'It was the cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.'

We finished Moby Dick this morning. We still have a bit of work to complete before I start reading Captains Courgeous. ( When everything has been 'road tested I'll put on TPT. It is a great story. give it a try (granted- in its original form it is heavy going but you can get abridged versions, annotated versions, audio and graphic novel versions and you can get it on an app as a pod cast for free) 

We also finished reading Stuart Little. We felt that it ended quite abruptly and without a proper conclusion. We wondered if EB White was thinking of writing a sequel or whether he just ran out of steam? we'll have to look into that.

Below are photos of some of the work we completed today (Venn diagram comparing Ahab and Starbuck and labelled 19th century whaler) 

Our PE student teachers were here today and played some fantastic co-operative games with the kids.

The new teacher/ principal review has been released. I wrote about a consultation on the process that I was involved in last year on my blog. They took absolutely NO notice of our recommendations from that briefing! What a waste of time that was. The new review process looks time consuming, it will also be interesting to see how they adapt it for me working alone at Glen Park.

Interesting to read in the local paper today that the Premier was involved in selecting a conservative mayor for the Ballarat Council!( for an election year) Together with his cozy relationship with certain 'colourful racing identities' in Warrnambool, I don't think we should be too smug in Victoria in our contempt for political 'shenanigans' in NSW.

The AEU has responded to the budget ( below is an extract from the latest Principal Memo from the AEU) The budget has been portrayed by the government and the Murdoch Press as an infrastructure spending spree. The sad fact is that state education like health was largely forgotten.They are treading water in funding to schools after years of cuts. This budget comes after $600 million was ripped out of public schools.( They are reneging on itheir deal with the previous Federal Government to implement the urgently-needed Gonski funding reforms.The Abbott government doesn't care.) 

AEU comment:

The budget should have seen at the very least a $150 million increase in school spending from the Gonski review. Instead, funding is at a standstill, with just enough to cover enrolment growth and indexation. The Gonski money has evaporated. The much-trumpeted school building works - heavily targeted on marginal seats in the east - only begins to catch up on the lack of investment over the past three years.
 
In TAFE, the budget papers reveal that diploma and advanced diploma enrolments have fallen by almost 30% in the past year, while the participation rate for Victorians aged 15-24 has fallen by almost 10% at a time when youth unemployment has topped 16% in some regions. Fee hikes have driven our young people onto the scrapheap and the budget has not reversed the $300m-a-year cuts imposed by this government.