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.

This long-overdue reform is required to underpin Australia’s crumbling social cohesion and economic prosperity.

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.

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.

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.