Been off air for some time but becoming sick of the teacher and school Principal criticism by politicians in Australia. They just don't get it, that is, how complex it is to run a school and to teach.
It is true that contemporary teachers and Principals are under more pressure than in my days as a teacher and Principal, however even in those days these vital jobs were no walk in the park.
The nub of the criticism is that Australian students are falling behind in the world rankings in literacy, numeracy and science learning. The stats for Australian students on the PISA (Program or International Student Assessment) were viewed negatively, most recently in New South Wales where the Premier of that State expressed concern at the decline in mathematics on the PISA tests (Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February, 2020, p18).
The stats from the Australian annual NAPLAN (National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy) testing are always under eagle eye political scrutiny. The results in recent years have drawn a lot of criticism from politicians. The irony in my view is that the administration of and coaching for these tests takes up too much teacher and student time that would be better spent on mastering the prescribed curriculum learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy. Australia has an excellent national curriculum K-12 and each state has its variations of this.
I have laboured long and hard in this blog to indicate the strategy to overcome the above deficiencies. It is based at least in Primary (Elementary) school around mastery in the English language skills and mathematics skills, knowledge and understandings. At this level of schooling there is no need for rigorous mastery of the prescribed syllabus learning outcomes in the other subject areas except perhaps for Digital Technology and Science. I wouldn't even require mastery of in science at this level. I would be contented to be able to say for these non mastery syllabus areas that my graduating students have covered all the required learning outcomes in these non mastery areas and are enthusiastic and ready for the more specialised requirements of Secondary (High) schooling. I would be able to have each graduating student carry detailed records for literacy and numeracy into the hands of the receiving Secondary school teachers. Throughout the primary school years each student's report would show a special comment section on how they are progressing in attaining in functional literacy and numeracy. Parents want to know this.
Readers there is so much detail in previous posts about all this with the above being a brief recap.
As for School Principals any Principal worth their salt will be regularly assessing how their school community is going against a set of school effectiveness criteria. Hopefully their training makes them competent to do this. Such effective Principals would be confident to open their schools to an external effectiveness audit at any time. Previous posts cover all this in detail.
Without being a showoff it would be useful for politicians to read the posts in this blog.
Frustrated as ever!
May the Force be with you.
