🚀 go-pugleaf

> <snip>
>
> >But if you wanted to test Vanstone's assertions about private and
> state
> >schools, you would look at the proportion of students from each of
> the
> >colleges who gain university entry, and not actual raw numbers.  Of
> >course this would mean the use of percentages, and as we've noted
> before,
> >the CT is not good at this.
>

Ok, from the POV of a Narrabundah College student...
here are my opinions on the current education system (crisis)

The teachers are under too much stress for what they are being paid...
it's no wonder why more than 250 teachers are on stress leave at any one
time.
No student who gets a high ter wants to become a teacher, so staff have
to continue working after they have retired from the public service...
and the quality of the teaching will eventually decline because of this
stuffed up mentality.
Information Technology needs a big boost in the schools... the internet
connection is via a router through the department of education... behind
a firewall etc... and the fastest download during the day is at about
240bps... it rises to about 10kbps at night...
And although a lot of students at Narrabundah go to ANU, the reason why
there are so many is because Narrabundah had the highest number of
enrolments for any college last year. (this year Canberra college has
the highest because they merged...) And because they specialise in the
Arts, Music, IT, etc... so students are encouraged to go to ANU school
of art/music. Although there still remains a high number of students
going to ANU to study other degrees... the proportion is probably
equally distributed...
All faculties desperately need more funding... why else are staff unable
to answer e-mails that are flooding into their accounts... there are no
computers and the intranet hasn't been set up so that access is from the
staff office. They have to find the key for the room where the computer
is in, remember all the passwords, and hope that someone else isn't
using the dial-up connection somewhere else in the school.
Until the profile of the current education system is raised, and until
the job of teaching becomes more appealing, the standards of education
are continually going to remain the same (or become lower).

Thankfully a group of volunteers have given up the majority of their
free lines and lunch times to create the school's web page:
http://www.narrabundahc.act.edu.au  , maintain the computing facilities,
and provide tech support for students and staff...

(and one of those happy ppl is me!)