GRADING THE GRADERS: TEACHER PERFORMANCE REVIEWS
Teachers would be required to collect evidence like student results and feedback to prove they’re meeting education goals under Australia’s first national teacher performance guidelines. The proposal is only in draft stage at the moment, developed by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and released for consultation today.
Teachers would set performance goals each year and then show what they’re doing to meet them.
“Teachers will have a clear understanding of what they will be expected to achieve every year and a clear understanding of how their performance will be measured,” said School Education Minister Peter Garrett.
“This will allow our many terrific teachers to demonstrate how well they are performing and the positive results they are producing, while also providing opportunities to improve their skills where needed.”
What do you think?
And here’s the other tidbits that have been buzzing around:
1. Wow. Did you see this interview with Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten? It feels like it’s straight out of a comedy sketch. Really, just watch:
2. The Week in Pics. A joker Victoria Beckham, beautiful family photos and a few surprises:
Top Comments
In Australia teachers are lucky because in the UK controversy surrounds the fact that pupils are recruited to spy on teachers during lessons and are being 'run like totalitarian regimes'. The best case scenario is to avoid in class surveillance on teachers and have questionnaires distributed after each term and all feedback should be discussed with the principal on a one to one basis. In
many Australian universities this is the case and can lead to either promotion or demotion or in the best case scenario lecturers can fix their problems on how they communication with their students and fix their flaws. Although teachers are not perfect parents pay alot of money (even thousands of dollars) out of their pockets to educate their children so they have a future rather than no future at all in the workplace. One could say teachers are surrogate guardians who will always receive the blame from parents if their children do not perform at their peak. Thus education relies on 4 pillers of hope
firstly government need to fund more programs to assist students that lack the skills that other students have at their age. Secondly parents need to relieze their kids have a limit in this Facebook and twitter generation where education is second only to socializing with friends in both the online and offline environment. Thirdly parents cannot always blame teachers some kids take time to process information where information overload is the norm. Lastly the pressures of school is too much to bear for most students what parents should understand only year 12 is the most important year the rest is the internship to achieving your goal which is either completing further tertiary studies or finding that dream job.We are all products of the education system no matter how old we are today but are the services
offered robust enough to continue or as always education cracks will appear and we have no tech support to fix it.
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I think the whole 'performance test' thing is a bit of a non-issue (well, at least I hope so!) - we do (in NSW at least) have a review system, for teachers in state schools - I'm not sure about independent ones.. It's called TARS (Teacher Assessment and Review Schedule). I think what they're talking about is the introduction of 'national teaching standards' which is like the NSW Institute of Teachers' professional accreditation process. Honestly, I could list how hard I work, but plenty of teachers have done it below already. Can I please just say, for the record: as a teacher I am not opposed to performance reviews. I do them already. I am not opposed to transparency - I have nothing to hide (except for the red bull cans and coffee cups piling up in my car trash bag). It's just that 'teacher-bashing' gets really old. Today one of our students died, tomorrow (yes, Saturday) I'm going to the funeral of one of my students' parents, and then coming home to mark year ten's assessments, year seven's homework and then I think I'll spend at least two hours of my Sunday at Officeworks doing photocopying for the week because my school budget allows for 200 pages a term per teacher - I teach 150 kids. Oh yeah, then I have to collate the results of the end-of-term survey I collected last term to ensure the kids are happy with the learning strategies in our classroom. Whoops, guess I couldn't resist throwing in a little list.. Sorry!
Also, really, Bill Shorten, really? Man, even if that's your line hire a speechwriter to dress up your language so you don't sound like a mindless drone.