isyulli: school

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Jumat, 21 Mei 2010

Gevernment Funding of Private Schools Should Be Reduced

Why should ordinary people support private schools? Taxes are taken from everyone so parents who choose to send their children to private schools should pay the full cost. Children are sent to private schools because funding is redirected to support these schools. Take the money away and let all children have an education on a level playing field.

A review of school funding is about to begin. The fat coffers of private schools need to be curtailed. One time head of the NSW Education Department says that the support of private schools is a misplaced belief in "neo-Darwin free-market forces". He goes on to say that the system panders to "an exclusive clientele identified by religion, ethnicity or some other dimension". He is correct in claiming that this gives some an "exclusive education". Income of private schools must be taken into account before money is allocated. The books should be reviewed and openly published by the Government. A school that has money coming out of its ears should certainly be penalized.

The current practise means public schools are starved of funds while many private school do it easy. Money per student in a government school is $12,639 while a student in private school receives $ 6,606. It is incorrect to say that every student being educated in a private school saves the taxpayer 6,033. Wealthy parents would continue to send their children to private schools if no funding was available. The fall in money to the non-government sector since 2003 of 0.6 percent is trivial. It needs to be so much more. Barriers also exist. Public schools have to take a student. Apply for entry to a Catholic school and admit that you are Protestant. You will not hear from that school again.

There is no doubt that the present system of gaining a tertiary education favors the wealthy. The young person from a high-income family can certainly find a place in a university somewhere in the country even if minimum entry academic achievement is not met.

Disadvantage lies in the public school sector so rationally this is where funding should go.

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Minggu, 09 Mei 2010

Literacy and Numeracy Skills Are Low in Australia

You would think that with the Internet communication skill would be better than ever. This is clearly not the case. Forty six percent of Australians don't have adequate numeracy and literary skills in order to cope with modern society. Australian industry has called for a literacy entitlement to improve the skills of those in vocational study. Employers aren't getting sufficient numbers of new workers who can read and write to a "normal" level.

Despite Australia's fifth ranking among other countries for education, this problem persists and is getting worse. Even though Australia is developed it appears children are "falling through the cracks" in education. Oddly, a 2009 UN paper put Australia's literacy rate at 99 percent. This is just plain wrong.

A test was developed that covered people's interaction with newspapers, consumer information articles, finance graphs, medicine labels and so on. Calculating interest on a loan or understanding a workplace agreement, for example, was way beyond the ability of the majority. People are very skilled in covering up their shortcomings in numeracy and literacy skills. Many, in fact, become highly skilled orators, while they rely on friends and family to organize the filling out of forms. The main difference, usually, between those who can read and write well and those who cannot is income. Though there are a few illiterate millionaires. Most of those in financial trouble do not understand why.

A Canadian study showed that spending more money on raising the skill levels of people at the bottom of the scale significantly reduced the amount spent on welfare and improved employment. It is not children of immigrants who have problems it is the children of third and fourth generation Australians whose parents have had financial or social problems. Teachers cannot do it alone. They need help from government and the community.

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Selasa, 16 Maret 2010

Too Many Curriculum Changes Are Destroyng Western Education

Peter Freebody advisor on the national English curriculum is completely wrong when he says we shouldn't be looking back to a golden age of literacy when everyone could read. He says look at the over sixties and see that most cannot read and write. What absolute rubbish. The baby boomer generation is this golden generation that could read and just as importantly - add up. Few over sixties cannot competently write a letter and this is what they were taught to do. Unfortunately, the current generation is not taught to do such mundane things. They are taught to do "an in depth analysis of modern literacy as it relates to the widespread phenomena of the Internet" or some such gobbledygook which is foisted upon them by so-called experts in academia.

It is university educated advisors that have ruined prospects for a literate society. Get back to basics and start teaching rote again, because that is where the mistake is being made - the absence of rote learning. Ask a youngster today to reel off the arithmetic tables and he/she cannot do it. Children don't learn to add up correctly by messing around with pieces of wood of different colors and lengths. Teaching children to sort things into sets will not get them anywhere in real life.

Another thing Mr Freebody goes on about is lack of access to education, but children from all social strata can find a school to go to. It is the methods used that are wrong. For example, teaching trigonometry at high school is putting something in the curriculum that should not be there. This belongs at college level and above.

The problem is in making schools too academic. Teach children how to do arithmetic not mathematics. When you build a table you don't need maths. You must measure and cut to length. That is arithmetic. Three levels of mathematics are offered at high school when most pupils have not mastered arithmetic. You cannot run until you can walk. All schooling must return to English, Arithmetic and History and these must be compulsory. Concentrate on these three and leave the rest for college and university.

Curriculum, curriculum, we must change the curriculum - that is all you hear decade after decade. Too much change has sorely damaged Western education systems. Peter Freebody's statistics are wrong. He says people have never been more literate. Just ask an employer and he will tell you how literate! People cannot add up a list of numbers correctly, nor read written instructions. It went down hill when calculators were allowed into schools. It is like saying give all Australian children a computer and they won't need books. What rubbish. The Internet is no good for doing assignments because everything is brought down to a page, a paragraph, a sentence then a word. Go to Encyclopedia Britannica and look up "Australian History". A paragraph gives the whole history of a nation. Search for "Ned Kelly" and all the sites give the same paragraph.

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Rabu, 27 Januari 2010

Stop Funding Private Schools

The Australian Government is ignoring the protests of teachers and going ahead with publishing a list of schools ranked by proficiency. There are problems in how this ranking is done, what criteria it is based on and what parents can do about it. Teachers say the tests on students are not fully relevant to measuring how well schools "produce" good students. The rules of the test need to be explained to parents. If a parent finds his or her child does attend a poorly ranked school how can a change be carried out if, in the bush for example, another school is a hundred miles away?

Low wage earners do not have the choice of paying for their children's education so the list for them is irrelevant. Suggestions that parents take their custom elsewhere is not a luxury they can afford. The Government has made mistakes in allocating resources to schools. Yes they continue to do this. Too much is dished out to schools who then send parents unregulated bills to educate their children. Education is being treated like a business when it shouldn't be. It should be a right irrespective of income. These schools choose students based on their own criteria. A couple took their children to a Catholic School and admitted they were Protestants. They never got any correspondence from this school again. It is rubbish to say parents have a right to choose.

The website will show that schools in disadvantaged communities will be ranked low. You don't have to be an expert to know this. The allocation of money is the problem. It always had been. It is ridiculous to give schools money then allow them to charge as well. Cut all funding to private schools except to those who cater for teaching of rural students who have to live away from home. Cut funding and watch parents move their children out of private schools, ranking or no ranking. The cost of keeping them there will be too high. Let's face it private schools are subsidized by the taxpayer.

Ranking will let parents into the big secret of under-performing schools. And when they know there will be a reaction. The Government will not have to wait long for this. The Government will then try to quietly close the website citing a "technicality", like a review of the ranking system.

The truth is described by Judy Crowe of Melbourne Girls' College. She says that the school spends $20,000 per student which is three times the average spent on students in public schools. Parents who send there children to private schools are not upset by the ranking, because they will see their choice justified - carry on paying and get a first class education subsidized by the state.

Correct the disjointed funding problem. It is skewed toward the rich. Give to the poor.

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