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Once again and despite the new era that the Gonski reforms were supposed to bring in, State schools are the losers. Gonski envisaged taxpayer money being spent in Education on the basis of need and, at the time, conservatives paid lip service to that. As we can now see in Treasury reports on who gets what, surprisingly the private sector gets the biggest slice. Mind you, that could be where most of the need is and we just haven't been alert to it.
Why is it that a free and universal education system and a free and universal health system can manage to divide us? It's a class thing and is deeply embedded in us culturally though it is not as evident as it was in years gone by. One section of the populace including wannabees will not have a bar of mixing with"that lot" (mostly meaning the less well off) and so, through their political representatives, they demand that an enormous amount of taxpayer money be spent on their exclusiveness. We give more to their schools than to our own and we prop up a money pit private health system as well and we do so on the spurious premise of free choice. We pay for a minority's free choice. And we don't seem to give a toss.
I spent 40 years as teacher in the state system quite a few of them finally working casually so I got a pretty broad exposure to what a state high school is like and how it operates. At the outset it should be pointed out that HSC results over many decades show no difference in success rates when socio economic variables are taken into account so what determines the negative attitude held by s many to democratic education system - free at that? The class thing of course but the obvious aversion to public by many less able to afford private cannot be overlooked and that saddens me because I know that people (not all by the way) want the best for their children.
Little things like sloppy state school uniforms put a lot of people off (there are no uniforms in the US imagine what that must look like) but State schools are very well run by extremely competent people. Apart from the subject English (which is in disarray public or private) the core subjects are staffed by effective and well trained teachers and the work that goes into welfare is extraordinarily thorough, I often used to marvel at the patience of those involved in that side of things and I certainly never had maths and science teachers of the same quality at the Catholic high school that I attended.
State schools cater for all including those "moved on" by private colleges and all are treated with obvious humanity and understanding. Of course there are social problems, more in some schools than in others and most kids anywhere are not all that bright. When my initial idealism as a teacher was eventually blunted by indifference in most classes I began to accept that a fair chunk of the population (perhaps the majority) lose curiosity at some time in infancy and usually want little to do with what is essentially academic training which eventually turns out an intellectual elite. Most privateers are worried that their kid will be drawn into that large cohort but the cohort also exists in the private system. I usually advise the concerned that as long as their kid is in the one of the top two tiers of a form, they have no worries, children will share the class with the like minded and the education they will be exposed to will be as good if not better than you would get anywhere.
A casual teacher usually replaces staff who need mental health days and those staff often have two or more difficult groups to look after day after day. In some schools I would feel quite despondent at what I saw as an educational wasteland. A lot of youngsters are so diverted by hormones and the distractions of our modern world that they can't recall what they had been doing the day before in class and in those circumstances continuity is almost impossible but then I might find myself in a top class at the same school and the difference was astounding - I might have been at Fort St High or North Sydney Boys - interested, articulate, confident bright kids clearly at ease with one another. If your kid is well brought up and sensible he/she will be in that sort of environment.
Why is it that a free and universal education system and a free and universal health system can manage to divide us? It's a class thing and is deeply embedded in us culturally though it is not as evident as it was in years gone by. One section of the populace including wannabees will not have a bar of mixing with"that lot" (mostly meaning the less well off) and so, through their political representatives, they demand that an enormous amount of taxpayer money be spent on their exclusiveness. We give more to their schools than to our own and we prop up a money pit private health system as well and we do so on the spurious premise of free choice. We pay for a minority's free choice. And we don't seem to give a toss.
I spent 40 years as teacher in the state system quite a few of them finally working casually so I got a pretty broad exposure to what a state high school is like and how it operates. At the outset it should be pointed out that HSC results over many decades show no difference in success rates when socio economic variables are taken into account so what determines the negative attitude held by s many to democratic education system - free at that? The class thing of course but the obvious aversion to public by many less able to afford private cannot be overlooked and that saddens me because I know that people (not all by the way) want the best for their children.
Little things like sloppy state school uniforms put a lot of people off (there are no uniforms in the US imagine what that must look like) but State schools are very well run by extremely competent people. Apart from the subject English (which is in disarray public or private) the core subjects are staffed by effective and well trained teachers and the work that goes into welfare is extraordinarily thorough, I often used to marvel at the patience of those involved in that side of things and I certainly never had maths and science teachers of the same quality at the Catholic high school that I attended.
State schools cater for all including those "moved on" by private colleges and all are treated with obvious humanity and understanding. Of course there are social problems, more in some schools than in others and most kids anywhere are not all that bright. When my initial idealism as a teacher was eventually blunted by indifference in most classes I began to accept that a fair chunk of the population (perhaps the majority) lose curiosity at some time in infancy and usually want little to do with what is essentially academic training which eventually turns out an intellectual elite. Most privateers are worried that their kid will be drawn into that large cohort but the cohort also exists in the private system. I usually advise the concerned that as long as their kid is in the one of the top two tiers of a form, they have no worries, children will share the class with the like minded and the education they will be exposed to will be as good if not better than you would get anywhere.
A casual teacher usually replaces staff who need mental health days and those staff often have two or more difficult groups to look after day after day. In some schools I would feel quite despondent at what I saw as an educational wasteland. A lot of youngsters are so diverted by hormones and the distractions of our modern world that they can't recall what they had been doing the day before in class and in those circumstances continuity is almost impossible but then I might find myself in a top class at the same school and the difference was astounding - I might have been at Fort St High or North Sydney Boys - interested, articulate, confident bright kids clearly at ease with one another. If your kid is well brought up and sensible he/she will be in that sort of environment.