A little piece I penned when Campbell Newman announced his Great teachers = Great results 'plan' ...
Sam* is a high school mathematics
teacher. With over 15 years experience, she is a senior teacher and has a Masters
degree. Like many of her colleagues around the state, much of Sam’s Easter
holidays are being taken up with marking exams and assignments. Today she is
marking her Year 9 exams – a task she has anticipated with dread, because she
knows that several of her students have not done well.
As any teacher will attest, marking the
work of students who are failing is a soul-destroying task. What makes it worse
is the countless hours Sam has spent examining student data, re-writing unit
plans and lessons to better suit her students’ needs, calling home, and helping
students at lunchtimes and after school.
More than half the students in Sam’s
class have failed mathematics in previous years and several of them have been
identified as being academically ‘at risk’. Most require one-to-one assistance
every lesson. But with 29 students in her class, Sam only gets to spend an
average of 2 minutes with each student per lesson. It doesn’t take a
mathematical genius to work out that this is simply not enough time to make a difference.
Conscious of this fact, this year Sam’s
school purchased computer software to enable students to be provided with more
individualised mathematics instruction. But as is the case in so many of our
schools, at best Sam’s class only has access to computers once a week. Sam
spends a great deal of time preparing individualised worksheets for her
students. But it is doubtful the budget will allow for the photocopying of
these worksheets past the end of second term. Like so many teachers who dip into
their own pockets when resourcing falls short, Sam will probably resort to
printing the worksheets at home.
All over Queensland there are students
like Sam’s Year 9s who are struggling. And all over Queensland there are
thousands of teachers who are trying their absolute best to help them.
This month the Newman government
announced its $535M Great teachers = Great results “plan”. According to the
Premier, the way to improve Sam’s Year 9 students results is to subject Sam and
her principal to a yearly performance review, make it more difficult for Sam to
access the experienced senior teacher classification, create a competition
rewards system to enable Sam to compete for funds from a “bonus” pool, create
job insecurity for the leadership of Sam’s school with fixed-term
performance-based contracts, and make all state schools independent public
schools. Yep, that should do it.
Unfortunately for the Can-Don't team,
similar schemes tried interstate and overseas have failed – sometimes
spectacularly so. What makes the Premier think his plan
for Queensland schools will be any different?
Whilst the Newman government professes to
reject the Gonski reforms because they’re not in the best interests of
Queensland’s children, its actions speak louder than its words. So “committed”
is this government to the education of Queensland’s children that it budgeted
for just “270 additional teachers, teacher-aides and support staff to support
enrolment growth” in 2013, despite the fact that its own projections showed
that 837 additional staff would be required. Similarly, the government
demonstrated its “commitment” to Queensland’s teachers by absolutely refusing
to countenance claims for increased planning time for beginning teachers,
professional career structures for teachers and recognition of specialist
positions during last year’s enterprise bargaining negotiations.
The Gonski Review of Funding for
Schooling by contrast undertook the most comprehensive review of funding in 40
years. After receiving more than 7,000 submissions, visiting 39 schools and
consulting 71 key education groups around the country, it found that Australia
is seriously underinvesting in education. Despite the Newman government’s
reliance on teacher bashing and political posturing, the evidence is in that
the problem with our schools is not the teachers but the persistent failure of
governments to resource schools fairly.
If agreement could be reached and Gonski
dollars started to flow, education funding for Queensland students would
increase by about $1,500 per student. For a school with 1,600 students the
extra money, in real terms, would mean: around 15 extra full-time teachers,
smaller class sizes, extra specialist teachers in areas such as literacy and
numeracy, greater support for students with higher needs, and increased
training and classroom support for teachers. These are all things that we know
will actually make a difference to student learning.
The Gonski Review Panel has proposed that
half of the funding for its recommended reforms be provided by the federal
government, and half by the states. Using that model, the Premier's $535
million dollar plan represents roughly Queensland’s share of funding the Gonski
reforms. If the Premier can find the money for an ill-considered failure,
surely he can find the money to fund the Gonski reforms, a plan which is backed
by proven research and will truly improve our children’s educational outcomes.
I challenge the Premier to find a single
parent who would prefer that $535M be spent on teacher “bonus” pools and the
like, rather than fully funding the Gonski reforms. I challenge him to find a
single teacher who feels that more bureaucracy or meagre bonuses are the
resources they need to turn failing students around. If I were Sam, or the
parent of one of her students, given a choice between Premier Newman’s “plan”
and implementing the Gonski recommendations in full, I know which one I’d
choose.
*Not her real name.
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