We are about to inject six billion dollars into the New South Wales education system over the next four years and yet comparisons show that education in Australia is actually going backwards in comparison with other countries. One of the problems is the diversity of curriculums that apply because education is a state matter and consequently we have six states and two territories setting their own different standards. All attempts to coordinate a national curriculum founder on a tertiary dogfight of state educators claiming that their system is best.
They are not able to even agree on a common reading list, and consequently when the job market moves parents from state to state their children are utterly confused when they need to change schools. Education has amassed into a huge bureaucracy which tends to micro-manage and which has a gargantuan appetite for statistics which it pushes around endlessly to illustrate combative view points. The time teachers spend - face to face with their students - seems to be ever shrinking.
The latest impost is something called " Plan 2 software " which applies to kindergarten to year two classes and is supposed to help teachers diagnose student weaknesses and eliminate gaps before they are moved forward. Teachers claim it is " time consuming and overwhelming ". It involved addressing over a thousand indicators across seven segments of literacy and numeracy for each child.
One teacher reported that it took him an entire day each week to do the necessary data entry and consequently his teaching place was taken by a casual teacher. Others compare it to the rigors of personally filling out their annual tax return, which most people leave to a professional service. It does seem to merge the skill and knowledge of the teaching profession with a mix of accountancy and data input that has little impact on pupil learning.
Another problem is that the schools are seen as an opportunity to achieve many objectives not directly connected to tertiary standards. Time is set aside for sport to enable healthy bodies, but in many cases teachers are not involved and the student must make his or her own arrangements. Then we have religious instruction taking up a segment each week, with many opting out and being idle for that time. It has become the custom to use the education system to facilitate a social agenda covering many aspects of desirable human conduct. This may be worthwhile in building a better society, but it detracts from the business of equipping the kids with the basics necessary to actually earn a living.
When we reminisce about our own school days we mostly remember a teacher that made his or her subject alive and interesting - and that was the subject at which we excelled. A good teacher needs the time to carefully plan and prepare each lesson, so that they can hold pupils interest and make the subject interesting. That can not be achieved if they are overwhelmed by data input and attending to the demands of a huge bureaucracy compiling statistics rather than concerned with teaching results.
That six billion dollars will not improve student results unless we improve the face to face time they spend with their charges and less time shuffling piles of paper. The job of a good teacher is to combine knowledge with the presentation a talented actor employs to bring a role to life on a stage.
Just as that actor holds the audience spellbound in their seats, a talented teacher has that magic ability to present the subject in an interesting form and to simplify the message and make it understandable. That comes naturally to some teachers, and needs to be learned by others.
Australia is the lucky country free of internal land borders - and a common language. It is time we adopted a common education curriculum and scale back the demands of the bureaucracy - and allow teachers - to teach !
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