Education
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More transparency needed around Uni’s audit into ‘foreign interference’
The University’s approach to ‘foreign interference’ puts its Chinese staff at risk. There’s a tension in the idea of the modern university, between the essentially borderless nature of knowledge production, and the rival claim that universities should serve the “national interest”. Continue reading »
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Tudge fudges school results and funding
The Minister for Education, Alan Tudge, was fudging figures to denigrate Australia’s school performance at the The Age education summit last week. He claimed the UK as the new benchmark for education performance, but ignored serious flaws in the reporting of its results. He also fudged data on school funding and student results in Australia. Continue reading »
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Our Christian heritage and the culture wars
The culture war drum-beats are sounding again – pounded out by the usual suspects in the Murdoch media and among shock jocks and the Morrison Government. Continue reading »
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Childcare and the federal budget: what about the childcare workforce?
Changes to childcare in its role as a workforce support are expected to be made in the next federal budget. Childcare is more than workforce support and without reforming the present market-driven system it is unlikely recommended changes will deliver anything except minimal short-term relief to an ailing system. Continue reading »
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Can you teach people to be more empathetic? Yes and no
Empathy training is trendy in the corporate world. In light of the events in Parliament House in the recent past, empathy training has arrived there too. Rather than demanding that the Liberal National MP Andrew Laming resigns for his alleged misconduct, the Prime Minister has requested that he undertakes empathy training. Continue reading »
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Do we have an oversupply of degrees?
A recent edition of ‘The Conversation’ carried an article, by Small, Shaw and McPhail, titled ‘1 in 4 unemployed Australians has a degree. How did we get to this point.’ Continue reading »
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Investment in early childhood education provides greatest benefit
In Part 1 – Policy and Progress, I pointed out the problem of focusing on schooling and the myths of its contribution to economic growth. In Part 2, I emphasise the importance of teacher-led assessment and the fundamental importance of early childhood. Continue reading »
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Education shouldn’t be about contribution to the economy
The Coalition’s education policy deals only with schools, ignores the critical early years of life and the nature of learning and wrongly asserts a link between student education achievement and economic growth. Funding has produced gross inequity and no educational gain. Continue reading »
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Group of Eight universities concede to ASIO, restrict vital research engagement with China
China is provoking every country in its region. But that is no reason to cut off all contact, including scientific engagement, especially if we want to avoid war. Brian Toohey investigates another sphere in which academic freedom is being restricted by government. Continue reading »
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USYD’s war on peace in education
The University of Sydney looks set to close its Department of Peace and Conflict Studies. What is the broader significance of this? Does it matter? Continue reading »
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The gender bias of all-boys’ schools is obvious from the books they study in English
Fiction affects students’ social empathy. The English classroom can foster inclusion and develop appreciation for gender equity. While our private school system must denounce the most conspicuous elements of misogyny, we must also contend with the profound role that classroom learning plays in affirming or challenging a culture of oppression. Continue reading »
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Three school education policies for Labor
It seems just months since the last one, but the next election is already highlighting interest in policy development. What school education policies might a progressive sort of party like the ALP develop? They would have to pass three simple tests: they must address something that urgently needs fixing, they mustn’t scare the punters and Continue reading »
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Numbers don’t lie: Public schools underfunded by $60bn; private overfunded by $6bn
The Morrison Government has abandoned all pretence at funding private schools according to need and has washed its hands of ensuring that public schools are fully funded. Continue reading »
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Upturn in education? A few more lessons need to be learned
Tanya Plibersek’s contribution to Upturn, a better normal after COVID-19, is entitled ‘Lessons Learned: Education in recovery’. For school education in particular, the problems and the lessons learned go back many years. Achieving a better normal is not good enough; the pandemic didn’t so much create new problems as seriously highlight and worsen old ones. Continue reading »
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If there is no crisis in VET, why is it so difficult to tackle “acknowledged weaknesses”?
How does the Productivity Commission see vocational education and training: is it about quality training needed now by employers and employees and provided by TAFE during the Covid-19 pandemic, or about a competitive training market? Continue reading »
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Alan Tudge as Federal Education Minister: what does he mean for our school system?
Given Tudge’s concerns that the Gonski reforms would require Catholic and independent schools to take “certain cohorts” of students, amounting to “an incredible intrusion” , it seems he will sit comfortably with the pantheon of previous Coalition ministers. Continue reading »
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Vocational Education Trainers need vaccination priority – economic recovery may depend on it
Face-to-face teaching is vital for VET students, who are often from a lower socio-economic background and are most affected by the digital divide. As getting them back into the classrooms is a priority, their trainers should also be considered a priority group for the Covid-19 vaccine. Continue reading »
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Morrison’s private school funding model ignores the Bank of Mum and Dad
Private schools will receive $130 billion from the Federal Government over the next eight years. It constitutes massive over-funding by taxpayers because the Government’s funding model ignores a major source of family income used to assess the financial need of private schools. Continue reading »
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Public schools are as good as private schools
The widely held myth that private schools deliver better results than public schools has taken another blow. A new study of NAPLAN results shows that public schools do as well as private schools despite the large resource advantage of private schools. Continue reading »
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Most viewed posts 2020: Private Schools: Blessed are the rich (Oct 14, 2020)
Last year Shore’s income was $87.54 million. It is a rich school for kids of rich parents. It is also a charity. Yes, just like Habitat Australia, in Mount Street, North Sydney, just down the road from the school, Shore is a registered charity. Continue reading »
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University degrees are not as valuable as they once were with the million dollar cheating industry.
For the last decade it seems, employers, most unknowingly, have not been able to take for granted that a degree, even from the most highly ranked universities, ensures that the holder of that degree actually studied and passed the courses indicated by the degree. Continue reading »
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Asian language learning in Australia was a disgrace 40 years ago. It is now much worse.
An important issue we worked on in the Department (of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs) was foreign language learning. We set the pace in the early 1980s, with not many supporters. I felt quite lonely. Continue reading »
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Higher Education Bill: Disrupting human potential
The “Higher Education Bill” is one of those policies that strike their targets but carry behind a tail of undeclared impact. Here my aim is to define some of its hidden problems and to show why this law is ill-advised and dangerous. Continue reading »
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The failing pursuit of school success in NSW
Yes, it was announced in a Sunday newspaper, but this is serious: The NSW Department of Education will intervene in public schools that fail to meet performance targets in priority areas such as HSC and NAPLAN results, and other measures of success. Continue reading »
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Three cheers for health workers who care for patients, communities and the planet
During the Covid crisis doctors and heath care workers have been a ‘light on the hill’ for service and dedication to humanity. By September 2020 over 7000 around the world had died from Covid contracted at work. Continue reading »
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What does a Biden presidency mean for Australian post-secondary education?
President-elect Joe Biden’s anticipated quick alteration to American policy on climate change has received the greatest media attention in Australia because of its anticipated impact here, what about education? Although the election appeared to be a “policy free zone”, many of the Democratic Party’s policies on education represent a significant change from the past four Continue reading »
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Australian universities may come to regret the end of the Trump presidency
The share of Chinese students who have applied to study in Australia next year is 53 per cent of all international students compared to 27 per cent last year. Continue reading »
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Time To Release The Magic Pudding of International Education From The Covid-19 Freezer!
International education had become the quintessential Magic Pudding that not only kept regrowing no matter how much we feasted on it, but became bigger every year! At least, until Covid-19 put it into the freezer! Continue reading »
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Underlying tension between mission and money in our universities
The corporatisation of the Higher Education System is complete. It is no longer driven by the community of science but by money. Public higher education institutions are run as “businesses” in a higher education industry where revenues account for approximately 2% of GDP. Continue reading »
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Busted higher education policy demands a reset
The corporatist/managerialist paradigm introduced in the 1990s, with its heavy focus on financial performance metrics, is being rejected by students, staff, business and the broader community. The corporatisation of public higher education, and the substantial wealth it has created, has made the advocates for more money in the current fiscal environment look like greedy rent seekers. Continue reading »
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