Category: Education

The Jewish Council of Australia condemns attacks on students exercising their democratic right to protest. (more…)

Recent figures show that around 30% of Australian school children do not have adequate reading skills. This 30% of Australian school children need vocational knowledge and skills to find a productive place in Australian life, but some will have their reading tested by TAFE then told, without a hint of irony, “You need to go back to school”. (more…)

There is no government or agency or combination of them capable of conceiving and driving the kind and scale of change Australian schooling now requires. The ‘national approach’ installed by the Rudd and Gillard governments fifteen years ago has not worked and cannot. Its sponsor, the Commonwealth, should move or be moved to the margins or get out of schooling altogether.  (more…)

New figures again demonstrate the bias against public schools in Australia’s school funding system.
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A friend of mine resigned from her university job in February 2024 just weeks before term started. She couldn’t face another year. She was old enough to retire but I had thought she might have a couple more years of teaching in her. The bureaucracy, the rules, lowering standards were too much. Another friend, an emeritus professor no less, saddened me when he confided he would not recommend a university career to someone starting out now. No longer was it the best way to channel a fine mind. (more…)

The recent announcement by the Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, that the government wants to raise the percentage of young people achieving a tertiary education to 80% points to the huge stakes at issue in the current negotiations between the Federal and state governments on the next school funding agreements. (more…)

“The quasi market-based nature of the Australian education system entrenches disadvantage.” The degree of socio-educational stratification among schools makes Australia an anomaly among comparable democracies. Inequity is at a level where an archaeologist delving in to the system might label it as Out-of-Place stuff! (more…)

A reason for Indonesians overwhelmingly supporting cashiered general Prabowo Subianto and a likely military dictatorship is because the electorate rarely reads; voters haven’t been taught to think critically so know little of their new president’s past. (more…)

Reaction to the release of the Final Report of the Accord Review of Australia’s universities has been relatively positive. However, while some university administrators recorded their appreciation and perhaps their relief, there is little in it for academic staff. (more…)

A few hours of testimony before the Education Committee of Senate Estimates exposed the canker at the heart of school funding in Australia. The canker is the double standard applied to the funding of public and private schools. The Assistant Minister for Education, Anthony Chisholm, announced that a tax rort worth hundreds of millions of dollars to elite private schools would continue but refused to renounce accounting tricks that swindle public schools of billions in funding. The double standard is despicable. In effect, Labor is refusing to fully fund public schools but private school funding privileges are sacrosanct. (more…)

The release of the latest PISA results provided another opportunity to bash schools and teachers. Amy Haywood and Jordana Hunter, from the Grattan Institute joined the chorus of denigrators. (more…)

A while ago I was – reluctantly – watching some television footage about the catastrophe in Gaza. To my amazement, a fleeting image appeared of two little girls, about 7 or 8, playing a hand-clapping game. I don’t know what nationality the girls were, or the location of their play. They could have been Israeli or Palestinian, or one of each. We do know that for many years enlightened people in both locations have tried to encourage harmony through cross-cultural activities, including children’s play. (more…)

I write in relation to the article published in Pearls and Irritations on 23 January 2024, authored by John Frew. The writer appears to be questioning who should be working with children experiencing educational disadvantage, get funding to do it, and be responsible for their outcomes. He raises the example of The Smith Family, as a charity, and our involvement in education, and makes several assertions about our work supporting the education of children experiencing poverty. (more…)

The University is a place of questioning, investigation, reason and discovery. The University is corruptible and perennially corrupted, yes, but always open to such endeavours. (more…)

TAFE’s “Competency Based Training” sounds logical but dig a little and its roots are exposed. CBT has its origins in the post WW2 era of the “Scientific Management” of workers and production lines. In this world, products, processes and people are all standardised, the better for a hierarchy of management control.  (more…)

Recently, the issue of “Publish-or-Perish” has come back onto the Australian science policy agenda, with the Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley, saying that existing narrow research metrics are creating a “Publish-or-Perish” culture, perversely incentivising researchers to “publish iteratively”, chasing publication volume and citations rather than quality research. (more…)

The elephant can only be ignored for so long: we need to talk about academics. Rather like journalists, academics exhibit a profound mismatch between self-image and reality. (more…)