Gidday Bennie
That's what it's all about! Imagine working with a poor socio economic class of students in a school with barely minimal funding to get by - I know that if the teacher manages to engage the students that they've already done a huge job. Do the same in a class of students that come from a "privileged" background and it's not much of chance in the students.
I agree. This is precisely where the "pay by numbers" idea falls flat on its face.
However, there has to be assessment of teachers as well. In the scenario you describe, things are made infinitely worse for the pupils by the presence of a crappy teacher. And like every other occupation, there ARE crappy teachers ...
The problem will be that if the teachers are paid based on their performance there's most likely going to be further paperwork and audits on top of what's already required with VIT registration. On top of this the performance most likely won't be based on the change in the class rather that the teacher hasn't got the class above the "now very high" state average.
In my youth, exams were set and marked by the University of Queensland. These were at the end of year 8 ("Scholarship"); end of second year of secondary school (year 10 - "Junior") and at the end of the final year of secondary school (year 12 - "Senior") If one achieved the minimum standard in Senior, one matriculated, and could then apply for entry into university. One could pass, but not matriculate.
I reckon this started back in the baby boomer times
Actually, started in the early 1970s when the American system of teaching kids to read by recognising whole sentences at once came into vogue. That was a disaster! Adults generally read this way, often scanning an entire sentence in a non-logical order. They can do this because they learned the alphabet and how to spell words first ...
I'm not trying to point fingers, but I know my parents know how to spell a pot load better than I do simply because they studied latin at school. Latin explains where most english words come from and with this background you can more often than not work out the spelling of words and their "origins" so to speak. Now that this has gone and popular social networking has dumbed everything down it's a real task to turn it all around. This also has to be pushed in primary school.
As I said before, teachers who cannot read, write and spell reasonably well see nothing wrong with kids who cannot read, write and spell ...
On top of this you really "can't fail" students these days - it's too negative. The VELS (Victorian Education Learning Standards) system has been produced to report to parents without saying that their student has failed and needs to repeat the subject/year again. Rather "little Billy is reading at a level 3 standard" is the way to go. But little Billy is in year 10 and level 3 is a grade 5 level of reading... I don't agree with that, no one is going to sugar coat it once they're out of school, then it's too late.
Under the Dawkins Plan, it has become almost impossible to fail at University as well. Great. Really terrific.
Now we have large numbers of university graduates who cannot read, write and spell. Universities have had to start teaching remedial English classes to students, because they have managed to matriculate into university without being able to read, write and spell ...
But we do what is required by the powers that be who "know better"...
I would like to be able to grade them all on their results ...
AND that's not a party political - I apply it across the board to all of them.
It is very interesting and informative to see the graph of results in a subject where a student either knows and understands the subject matter or they don't - e.g. statistics.
The distribution curve is bi-modal.
I would suggest that this is the case with almost all subjects, just that the marking system employed 'fills in the gap' between the two distinct and unconnected 'humps'.
