are part of a set piece of political manoeuvring aiming to draw a line in the sand, and to establish a contrast between the government’s new policy announcements (the national curriculum and health) and the opposition’s negativity. That’s potentially quite an effective play when everything we’ve seen of of Abbott et al over the last few weeks has been pure opposition.
Incidentally, I’d repeat the point I’ve made a number of times before – among all sorts of other influences, commentary on the polls has an underlying and perhaps unexamined premise that a Liberal majority is the natural state of affairs. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain the narrative of trouble and crisis when Labor is still comfortably ahead. It’s as if the Coalition ever overtaking Labor spells doom and destruction for the Rudd government. It would not. It’s worth underlining the fact that governments are often behind in the polls, and come back to win elections. John Howard frequently appeared headed for defeat in each electoral cycle after his first win.
Trevor Cook provides a useful reminder another point of comparison – to the Rudd opposition of the late Howard years.
Speaking of which, those who talked about Howard’s comments and policy changes around the time of the Aston by-election in 2001 were making the better comparison than the chorus of ‘Beattie reborn!’ songsters. The difference, of course, is that Howard appeared headed for a genuine whacking in early 2001, while Rudd is sitting pretty.
While we’re talking polls, I’d also recommend a squizzy at Possum’s fascinating tables on the Essential Research questions about the assessment of leaders’ attributes.