In the News for week ending 27 June, 2010

Our In the News feature provides an overview of news stories relating to education over the last week.  We focus particularly on news items referring to significant new developments or reports, issues affecting students with learning difficulties, and issues relating to education more generally.  We hope that this feature will help to keep our members and website visitors informed of current issues in education, and to generate debate and discussion of these issues.  To initiate debate and discussion on news stories listed, comments can be posted on the LDA Discussion Forum.

Complaints roll in over BER scheme
Anthony Klan, The Australian, June 26, 2010
MORE than 100 NSW public school communities filed complaints with the taskforce looking into the $16.2 billion schools stimulus program.
This means a fifth of public primary schools in the state have now lodged official concerns.
Public Schools Principals Forum chairwoman Cheryl McBride met taskforce head Brad Orgill yesterday and delivered 112 complaints on behalf of aggrieved school communities.
Ms McBride said many of those schools had been unaware of the complaints process under the Orgill inquiry.
"Mr Orgill has repeatedly referred to low levels of complaints when talking about the effectiveness of the (Building the Education Revolution) scheme," Ms McBride said. "But many of those schools don't even know how to make a complaint, so it's pretty misleading to be quoting complaint levels."

BER funding freeze the final act after months spent in denial
Natasha Bita, The Australian, June 26, 2010
ONLY hours before telling her boss she wanted his job, Julia Gillard began minding her own business.
In what turned out to be her final act as Education Minister, Gillard froze funding to NSW under her government's partly botched Building the Education Revolution program.
It took Gillard a year to reach the same conclusion that had become bleedingly obvious to the voting public: that taxpayers' money was being wasted. Doggedly, the woman responsible for an ambitious project with nigh-impossible deadlines refused to concede -- let alone fix -- its flaws.
On paper, the concept looked clever. As Australia's economy teetered on the edge of recession, every school in the country would get a makeover. In doing so, $16.2 billion of taxpayer funds would give a shot in the arm to the shaky construction sector. The idea married Gillard's twin obsessions of good-quality education and job security. It 4seemed like a vote-winner: who would dare look a gift horse in the mouth?
But as the menace of recession passed, unquestioning gratitude was overshadowed by pesky questions from school principals, parents and even builders about fairness and value for money.

Inquiry calls for schools stimulus delay
Anthony Klan, The Australian, June 25, 2010
A SENATE inquiry into the $16.2 billion schools stimulus program has called for states to immediately release detailed project costings.
It has also recommended that funding be suspended until after a taskforce reports in August.
The inquiry's interim report into the scheme also recommends that those schools wishing to self-manage projects be provided with funds directly and that federal guidelines be strengthened to ensure value for money is achieved by the federal government for state-run programs.
Four Coalition members, two ALP members and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young made up the seven-person inquiry, with senator Hanson-Young agreeing with "most recommendations" put forward.

BER contractor ordered to fix shoddy school buildings
Anthony Klan, The Australian, June 23, 2010
THE Reed Group building company has been found to have conducted shoddy work on 60 prefabricated school buildings in northern NSW.
This has cast more doubt on the Rudd government's repeated claim that instances of rorting under the school stimulus program are isolated.
A spokeswoman for NSW Education Minister Verity Firth said yesterday the problems related to how The Reed Group had installed the buildings and the company had been instructed to fix the problems "as soon as possible".
"The problems are with defects in prefabricated libraries and classrooms," said spokeswoman Samantha Wills.
"They relate to the installation of the buildings, not to the actual building structure."

Kindy kids to be tracked for mental health
Lanai Vasek, The Australian, June 25, 2010
EVERY kindergarten student currently enrolled in NSW will be tracked for the next 20 years in an attempt to find clues on mental illness.
Using the data, which includes birth and education records, researchers from the University of NSW hope to identify early markers that may be associated with the development of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and other mental and social disorders.
The data is being made available by the Department of Education and the Department of Health for more than 80,000 five-year-olds currently enrolled in NSW. It has been approved by the two major research ethics committees in NSW.
Individual children and schools will not be identified in the study, which if successful may lay the groundwork for an Australia-wide model.
"The study will focus particularly on children's emotion regulation, social behaviour, academic achievement and cognitive function and may eventually help to establish effective early detection and prevention programs," study chair Professor Vaughan Carr told The Weekend Australian.

Minister to placate schools over merger
DAVID ROOD AND JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age,  June 24, 2010
EDUCATION Minister Bronwyn Pike will visit two schools in Melbourne's north tomorrow, which are warring over a proposed $27 million merger due to begin on July 1.
Thomastown Secondary College's school council has withdrawn its support for the amalgamation with Peter Lalor Secondary College because of concerns over a lack of state government funding.
Thomastown's school council also claims it was bullied and intimidated by Energy Minister Peter Batchelor's office over the school merger, despite the state government repeatedly claiming any decision to merge was made by school councils.

And from overseas...

School Is Turned Around, but Cost Gives Pause
Sam Dillon, New York Times, June 24, 2010
LOS ANGELES — As recently as 2008, Locke High School here was one of the nation’s worst failing schools, and drew national attention for its hallway beatings, bathroom rapes and rooftop parties held by gangs. For every student who graduated, four others dropped out.
Now, two years after a charter school group took over, gang violence is sharply down, fewer students are dropping out, and test scores have inched upward. Newly planted olive trees in Locke’s central plaza have helped transform the school’s concrete quadrangle into a place where students congregate and do homework.
 “It’s changed a lot,” said Leslie Maya, a senior. “Before, kids were ditching school, you’d see constant fights, the lunches were nasty, the garden looked disgusting. Now there’s security, the garden looks prettier, the teachers help us more.”
Locke High represents both the opportunities and challenges of the Obama administration’s $3.5 billion effort, financed largely by the economic stimulus bill, to overhaul thousands of the nation’s failing schools.
The school has become a mecca for reformers, partly because the Department of Education Web site hails it as an exemplary turnaround effort.

THE SOURCE OF LAKE WOBEGON
Nonpartisan Education Review, Richard P. Phelps, 2010
 John J. Cannell's late 1980's “Lake Wobegon” reports suggested widespread deliberate educator manipulation of norm-referenced standardized test (NRT) administrations and results, resulting in artificial test score gains. The Cannell studies have been referenced in education research since, but as evidence that high stakes (and not cheating or lax security) cause test score inflation. This article examines that research and Cannell's data for evidence that high stakes cause test score inflation. No such evidence is found. Indeed, the evidence indicates that, if anything, the absence of high stakes is associated with artificial test score gains. The variable most highly correlated with test score inflation is general performance on achievement tests, with traditionally low-performing states exhibiting more test score inflation—on low-stakes norm-referenced tests—than traditionally high-performing states, regardless of whether or not a state also maintains a high-stakes testing program. The unsupported high-stakes-cause-test-score-inflation hypothesis seems to derive from the surreptitious substitution of an antiquated definition of the term “high stakes” and a few studies afflicted with left-out-variable bias.

In the News for week ending 20 June, 2010

A school's closure pushes Braille to the margins
NATALIE CRAIG, The Age, June 20, 2010
REBECCA Maxwell cannot imagine life without Braille. She lost her sight to meningitis as a baby, and at five went to a blind school in Adelaide where she learnt to read with her fingers. By six, the patterns of raised dots transformed in her mind into letters and words. By seven she could read short stories, and, some 60 years later, she is a published author and poet. ''It is how I think, how I express myself, how I go about my daily life,'' Ms Maxwell said. But to her horror, specialist schools, such as the one she attended, no longer exist in Victoria. She fears Braille literacy will decline as a consequence. ''You can't learn Braille unless you are surrounded by it,'' she said. ''The sighted child has print everywhere … it's impossible to learn to read properly unless you are immersed.'' In December, Vision Australia closed its Burwood Education Centre, Victoria's only school for blind students, where Braille was lingua franca. The Vision Australia board reasoned the students were better off in mainstream schools.

Stimulus not delivering value to every school
JESSICA MAHAR, Sydney Morning Herald, June 19, 2010
THE two primary schools are neighbours in Sydney's west, but that's where the similarities end. Both were allocated several million dollars through the federal government's Building the Education Revolution program, but the private school's ability to manage the projects appears to have paid handsome dividends. The public school spent about $2.8 million constructing four classrooms and refurbishing five other classrooms. At the private school, $3 million was spent on a new hall with stage, a covered outdoor learning area, a toilet block, two special learning areas, a multipurpose library including a soundproof room, a storage area, a staffroom, storage sheds, rainwater tanks, solar panels and an interactive whiteboard. Yesterday the NSW upper house inquiry into the program heard this was not an isolated case. There were other examples where cost blowouts, value for money and discrepancies between what schools wanted and what they got had become an issue. The head of the taskforce investigating the program across the country, Brad Orgill, said that fewer than 1 per cent of schools had complained.

BER is a success, inquiry chief Brad Orgill says
Anthony Klan, The Australian, June 19, 2010
THE head of the $14 million taskforce into the schools stimulus program yesterday defended the scheme as a success. Speaking a month before he delivers his report to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Brad Orgill said the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution program had delivered schools value for money "in many cases". Speaking at a NSW upper house inquiry, Mr Orgill spoke of the positive attributes of the scheme such as job creation and the stimulus boost, which have been pushed by the federal government. "I personally think the scheme has clearly delivered significant stimulus, and that was a key plank in the design and creation of the program," he said. The BER taskforce began investigating the scheme six weeks ago at the request of Ms Gillard, who is also Education Minister. Its first report will be delivered in August.
Mr Orgill said he had spoken to many schools who were delighted with the scheme. "We hear a lot about the jobs that have been created as a result," he said. "In many cases it has clearly been successful in delivering value for money. Has it delivered value for money in every case? No, I doubt that." Mr Orgill did not say why NSW public schools are paying roughly double for BER school buildings compared with Catholic and independent schools.

Putting furniture costs on the table
Justine Ferrari , The Australian, June 18, 2010
VICTORIA'S Education Department is handing grants to schools to furnish facilities built under the federal government's Building the Education Revolution -- despite the commonwealth's claim that furniture inclusions contributed to the vast difference in costs between projects in government and non-government schools.  The grants range from $3500 for a small school hall to almost $55,000 for the biggest library. Building costs under the BER are on average almost twice as high in public schools as in non-government schools, based on projects in NSW, which is the only state to publish a breakdown for every school building. Federal Education Department officials told a Senate estimates hearing two weeks ago that the difference in costs between government and Catholic school buildings was because of the different inclusions in the budget, notably fittings and furniture. This prompted the opposition to observe that even furnishing schools with antiques would not account for the discrepancy. It follows a similar argument made by the NSW Education Department to the Senate inquiry into the primary schools building program, when director-general Michael Coutts-Trotter said public school buildings were constructed to a higher standard and the budget included fittings and furnishings. It is a claim that has been repeatedly rejected by the Catholic sector, which says all its buildings are of "high quality" and its budgets include all construction and non-construction costs, from the fittings, furniture and equipment, to the architect and council fees, to the landscaping and carpark.

Kilvington 'boy bombshell' stuns school parents
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, June 18, 2010
THE bombshell arrived in an express post envelope on Wednesday. After 87 years of educating girls, Kilvington Girls Grammar in Ormond wrote to parents this week informing them it had made the ''historic decision'' to enrol boys at the school. ''It was certainly a surprise - there was no hint of it happening,'' said Alan Shanks, whose daughter Millie is in prep. ''It was a well-kept secret.''
The Shanks family were overjoyed by the letter, and within 24 hours their three-year-old son Harry became the first boy to be enrolled.

$600 million kindergarten shortfall
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, June 17, 2010
VICTORIAN children could miss out on kindergarten unless at least 600 new preschools are built within three years, with an audit revealing a $606 million funding shortfall. Councils have warned of waiting-list lockouts and fee increases following the introduction of an extra five hours a week of kindergarten for every four-year-old from 2013. The Municipal Association of Victoria says the state would need about 50 per cent more kindergartens and an additional 400 trained staff to meet the new state and federal government policy. From 2013, every four-year-old will be entitled to 15 hours a week kindergarten - up from the current 10 hours. But association president Bill McArthur said councils and community groups could not magically create 50 per cent more facilities within the next three years and children could miss out on kindergarten places.

School skills reflected in wages
Stephen Lunn, The Australian June 16, 2010
PARENTS should embrace the Rudd government's focus on children's reading, writing and maths testing after a new study found they lead to significantly higher incomes. But while both literacy and numeracy have a positive impact on female wages, only numeracy affects the level of men's earnings, the study reveals. Melbourne Institute researcher Roger Wilkins finds the difference between very poor and excellent literacy for women is associated with a 14 per cent increase in hourly earnings, while for numeracy it means an extra 15 per cent in the average female paypacket. "For males, no significant impact of literacy is evident," associate professor Wilkins finds. "(However) moving from very poor to excellent numeracy is associated with an approximate increase in the hourly (male) wage of 39 per cent." The report, based on data drawn from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey that has run for nine years, notes that overall, literacy and numeracy levels have less of an impact on women's wages than men's. "Both literacy and numeracy have an important effect on female wage levels, however it appears only numeracy matters for male wages," Professor Wilkins said. "The strong effects on earnings that we found were in addition to the positive effects of educational qualifications.
"Since better literacy and numeracy make it more likely a person will stay in school and go on to further study, they could also have indirect effects on earnings." Professor Wilkins said the findings validated the government's emphasis on literacy and numeracy programs and testing.
"The study clearly adds support to the government's current focus on improving literacy and numeracy in the community, for example with the introduction of the NAPLAN tests."

History program 'dated'
DAN HARRISON, The Age, June 16, 2010
HISTORY teachers say terrorism, popular culture, technology and globalisation should be included in the national curriculum to make the subject more interesting and relevant to students.
The History Teachers' Association of Australia has criticised the proposed history subjects for years 11 and 12 as too conservative, repetitive and dated. ''It has been suggested that there has been a missed opportunity in terms of creating exciting new courses for the 21st century,'' the association's president, Paul Kiem, wrote in a submission to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which is responsible for the curriculum.

Girls and maths can add up, with the right support
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, June 16, 2010
TRUE or false: boys perform better at maths because of a maths-suppressant hormone that only affects girls after puberty? Total bollocks of course, but it's one of the zanier explanations education expert Judith Gill has heard over the years as to why boys continue to outperform girls in maths. ''That was the most outrageous hypotheses of all - untested and untestable,'' says Dr Gill, an associate professor at the University of South Australia. The issue of whether boys and girls learn differently because they have different brain structures is one that has preoccupied educators for years. But Dr Gill says many theories - including the old chestnut that girls use both sides of their brain to learn because the corpus callosum, which links the two hemispheres, is larger in females - have been ''pretty much debunked''. Dr Gill, who will be a guest speaker at a national conference on girls' education starting in Melbourne today, will controversially argue it has never been convincingly demonstrated that boys learn differently to girls.

Special needs school wins brief reprieve
LOUISE HALL, Sydney Morning Herald, June 16, 2010
THE only school in Australia that supports children from rural and remote areas with severe learning disorders has won another reprieve and will continue its specialised residential program until the end of the year. The surprise announcement by the Minister for Education, Verity Firth, yesterday means dozens more children with complex reading difficulties will benefit from the literacy and language programs run by the Dalwood Assessment Centre and Palm Avenue School.
The reinstatement of the program in which year 6 students live on campus with a team of teachers, psychologists and speech pathologists is a win for the Isolated Children's Parents' Association, which have been lobbying Ms Firth and the Premier, Kristina Keneally. In December - her first month in office - Ms Keneally intervened after the Herald publicised the decision of health and education bureaucrats to close the school, then at Seaforth, without a replacement service. The school was temporarily reopened at the Royal Far West School in Manly for the first two terms this year.

Unions pressure Brumby on school funding
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, June 15, 2010
THE Brumby government will come under intense pressure to increase spending on schools with the launch of a $1 million union campaign linking the drift to private schools to a lack of investment in public education. The Australian Education Union says Victoria spends less per state school student than any state or territory - $1151 per student below the Australian average. It will today call for student funding to be increased to at least the national average by 2012, in an election-year campaign that is likely to be politically damaging for Labor.

Prepare students for life, not rankings
ANNA PATTY, Sydney Morning Herald, June 14, 2010
The new head of a NSW high school principals' group says a positive approach is key, writes Anna Patty.  At the height of the teacher revolt against delivery of the national literacy and numeracy tests last month, things started turning ugly for school principals. Christine Cawsey, the principal of Rooty Hill High School, was among principals who were standing firm behind teachers in a planned boycott of the NAPLAN tests. The principals, who ordinarily shy away from the mere whiff of industrial action, were in a solid professional alliance with teachers. The protest was against the use of results from the diagnostic tests to compare the performance of schools on the federal government's My School website and in school league tables published by newspapers, including the Herald.

Let the principals take charge
JIM MCALPINE, Sydney Morning Herald, June 14, 2010
Jim McAlpine has taught teachers, principals and pupils many things - but he has learnt a few things himself, too.
Twenty years and thousands of teachers, parents, principals, educators and bureaucrats. So what have I learnt? I have learnt that the greater the authority given to a principal (or the greater the authority taken by a principal), the more likely a school will flourish, the students will improve their learning and attitude to school, staff will feel more valued and take on extra tasks for the students, and the community will have a much greater sense of ownership of their school and support it. These are self-evident truths and didn't take a great deal of learning on my part.
I have also learnt that there are powerful forces that might articulate the desire for greater principal authority but which work strongly against it. These forces are political, bureaucratic and industrial. Let's take the NSW Teachers Federation. You would expect that it would represent the interests of members who are also principals, but I found out two years ago during a dispute over the staffing of schools that there was strong hostility to the concept of principals being given a greater say. My union is strongly centralised and bureaucratic so it certainly doesn't support greater principal authority, even though it says it supports all of its members. That said, the federation is now friends with me again as a result of the principled stand principals took over the misuse of student data on the My School website.

Daycare fee increases to send children home
Rachel Browne, Sydney Morning Herald, June 13, 2010
THE families of more than 500,000 children in long-daycare centres could face fee increases of up to $120 a week under federal government changes, starting from next month. The reforms are aimed at improving early childhood education but may actually make it unaffordable for thousands of those families. Long-daycare centres - the largest provider of preschool services in NSW - are expected to increase fees by up to $24 a day to meet requirements under the government's National Quality Framework. About 45,000 families in NSW will be affected by the increases. Childcare NSW president Lyn Connolly, representing 80 per cent of long-daycare centres, said disadvantaged children would be worst hit: ''Potentially thousands of children will miss out on any form of early childhood education. The government has said fees will only go up by $4 to $6 a day but we estimate they will go up by $14 to $24 a day. ''Children from lower socio-economic areas do not have a hope in Hades of getting in. Those children will be at home all day, probably spending half the day in front of the television, because their parents can't afford to get them into an early learning program.''

Few children and even fewer resources in remote NT schools
Lex Hall, The Australian, June 12, 2010 

IN the remote central Australian town of Yuendumu, a generation of teenagers is at risk of missing out on an education. Barely half the community's school-age children are attending classes -- a situation mirrored across the Northern Territory, where literacy and numeracy rates are among the nation's worst.  While there is a united front to stamp out absenteeism, there are divisions over the path to take. As education officials negotiate cultural factors to convince parents to send their children to school, other education experts say the facilities are not in place to provide for them. Listed as a Territory "growth town" or future economic hub, Yuendumu, 300km northwest of Alice Springs, is home to about 1000 people. Just over 10 per cent are high-school aged children. But it is a transient population and, according to the MySchool website, there are 118 full-time students enrolled at the school, 52 in years 7 to 12, with an attendance rate of 56 per cent. With English as a second language for almost all students, the school's literacy and numeracy results across years 3, 5 and 7 are "substantially below" the national average. Andrew White, executive director of not-for-profit consultancy Education Transformations, estimates up to 7000 of the Northern Territory's 20,000 school-aged children do not attend school. "We know that 80 per cent attendance is the minimum to get any outcome," Mr White said.

And from overseas...

The UK Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove’s speech to the National College’s Annual Conference, Birmingham, 17 June 2010
“...We know, from Leon Feinstein’s work, that low ability children from rich families overtake high ability children from poor families during primary school.
And the gap grows as the children get older. A child eligible to free school meals is half as likely to achieve five or more GSCEs at grade A*–C, including English and maths, than a child from a wealthier background. By 18 the gap is vast. In the most recent year for which we have data, out of 80,000 young people eligible for free school meals, just 45 made it to Oxbridge. That’s fewer than some private schools manage by themselves. We are clearly, as a nation, still wasting talent on a scale which is scandalous. It is a moral failure, an affront against social justice which we have to put right.”

There's No Such Thing as a Reading Test
Real literacy involves learning about the world, not just letters and sounds.
E.D. Hirsch  and Robert Pondiscio, June 13, 2010
It is among the most common of nightmares. You dream of taking a test for which you are completely unprepared -- you've never studied the material or even attended the course. For millions of American schoolchildren, it is a nightmare from which they cannot wake, a trial visited upon them each year when the law requires them to take reading tests with little preparation. Sure, formally preparing for reading tests has become more than just a ritual for schools. It is practically their raison d'etre! Yet students are not prepared in the way they need to be.  Schools and teachers may indeed be making a Herculean effort to raise reading scores, but these efforts do little to improve reading achievement and to prepare children for college, a career, and a lifetime of productive, engaged citizenship. This wasted effort is not because our teachers are lazy or of low quality. Rather, too many of our schools labor under fundamental misconceptions about reading comprehension -- how it works, how to improve it, and how to test it.

In the News for week ending 13 June, 2010

Critical shortages in inner-city schools as population swells
NATALIE CRAIG, The Age, June 13, 2010
MELBOURNE'S population boom is causing a critical shortage of schools in the inner suburbs, with research showing an urgent need for as many as 14 new schools in the next five years.
Research commissioned by The Sunday Age reveals the state government's delay in building new schools in inner suburbs could lead to sudden overcrowding, with more than 4000 additional primary school-aged students expected to be jostling for desk space in 2016.
That's enough students to create 164 extra classes of 25 students each.

Principals 'face sack' over test results
DAN HARRISON, The Age, June 11, 2010
PRINCIPALS have been threatened with the sack if their school's results in national tests don't improve, according to the Australian Primary Principals Association.
And the association says year 3 and 5 teachers have found the stress associated with the tests so great that they have even requested a change of year level.
A report by the association detailing the unintended consequences of the national literacy and numeracy tests and the My School website also claims that the pressure to improve scores is leading to unethical behaviour by teachers, principals and education bureaucrats, and anxiety among students.
The association issued its report as the nation's education ministers' meeting in Perth endorsed several changes to the controversial website, which allows parents to compare the test results of Australia's almost 10,000 schools.

Plug pulled on students' virtual chatroom
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, June 10, 2010
THE Education Department has been forced to scrap part of its $77 million virtual-classroom project after the Privacy Commissioner raised concerns about children chatting on Facebook-style pages.
The ultranet - an online network that will give parents round-the-clock access to their children's lessons, homework, results and attendance - will be rolled out in every state school in Victoria by September.
But the department has ditched plans for every student to have a so-called ''eXpress landing page'', which would have allowed them to chat via Facebook-style message walls.
Students also will no longer be able to have ''learning contacts'' - similar to friends on Facebook - access their personal profiles on the ultranet.
The Age believes there were fears this could lead to social exclusion.

Call to tighten exam security
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, June 10, 2010
EXAM rules should be reviewed to prevent Victorian Certificate of Education students cheating by using mobile phones and other electronic devices, according to the acting Victorian Auditor-General.
An audit into the VCE also recommended strengthening security through surprise visits to schools while exams are being held and at companies where exam papers are printed.
Eighty-seven Victorian students were investigated after last year's exams but there were only nine proven cases of cheating. Of the students who cheated, at least three had their grades reduced after they were caught trying to use mobile phones to access exam answers on the internet.
The audit said the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority had identified that exam breaches involving the unauthorised use of electronic devices had increased from 35 per cent in 2008 to 40 per cent last year.
''The VCAA should continue to actively review and update its exam rules in light of any potential risks caused by new and emerging technologies,'' acting Auditor-General Peter Frost said in his report.

Library that lets kids know they matter
Justine Ferrari, The Australian, 10 June 2010
WITH a $2.5 million grant from the Building the Education Revolution scheme, a primary school in Melbourne has built the library of its dreams.
The old library at Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception School in Sunshine dated back to 1919, with shelves of books at one end and with only one computer for every two students.
The newly built library, officially opened yesterday, is a two-storey, architect-designed building about five times the size of the library it replaces, with different types of learning spaces as well as an auditorium with tiered seating for 120 students, and state-of-the-art computers and technology.
Principal Peter Moore believes his school has achieved what the federal government intended when it announced the BER: an "iconic" school building that will inspire students and staff. Without the BER money, Mr Moore said, the school would never have been able to build such a library.
"It made our dreams into a reality," he said. "Our children are so excited; one of the children when he came into the library for the first time burst into tears, he was so overwhelmed with the enormity of what was before him.
"The government is giving the children a very clear message that they matter, and the children now have the evidence.
"It's easy to be told you matter but they can go to school now and they know they matter."
While government schools struggle with inflexible bureaucracies and template buildings constructed at inflated costs, Mr Moore and his staff worked with an architect to design a library that not only improves the educational experience for students but also looks inspiring.

Young face tougher school tests
BETHANY HIATT EDUCATION EDITOR, The West Australian 9 June 2010
Students as young as eight will have to write a persuasive essay instead of a story in the writing section of national literacy and numeracy tests next year.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority told schools across Australia yesterday that the writing task would change to the persuasive form.
Until now, Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 students who sat the annual National Assessment Plan Literacy and Numeracy tests were given the same prompt and asked to use that as the basis of a story. Students who took the tests last month had 40 minutes to write a story in response to the phrase: What a mess!
In the new test, they will be given a topic such as "Reading books is better than watching TV" and will have to convince a reader of their opinions.
Students will be expected to include an introduction, opinions backed up by evidence and a conclusion. They will be asked to think about whether they agree or disagree or see both sides of the argument.

Coalition wants standards exemption for Go8
Justine Ferrari and Andrew Trounson, The Australian, June 09, 2010
THE Coalition is proposing to exempt the elite Group of Eight universities from the new tertiary education regulator.
Although the move is likely to anger the rest of the country's universities, opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne told the HES he was concerned the new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency would just add red tape.
He said it was an "unnecessary imposition" on universities already ranked among the Times Higher Education top 100.
The Go8 institutions are the only Australian universities in the global top 100.
"There are 38 universities in Australia and some are better than others," Mr Pyne said. "But if you're in the top 100 in the world, to be expected to be subject to faceless Canberra bureaucrats for your standards and qualifications is, quite frankly, offensive."

Schools express curriculum concerns
ABC, 8 June 2010
Canberra schools taking part in a trial of the draft national curriculum have put forward their views about its implementation.
The trial started in March and involves the curriculums for english, maths, science and history.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) is visiting ACT schools this week to obtain feedback.
ACARA staff will hold a forum in Canberra where they will talk with city and rural teachers and principals from schools that are currently road testing parts of the draft national curriculum.
More than 150 schools from across the country are taking part in the trial.
"This feedback is intrinsic to our understanding of how the new Australian Curriculum works, of its strengths and what needs to be changed," said Dr Peter Hill, chief executive officer of ACARA.

Privately run school rankings site riles union
ABC, 8 June 2010
The Australian Education Union wants another website publishing school rankings based on NAPLAN test results to be closed down.
In February the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) ordered the closure of a similar site that charged for written reports.
The union's South Australian president, Correna Haythorpe, says its federal executive will tomorrow discuss the latest Better Education website, which is funded by advertising.
"We don't believe there's any difference between a website that sells a list of league tables as opposed to one that offers it for free and has private advertising on the website," she said.
"We have an opportunity through the Senate inquiry that is now happening at a federal level, but also with ACARA about this particular website and we'll be raising those concerns there."

Funding gap forces private kinders to increase fees
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, 8 June, 2010
PRIVATE schools are being forced to increase fees for kindergarten children because they receive less state government funding than for-profit childcare centres.
Although the Victorian government funds 10 hours of kindergarten a week for every four-year-old, independent schools receive up to $1393 less per child than childcare centres or government preschools.
Independent Schools Victoria says the funding disparity means early learning centres attached to private schools are being forced to increase fees.
''We feel it's very unfair,'' said Independent Schools Victoria's early years ambassador Evelyn Sayers. ''It seems strange that a childcare centre set up to make money gets more funding from the state government than a not-for-profit independent school.''
About 100 independent schools provide more than 5800 kindergarten places across Victoria. But Ms Sayers said that, under the ''anachronistic'' state government funding model, independent schools were only entitled to between $350 and $1136 per four-year-old child, while childcare centres and government preschools received $1743.
''The government has deemed the universal access of 15 hours of kindergarten per week to be critical, but they do not see that the funding model should be applied in a way that takes equity into account,'' she said.

No to bonus pay
CANDICE KELLER, EDUCATION REPORTER, The Advertiser, 8 June, 2010
PERFORMANCE-PAY schemes will not improve teacher quality but instead have a "perverse effect" on the workforce, a leading sociologist says.
Professor Raewyn Connell, of the University of Sydney, said the idea of rewarding high-performing teachers with pay bonuses was archaic and could be "catastrophic" for the education system.
She also said the measures of performance - such as national literacy and numeracy test results - were not appropriate and teachers should instead be encouraged to be innovative and passionate in their profession.
The teachers' union agreed that performance-pay schemes "pitted teachers against one another" and overlooked different forms of achievement in the classroom.
A teacher rewards program is currently being trialled by the Victorian Government, with bonuses of up to $6000 available to teachers annually.
The scheme has been backed by the Business Council of Australia and Australian Council for Educational Research which presented a paper on the issue to the Federal Government in 2008.

Marketing, results shifting education focus away from students
CANDICE KELLER , The Advertiser, June 07, 2010
PUBLIC schools are being run like commercial firms in a stock market and are trying to attract top students at the expense of improving broad education, a leading sociologist warns.
Professor Raewyn Connell, a social change researcher and author, has blamed the My School website for a shift in resources towards the marketing and branding of taxpayer-funded schools.
Other education experts have backed the comments and warn school leaders could soon seek to enrol only high-performing students to ensure their school was considered a successful business.
The Federal Government has created a "powerfully negative" regime, particularly through its controversial National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests, Professor Connell told The Advertiser.
South Australian Primary Principals Association president Steve Portlock said yesterday government schools were under greater pressure to better manage students and compete for enrolments.

Elitist school system threat to education
Editorial, The Advertiser, 7 June 07 2010
LIKE any stable, progressive and prosperous democracy, Australia has been well served by its education system. The school system educates all Australians in the values we hold dear, preparing us to be valuable members of society and the workforce.
The educational structure must be flexible and not just for the extremely talented, rich or motivated.
A school system which properly reflects the nation allows the exceptional to excel, but also caters for the child who is an eccentric but talented artist, the child prodigy who is of concert pianist standard but has no interest in maths, or the troubled teen in danger of dropping out.
The school system is one area in which the sole application of free market forces will not produce the best outcome.
It is worrying then that University of Sydney Professor Raewyn Connell has warned the priorities of the education system are becoming like a "stock market" in which public schools are like businesses and principals are acting like "small businessmen".
Professor Connell warns the attraction and promotion of only those considered the best and brightest, only those who can deliver outcomes for their school, will damage the education system for decades to come.

Time to scrap School Certificate, says Kings School head
ANNA PATTY EDUCATION EDITOR, Sydney Morning Herald, June 7, 2010
SCHOOL communities should take control of the year 10 curriculum and the School Certificate should be scrapped, says the headmaster of The Kings School at Parramatta.
Tim Hawkes believes the year 10 School Certificate has become irrelevant. Instead of an exam at the end of year 10, students could prepare their personal resumé with the help of teachers. NSW is the only state to have exams at the end of year 10 and the NAPLAN tests in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have rendered them excessive, he says.

Actor bribed to improve reading
Herald Sun, June 07, 2010 
SEXY Aussie model Miranda Kerr's boyfriend Orlando Bloom has opened up about his battle with dyslexia.
"It's still an ongoing struggle," Bloom told guests at the Child Mind Institute in New York.
"I have more trouble studying scripts and memorising lines than most (other actors)."
As a supportive Kerr looked on, Bloom said his mother used all sorts of temptations to try to get him to read.
"My mom used to tell me, 'If you read 50 books, I'll get you a motorbike'," he said. "So it inspired me to read a lot and work through (my dyslexia). But I never quite got to 50. And I never got that motorbike."

Disadvantage is a start, not an end point
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, Sydney Morning Herald, June 7, 2010
THE first thing you see on the classroom doors at St Albans Secondary College is a sign that barks: ''It's not OK to be away: 90% attendance - no less.''
There are also coloured posters with aphorisms such as, ''Attitude is all'' and ''Triumph over the conditions''.
Life can be tough in Melbourne's north-western suburbs. The median weekly income in St Albans is just $274, compared with the national figure of $466, according to the most recent census, and many residents are from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
But for St Albans Secondary College's principal, Kerrie Dowsley, disadvantage is a starting point not an end point. ''We don't make excuses based on that,'' she says. ''Sometimes you can fall into the trap of saying our students can't do this based on [their low socio-economic background] or any other factor, but we don't do that. We simply say, this is a factor, but it is not going to be a limitation.''

Man of his people
MIRANDA DEVINE, WA Today, June 6, 2010
THOSE who know Noel Pearson well see traces of the ebullient child he once was in his five-year-old son, Charlie. On a two-day trip to Cape York from Cairns last week, Charlie Pearson sings sweetly to himself, draws elaborate pictures of solar systems, counts aloud and tells rollicking stories about dinosaurs and crocodiles to the adults around him, constantly good-natured about the attention they are not giving him but assertive enough to ensure his busy father cannot ignore him.
This tiny ball of energetic enterprise finally falls asleep after a lasagne dinner at the home of the principal of Aurukun school, his curly gold-flecked head on his dad's lap as the adults talk.
Pearson, 45 this month, says he ''put off the idea of children'' for a long time, ''and I regret it sincerely''.
Now the Cape York Aboriginal leader has Charlie, whose Aboriginal name is Ngulunhthul, and a daughter, three-year-old Melita, aka Mijili, who stayed home with her mother Tracey in Cairns last week.
''Having kids heightens your anxiety about the fate of children, because I just can't bear the thought that children who are not mine, not all of them are guaranteed safety and a future and all those things that I insist on my children having."

And from overseas...

Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Tests
TRIP GABRIEL, New York Times, June 10, 2010
The staff of Normandy Crossing Elementary School outside Houston eagerly awaited the results of state achievement tests this spring. For the principal and assistant principal, high scores could buoy their careers at a time when success is increasingly measured by such tests. For fifth-grade math and science teachers, the rewards were more tangible: a bonus of $2,850.
But when the results came back, some seemed too good to be true. Indeed, after an investigation by the Galena Park Independent School District, the principal, assistant principal and three teachers resigned May 24 in a scandal over test tampering.
The district said the educators had distributed a detailed study guide after stealing a look at the state science test by “tubing” it — squeezing a test booklet, without breaking its paper seal, to form an open tube so that questions inside could be seen and used in the guide. The district invalidated students’ scores.
Of all the forms of academic cheating, none may be as startling as educators tampering with children’s standardized tests. But investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing ratchet higher — including, most recently, taking student progress on tests into consideration in teachers’ performance reviews.

Scoring Low, More Pupils Face School This Summer
By JENNIFER MEDINA, New York Times, June 10, 2010
An estimated 21,000 elementary and middle school students scored at the lowest levels on state math and reading exams, New York City education officials said Thursday, meaning that twice as many students in those schools as last year will be required to enroll in summer school.
Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s policy of ending so-called social promotion, students who score at the lowest levels of the state English and math tests must go to summer school or be held back. Official results from the tests, which are administered by the state, will not be released until the end of July, but with the end of the school year near, the city is using preliminary results to determine who should enroll in summer school.
Last year, the number of students passing the exams — meaning they achieved a Level 3, with Level 4 the highest — skyrocketed, and a relative few, less than 5 percent, scored at Level 1, the lowest. But the tests were widely criticized as being too easy, and state officials vowed to make them less predictable.

In the News for week ending 6 June, 2010

Syllabus confused on place of phonics
Justine Ferrari, The Australian, June 07, 2010
THE place in the national curriculum for teaching letter-sound relationships to students learning to read is "submerged in a sea of competing strategies" that confuses teachers and students, say leading researchers.
In a submission on the national English curriculum, some of the nation's most respected scientists in reading research are concerned that while the requirement to teach phonics is included in the curriculum, it fails to clearly state the best way to teach it as shown by research.
The submission says the curriculum "makes reference" to sound-letter correspondences but it lacks a statement clearly specifying that all sound-letter correspondences be taught intensively and systematically. It also fails to specify the teaching of the skills of blending sounds for reading and of segmenting sounds for spelling, and that decoding skills be taught "to the level of fluency".
The signatories to the submission include Macquarie University professors Max Coltheart and Kevin Wheldall, who developed MULTILIT (Making Up for Lost Time In Literacy), a phonics-based remedial reading program that is being trialled in NSW schools this year. It is the first direct comparison in Australia between phonics-based and other teaching strategies for reading.
The submission argues that the curriculum continues to give emphasis to a discredited system for teaching reading, known as the three cues, which includes phonics as one part, but not the first step, in reading, alongside the syntax of the sentence and the shape of the word.
"The three-cueing system is a seriously flawed conception of the processes involved in skilled reading, and the practices flowing from its misconception may have contributed to the problems experienced by an unacceptably large number of students," the submission says.
"The Australian curriculum is unclear about which skills are crucial in learning to read. This leads to confusion between the processes involved in learning to read (decoding text) and the processes involved in understanding what has been read."
The dominant strategy for teaching reading in Australia since the late 1970s has been the "whole language" approach, which assumed children learned to read in the same way they learned to speak through exposure to books and reading.
Its proponents contend that children were taught to look at the picture on the page, the shape of the word, the initial letter and guess the word given its place in the sentence.
The submission quotes British studies of eye movement and brain research that have shown that, when reading takes place, decoding or sounding out always takes place before the understanding of words or sentences.

Hear, hear: librarian puts the 'i' in reading
ALICIA WOOD, Sydney Morning Herald, June 6, 2010
INSTEAD of turning pages, students at Our Lady of the Rosary Primary School at Fairfield are using MP3 players for the Premier's Reading Challenge.
Students at the Sydney school who struggle with reading are given the option to listen to audiobooks as a way to improve their literacy.
Librarian Janette Herok said audiobooks would not replace the real thing: ''Using an iPod motivates students and gets them into the story. They can then improve and get up to a higher level of reading. Some children don't see themselves as readers but this gives them a chance to experience books.''

Private school waiting lists bring in millions of dollars
The Sunday Mail (Qld), June 06, 2010
TOP private schools are sitting on millions of dollars' worth of non-refundable application fees as anxious parents sign up for multiple schools.
Some schools charge as much as $440 to put a child's name on the waiting list.
And to secure a place it can cost up to $1600 – that's before annual fees of up to $17,000 are paid.
But some in-demand schools say the worry is unnecessary.
Brisbane Girls Grammar communications manager Mary Bishop said parents did not need to put their daughter's name down from birth. "The school has the capacity to intake 234 students per major entry year," Ms Bishop said.
St Joseph's Gregory Terrace charges a $165 fee and receives about 550 applications each year – about $90,750.

Lost generation finds new pride
Miranda Devine, Sydney Morning Herald, June 5, 2010
When the Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson was in year 5 at Hopevale primary school, in the mid-1970s, a fill-in teacher arrived to take his class. She was an older woman, but he can't remember her name. He can remember names of more charismatic teachers.
He just remembers a "long, torrid" year with this nameless teacher, who had once taught high-school English and who drilled the children in literacy so intensively it felt ''like doing football practice day in and day out''.
That was the year of his "literacy breakthrough", he remembers, and when he went away to boarding school in Brisbane at the Lutheran St Peter's, he outshone most of his contemporaries in English. He continued to do so at Sydney University where he took his history and law degrees.

School stadium a $200,000 'shed'
JEWEL TOPSFIELD, The Age, June 2, 2010
A $200,000 basketball stadium built at Black Rock Primary School under the federal stimulus program does not comply with building regulations and is unsafe for anything but storage.
School council member Mandy Grogan says the school is in breach of the law and has put the safety of children at risk by using the stadium for sports lessons.
Black Rock Primary received $200,000 from the federal government to extend the school hall and build a gymnasium.
However, an inspector from Bayside City Council said the stadium only had a building permit for a class 10a building - a ''non-habitable building being a private garage, carport, shed or the like'' - under the Building Code of Australia.

Revolution in the history curriculum
DAN HARRISON, The Age, June 1, 2010
VICTORIAN history teachers say the national curriculum downgrades Australian History and may lead to the elimination of Revolutions, the state's most popular year 12 history course.
The History Teachers Association of Victoria has written to curriculum authorities to express concerns over the draft senior secondary curriculum, released two weeks ago.
The association fears Revolutions and Australian History courses will be cut with the introduction of the national subjects, because of the overlap between the Victorian courses and the national curriculum modern history subject proposed for year 12.
But the proposed modern history course reduces Revolutions to a one-semester option and only teaches Australian History as a component of a course on Asia and Australia covering 1937-2000.

Tests too hard, say education experts
Candice Keller, The Advertiser, 1 June 2010
EDUCATION experts have condemned this year's national literacy and numeracy tests, claiming the Year 3 test is ``ridiculously'' difficult, while some questions are a waste of time. South Australian university lecturers have examined the Naplan tests, sat by more than a million Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students nationwide last month, and stated their opinion. Most test sections attracted some criticism for being too complex or lacking relevance.

Fewer teachers likely under new curriculum
Candice Keller and Martina Simos, The Advertiser, 1 June 2010
TEACHER shortages will be worsened by the introduction of the new English curriculum, a top educator claims. Responding to the first draft of the Reception to Year 10 national curriculum, Flinders University senior lecturer Lyn Wilkinson said prospective teachers would be deterred from the workforce by the complexity of the English course. She believed some teachers would leave the profession.

English teachers flay study plan
Justine Ferrari, The Australian, 1 June 2010
ENGLISH teachers argue the national curriculum devalues their role by being too prescriptive, emphasising the transmission of knowledge rather than guiding students in their own learning. The submission on the English curriculum for years K to 10, released yesterday by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, criticises the inclusion of literary criticism and informed appreciation, saying it is unsuitable for students before years 11 and 12.

Seeking a new deal on dyslexia
Elisabeth Tarica, The Age, 31 May 2010
Australia can take some tips about learning disabilities from schools in other countries, writes Elisabeth Tarica. A NATION as self-confident as Australia doesn't expect to receive lessons in advanced education practices from such humble places as Irvinestown, a small village two hours west of Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Compete with yourself, not others
Anna Patty, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 2010
STUDENTS achieve greater academic success by competing with themselves instead of with each other, Australian research has found. The study of 1866 Australian high school students found that students who strive to improve their personal-best performance were more likely to achieve higher literacy and numeracy standards, complete their homework and participate in class.

Kids say bye to books
John Masanauskas, Herald-Sun, 31 May 2010
SCHOOLS are moving to get rid of textbooks and replace them with hi-tech devices such as the new iPad. Several state and private schools have started testing the iPad amid concerns that students' bags are being overloaded with books.

Call to support teacher aides
Paul Bibby, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 2010
SUPPORT for NSW school students with special needs and disabilities is being compromised because the government is refusing to give permanent employment to the state's 5000 teacher aides, the Public Service Association says. The aides, also known as school learning support officers, help special needs students with everything from basic skills and behaviour management to health care procedures.

Mistakes can spell trouble
Joanne Brookfield, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 2010
HOW TO OVERCOME THAT 'BUMBLE' BEE.  NSW primary school students have enthusiastically embraced the words challenge, writes Joanne Brookfield. If you don't think spelling is that important, then think about this. Incorrect spelling can result in some serious real-world complications. How would you feel if you wanted a tattoo saying "lucky" but instead you walked out with one saying "lucy"? There's no delete key for that.

Queensland OP school grades breakdown busts gender myth
Tanya Chilcott and Jason Tin, The Courier-Mail, May 31, 2010
QUEENSLAND boys have beaten girls in the most important test of academic performance, busting an age-old myth about gender roles in the education system.
The revelation emerges from the first-ever comprehensive breakdown of school OP grades, published in today's Courier-Mail print edition.
It shows Queensland's elite schools, both private and state, were the top performers, having pulled further away from poorer performing schools since OP results were first published in 2006. Brisbane Grammar School and Brisbane Boys College had the highest percentage of OP1-5 students, followed by the Brisbane School of Distance Education.

Gillard defends failure to deliver computers to schools
Josh Gordon, Sunday Age, 30 May 2010
The Rudd government's digital education revolution has so far delivered just one computer for every three high school students.

And from overseas...

States Receive a Reading List: New Standards for Education
Sam Dillon, New York Times, June 2, 2010
The nation’s governors and state school chiefs released on Wednesday a new set of academic standards, their final recommendations for what students should master in English and math as they move from the primary grades through high school graduation.
The standards, which took a year to write, have been tweaked and refined in recent weeks in response to some of the 10,000 comments the public sent in after a draft was released in March.


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