The Andrews government has committed itself to turning Victoria into the Education State. Basic to this vision-in-progress are the 1500 government primary and secondary schools educating about two-thirds of the state's children. Does the Victorian government have a view about how these schools should work, which families they should serve, what outcomes they should achieve, and how they should be judged?
For decades, the emphasis of government policy has been on freeing public schools from bureaucracy and making them "self-managing". Along with this has come increasingly sophisticated methods of measuring the performance of schools. But autonomy and accountability have been pursued without an overall view of the impact that government schools should make on the well-being, prosperity and cohesion of the Victorian community. What difference to the lives of children and their families should public schools make?
These are the schools on which the great majority of families depend, and their dependence has been justified. For over the long term, public schools have lifted standards of educational attainment, increased access to the most demanding subjects of the curriculum, raised participation in higher education, and reduced social inequalities. These are valuable economic and cultural benefits, and they have been widely diffused through the work of government primary and secondary schools.
To read more from Richard Teese author of 'For the Common Weal' (2014) which I bought for our school's parent library go to the link below.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-challenge-facing-victorias-public-schools-20150802-gipmge.html#ixzz3hjjbjXwj
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