In the News Archive: March 2010

In the News, for week ending 28 March 2010

School's literacy boost scores a Hi-5
ALICIA WOOD, Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2010
TEACHERS at Bathurst West Public School are doing all they can to raise student literacy levels.
Principal Toni MacDonald said her goal was to get a 100 per cent participation rate in the Premiers Reading Challenge to make sure students excel in English. ''Our school has been identified as needing to improve literacy and our goal is to do this,'' Ms MacDonald said. ''For children who cannot read at home, we have made sure they can get their reading done at school.'' The children's entertainers Hi-5 visited the school this month to encourage students to continue reading. ''Having Hi-5 here was a huge boost to enthuse and encourage children,'' Ms MacDonald said.

Some magic bullets for education
Noel Pearson, The Australian, March 27, 2010
SOMETIMES I just cannot understand how governments think when it comes to setting indigenous policies. Two of the five goals that all Australian governments are now striving to close the gap on indigenous disadvantage concern education. It is probably useful to distil a complex policy agenda down to a handful of key goals, because some of these dashboard indicators can capture whether or not progress is being made across a broad policy range and gaps are closing.
But I have problems with the policy reasoning underpinning the two educational goals. First the goal of doubling the year 12 completion rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students is strange. Of course secondary school completion rates are important, but in a strategic sense there other more fundamental prerequisite policy goals which, if solved, will automatically result in higher year 12 completion rates. The strategically important goal is closing the gap on literacy and numeracy achievement by indigenous students. You solve this problem, you solve the year 12 completion rate problem. There is a strategically important prerequisite to closing the gap on literacy and numeracy, and that is school readiness and attendance. You can't close the gap on literacy and numeracy unless you first close the gap on school readiness and attendance.

Only one principal in 10 believes My School accurately portrays performance
Justine Ferrari, The Australian, March 25, 2010
THREE-QUARTERS of school principals believe the information about their school presented on the My School website is incorrect and nine in 10 believe it fails to present an accurate picture of school performance. A survey of almost 1200 primary and high school principals found half believe the index of social and educational advantage assigned to their school is inaccurate and about 90 per cent said the schools with which they were grouped were not similar. The survey conducted by the Australian Education Union, to be released today, is part of its campaign against the website, which publishes the results in national literacy and numeracy tests for schools around the nation. The survey found about a third of the schools surveyed had been named in a league table ranking schools based on test results but only half the principals thought it would have a negative impact on the students and about 40 per cent thought it would have no impact.

Gillard stares down teachers over My School
Tim Leslie, ABC News, Thu Mar 25, 2010
Education Minister Julia Gillard has defended the Federal Government's My School website after a survey of Australian principals revealed the majority were against it in its current form.
The site allows parents to access information about their child's school, including overall performance on national numeracy and literacy tests (NAPLAN).
The Australian Education Union (AEU) is opposed to the site in its current form, saying it facilitates the creation of league tables and fails to give an accurate indication of a school's performance.

History curriculum 'may be pared back'
LEAH MCLENNAN, Sydney Morning Herald, March 25, 2010
A draft national history school curriculum may have to be pared back following complaints from teachers who say they don't have enough time to teach the subject, Australia's curriculum chief says. The authority that created the new program, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), is travelling around the country to brief teachers in each state and territory on the draft curriculum. The draft, which the federal government has described as a "world-leading national curriculum", is focused on four learning areas - English, maths, science and history. History, which is not taught as a separate subject in some states, will become a compulsory subject, with many teachers fearing this might result in a teacher shortage. ACARA chief executive officer Peter Hill said the subject of history might have to be pared back given the time restraints of teachers.

Education revolution flushes the toilets
ANNA PATTY, Sydney Morning Herald, March 24, 2010
IS THE Australian dunny iconic? The Department of Education says no. In an email to a NSW Treasury official, a department official said many schools that applied for refurbished toilets under the federal government's school building program were rejected because they were not deemed ''iconic enough''. Under the guidelines, libraries, multi-purpose halls or classrooms were referred to as iconic facilities. ''Toilets or administration blocks do not have a sufficient degree of iconicness,'' the official said.

Bosses call for reading and writing courses to lift workforce skills
Sid Maher, The Australian, March 23, 2010
BUSINESS has called for literacy and numeracy to be taught in vocational education courses because nearly half the nation's workers lack the basic reading and maths skills to function in the workplace. The Australian Industry Group in its pre-budget submission has called on the Rudd government to establish a feasibility study on creating a "literacy entitlement" for all students enrolled in VET courses, to tackle a crisis in reading and writing skills in the workforce. AiGroup chief executive Heather Ridout cited OECD research showing 46 per cent of the workforce did not have "the level of prose literacy and numeracy to participate fully in the workforce". This meant they could not read well enough to follow a work operating manual, "which involves a whole lot of costs to individuals and business".

The times tables they are a-changin’
Burkard Polster, Marty Ross, The Age, March 22, 2010
Has everyone done their homework and perused the draft National Mathematics Curriculum? We have. As you may know, we found much that caused us to shake our heads and groan in despair. We've had our say, and now we hope to get out of the way, and simply watch as this trouble-ridden Titanic sails off to its fate. And we'll do that. But first, in the next few columns, we want to share with you some of what we've learned from studying the draft curriculum.
One thing we learned is that the expression "times tables" is forbidden. In its place there is continual reference to "multiplication facts". For example, one of the goals is for year 4 sudents to: Understand and become fluent with multiplication facts and related division facts of 2, 3, 5, and 10 extending to 4, 6, 8, and 9. Ignoring the fact that this sentence is ungrammatical and clumsy, we were puzzled by the curious exclusion of the number 7. Pondering it, this exclusion appears curiouser and curiouser.

And from overseas...

Numbers Wars: School Battles Heat Up Again in the Traditional versus Reform-Math Debate
Linda Baker, Scientific American Magazine, March 2010
Weak student scores fuel the fight in mathematics education
Over the past 20 years educators have fought over the best way to teach numbers to kids. Advocates of traditional math tout the practice of algorithms and teacher-centered learning, whereas reform-math proponents focus on underlying concepts and student inquiry. In the face of continued declining scores in the U.S., these so-called math wars have heated up recently with the circulation of petitions, the release of contested curriculum guidelines and, in one case, the filing of a lawsuit. At stake is the ability of American high school graduates to perform everyday math tasks and compete in a global economy.

In the News, for week ending 21 March 2010

New philosophy to make up for the syntax of the past
NEROLI COLVIN, Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 2010
COMMENT
THE problem is huge: low levels of literacy among up to half of Australians. The solution: a new national school curriculum, literacy for the 21st century and, gasp, grammar.
Some say dropping grammar in the 1970s began the slide to today's textese - ''yng peeps cant rite proply''.

Teachers fear bullying if they tell of school building rorts
RACHEL BROWNE AND JOSH GORDON, Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 2010
FEAR of bullying and victimisation may deter principals and teachers from blowing the whistle on alleged rorts in the federal government's school building program.
The $16.2 billion program is the subject of eight separate inquiries or audits at state and federal level.
But education authorities feel the inquiries may be a waste of time and money if principals and teachers are unable to raise problems without fear of retribution.
Public Schools Principals Forum deputy chairman Brian Chudleigh said principals feared speaking publicly because of a history of intimidation in the NSW Department of Education: "There is a culture of fear in the Department of Education and it's been going on for a long time. … Our concern is that problems will not be identified because principals are unwilling to speak out unless they can do so without fear of reprisals.''

Students forced to wait months for counselling
NATALIE CRAIG, The Age, March 21, 2010
VULNERABLE children with depression, behavioural problems and autism are waiting months to see psychologists and speech therapists following the state government's overhaul of school support systems.
Principals' groups will meet the Education Department tomorrow to discuss complaints from scores of schools, including some that have waited more than a year for mental health and speech services.

Truancy welfare threat unenforced
Jamie Walker, The Australian, March 20, 2010
CANBERRA is yet to wield the stick and suspend the welfare payments of parents who fail to send their children to school, despite piloting the new "tough love" arrangements in jobless hotspots in Queensland.
Federal Families Minister Jenny Macklin yesterday released a progress report on the trial of the School Enrolment and Attendance Measure, which would dovetail with the national rollout of Northern Territory-style income management for people who squander welfare on drink, drugs or gambling.
The test-run of SEAM, backed by the Queensland government, allows Centrelink to suspend unemployment and other benefits for those who fail to respond to warnings about poor school attendance by their children.
But since the trial was introduced last September in four disadvantaged pockets of Brisbane's outer south and in the remote north Queensland indigenous communities of Doomadgee and Mornington Island, not one suspension has been meted out.

Business 'slow to help schools'
FARRAH TOMAZIN, The Age, March 19, 2010
FORMER Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has accused big business of not doing enough to help schools improve, and has challenged the private sector to play a greater role in funding and shaping public education.
Warning that schools can no longer flourish as ''isolated'' entities, Mr Bracks – now an adviser for an education program funded by National Australia Bank – will use a speech today to urge companies to join forces with schools in a bid to lift students' results.

Declining numeracy is shaping our future
Guy Healy, The Australian, March 17, 2010
AUSTRALIA was heading back to the Lucky Country days when it did not have to innovate and could rely on earnings from the soil, one of the country's leading statisticians has warned.
In the wake of last week's Group of Eight report on the maths crisis, Australian Research Council Federation fellow Peter Hall said he feared Australia was "going backwards" on maths education and the disciplines it supported.
"In 1964 Donald Horne wrote that Australia showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society," said Professor Hall, an adviser for the maths report.

Online schools portal goes live
FARRAH TOMAZIN, The Age, March 16, 2010
IT WAS hailed by the state government as the computer project that would revolutionise public schools. Now, after four years of hype, a controversial tender process and $77 million in taxpayer funding, it's here.
More than 1600 Victorian schools are about to get the Ultranet - an online portal and ''virtual classroom'' that Education Minister Bronwyn Pike promises will transform the way students learn.
Parents will be able to use the Ultranet to check their child's attendance records, monitor academic progress and give teachers immediate feedback.

And from overseas…
Our Schools Are Skilled At Making Sure Boys Don’t Read…
Bruce Deitrick Price, Canada Free Press, 15 March, 2010
Not to worry. Our top educators have pretty well got this thing figured out. It’s a two-punch combination, researched-based, that almost always works. Bingo, you don’t find American boys wasting precious time inside the pages of a book.
First of all, you want to make sure they don’t hear much about the alphabet (shhh!), letters, sounds all that right-wing nonsense. They have to learn to read with sight-words, Dolch words, whole words (all the same thing). And you want a whole lot of hoopla, thousands of brightly colored books lying around, and constant chatter about literacy and being a lifelong reader. All this stuff convinces parents that their kids, if they are halfway normal, will quickly learn to read. Ditto the boys. When they can’t memorize hundreds of sight-words, they know there’s something wrong with them and they give up pronto. And they keep their mouths shut. Perfect. The silence of the lambs pretty well describes it.
Second, you’ve got to catch those boys who figure out phonics for themselves and actually make it through the sight-word minefield. A lot of boys just barely survive; they’re on the cusp. Give them some good comic books or Sports Illustrated for Kids, and they might break through. But you never do that. Here’s the secret formula. You say, this book is perfect for you! And you give them books intended for girls. Soft, sensitive, emotional books. Boys hate this stuff. They’d rather sleep in mud than have to read books like that. So you can snuff out the last little bit of interest in reading. If some of the boys are hard-headed and keep trying to read, you up the ante. Make sure every recommended book is literarily pretentious, big time! New-Yorker-type books with soft pastel covers and delicate type. Oprah-type books with haunting relationship stories that revolve around strong women. Boys cringe in horror from this stuff. Grown men cringe in horror from this stuff; but they can defend themselves. What can twelve-year-old boys do? Other than learn to hate books and reading forever.
By this simple, two-step program, the major goals of American education are achieved, everybody’s semi-illiterate and everybody’s a wimp. Look at the stats. These educators know what they’re doing.

In the News, for week ending 14 March 2010

Schools must teach thinking
RACHEL BROWNE, Sydney Morning Herald, March 14, 2010
THE man who coined the term ''lateral thinking'' has called on Education Minister Julia Gillard to include thinking on the national school curriculum. Author and psychologist Edward de Bono said the Deputy Prime Minister ''has this education revolution [but] when you read this stuff it's the same old stuff all over again. ''Building school halls is not going to solve the problem. There are huge needs in education. Youngsters are ready for it. They love thinking - it's a joy for them''.
 
Residents bypassed as schools take the fast track
RACHEL BROWNE, Sydney Morning Herald
March 14, 2010
AN ELITE Sydney school had major building works approved by the state government under the building schools stimulus program despite overwhelming opposition to the plans. More than 30 neighbours of St Luke's Grammar at Dee Why lodged submissions with Warringah Council last year objecting to the work. The school withdrew its development application from the council and had the work approved under the government's fast-track school building scheme.
 
Teachers give poor marks to national curriculum
ANNA PATTY EDUCATION EDITOR, Sydney Morning Herald, March 12, 2010
TEACHERS believe the new draft national curriculum represents a step backwards for NSW students in science and English, little improvement in maths and is unworkable in history.
In NSW the Board of Studies has established time frames for each subject, but the national curriculum has not been tailored to fit the number of hours teachers have in the classroom.
Margaret Watts, the president of the Science Teachers Association of NSW, said the national science curriculum for kindergarten to year 10 was not as prescriptive as the NSW syllabus.
''We are very concerned and it may well be a step backwards,'' she said.
 
Call to stagger school starting times
Sydney Morning Herald, March 11, 2010
STAGGERED school starting times have helped parents like Joy Poulos co-ordinate drop-off and pick-up times for children attending different schools. The later start at Bald Face Public School in Blakehurst means she does not have to drop off her daughter Nicola, 6, until 9.25am, after she has delivered her 12-year-old son, William, to high school by 9am. The NSW Business Chamber has suggested trialling staggered starting times for schools to relieve peak-hour traffic congestion.
 
Maths ability 'dangerously low'
FARRAH TOMAZIN, The Age, March 10, 2010
THE quality of students completing year 12 maths has deteriorated so much over the past 20 years that standards are now ''dangerously low'', according to research commissioned by Australia's leading universities. Just one week after the Rudd government launched plans for a new national curriculum that would change the way maths is taught in schools, universities are being urged to provide students with remedial classes to deal with the fact that many are entering courses with insufficient maths skills.
 
Troubled teens: a battle for hearts and money
FARRAH TOMAZIN, The Age, March 10, 2010
THE boy was only 14 but he had been in and out of the juvenile justice system since he was 10. By the time teacher Mick Butler found him, his life was punctuated by violence and crime: skipping school, stealing cars, starting fights and couch-surfing from place to place without a home to call his own. Out of sheer persistence, Mr Butler persuaded the boy to attend classes at the Heidelberg Teaching Unit, an education centre for teenagers who, for a range of social or emotional reasons, cannot cope in mainstream schools.
 
Equation for maths warns of disaster
Luke Slattery, The Australian, March 10, 2010
THE Group of Eight has declared mathematics education in Australia is in crisis.
A six-point rescue package for maths and related disciplines recommends better dialogue between mathematics and teaching faculties to improve the mathematical competence of teachers. At the same time, it accepts an increasing number of students will be taught secondary school mathematics at university through expensive "enabling" programs. These will require "systematic organisation" and new funding initiatives. A groundbreaking review of the mathematics and statistics disciplines at school and university by the Go8 found "the state of the mathematical sciences and related quantitative disciplines in Australia has deteriorated to a dangerous level, and continues to deteriorate."
 
Changing course - the inside view
CAROLINE MILBURN, The Age, March 5, 2010
A FEW days ago Stuart Macintyre's wife, Martha, asked him how many hours he had spent helping devise Australia's first national school curriculum in history. Professor Macintyre, a former dean of Melbourne University's arts faculty, leads a 23-member team of academics and teachers who have shaped the history document from its conception 18 months ago, through exhaustive rounds of public consultation, revision and writing that ended when the draft version was released last week.
 
And from overseas...
 
Child-centred learning is turning out school-leavers without the skills for life
Education News March 13, 2010
Let education stand as the example. Between 1999-2000 and 2007-08, state spending per school pupil per year rose from £3,360 to £5,620. Yet the CBI reports that its members are increasingly compelled to seek recruits abroad because school-leavers are so poorly educated. Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, which employs 40,000 workers under the age of 19, says that the company has to teach recruits basic literacy and numeracy itself. During this period of the greatest state spending ever, more and more pupils – 59,071 in 2006 – took Media Studies GCSE, a subject that literally everyone I have ever met in the media thinks is worthless. At the same time, the number of those studying modern languages at GCSE fell from 547,189 in 2003 to 382,228 in 2008. Only 46 per cent of English state schools now enter a pupil for Biology, Physics or Chemistry GCSE. The others favour the combined science GCSE, which has multiple choice questions such as "Why is wireless technology useful?". The correct answer to tick is "No wiring is required".
 

In the News, for week ending 7 March 2010

Schools should be free to teach what they want 

Chris Berg, The Age, March 7, 2010

Most people seem to have missed the point about the national curriculum. The opposition certainly has. If the national curriculum is as bad as Nationals senator Ron Boswell says - it ''reads like a Marxist learner … to prepare our young for the anti-capitalist class struggle'' - in a way, that's the (decidedly not Marxist) Howard government's fault. Taking control of the curriculum out of the hands of the states and into the loving arms of the federal government didn't begin when Kevin Rudd won the 2007 election.

You can't fool the children of the school building revolution

RACHEL BROWNE, Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 2010
 
FOUR schools have joined forces to protest their dissatisfaction at work undertaken on their grounds as part of the federal schools stimulus building program. The schools claim some of the costs for parts of the buildings were more than 10 times the standard market rates and some of the workmanship is unsatisfactory. Representatives from Mid North Coast public schools - at Willawarrin, Eungai, Stuarts Point and Scotts Head - met their local MP and Nationals Leader Andrew Stoner last week to discuss their concerns after being ''stonewalled'' by the NSW Department of Education.



Study secrets from Mr 100 per cent
DANIELLE TEUTSCH, Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 2010

FOR parents desperate to get their children into one of the state's selective high schools, this man is Mr 100 per cent. Mr Ye, as he wishes to be known, runs a small coaching college in suburban Campsie where, he says, all his students are offered a highly coveted place in an elite school. Last year 48 of his students made it into year 7 at James Ruse Agricultural High School - NSW's top-ranked school for HSC results. The total year 7 intake at James Ruse last year was 120. The rest of his 129 students all made it into selective schools. Chinese-background Australians make up the majority of his students. More than 13,200 year 6 students will vie for 4127 selective high school places when they sit the selective school test on March 18. Mr Ye has a competitor. At Sydney's biggest coaching outfit, Pre-Uni New College, manager David Lee boasts that 67 of its students got into James Ruse last year. If the claims of both men are correct, it means the two colleges between them are responsible for coaching 95 per cent of James Ruse's annual intake.



Teachers vote with their feet on Cape York curriculum 

Tony Koch, The Australian, March 6, 2010 

THE two schools that have adopted a radical competency-based learning program in Cape York have encountered teething problems, with teachers leaving because they are unhappy. In the six weeks since school resumed, eight of the 20 teachers at Aurukun on western Cape York have left and one of the four in Coen has transferred to another school. The learning program is the brainchild of Aboriginal social reform advocate Noel Pearson, who lobbied government to introduce the US-based academy system in an effort to accelerate the learning levels of Aboriginal children, particularly those on remote communities. He pointed out, for instance, that very few children entering mainstream high school had a genuine competency level of even grade 4 or 5.



Literacy barriers hold back workers

Andrew Trounson, The Australian, March 6, 2010 

POOR adult literacy and numeracy skills are impediments to raising workforce participation and productivity, with an additional $50 million needed for adult teaching programs by 2012, warns Skills Australia. Highlighting the extent of the problem, a yet to be released survey from the Australian Industry Group has found that 75 per cent of firms believe a lack of English language and mathematics skills hurt their productivity. Skills Australia yesterday proposed a new workforce strategy to boost skills and participation and arrest the projected decline in workforce as the population ages. It wants to boost funding for tertiary enrolments from $22 billion to $32bn by 2025 as part of a target to raise the participation rate to 69 per cent from 65 per cent. AI Group chief executive Heather Ridout said a big issue holding back participation was that 40 per cent of employed Australians and 60 per cent of the unemployed "don't have the literacy or numeracy levels to participate fully in a modern workforce".



School 'a longer race than before' 

DANIEL HURST, Brisbane Times, March 5, 2010
 
Queensland's education minister says measuring the percentage of people who finish Year 12 studies at the normal age is as useless as picking a running race winner at the halfway point. Education Queensland said last week it was unable to provide recent figures on the senior school completion rate which could be compared with a target it set about 10 years ago. 



Cum laude for the curriculum

The Australian, March 5, 2010 

Julia Gillard has prevailed where others failed for 25 years. 
The Hawke, Keating and Howard governments had a proud record of reform in many areas but, when it comes to the school curriculum, Julia Gillard has achieved more in two years than her predecessors managed in a quarter of a century. The draft national curriculum released this week for kindergarten-to-Year 10 is a major achievement setting out a path for improved teaching of English, history, mathematics and science. Parents of children who have left school might wonder why previous governments did not act instead of talking and dithering.
The Rudd government is promoting the curriculum as "back to basics" and for once the spin has a solid basis. The English program sets out a good foundation in phonics, sentence and paragraph construction and grammar. And while the draft does not nominate set books or poems, it values literature in all years. Thankfully there is no sign of the nonsense pushed by English teachers' associations, branding literature study "inherently political" and advocating "other models of English such as personal growth".



Curriculum no return to 'golden age' 

ANNA PATTY, The Age, March 5, 2010
 
The leading adviser for the new national English curriculum has dismissed assumptions that the back-to-basics approach to grammar is a return to a so-called golden era of education. Peter Freebody, who wrote the English curriculum ''shape'' paper, on which the draft national curriculum was based, said literacy standards were poorer two generations ago, when grammar was taught more intensively in schools. He said the back-to-basics approach to grammar was not about returning to ''a golden age where everyone was literate''.



Creationism could slip into science classes 

ANNA PATTY, Sydney Morning Herald, March 4, 2010

The draft national curriculum does not prohibit the teaching of creationism in schools, raising questions about whether this will open the door to its promotion as a science in classrooms. The NSW Board of Studies has explicitly ruled out the teaching of creation theory from the Bible as a science, however it allows the teaching of spiritual perspectives on creation in science classes, as long as they are not dressed up as scientific or used to substitute any curriculum content, such as the teaching of evolution.



Making history in the classroom 

Justine Ferrari, The Australian, March 4, 2010 

The newly unveiled national curriculum takes a back-to-basics approach 
"THEY didn't teach it like that in my day." For years, that was the lament of parents worried that an out-of-touch school system was failing to equip their children with the basic skills needed for life and work. Well, their day is back. At least that is how the federal government is selling its new "back-to-basics" national curriculum, with the release on Monday of the first four subjects of English, history, maths and science. The national curriculum is not intended to provide an exhaustive list of everything a student will learn but to set out the essential knowledge and skills children across the nation need to know.



Glen Waverley students to test new curriculum 

FARRAH TOMAZIN, The Age, March 3, 2010 

KYLIE Price has a tough task ahead. Over the next three months, the year 8 English teacher will be one of the first in the country to test-run the new national curriculum. After so much hype about the new system - which promises to strip English ''back to basics'', scale back maths so students have more time to learn, and reinvigorate history and science - Ms Price is keen to finally discover what works and what doesn't. The new system dictates that all students must be taught grammar and language conventions - fundamental skills the 29-year-old head of English at Glen Waverley Secondary College admits she didn't spend much time learning when she was at school.



On the path to higher standards

Andrew Trouson, The Australian, March 3, 2010 

OVERSEEING the development of new academic standards is the first step in what could be a continuing role for the Australian Learning and Teaching Council in keeping them updated and relevant, new council chief Carol Nicoll says. Nicoll, a former senior federal education bureaucrat who last month succeeded Richard Johnstone as chief executive, believes the ALTC can be the "honest broker" in leading the development of standards and presenting them to the new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. She says the standards should be viewed as "living documents" that will need revising as curriculum priorities and graduate needs change and evolve. "We have been given the leadership [role] to work with the academic community and other stakeholders on developing a preliminary set of academic standards in some discipline areas, and I hope it is a role that we can continue," Nicoll tells the HES.



Christian schools angry over ban on teaching creationism

MALCOLM BROWN, Sydney Morning Herald, March 3, 2010

Australian Christian schools will campaign against what they see as the thin end of the wedge - a decision by the South Australian Non-Government Schools Registration Board to effectively ban the teaching of creationism. Under policies published in December, the board said it required ''teaching of science as an empirical discipline, focusing on inquiry, hypothesis, investigation, experimentation, observation and evidential analysis''.



Bradley endorses My Uni website

Andrew Trounson, The Australian, March 3, 2010 

DENISE Bradley has backed federal Education Minister Julia Gillard's plans for a My University website, arguing it is in line with the new "student demand-driven" system being rolled out. There are concerns that complex information on a university's performance, such as the varied academic background of commencing students, could be taken out of context and lead to simplistic judgments. But Professor Bradley said this was not an excuse for not putting out comparative information. "I think it is an important principle," said Professor Bradley, who in 2008 chaired the government's review of higher education. "In a more open system with more choice and competition, people need better public information, not PR information." In a speech at the Universities Australia conference in Canberra today, Ms Gillard will announce plans to launch a My University website by 2012 that will complement the My School site launched in January.



Public need a clear policy on education
Editorial 
The Courier-Mail , March 2, 2010

THE draft national curriculum unveiled this week drew some passionate criticism but also praise for its attempt to give structure to the hodge-podge of state-based curriculums Australian teachers and children are labouring under now. Not before time, Australia will have a school curriculum that acknowledges the increased mobility of its residents, while making it clear that the classroom is no place for fad theories on how to help children realise their potential. Those who see the value in a return to less casual forms of school education will welcome a curriculum which ensures that history, phonics and grammar are granted more formal places in every student's learning. Although it is important to make sure children are not force-fed political dogma at their desks, we should avoid spending too much time worrying about whether and how the curriculum allows for some ideologically sound form of Australian history to be taught. Those who produced this draft curriculum appear to have made a serious effort to eschew the notion of either a black armband view or a white blindfold approach to teaching children about Australia's past.



What the nation learns, the nation will become
The Age, March 2, 2010 

AUSTRALIA'S history teachers are worried that the draft national curriculum for their subject, released yesterday, might fail if it is placed in the hands of the bored or the ill-trained. That seems a sensible and mundane concern to have, and the fact that history teachers have that sort of worry about the curriculum is cause for rejoicing. It is one sign that the ideological battles of the so-called history wars are over, allowing the focus to return to what actually happens in classrooms. There will be no black armbands, or white ones either, for students will be expected to study history from more than one perspective.



'Black armband' view risks national curriculum 

DAN HARRISON, The Age, March 2, 2010 

THE Coalition has threatened to scrap Australia's first national curriculum, saying it places too much emphasis on indigenous and Asian perspectives at the expense of the nation's British and European heritage. The curriculum, the product of more than 30 years of agitation by education experts and two years of negotiations by federal, state and territory governments and Catholic and independent school sectors, could be binned before it reaches classrooms if Labor is defeated at the election expected in the second half of this year. Speaking to The Age soon after launching the draft curriculum yesterday, Education Minister Julia Gillard said she took the threat seriously.



Back to basics on national education 

Sue Dunlevy and Bruce McDougall, The Daily Telegraph, March 2, 2010

TEACHERS will be forced back to school to learn how to deliver the Federal Government's new national curriculum. Experts who have designed the back-to-basics curriculum, which has heavy emphasis on grammar and phonics, said yesterday many teachers would have to be re-educated before they were competent to teach it from next year. It is expected that primary school teachers will need training in basic grammar. High school teachers for the first time will be required to teach literacy basics such as grammar and text types to children who may not have fully understood the concepts in primary school.



A sound beginning

FARRAH TOMAZIN AND MIKI PERKINS, The Age, March 2, 2010 

When Elisabeth Lenders went to school, she was part of a generation that wasn't taught grammar but rather the ''whole-language'' approach, which emphasised meaning rather than deconstruction. Decades later, Lenders (pictured above), now an English teacher and deputy principal of Carey Baptist Grammar School, admits that grammar lessons are still the ones she has to prep for, ''like most teachers under 50''. From next year, she will be one of thousands charged with rolling out Australia's new national curriculum - a curriculum in which English teaching will be stripped ''back to basics''; maths will be scaled back, but taught more comprehensively; science and history will be revamped to encourage more students to take on the subjects; and Aboriginal and Asian ways of seeing the world will be placed into almost every learning stream.



Give Britain its due or we'll can it: opposition 

DAN HARRISON, ANNA PATTY, HEATH GILMORE AND AMY CORDEROY, Sydney Morning Herald, March 2, 2010 

THE federal Coalition has threatened to scrap the new national curriculum, saying it places too much emphasis on indigenous and Asian perspectives at the expense of British and European culture. Its education spokesman, Christopher Pyne, said the curriculum was ''unbalanced''. ''While there are 118 references in the document to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people and culture, there is one reference to Parliament, none to 'Westminster' and none to the Magna Carta,'' he said.



History curriculum 'could fail' 

DAN HARRISON, The Age, March 1, 2010 

HISTORY teachers are warning that the national history curriculum could be a failure if the subject is placed in the hands of bored or ill-trained teachers.
Before the release of the curriculum today, History Teachers' Association of Australia president Paul Kiem, a member of the advisory panel for the history curriculum, also suggested the document might be too ambitious in the amount of content it expected teachers to cover. The draft national curriculum expects year 9 and 10 students to cover world history, including Australian history, from 1750 to the present day.



Draft national curriculum unveiled

By Samantha Hawley and David Mark, ABC, 1 March 2010

Grammar and phonics will be central planks in a new draft national curriculum teachers across Australia will be expected to teach next year. The curriculum - covering English, maths, science and history - will go up on the web this morning for a public consultation period before all state and territory standards are abolished. Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard will unveil the draft curriculum, which covers students from kindergarten to year 10. "As a nation we have to be able to reassure ourselves that we have got a high-quality curriculum being taught to every child in every school," she said. "There are around 80,000 students who move interstate each year and it is obviously easier for them if they are in a new school and they are doing the same curriculum." Grammar and phonics are significant inclusions in the new curriculum.