Bell tolls for AEU on school reform

The Association of State Schools commissioned a survey in August revealed only one-in-five parents supports the teachers' industrial action over pay and conditions.

Many of the academic and teacher’s complaints deal with qualitative assessments of how the state will assess teacher performance. They ask "is a child's intellectual and scholarly performance the only measure of a 'good' teacher? Aren't other factors also at play in any child's development?"

The AEU believes teachers will be punished for teaching students who are poor and whose performance is unsatisfactory.

They’ve got it around the wrong way. Teachers will be rewarded for demonstrating initiative that improves the performance of students at the bottom end of the grades sheet.

These questions are born of fear and they miss the point. They’re anticipating some sort of Stalinist pogrom if the schools more become accountable.

The focus is on making teachers and their schools accountable for not only what they teach but also how they teach it. There is no hint of mass dismissals or downgrading of roles or salaries. But there will be changes.

The Rudd Government know that if the schools disclose how their students are performing, then we’re one step closer to addressing the disastrously poor performance of those at the bottom 20 per cent of the public school sector.

About 500,000 Australians aged 15 to 24 are neither in full time work or in education and each year another 50,000 early school leavers join them. This is a recipe for disaster.

“I cannot understand why public institutions such as schools should not be accountable to the community that funds their salaries and running costs. We do not have accurate, comprehensive information to allow rigorous analysis of what schools and students are achieving. This must change,” Rudd said.

This has nothing to do with league performance ladders. Everyone knows that an eastern suburb private school will out perform a western suburbs technical school in a high unemployment area.

The crux is addressing failure at both the coalface, within the school administration as well as in the state bureaucracy.

The Rudd-Gillard action plan means about $500,000 on average per school but slewed towards the more disadvantaged schools.

One of the major problems for Rudd is the Constitution. Secondary school education is a matter for the states. Rudd and Gillard are relying on the states to approve these changes otherwise the whole venture is a dud.

It will show that the inability of the ALP in every state except WA to work across the states-Canberra divide.