Surely we can teach people to read

Nuggets73

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How do kids progress at school if they cant read?

.... about 50,000 students Australia-wide began secondary school in 2019 with bare minimum reading skills, if any.

..... total government spending on schools increased from $36.4bn in 2007-08 to $65.58bn in 2018-19



Secondary students’ achievement in writing is now below the 2011 national average, according to analysis of NAPLAN trends, with boys’ performance trailing two years behind that of girls when they reach Year 9.

By that stage, more than one-in-five students do not meet the national minimum standard, posing a significant risk for their final years of formal education.

The demise has prompted a national think tank to call for the introduction of an annual English proficiency test for all students at each year level. Tougher entry requirements for university teacher training courses have also been recommended in a bid to ensure candidates’ own literacy skills are up to standard.

“Australian students’ declining achievement in NAPLAN, as well as in international test regimes such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), is of concern to parents, employer groups and tertiary institutions who question the preparedness of many school leavers for adult life and the workforce,” they write.

“Initial teacher education programs have largely dropped the ball on writing instruction, at least in terms of ensuring that all graduating teachers demonstrate sophisticated control of the rules and conventions of English. It is possible that the loss of teacher expertise in English language usage may be insurmountable.”

The report, which comes as ACARA evaluates feedback to its recently released draft curriculum before a final version is presented to education ministers later this year, is likely to compound existing concerns about the nation’s falling education standards.

“It is well past time for a forensic investigation into why they have to do this and who is responsible for the demonstrable decline in Australian literacy standards and practices.”


Good post bud, this should be discussed more :thumbsu:

I'd be surprised if there wasn't a direct correlation between the evolution of the internet & decline of literacy rates.
Back when I grew up, the only way you could source info was reading - these days you just jump on google and source that same information within seconds

In my opinion, this needs to start at home - we can't rely on government & schools to do all the heavy lifting.
.... If I had to pass on advice to a new parent, 30 mins reading a day with your child is an non-negotiable
 
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'Teacher training is set for a shake-up, as the federal government prepares to weed out students with poor literacy and lure top-ranked school leavers and midlife professionals into classroom teaching.'

The literacy and numeracy test – failed by one in 10 teaching graduates despite a four-year university degree – is set to be mandated during the first year of study, instead of the final year.

Tighter controls on entry standards and teaching quality will be imposed, after the review found some universities had lowered entry standards and failed to ensure graduates were ready to teach in classrooms.

Many newly graduated teachers do not know how to teach children to read – the most essential skill of teaching, and the foundation of all other learning.

“It is critical to continue to ensure that teachers possess strong personal literacy and numeracy skills,’’ the report states.

For more:
 

CaptainHowdy87

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I wonder how much of this is attributable to the growing reluctance to have low IQ children attend special schools. Many these days are going to mainstream schools and really struggle, they just don't get it

This is very much the case. My Mum is a secondary school teacher, and she has 4 or 5 kids in every class at every year level who really should be going to a special school, but the parents want them to be "normal". It's ridiculous. Teachers in public schools have to dedicate a grossly inordinate amount of time to the special students, and there's not nearly enough teachers aids. The special kids all struggle immensely in public schools, and often have severe behavioral issues that have a profoundly negative effect on the rest of the students.

It should be mandatory to ship these kids off to special schools when it's shown that they clearly can't thrive at all in the public school system. My Mum and every teacher at the disgustingly underfunded and under-resourced shithole public high school she teaches at are burdened to a tremendous degree having to deal with these kids. Thank Goodness she's retiring this year. I'm trying to convince her she should write a tell-all book about what a goddamn joke the public school system is in this country.
 
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This is very much the case. My Mum is a secondary school teacher, and she has 4 or 5 kids in every class at every year level who really should be going to a special school, but the parents want them to be "normal". It's ridiculous. Teachers in public schools have to dedicate a grossly inordinate amount of time to the special students, and there's not nearly enough teachers aids. The special kids all struggle immensely in public schools, and often have severe behavioral issues that have a profoundly negative effect on the rest of the students.

It should be mandatory to ship these kids off to special schools when it's shown that they clearly can't thrive at all in the public school system. My Mum and every teacher at the disgustingly underfunded and under-resourced shithole public high school she teaches at are burdened to a tremendous degree having to deal with these kids. Thank Goodness she's retiring this year. I'm trying to convince her she should write a tell-all book about what a goddamn joke the public school system is in this country.

Yes I know some teachers too - same story. An entire class of children missing out on learning while they try to get one or two kids under basic control.

The low kids get nothing out of school. They need to be taught road safety, basic numeracy, how to interact with people. They have no hope with learning about dinosaurs or the gold rush. The other kids get nothing out of it, because they are not being taught whilst the struggling kids are managed.

We are investing taxpayers' money in a scheme to produce kids with stunted education.
 
There’s huge stigma attached to “special schools”, especially after primary school. As if bullying isn’t bad enough. Agree that schools are still very much “one size fits all” in many ways, still; public and private included have worked in both and have a young teenage relative with learning issues). Sadly, a percentage will never catch up, and solutions need to be explored, but not rated a priority by powers that be.
 
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This is very much the case. My Mum is a secondary school teacher, and she has 4 or 5 kids in every class at every year level who really should be going to a special school, but the parents want them to be "normal". It's ridiculous. Teachers in public schools have to dedicate a grossly inordinate amount of time to the special students, and there's not nearly enough teachers aids. The special kids all struggle immensely in public schools, and often have severe behavioral issues that have a profoundly negative effect on the rest of the students.

It should be mandatory to ship these kids off to special schools when it's shown that they clearly can't thrive at all in the public school system.
They typically don't thrive in special schools - which is why those parents prefer to send their child to a mainstream school. It's really not that hard to differentiate content for students in Years 7 to 10, and at senior school, there are other pathways available such VCAL, going into TAFE, getting an apprenticeship etc.

Schools with an effective behaviour management framework are able to teach most students with severe behavioural issues how to regulate their behaviour. However, this needs to be consistently explicitly taught and re-enforced throughout the school, and in some schools, many teachers don't see this as their role.

I agree that the funding model needs tweaking - there are always a heap of students that are right on the border of being funded - but miss out entirely and struggle as a result.
 
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There’s huge stigma attached to “special schools”, especially after primary school. As if bullying isn’t bad enough. Agree that schools are still very much “one size fits all” in many ways, still; public and private included have worked in both and have a young teenage relative with learning issues). Sadly, a percentage will never catch up, and solutions need to be explored, but not rated a priority by powers that be.

I have a close relo who is a teachers aide (not sure of her job title) who looks after kids in that position in a Catholic high school (fwiw) & from what I understand the school has to limit the number of students in this category. The school works hard to ensure mainstream students are not effected negatively.
Parents often seem to use school as a child minding service.

Ignoring the issues wont make the problems go away & I commend those working for an improved result.
 

CaptainHowdy87

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They typically don't thrive in special schools - which is why those parents prefer to send their child to a mainstream school. It's really not that hard to differentiate content for students in Years 7 to 10, and at senior school, there are other pathways available such VCAL, going into TAFE, getting an apprenticeship etc.

Schools with an effective behaviour management framework are able to teach most students with severe behavioural issues how to regulate their behaviour. However, this needs to be consistently explicitly taught and re-enforced throughout the school, and in some schools, many teachers don't see this as their role.

I agree that the funding model needs tweaking - there are always a heap of students that are right on the border of being funded - but miss out entirely and struggle as a result.
We can't know whether or not they'll thrive if parents are afraid to send them there. Do primary schools not have meetings with parents of special needs kids at the end of Grade 6 and explain why their child would benefit greatly from going to a special school? Why is it even up to choice in the first place? Someone mentioned they had to have a sub-70 IQ which is just ridiculous. It should be on a case by case basis.

No such behavior management framework exists at the public schools my Mum has taught at, or any other schools her friends have taught at. She said there's very little at her discretion she can do about problematic kids. Continually disruptive kids get sent to timeout and then sent right back to class. Several times a week she deals with students, often the same ones time and time again, that have violent outbursts, attack other students and throw things around the classroom. They're back in her class in a day or 2.

Kids are allowed to have their mobile phones in class and can only ever be warned to put it away. Teachers can't confiscate a phone these days because of some horseshit about kids needing to be readily contactable by their parents in the case of an emergency or something (as if a call to the office wouldn't suffice).

Last year and so far this year, she's stuck in small, unconditioned portables, not allowed to open any windows, and again, can only give repeated warnings to kids to put on a mask. She can't send them to timeout over the masks, she's told she needs to just keep "reminding them" even though the non-maskers are rarely forgetful, they're just defiant little shits who don't care.

Plenty of kids are extremely troubled, and cause far too many problems, especially since these days they just get endless warnings and never adequate punishment.

20 years ago, I used to be so f'ing miserable I couldn't bare to go to school some days. For that I was punished with a full day of in school suspension basically doing janitorial duties. Nowadays kids show up late, skip periods or the whole day and never get in trouble. They show up reeking and without proper uniform. Many never show up to class with books or other essentials (parents can often afford to buy their kids the latest iPhone though). Many come from broken homes or simply have parents that don't give a s**t. Mum still gets cursed out in emails and screamed at during parent teacher conferences (if the deadbeats even bother to show up).

There's almost nothing teachers and staff can do to adequately punish or "correct" the behavior of troubled students, and those with severe learning difficulties simply can't get individualized teaching and the attention they need. If public schools continue having to operate with a one-size-fits-all curriculum, and aren't given the funding and resources to tailor the curriculum for troubled kids, then they need to be in a special school, or at the very least a class for troubled kids and those with learning difficulties, not spread out into every class. It's not fair on the teachers or the other students.

It's a soul-crushing, unrewarding and unfulfilling job like you wouldn't believe, and most people wouldn't have a goddamn clue judging from the sort of ignorant s**t people say about teachers in this country. Their hands are tied. Very little is at their discretion. They're massively overworked and have insanely unrealistic expectations put on them by the general public who simply just have no f'***ing idea how the system works, and rarely want to do their part in raising their own children.

This is a school in the outer-Eastern suburbs of Melbourne by the way. Not the roughest or poorest area in this country by a longshot. I can't even imagine how bad it is in crime and poverty ridden areas. I pray any young people idealistic enough to want to be a teacher at a public school in this day and age have someone in their life that can dissuade them from pursuing such a path. They will not get the support they need from the school system to adequately do their jobs.
 
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We can't know whether or not they'll thrive if parents are afraid to send them there. Do primary schools not have meetings with parents of special needs kids at the end of Grade 6 and explain why their child would benefit greatly from going to a special school? Why is it even up to choice in the first place? Someone mentioned they had to have a sub-70 IQ which is just ridiculous. It should be on a case by case basis.

No such behavior management framework exists at the public schools my Mum has taught at, or any other schools her friends have taught at. She said there's very little at her discretion she can do about problematic kids. Continually disruptive kids get sent to timeout and then sent right back to class. Several times a week she deals with students, often the same ones time and time again, that have violent outbursts, attack other students and throw things around the classroom. They're back in her class in a day or 2.

Kids are allowed to have their mobile phones in class and can only ever be warned to put it away. Teachers can't confiscate a phone these days because of some horseshit about kids needing to be readily contactable by their parents in the case of an emergency or something (as if a call to the office wouldn't suffice).

Last year and so far this year, she's stuck in small, unconditioned portables, not allowed to open any windows, and again, can only give repeated warnings to kids to put on a mask. She can't send them to timeout over the masks, she's told she needs to just keep "reminding them" even though the non-maskers are rarely forgetful, they're just defiant little shits who don't care.

Plenty of kids are extremely troubled, and cause far too many problems, especially since these days they just get endless warnings and never adequate punishment.

20 years ago, I used to be so f'ing miserable I couldn't bare to go to school some days. For that I was punished with a full day of in school suspension basically doing janitorial duties. Nowadays kids show up late, skip periods or the whole day and never get in trouble. They show up reeking and without proper uniform. Many never show up to class with books or other essentials (parents can often afford to buy their kids the latest iPhone though). Many come from broken homes or simply have parents that don't give a sh*t. Mum still gets cursed out in emails and screamed at during parent teacher conferences (if the deadbeats even bother to show up).

There's almost nothing teachers and staff can do to adequately punish or "correct" the behavior of troubled students, and those with severe learning difficulties simply can't get individualized teaching and the attention they need. If public schools continue having to operate with a one-size-fits-all curriculum, and aren't given the funding and resources to tailor the curriculum for troubled kids, then they need to be in a special school, or at the very least a class for troubled kids and those with learning difficulties, not spread out into every class. It's not fair on the teachers or the other students.

It's a soul-crushing, unrewarding and unfulfilling job like you wouldn't believe, and most people wouldn't have a goddamn clue judging from the sort of ignorant sh*t people say about teachers in this country. Their hands are tied. Very little is at their discretion. They're massively overworked and have insanely unrealistic expectations put on them by the general public who simply just have no f'***ing idea how the system works, and rarely want to do their part in raising their own children.

This is a school in the outer-Eastern suburbs of Melbourne by the way. Not the roughest or poorest area in this country by a longshot. I can't even imagine how bad it is in crime and poverty ridden areas. I pray any young people idealistic enough to want to be a teacher at a public school in this day and age have someone in their life that can dissuade them from pursuing such a path. They will not get the support they need from the school system to adequately do their jobs.
I've worked in low-SES public schools and they are definitely challenging environments to teach in - particularly if leadership is unsupportive or unable embed an effective behaviour management framework.

The issues you raise are not specific to whether students with additional needs can be effectively taught in mainstream schools (they can) - those are systematic issues with education in Australia. Ultimately, those low-SES kids with behaviour issues or learning difficulties (that don't meet the eligibility criteria for special schools) need to go somewhere and when private schools take the 'cream of the crop' in the area, public schools in low-SES areas become ghettoised. In a typical class of 25, instead of having 3-5 students with behaviour management issues - which you can work with to help them regulate their behaviour - you can instead have 10-15 which is unmanageable - even with aides. Given that this is the hand that public schooling is dealt, it is not fair to lay the blame on the public school system itself.

The dual public/private system is not going to change any time soon, so the solution is greater investment in Flexible Learning schools or campuses - which focus on students that at risk of disengaging from school due to:
  • low or non-attendance
  • literacy and / or numeracy outcomes
  • behaviours of concern
  • a history of school exclusion.
These schools (which are not special schools) benefit those students who are at risk of disengaging by providing them a flexible, individualised curriculum. The mainstream public schools, which these students would have otherwise been in, also benefit from the removed disruption to learning. At our school, students with repeated suspensions for severe breaches of the expected behaviours are eventually moved onto to a Flexible Learning school such as The Pavilion.



However, in order to be effective, these schools require a much lower teacher-student ratios (similar to special schools) and as a result, are more expensive to run - hence the need for greater funding for public education in Australia if we are to address the root issue of disparate socioeconomic outcomes associated with inter-generational wealth inequality.
 
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I've worked in low-SES public schools and they are definitely challenging environments to teach in - particularly if leadership is unsupportive or unable embed an effective behaviour management framework.

The issues you raise are not specific to whether students with additional needs can be effectively taught in mainstream schools (they can) - those are systematic issues with education in Australia. Ultimately, those low-SES kids with behaviour issues or learning difficulties (that don't meet the eligibility criteria for special schools) need to go somewhere and when private schools take the 'cream of the crop' in the area, public schools in low-SES areas become ghettoised. In a typical class of 25, instead of having 3-5 students with behaviour management issues - which you can work with to help them regulate their behaviour - you can instead have 10-15 which is unmanageable - even with aides. Given that this is the hand that public schooling is dealt, it is not fair to lay the blame on the public school system itself.

The dual public/private system is not going to change any time soon, so the solution is greater investment in Flexible Learning schools or campuses - which focus on students that at risk of disengaging from school due to:
  • low or non-attendance
  • literacy and / or numeracy outcomes
  • behaviours of concern
  • a history of school exclusion.
These schools (which are not special schools) benefit those students who are at risk of disengaging by providing them a flexible, individualised curriculum. The mainstream public schools, which these students would have otherwise been in, also benefit from the removed disruption to learning. At our school, students with repeated suspensions for severe breaches of the expected behaviours are eventually moved onto to a Flexible Learning school such as The Pavilion.



However, in order to be effective, these schools require a much lower teacher-student ratios (similar to special schools) and as a result, are more expensive to run - hence the need for greater funding for public education in Australia if we are to address the root issue of disparate socioeconomic outcomes associated with inter-generational wealth inequality.


Any call for more funding for education generally has many critics - a specific program has a far better chance of success, NOT yet another call for more dollars.
 
Behavioural problems don't need to be placed in special schools, the poor kids there have enough cope with just learning the basics and life skills. As it is there aren't enough special schools in the first place. The other thing is, even special schools can't cater for ALL special needs and can't take every child who needs to go there. My young relative has basic numeracy and literacy but has ADHD. The school works with similar kids on social skills, but they have poor concentration and are also ripe for bullying. It seems the bullied can be advised but the bullies can't be stopped.
 
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'According to the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment tests, 20 per cent of Australian 15-year-olds lack sufficient literacy skills to participate effectively in everyday life activities requiring reading and writing.'

'In large part, this reflects a failure to translate into practice, the knowledge derived from the scientific study of reading and reading instruction and, indeed, to the rejection in some circles, of the notion that there even is a science of reading.

Unfortunately, much of this resistance comes from the very places that are supposed to be bastions of critical thinking and scholarly inquiry – our universities. We now have an Australian curriculum that has returned phonics to its rightful place in the classroom and disendorsed the use of predictable readers and empirically-baseless approaches to helping children read unfamiliar words.'

'But a new curriculum does not slay the seemingly indestructible legacies of the whole language-balanced literacy philosophy that haunt the teaching of reading.'


'If education is about social justice, high-quality reading instruction must have a front-row seat.'

 

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I teach a couple of Special Ed classes. Most of these kids have very limited literacy skills. We should be teaching them how to read and write. However we aren't able to. If year 10 is doing a film review unit we need to teach these kids to write a film review, albeit at a much simpler, or "differentiated" level. How can they when they don't have the literacy skills? Some students are on individual curriculum programs (ICP) where they work at a different year level. However if they can meet just one standard criterion for that year they are moved up. They may be able to meet a listening or oral criterion so are moved up even if they can't read or write. I have year 10 kids working at a year 6 ICP level who still can't read or write but I'm expected to get them to write a film review. It's seriously inane and getting me very down. I just keep telling myself that I can retire in 5 years but that doesn't help these students much.
 
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'When Australia’s 15-year-olds began sitting the international PISA tests of reading literacy, in 2000 and 2003, about 12 per cent were shown to have reading levels that OECD experts consider “too low to enable them to participate effectively and productively in life”.
By 2018, that figure had become one student in five. By the end of this decade, it is on course to be nearly one in four. Translated across the school system, that means a million students, out of just over four million, who cannot read well enough to have a productive career and a full life. Similar results exist for scientific literacy. In maths, the results are even more bleak. Inequality in Australian education just keeps getting worse.'

So up from 12% (2002, 2003) to 20% in 2018 & heading towards 25%.

'Of the 76 countries that took part in the latest PISA tests in 2018, Australia had the eighth-largest gap in performance between the top and bottom 10 per cent of students. We are on track to achieve a grim milestone: a million schoolchildren with an education too poor to enable them to participate effectively and productively in Australian society.'
.....

'In 1968, only about a quarter of students who started high school completed year 12. By 1992 that figure was close to 80 per cent. The figure is now 83 per cent, reflecting little improvement in the past 30 years......

Slowly and insidiously, the narrative of a common education producing a more level playing field of life chances has changed. We no longer talk about equality, we talk about adapting education to every child’s needs.'

......

'The Australian curriculum, however, is not a high-quality, knowledge-rich curriculum. It doesn’t guarantee the knowledge students are supposed to learn. It fails to provide teachers with comprehensive, high-quality instructional materials to be used in classrooms. ....

Instead, it is a skills-based curriculum; the standards for students to achieve are skills-based. A skills-based curriculum includes knowledge but isn’t specific about what knowledge should be taught, so there is no guarantee of what will be taught in each year level, let alone across the curriculum.'

 
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Reading is a struggle for quarter of our teenagers, NAPLAN 2021 testing reveals​


One in four teenagers cannot read at the minimum standard as high schools fail to provide remedial teaching, damning new test results reveal.
Data from the 2021 NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) tests of 1.2 million children reveals that a quarter of year 9 students and nearly one in five year 7 students failed to meet the minimum standard for reading.

High school students are twice as likely as primary school students to have problems reading at their year level. In primary schools, 11 per cent of year 3 students and 12.5 per cent of year 5 students failed to read properly.

The data will be presented at the Learning Difficulties Australia conference this weekend by Five from Five project founder Jennifer Buckingham, who promotes evidence-based reading instruction for children.

Dr Buckingham’s research shows 57,000 teenagers started high school this year semiliterate. She warned that schools were failing to get struggling readers back on track – one in three students who failed to read well in primary school also failed to meet minimum literacy standards in high school. “High school students with low literacy and numeracy need intensive intervention as soon as possible,’’ she said. “A significant number of students do not meet minimum standards, year after year.’’


Lets see if the conference gets any media ??
 
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Sadly 'the blame it on Naplan' apologists are out there, seemingly oblivious of the harm that is being inflicted on these kids.

'In a troubled education era when consideration has been given to letting machines mark school students’ creative and narrative writing pieces, it is small wonder that we now have newspaper headlines screaming that school writing standards are in crisis.

NAPLAN plays a central role in this. Teachers, whether they agree or not, find themselves teaching to this test. The writing section in particular stifles creativity and forces teachers to deliver lessons that are geared to focus on a narrow band of criteria unrelated to the craft of creative writing and do not necessarily lead to transferable writing skills.'

 
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Reading is a struggle for quarter of our teenagers, NAPLAN 2021 testing reveals​


One in four teenagers cannot read at the minimum standard as high schools fail to provide remedial teaching, damning new test results reveal.
Data from the 2021 NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) tests of 1.2 million children reveals that a quarter of year 9 students and nearly one in five year 7 students failed to meet the minimum standard for reading.

High school students are twice as likely as primary school students to have problems reading at their year level. In primary schools, 11 per cent of year 3 students and 12.5 per cent of year 5 students failed to read properly.

The data will be presented at the Learning Difficulties Australia conference this weekend by Five from Five project founder Jennifer Buckingham, who promotes evidence-based reading instruction for children.

Dr Buckingham’s research shows 57,000 teenagers started high school this year semiliterate. She warned that schools were failing to get struggling readers back on track – one in three students who failed to read well in primary school also failed to meet minimum literacy standards in high school. “High school students with low literacy and numeracy need intensive intervention as soon as possible,’’ she said. “A significant number of students do not meet minimum standards, year after year.’’


Lets see if the conference gets any media ??
Hasn’t this been the case from time immemorial? Schools have always been one size fits all. And yet kids are all very different, with individual interests and abilities. Smaller classes, streaming, special needs classes, extra tuition and much more have all been tried with limited success, and still kids go through school with sub-standard achievement.

Technology has its advantages, most kids are interested whereas they aren’t interested in reading books, so can it be harnessed (at low cost for struggling families) more creatively?

Many kids are smart, but not school-smart. My son, for example, was never engaged by school but quickly got the hang of technology as it developed and now as an adult is able to use it in a satisfying and well-paid career.
 
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Hasn’t this been the case from time immemorial?

You may be right, its more* in focus for me with my grandkids in primary school.

* I encountered in the 70s, when employing people with ability who were being held back by problems reading & writing.

Promoting people without reading & writing skills is unforgivable to me.
 
I should add that my son is very literate and adequately numerate - somehow he absorbed these skills to quite a high level. And that’s in spite of, not because of school 😏

Edited to add: I do think parental involvement in a child’s learning from a very early age is crucial. We have heaps of books in our house and he was given books and read to since he could sit up. But I’ve been to houses where there are no books, parents are busy working or tending to several children or have other calls on their time. There’s a tendency by some to think it’s the school’s job to teach reading and writing and counting. I know I’m possibly generalising but I wonder if there have been any studies into this aspect and connections thought about.

And how highly is education valued by Australian parents? I’ve taught and worked in schools with a multicultural population and migrant parents are invariably very keen that their children achieve to a high standard, strictly monitoring homework and visiting the teachers often.
 
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They have computers and calculators and audible books now

No real thought process/comprehension/focus/attention level is required these days

Sure kids can type and have digital/social media skills but they can't freely or creatively write due to their learning and limited language and vocabularies

Working with a lot of 18-25yo when I send emails you always get messages asking "what does (insert what may be considered an archaic noun verb or adjective) mean?" or comments "I never knew that word existed - i had to Google it" and you just shake your head.
 
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