Teacher union ban on schooling reforms is ‘selfish’

Teacher union ban on schooling reforms is ‘selfish’.

Students will pay for the public teacher union’s selfish boycott of schooling reforms.

The Australian Education Union’s (AEU) act of educational sabotage is right up there with the CFMEU’s thuggery.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare wants to pour an extra $16bn into public schools over the next decade, in return for crucial reforms to teaching and learning.

The priority is that all states and territories mandate the immediate use of phonics-based methods to teach children to read by sounding out letters and words.

This is the only way that many children – especially those with dyslexia – will ever learn the fundamental skill of reading and writing.

One in three Australian students failed to meet the baseline standards for literacy in this year’s national tests. One in 10 have fallen so far behind their classmates they require remedial tutoring in maths and English.

Employer groups have warned this is a “ticking time bomb’’ for the economy.

The National Children’s Commissioner, Anne Hollonds, has pointed out the no-brainer link between schooling failures and youth crime.

Many of the children and teenagers she’s visited in prison are functionally illiterate – including a 16-year-old boy who couldn’t even write his name.

It’s a tragedy – indeed a national shame - that some children are only taught to read and write when they’re behind bars.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way. Clare wants all public schools to test children’s ability to read and count in Year 1, so those needing help are identified before they fall too far behind.

Another fundamental reform is to ensure all teachers use “explicit instruction’’ – an old-school, yet highly effective, method of teacher-directed learning.

It involves a teacher explaining and demonstrating a new concept, getting students to try it themselves, testing their knowledge - and repeating the lesson until everyone understands.

The stupid fad of “student-directed’’ learning – where kids magically teach themselves – may benefit some bright sparks, but has failed a generation of children.

The union is boycotting Clare’s Better and Fairer Schools Agreement until he doubles his funding offer.

It reckons the reforms will add to teacher workloads – this doesn’t add up. The use of tried-and-true teaching methods need not cost an extra cent, nor create extra work.

What does cost time and money is remedial teaching and youth crime, as taxpayers are left to mop up the messes left from a broken schooling system.

Some of Clare’s reforms – such as small-group tutoring – will require extra funding, to employ the extra teachers required to help struggling children catch up to classmates.

So too will the reform to embed health services – nurses, doctors, and psychologists – into schooling systems.

Too many kids are missing out on eye checks, hearing tests, speech pathology and professional counselling that could transform their learning and change their lives.

The union is right to advocate for better funding of public education systems that bear the brunt of teaching children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

But to hold struggling students hostage by denying them the reforms required for a top-quality education is deplorable.