A teacher’s letter to the PM
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Dear Kevin, You’ve changed. Have you been possessed by the spirit of failed Liberal policies? What are you doing going on about all this performance pay for teachers and national league tables for schools? Please stop. It’s not a revolution it’s a rehash. These “crucial reforms” get blocked at every turn because they are illogical, unfair and unworkable. Have you been into a classroom lately? And I don’t mean read a fairy story to a select group of Anglo-saxon kids at an inner-west school with cameras snapping. I mean really heard to the issues facing schools and the teachers in them? Thought about the nuts and bolts logistics of delivering “quality education”? Talked to teachers about how stressed they are with increasing numbers of kids with learning difficulties, Autism Spectrum diagnoses, behavioural disorders, all needing more and more attention? Sometimes it’s hard enough to get kids to sit on their chairs let alone be model students. I used to teach High School. At one of the NSW’s top selective boys schools. A whole bunch of kids I taught got a UAI of over 99 in their HSC. We had about 80 computers in the whole school. The private schools we compete with have a laptop and wireless net access for every kid. We still kicked arse. Except at Rugby. Before that I taught at a school in the western suburbs where kids would come out of the detention centre across the road to come to school. Over 10% of the students had learning disabilities, more than 80% were from non-English speaking backgrounds. How would you compare my teaching at those different schools? How do you get teachers to want to work in the poorly performing schools if they get paid based on their performance? How do you map out the performance of thousands of individuals against one another? Is it fair to base my pay on whether the kids in my year 9 Commerce class decide not to do their homework and fail their exam on personal finance? When we give $50 textbooks to the kids they come back trashed in their bags, used as a football, a place mat to eat off or put through the washing machine, but you thought it was a good idea to give them a laptop each and let them take them home? Do you have shares in Facebook, MySpace and Warcraft? Because I can tell you, kids will use their laptops for that rather than school work… that’s if they don’t sell them to buy Ritalin. Quality teaching? Yeah, I agree on that but until you start paying teachers decently as they work their way up the pay scale, you will never keep the good people in the job. People coming out of uni these days usually have double degrees and have to jump though all sorts of hoops to join the NSW Institute of Teachers. After ten years they hit the top of the pay scale and stay there forever, unless they go for promotion… but most leave the system before they get 3 years experience. I’m now training to be a school counsellor. Now I deal mainly just with the really tricky kids. Trust me, generally it’s not the kids that are the real problem. It’s their parents. If you’re talking about a revolution, sort out the national child protection issues. Let’s implement policies that create and establish real community support networks. How about helping people realise their dreams, not just by making more apprenticeship places but teaching people how to think, feel, make good decisions, take responsibility for their actions and become involved in their communities. Scrap the baby bonus, pay parents to attend programs which they talk about their experiences and know their neighbours. Don’t penalise the people at the coalface. Thanks for reading. |
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13 Comments
Dear Jocelyn, thanks for the letter. It is precisely because of the issues you raise — allegations of chronic under-resourcing, teachers’ stress levels, behavioural and developmental challenges facing students, etc — that the Government has decided that an ‘information revolution” is needed within the education sector.
Let’s get in there and get the information. Let’s crunch the data, pull it to pieces, analyse and argue about what it means. By making education information more transparent we can get academics, policy makers, journalists and parents in on the act and have a real community debate about education needs, instead of the usual merry-go-round of claim and counter-claim between teachers’ unions, private schools and politicians. I can understand the fear that teachers hold regarding these reforms; concerns about being hung out to dry, held responsbible for children graduating without being able to spell or read or count, being exposed by tabloid newspapers as ‘responsible for the woes of education when of course the issues aremuch deeper. But these are second-order issues that can be managed. We need to get the fundamentals right so we know where the money needs to go. And that means getting the information.
Sincerely, Kevin (ok, not really Kevin.)
Yes, I’m a teacher too, in a SW Sydney public school with 70%+ NESB kids. I would agree with most of the article, especially the difficulties of providing quality education in classrooms including special needs children. Many people don’t realise that their inclusion is relatively recent - another retrospective, cost-cutting measure that helps nobody, least of all the class teacher trying to cope with limited support. All the pollies need a reality check. Long visits into such classrooms might help. However, the effectiveness of any school does depend on the effectiveness of the principal and executive staff. Our school has just emerged from six years ineffectual leadership, easily measured by a sharp dip in basic skills results. Our new principal has introduced goals, inservicing, mentoring, focus on literacy/numeracy, and increased behavioural expectations. We’re working harder. We’re the same staff, but being appreciated and respected and working as a team is already producing results. So yes, I’d love it those ineffective, useless principals to be given a short,sharp lesson and introduction to the real world of accountability. Don’t dismiss all the government wants. Talk and work with them.
Jocelyn:
I think your points above are fair enough - and should be addressed within any new system…
League tables for schools. What an original idea. Brilliant! Good on you Kev. A couple of questions though. Is the league table going to weight the scoring on the degree of difficulty that schools face in delivering these outcomes. A bit like olympic diving I suppose. Some of the factors that must be included for each school are - annual total funding per head, percentage of number of single parent families attending, capital value of school assets per head, average family income per head. Percentage of children who attended pre school, percentage of special need children etc etc etc. Another question. lets say I live in the country and my school for which I can get a bus is down the league table. I want to go to another “better” school, but the bus won’t take me because it’s not the nearest. How am I going to get there. Are you going to put more money into busses Kev or does this only apply to the capital cities that do have a rudimentary public transport system? Maybe every country kid will get a car as well as a computer! Pity they don’t have licenses.
Taking up Jocelyn’s last point - If you’re talking about a revolution, sort out the national child protection issues. Why not have a think about incorporating child protection functions into the schools - imagine schools with all those child protection resources sitting in the one place where all children are - schools. maybe instead of reacting to the problems of child protection from afar, these resources may eventually take a proactive role in reducing the need for these functions. Now that would be a revolution.
While government and the community continue use the strategy of resolving child protection issues by increasing the size of the bandaid instead of takinng a more proactive stance in a preventative mode, child protection will continue to fester.
By way of the rest of Jocelyn’s comments. My partner is teacher in a primary school. She has 22 children - six have both natural parents living at home. Another four have an adult male living at home. Two of the children are in care of the State. And this is a Prep class of 4 and 5 year olds. This is the reality for many teachers today. The sooner Teacher’s salaries are doubled and the government and community value education, then we may see a different outcome than what we see today.
As a teacher I don’t fear accountability. I fear my pay being linked to massive system more complicated than the calculations that go into working out the UAI.
Before I was a teacher I worked in call centres, where robotically everything was explained away by performance indicators. Even the tone by which I said “thank you”.
I understand and support the need for accountability, efficiency and competition. The need to be able to rid a system of people whose most happy teaching days are pupil free ones and who still think plonking a textbook down in front of kids and telling them to do the questions qualifies as teaching.
I fear the people who come up with this system of linking me with the grades of my students will miss the complexity and diversity of human developmental experiences and not anticipate issues of staffing and the flow on effects on a school when it bombs out on the league table. Where will we get all the bright eyed and bushy tailed young teachers to take over from the cardigan wearing “sage on a stage” style ones who are hitting retirement? Seriously, there aren’t many jobs going at Summer Bay High…
We might laugh at Jonah on Summer Heights High, but if you ever watched the episode of “Old Boys” centring on Felipe, you wouldn’t be.
Literacy and numeracy are at the top of the NSW education agenda, along with student engagement and retention, connected learning and teacher quality. There are lots of issues to contend with here and performance pay is way down food chain in terms of innovative solutions to the problems I am/ you are/ we are only touching on.
BTW- I won’t be stopping work tmrw either, when the Federation suggests I should. I think the points system is silly. For the 5 years I was a teacher, I never had a permanent job. I was temporary in one place for over 3 years. Yes, there are problems associated with getting people to teach in the bush. Yes, there needs to be a system that entices people to those areas. It’s usually called merit
When the old lot were turfed out at the last election I was elated and relieved. It’s taken only a few months to reveal that the old lot are still in office with different names and faces. A malevolent version of Time Lords. So much for the “education revolution”. How about restoring the “monitor system” along with caning machines! Some revolution. Some change.
How about a few extra swimming pools for Kings School?
Dear Jocelyn,
You are simply echoing my girlfriend Gail’s observations after 35-years of teaching, the last 15-years as a special needs co-ordinator integrating blind students into state primary and high schools. How on earth does any teacher these days begin to communicate with students when on average, each primary class comprises eight students who’s native language isn’t English, five with hearing, sight, speech, mobility or learning difficulties, 42% are from single or divorced parent situations and 60% are economically disadvantaged. In south-western Sydney those figures are higher. The statistics on how many are on various medications for such conditions as ADD, diabetes etc vary and absentee rates are extremely high. That’s the launching pad for an education revolution that without doubt rests on not just our schools or teachers but also with entire communities. I’d say Rudd would be more realistic if he aimed at social reform.
Thanks Jocelyn…. and Gail who retired last week!
Teachers in public school expect the Tories to bash them regualrly as John Howard seemed to do every January for 11 years( e.g.”public schools do not teach values”). It is awfully disappointing when the Rudd ALP governent starts teacher bashing so soon into its first term. I campaigned extensively for Maxine McKew in Bennelong during the last election and so did many other public school teachers. At one of her public meetings I denounced the teacher bashing so beloved of the previous government . I also railed againt the blackmailing of states into submission by threatening to withold funding for health and education as a tactic of the former government. I cannot ask my teachers in an inner west comprehensive public high school to work any harder as we battle with inadequate resources and an increasing number of students at risk with very difficult and challenging behaviours. I love teaching and working with young people, depite all the problems and lack of support from political leaders. Most teachers feel the same way but still elected leaders need to denigrate them and vilify them in the most simplistic way.
Should I have realised that the Rudd government would do this too ? For whom should I campaign so enthusiastically next time ?
My third post is driven by the absurdity of the arguements put forward by teachers & supporters in opposing govt plans to link increased funding to transparency & accountability (simple tenets most workplaces already operate under).
Most comments avoid the issue and go off on a tangent, raising other (important) issues or simply push the “cause”. Unfortunately it is far easier to push socialist utopian doctrines on children than adults !
Here’s a smattering of the ideological comments to date:
“Have you been possessed by the spirit of failed Liberal policies?”
“hitting schools with a big stick (or with Liberal Party policy, which amounts to the same thing)”
“When the old lot were turfed out at the last election I was elated and relieved”
“How about a few extra swimming pools for Kings School? ” i think this is sarcasm…
“Finally, Mr Rudd, please move our Country further left”
“I’d say Rudd would be more realistic if he aimed at social reform.”
“Teachers in public school expect the Tories to bash them regualrly as John Howard seemed to do”
If I was a psychologist I’d ask teachers why are they so afraid of accountability ? Note that issues around language and learning disabilities can be dealt with under a transparent system. Note that funding is not being denied. The malaise for public school teachers as I see it is that efforts to create a socialist utopia by putting their idealogoy on kids - have only created a brutopia - because we all know the real world starts at the school gates and if you can’t read, write or add - you have little hope - and unfortunately it appears those most in need have been sold a pup. Sadly, telling kids that 2+2 = 5 is a good effort just hurts them in the long term…
Before you ask, I have no political affiliations, was not born with a silver spoon, but DO like to see rational arguement…sometimes when people are too close to an issue reason leaves the room…
I am not a teacher, but I am a parent of five teenagers, all in High School.
There was a time when teaching was a highly regarded profession in the community. We need that back. Start by paying good teachers to stay in the classroom. It doesn’t matter if the managers and other bureaucrats are paid less than those teaching, increasing teacher pay to retain experienced teachers and improving their other conditions is what is needed.
And Parents can help to make classrooms a better place. Stop telling your children they have all these rights until you first teach them responsibilities. And don’t blame the teachers when your child goes off the rails academically - look in the mirror and ask yourself who can have the greatest influence on your child’s learning.
Finally, Mr Rudd, please move our Country further left, give us back a belief in a fair go and a desire to support our institutions. Create a system that rewards teachers for being teachers.
Jocelyn,
Like you I have fears that the ‘Education Revolution’ seems to be turning into hitting schools with a big stick (or with Liberal Party policy, which amounts to the same thing) to make them perform.
But I draw a line at criticising the laptops thing. In the state of Maine in the USA the state government gave every Year 7 student a laptop. Apple, the successful supplier, moulded the production run to indicate the student status of the machines (and reduce their value to pawn shops to nil). The educational outcomes of personal ownership were extraordinary, not just for the students, but also for their families and siblings. The scheme has now grown to other states…
I think that Guillard’s department will convert Kevin’s promise of ‘a laptop for every student’ to ‘a bunch more desktop computers in schools’, and I think students will be the poorer for the lack of knowledge that comes with control over one’s own computer, the lack of responsibility and trust, and the absence of the capacity to build their own working environment for their own education.
And yeah, I used to be a youth worker, and more often than not it was the parents…
Thanks for writing.
Dear Jocelyn,
You clearly haven’t changed. You start pushing your own political ideology three sentences into your missive. You want teachers to be better paid. But you want better pay without any accountability, on basis that any system would be too hard to implement.
I agree with your views that “helping people realise their dreams…teaching people how to think, feel, make good decisions, take responsibility…become involved in their communities” would be a good thing. But how about placing reding, riting and rithmatic at the top of the list - because guess what - as a taxpayer I thought I was paying you to provide the basic tools to achieve the lofty goals you outline. However, I am certainly not paying you to provide a political indoctrination !
I do agree on your comments that parental responsibility is a key issue - but if the system doesn’t have increased transparency then it is really easy to blame the teachers and the downward spiral will continue…