Nice to see Julia Gillard’s taking my advice. Two years ago Ryan Independent commented on the absolute need to wrest schools from the educrats and return them to local control: “I suggest a focus on more fundamental issues, such as giving local school communities greater autonomy and accountability through their elected School Councils, providing adequate [...]
Tags:Education·Education revolution·Gillard·Julia Gillard·principal autonomy research project·project·report
Most people like to believe that the major parties, as the “franchise-holders” of national politics, are highly competent and plan their policies with care. A small but telling sign that this isn’t always the case is a policy with impressive sounding, but suspiciously round numbers. Such was the case with the Government’s announcement yesterday of [...]
Tags:Education·The Parties
All is not well in the world of teaching. At its best, it continues to be an exceptionally satisfying profession, a fact that goes some way towards making up for its modest pay. For large numbers of teachers, however, the school has become a very stressful and difficult environment, and schools find it difficult to [...]
Tags:Education
Ryan Independent contains a mix of views, issues, events, and ideas. I will periodically add some statistics that I hope readers will find thought-provoking, and begin tonight by answering a follow-up question from my remarks at the recent Ryan Higher Education Candidates Forum. Can it really be, I was asked, that one American university spends [...]
I spoke today at the Candidates Forum held at the University of Queensland, on the topic of higher education. Good presentations and insightful questions from the audience, and a discussion that kept everyone involved for the full 90 minutes. Congratulations to the National Tertiary Education Union for staging this event. (In case you’re wondering, this [...]
Tags:Campaigning·Education
Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd have pulled each other to a stand-still in their “local” vs. “federal” tug-of-war over public hospital management, and have come in for sharp criticism (see yesterday’s post). I suggest that we can achieve more consensus about the proper roles of each level of government if we focus first on public [...]
Tags:Education
If the PM can have his say on local Government, I’ll have mine on a State issue. There’s an argument for a new State High School in the western part of Ryan other than growth in and around Karana Downs. In essence, the State has given up trying to provide public secondary education