The Teachers Are Blowing Their Whistles!
Subtitle
Chris Golis writes in On Line Opinion :
Australia needs a system that objectively measures the performance of teachers and then removes the poor performers.
At the moment Australian teachers are assessed in a very subjective manner.
In Singapore students are assessed with national tests every two years.
Concurrently a teacher is assigned a class every two years.
The normed average grades of those two years can then be measured and the percentage improvement (or decline) noted.
The relative movement in the class average is deemed to be reflective of the quality of teaching the students have received.
Not only that but the relative improvement can then be assessed against similar results for all the peers of the teacher for that year.
Supposedly the top ten per cent of the Singaporean teachers are given substantial performance bonuses and earmarked for future promotion while the bottom ten percent are counselled and effectively told that if similar results occur again that they should look to another career besides teaching.
Before this system was introduced the best teachers would always try and get the best students because they could then brag about how many students they had in top 1000 performers etc.
Now the best teachers try to get the worst performing classes so they can get the greatest improvement.
Thus the worst classes get the best teachers and in that way the whole country's education system is lifted.
Robina Cosser says : I found Chris's article interesting because a principal I worked with in England did something very similar.
Each week the classes were tested and the results posted up on the classroom wall.
Then, at the end of the year, the classes were tested and compared.
I thought it was a very effective way for the principal to identify weak teachers.
In the years since I first established this website, I have received several emails from older male teachers who believe that they have been discriminated against in favour of young, pretty women teachers.
And I myself sometimes felt that Queensland principals were more comfortable dealing with dim teachers.
And I felt pressured to comply with 'trendy' teaching methods which were clearly failing the students.
And I often wondered if Queensland teachers and principals were being rewarded and promoted for their family connections, political beliefs, etc. rather than their teaching or administrative skills.
Objective evaluation would bring the focus in Queensland schools back on education.
It would force the Queensland education system to work for Queenslanders - rather than for a particular political party.
We need that in Queensland.
And it would not cost very much.
Why Singaporean education works and Australia's doesn't, Chris Golis, On Line Opinion, 19 March 2012 :
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13389&page=1
