Some years back, I was walking down the street when I was confronted with that scourge of the modern urban landscape: the Intersection ‘Honkers’. You know the ones: the invariably lefty activists (righties are presumably too busy actually working to be able to stand on street corners all day) forming a gaggle at the traffic lights, waving their little placards and exhorting motorists to “Honk if you support (insert Fashionable Lefty Cause)”.
Motorists, of course, are lucky enough to be able to wind up their windows and ignore these hectoring layabouts. On foot, I had no choice but to run the gauntlet.
This particular rabble were teachers, beseeching me to show support for their endless demands for more money. As I couldn’t resist pointing out to them, my money, my taxes. In return for which, I and 14 million other taxpayers are seeing steadily declining results. Why should I give them more money, I asked, when they plainly aren’t doing their jobs?
It was probably fortunate that the lights changed when they did. But my challenge to these grasping, teachers’ union hacks was more than mere grousing.
Critical literacy and numeracy skills of Australian students are languishing, despite government funding for schools soaring by more than $20 billion over a decade.
State and territory education ministers are under mounting pressure to explain a lack of improvement in students’ academic results at a time when education funding has hit record levels.
Preliminary results from the 2019 NAPLAN tests, to be released publicly today, show average national student scores across most age groups and domains have barely budged since testing began more than a decade ago.
Even though it was the brainchild of a Labor government, teachers’ unions have always hated NAPLAN, which tests students’ reading, writing and maths skills as they progress through school. And why wouldn’t they? NAPLAN shows, in plain numbers, just how badly so many schools are doing their job. It’s hardly surprising that the latest bad numbers have been met with demands to dump NAPLAN altogether. Teachers and education bureaucrats are desperate to keep their ongoing failure a dirty little secret.
The NAPLAN scores, described as “disappointing” and “alarming”, sparked calls for unproven teaching “fads” to be dumped from classrooms, a renewed focus on promoting evidence-informed practices to schools and urgent action to improve initial teacher education to boost their proficiency […] Australian Catholic University senior research fellow Kevin Donnelly said blame rested with state and territory governments and education departments.
What, ask teachers and education bureaucrats to give up their endless watermelon brow-beating and Queer Theory propaganda, and actually teach kids to read, write and add two and two? “Tell ‘im ‘e’s dreamin’.”
Educators are demanding more and more money in return for this dismal record of failure. Yet, despite Labor and teachers’ union lies about “cuts to funding”, education spending has constantly risen.
The overall lack of progress is despite record funding flows into both government and non-government school systems since NAPLAN testing began […]There is growing community concern that Australian education standards are lagging behind international counterparts.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/naplan-schools-fail-to-lift-kids-with-20bn-flop/news-story
It’s long past time for a conservative government to have the bottle to put the kybosh on faddish nonsense like “whole language” reading, and sweep the schools clean of the watermelons and “gender whisperers”. Teachers and union hacks will scream blue murder, but parents and the wider community will give a cheer of relief.
And who knows? Kids might start learning again.
