Launch of the Australian Government’s Independent Public Schools initiative

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Monday 3 February 2014TranscriptThe Hon Christopher Pyne MP

• Minister for Education
• Leader of the House

MICHAEL PHILLIPS (PRINCIPAL): Good morning everyone. Welcome to Ringwood Secondary College.

This morning it’s my pleasure to welcome the Minister, Federal Minister for Education Mr Christopher Pyne and the State Minister for Education Mr Martin Dixon to Ringwood Secondary College. And of course our Local Federal Member Mr Michael Sukkar.

It’s a pleasure to have you all here in what’s a really important year for Ringwood Secondary College as we celebrate our 60th anniversary.

The Minister has decided to join Mr Sukkar in the electorate of Deakin for an announcement this morning, which we have the pleasure of hosting. So without any further ado I would now like to hand over to Mr Pyne. Thank you.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well thank you very much Michael. It’s very kind of you to host us here at Ringwood Secondary College here in Melbourne.

I’m very pleased to be joined by my Parliamentary Secretary Senator Scott Ryan and most particularly by the State Minister for Education Martin Dixon and my parliamentary colleague Michael Sukkar the Member for Deakin.

Today is a great start to the year from the Federal Government’s point of view in education because we are today announcing our initiative for independent public schools.

Before the election we promised we would have a focus on teacher quality, principal autonomy, a robust curriculum and more parental engagement.

 

Gus: So what is a robust curriculum? a piece of fourbetwo?

 

EVERYONE is excited about greater autonomy for public schools, so why am I uneasy? After all, there is much to like. Linking teachers' pay to professional standards is sensible. We also need to simplify school finances and fund schools on need - and no one can argue against incentives to teach in disadvantaged areas. Parents will support local management, especially over teacher hire and fire. Principals seem to like the idea.

But the case for more school autonomy is overplayed to the hilt. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says it "tends" to be associated with high school performance. But it has a small impact and there is no significant link between autonomy and student achievement in Australia. Good teaching and learning is what matters - and it can be found and improved in schools of any type in any system.

So why are we pouring so much energy into something that isn't significant? Because regardless of the evidence, it is good politics and the downsides are well down the track, certainly way beyond the term of any government.

These downsides are well documented. Yes, a more autonomous school system can mask real cuts in education funding.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/the-question/will-local--autonomy--improve--public-schools-20120316-1vae6.html#ixzz367WQD08v

The head of the Abbott government's national curriculum review has backed the use of corporal punishment for ill-disciplined children in schools if it is supported by the local school community.

Kevin Donnelly, co-chair of the national curriculum review and a widely published commentator on educational issues, said on Tuesday that corporal punishment was effective during his childhood and still has some merit.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/head-of-curriculum-review-kevin-donnelly-says-corporal-punishment-in-schools-was-very-effective-20140715-3bz7p.html#ixzz37X8WqS4G
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There is no two ways about it that corporal punishment can work in some cases, but it is my experience that it is hard to know if it's going to work or not. Corporate punishment is a major step towards teaching sadism and lying technique to the inner psychopath-self... I often wonder if for example Tony Abbott was not a victim of such punishment as canning but became a clever avoider of being punished by simple lying and blaming someone else or rat on his mates...
During my years of schooling, in the early days of slate and scribers, some pupils were being targeted and "victimised". Some teachers had their pet hate who always got flogged no natter if they did a bad deed or not. One had to find ways to go around evidence to avoid being flogged. 
The belief that this shapes character is idiotic.
The only thing, corporal punishment did was to teach and reinforce the hate of the pupils towards their teachers. Donnelly and his acolyte are mistaken. Too many Ill-disciplined children who are being treated with corporal punishment end up being bullies and sadists. 
Yes, these two dorks, Kevin Donnelly and Ken Wiltshire, show they are sadistic remnants from the 19th century by even making the suggestion.

The Australian Education Union has criticised comments on corporal punishment made by the head of the Federal Government's education review.

In a radio interview yesterday, review head Kevin Donnelly suggested he was not opposed to corporal punishment where it was supported by the school community and was "done properly".

He added that he was only aware of one or two schools in Australia using corporal punishment, and that it was only used rarely in those cases.

The federal president of the Australian Education Union, Angelo Gavrielatos, has slammed Dr Donnelly's views as out of touch.

"These are extreme views which have no place in Australian contemporary schooling, they are from an era of the far distant past," Mr Gavrielatos said.

"This is a person who was conducting a review on behalf of the Government to examine whether the curriculum is balanced.

"These comments are not appropriate.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-16/kevin-donnelly-slammed-over-corporal-punishment-comments/5600408

 

From Kevin Donnelly...

As a Catholic, it was only natural that I turned to prayer in the hope of finding some solace and comfort and a sense that all was not lost after losing a son. Prayer signifies a sense of giving oneself up to something higher and acknowledging that to be mortal is to experience suffering and pain.

As stated by the English mystic Julian of Norwich: "Prayer is a new, gracious, lasting will of the soul united and fast-bound to the will of God by the precious and mysterious working of the Holy Ghost."

Prayer, in its simplest form, is also a remedy for hubris and being narcissistic. A much needed tonic in a society where celebrity culture rules, ambition and ego prevail and the ability to find solace and calm is increasingly lost.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-16/donnelly-the-power-of-prayer-isnt-lost-in-the-modern-age/5816138

Far from me to stop Kevin Donnelly in believing in the big bearded man in the sky... It's his right. But I would suggest that he should keep his own counsel. If a prayer works for him by taming his angst, so be it, but like all other religious luminaries, he should stop the proselytisation and the rain dance.

In my view, it's unhealthy for a grown man to still believe in fairies. Of course when one experiences trauma and an ensuing "black dog", the easiest solution is to go into delusion. The god delusion is a good placebo. And there is nothing wrong with that, so one does not stay too depressed too long. But holding to the prop longer than necessary is a bit like an athlete going on the football field wearing crutches... The idea of god robs us of our humanity.

And this fellow, Donnelly, is in charge of the new Australian education curriculum, which has been received to great acclaim apparently, except by Gus who for whatever reason can smell sulphur in the absence of "details"...

Prayer IS hubris and narcissism. Telling ourselves that we are god's creatures is very much narcissistic and full of inflated hubris... When we know about the reality of evolution, this rigmarole should have stopped a long time ago especially for intelligent men. Other philosophical avenues are available to stop the "black dog".

 

 

The fact that Catholic and independent schools, that are largely independent of government control, outperform many government schools illustrates the fact that empowering schools at the local level leads to improved outcomes and higher standards.

There is an alternative to the Gonski model. While all schools deserve adequate funding equally, if not more important is the need to ensure all schools have effective and committed teachers, a rigorous curriculum, a disciplined classroom environment, and a school culture that promotes high expectations.

Schools, especially government schools, need to be freed from excessive government control and have the flexibility to best reflect the needs and aspirations of their communities.

Any new funding model should also embrace school vouchers - a situation where funding follows the student to whatever school, government or non-government, parents decide is best for their child. Increasing parental choice places greater pressure on schools to improve.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University and Director of the Education Standards Institute.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-29/donnelly-bill-shorten-has-backed-the-flawed-gonski-model/7123588

 

Of course Donnelly writes crap. CRAP ! Many studies have shown that "private" school students do not perform better than public school students. 

Furthermore, private schools, apart from sucking religious parents' cash it draws an equivalent money from the same parents' taxes... 

The Education "flexibility" that Donnelly talks about is discriminatory, anti-democratic and basically will create a society of people unable to connect to each others. IT'S CRAP.

The Gonski model for education is the closest best thing to fund education in this country. Effe-off, Donnelly...

See toon at top.

 

More than half the schools up for funding cuts are non-systemic Catholic schools, many of which do not appear to be overfunded, writes former schoolteacher Frank O'Shea.

Labor says that the Coalition’s proposal for school funding is a “smoke and mirrors trick” and speak wistfully about a missing $22 billion. When numbers are mentioned, however – $22 billion here, $18.6 billion there, four years here, ten years there – most people turn off. In truth, the endorsement which the Greens have given to the Birmingham proposal, as well as the opposition by Abbott and Bernardi are cogent arguments that there may be value in it. Perhaps, in time, Mr WooTube will explain it to us.

I want to concentrate instead on the widely publicised list of 24 schools that are said to be over-funded and will suffer under the new model. It happens that more than half of those are non-systemic Catholic schools, whose main problem may turn out to be they have not invested heavily enough in clever accountancy tricks. 

I will give just one example and then no more maths. Internet figures show that the 2017 tuition fees at school number 12 in the list is $8,060 at Year 11/12. Victoria has a slew of schools, mostly with the word "Grammar" attached to them, whose corresponding fees are in excess of three times that figure and yet they are not on the list. As Ms Hanson would put it: "Please explain."

Smoke and mirrors, perhaps? More likely, better accountants.

Turnbull’s ‘Gonski 2.0’ lauded as ‘courageous’, but Labor says it’s a ‘con’ | The New Daily @lukehgomes https://t.co/KmCh8iHZN2

— lynlinking (@lynlinking) May 2, 2017

Based on tuition fees alone, Australia has three levels of schools. The public sector charges no fees; the elite schools (many stapling the word Grammar to their title) charge in the region of $30,000 a year; between those two extremes is a group of schools like the one mentioned above whose fees are a small fraction of the Grammar ones. Most of those schools belong to the Catholic system. In round numbers (and he said no more maths!) the ratio would be 0:3:10.

However, there is a small number of Catholic schools who are card-carrying members of the elite group. All the Jesuit schools are in this category, as are a few girls – sorry, ladies – schools such as Loreto Kirribilli and Monte Sant’ Angelo (the top two schools in the list of 24) in inner Sydney. Many people regard these outliers as representative of Catholic schools; in my view, they give Catholic education an undeserved reputation for extravagance. And if you think they provide good value for money, consider the dominance of Jesuit Old Boys in the Tony Abbott cabinet a few years back.

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/gonski-20-why-a-schoo...

 

Hum... See toon from top and compare with toon at: 

gonski 0.5...

 

 

Stephen Keim discusses Kevin Donnelly's use of a discredited IPA study as a benchmark for university education content and the advancement of the Right's long march into privilege, tyranny and 'universal truth'.

WHEN an opinion piece, starts by citing an Institute of Public Affairs’ (IPA) "forensic analysis of how history is now taught in our universities", it is probably a good signal that I should read no further.

I thought that the piece, 'Barbarians at the door after the left's long march', published in The Australian, however, might yield some perverse fun.

And to be fair to the author of the piece, Kevin Donnelly, he was writing two days before the IPA study, relied upon by Mr Donnelly for his two key points – the cultural left now controls the academy and the left’s long march has been ongoing for years – was shown to be deeply flawed.

Barbarians at the door after the left’s long march | Kevin Donnelly | The Australianhttps://t.co/WS89YHSQfc

— Frank Acocella (@frank8427zz9za) October 18, 2017

Writing in The Conversation, Paul Sendziuk and Martin Crotty, drawing on their own exhaustive study of the subject, have since shown that the most taught and most popular courses in Australian universities tell the broad story of Western Civilisation (good, in Mr Donnelly’s opinion). And that the courses that look specifically at the influences of gender and race (hated by Mr Donnelly and the IPA) take up fewer teaching resources and student hours.    

Mr Donnelly celebrates “the liberal view of education”. The kernel of a liberal education, according to Mr Donnelly, is the recognition that the grand narrative of Western culture distinguishes the civilised from the barbarian and the educated from those remaining in ignorance.    

The narrative of Western culture must include:

• the Holocaust;
• the Inquisition;
• the torturing and murder of heretics;
• slavery;
• syphilis;
• the burning of so-called witches;
• religious wars;
• lynchings;
• feudalism;
• civil war;
• imperial war;
• employment of children in factories and mines;
• unsafe working conditions;
• the banning of trade unions;
• entrenched inequality;
• the genocide of native peoples; and
• the persecution of gay people.

Shouldn't need to be pointed out but anyhoo. https://t.co/eWM1AHt3yg

— David Maddock (@DavidMaddock1) October 24, 2017

There is a fair space for barbarism and ignorance in that narrative. To be fair to Mr Donnelly, some fine writing and art were produced across the same sweep of history. But to keep things in context, tyrants have patronised the arts and the instruments of torture have been things of great beauty produced by fine artisans. Culture, civilisation and virtue are not synonyms.

Central to Mr Donnelly’s thesis is his citation of Allan Bloom, the author in 1987 of The Closing of the American Mind. Mr Bloom is relied upon for the proposition that a liberal education is based on the deepest thinkers of the past because the works of these writers form a body of learning which we must preserve in order to remain civilised.

It is difficult to follow Mr Donnelly’s argument from this point. He descends into sloganeering and attacking armies of straw opponents. It may best be paraphrased by the proposition that it is wrong for any university or school to reflect upon the extent to which past writing has been impacted upon by social context and power relationships of the time.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/kevin-donnelly-the-ip...

 

Read from top...

 

...

The gathering was for the official launch of a new book by education expert and commentator Kevin Donnelly, titled: How Political Correctness Is Destroying Australia — Enemies Within and Without.

The book explores what Dr Donnelly calls the rise in political correctness, and it examines same-sex marriage, what it means to be Australian, and the way universities and schools are being influenced by left-leaning thinkers.

"You're talking about political correctness destroying Australia — not just in the classroom, but it begins in the classroom," Mr Jones told the crowd.

Mr Abbott said he had learnt that those in positions of authority didn't always have the power they might hope for, adding:

"All too often centre-right governments are in office but not in power because of the cultural shifts that have taken place in our polity over the last 20-30 years."

For Dr Donnelly — a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University — it is political correctness that is destroying Australia's cultural heritage and he said it can be seen most acutely in our educational institutions.

So what is 'political correctness'?

Dr Donnelly describes it like this:

It's a term that's become acceptable now to talk about the cultural left, or The Left if you like, where they censor or change the way language is employed or impose group-think in terms of what's politically correct.

Areas like feminism, gender, the environment, even history, Western civilisation, literature.

When I use the expression … it's [to describe] a form of censorship as I said and imposing group-think.

Dr Donnelly is a former high school English teacher who has held positions on numerous state and national curriculum bodies.

He has written extensively on education matters and co-chaired the federal government's National Curriculum Review in 2014.

He said he saw a politically correct philosophy dominating the education sector.

 

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-07/alan-jones,-tony-abbott-launch-kev...

 

For these rabid CONservatives, you can say what you will about minorities (Aborigines, Muslims, LGBTis, etc) but you can't say much about the ridiculousness and historical fallacy of Christianity, because that's what built "our" civilisation, and religion is a tax-exempt sacred territory. Alan Jones, Tony Abbott and many CONservatives (I guess Donnelly is part of this crowd) "do not" believe in Global Warming, because they have limited (zero) understanding of the sciences involved in this problem facing humanity.

Political correctness is often needed to protect those who are at the mercy of bullies and other aggressive stronger people, while having nor recourse to maintain their already battered self-esteem by circumstances. I can appreciate that PC can sometimes go too far, but the way, the Alan Jones of this world try to bury anything that they don't like (often due to personal subconscious selfishness) is vile. People like me can fight this with satire, cartoons and reactive vileness, but most people are unable to muster anything else but despair under these attack.They need to be protected...

Meanwhile:

Malcolm Turnbull says he will contact the vice-chancellor of the Australian National University after it pulled out of negotiations with the John Howard-backed Ramsay Centre to establish a controversial western civilisation degree.

Campaigning in the Queensland byelection seat of Longman on Thursday, the prime minister weighed in on the growing feud between ANU and the conservative organisation by saying he found the decision “hard to understand”.

“Look, I’m surprised by the decision of the ANU,” he said. “I’m going to speak to the vice-chancellor about it myself and just get his account of it. But I do, I find it very hard to understand why that proposal from the Ramsay Foundation would not have been accepted with enthusiasm.”

The ANU vice-chancellor, Brian Schmidt, announced the decision to pull out of negotiations with the Ramsay Centre last Friday. 

In a statement earlier this week, Schmidt said he had made the decision after coming to the conclusion the university had a “fundamentally different vision for the program than the Ramsay Centre, and that there was no prospect of us reaching agreement”.

The western civilisation degree course was the brainchild of the late healthcare mogul, Paul Ramsay, and was part of a $3.3bn bequest.

But the lucrative donation was mired in controversy. In April former prime minister Tony Abbott – a member of the Ramsay Centre board – published an article in the conservative publication Quadrant stating the Ramsay Centre was “not merely about western civilisation but in favour of it”.

That prompted a backlash from the National Tertiary Education Union and students over fears about the academic independence of the degree. 

In a letter sent by the president of the ANU branch of the NTEU, Matthew King, to the vice-chancellor a week before the decision was made to withdraw from negotiations, the union said it held “grave concerns” about the degree.

King wrote that Abbott’s article suggested the course would “pursue a narrow, radically conservative program to demonstrate and promulgate the alleged superiority of western culture and civilisation”.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/07/turnbull-wants-an...

 

Considering that Western Civilisation, through the war machine of the US empire, has killed an estimated 35 million people since WWII, one has to be a bit more modest about the goals established by the "sponsorship"...  One has to be less one-eyed in studying "Western Civilisation" which, as mentioned before, has been based on invasions, thuggery, colonialism and war. Western Civilisation represents less than one tenth of civilisations around the globe but it is by far the main one in regard to conflict creating.

The "superiority" of the Western Civilisation does not reside in its culture, but in its war machine.

In regard to art and philosophy, it's likely that since the great European thinkers of the 18th and 19th century, Western Civilisation has since been quite dismal on these front. On the scientific level, other civilisation have caught up and some are ahead. On global warming which was well scientifically calculated by the end of the 19th century, we still have boofheads like Jones and Abbott spruiking ignorance with authority. This is not civilisation. This is stupidity.

Read from top.

 

See also:

The greater meaning of meaninglessness...

 

slowly drifting towards the planet of the apes...

Students striking over climate change inaction have been described as victims of "politically correct teaching" and include some who are "barely literate or numerate".

Thousands of young people across the country — and countless more worldwide — will walk out of school on Friday in a global day of action to incite governments to do more to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Organisers believe crowd numbers will be triple those of student strikes held in November.

But Dr Kevin Donnelly, a conservative commentator and senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, claimed the movement was the product of "biased" academics and failings in education.

"I've just been on the Strike 4 Climate webpage, where you've got seven or eight-year-old kids barely out of nappies being involved in a strike," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

"A lot of these students are barely literate or numerate.

"I think it's absurd."

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-14/politically-correct-teaching-to-b...

 

It's absurd, sure, that Donnely comments on this issue of which he has NO UNDERSTANDING, while the kids are completely up to speed with it. To say "A lot of these students are barely literate or numerate" is highly patronising and denigrating — and shows he is a fully diplomed idiot.

 

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Numbers don’t lie: Public schools underfunded by $60bn; private overfunded by $6bn

 

By TREVOR COBBOLD | On 18 February 2021

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. 

The current school funding arrangements are heavily biased against public schools. Private schools will be over-funded by $6 billion from 2021 to 2029 under current funding arrangements while public schools will be under-funded by nearly $60 billion.

These estimates, based on official figures, show that the Morrison Government has abandoned all pretence at funding private schools according to need and it has washed its hands of ensuring that public schools are fully funded. To make matters worse, the Morrison Government has conspired with state governments through bilateral funding agreements to under-fund public schools indefinitely.

The outcome is that private schools will be lavishly funded for the rest of the decade while public schools are starved of funds needed to make a difference for the vast majority of disadvantaged students.

The over-funding of private schools will occur because they will be funded at more than 100% of their Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) from 2021 until at least 2029. The sources of the over-funding are:

• $2.4 billion from funding at over the Commonwealth target of 80% of the SRS;
• $2.5 billion from funding at over the States target of 20% of the SRS;
• $1.2 billion through the Commonwealth’s Choice and Accountability slush fund (from 2020).

Under changes to the Australian Education Act in 2018 by the Turnbull government, the Commonwealth committed to funding private schools to 80% of their national Schooling Resource Standard by 2023, with the remaining 20% to be funded by state governments.

However, the new measure of assessing the financial need of schools introduced by the Morrison Government has ensured that private schools will be funded at more than 100% of their SRS until at least 2023. The over-funding is due to reduce progressively to 2029, but it remains to be seen whether this will occur given the historical influence of private school organisations over Coalition and Labor governments to retain their special funding privileges.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/numbers-dont-lie-public-schools-underfunded-by-60bn-private-overfunded-by-6bn/

 

See also:  http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/26897

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/39057

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/28499

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35525

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/29318

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/27197

 

And plenty more... Read from top.