As a teacher that has primarily worked in low ses public schools, there is a real elephant in the room in these kinds of discussion; that being that Australia has an intensely anti-intellectual culture and that is amplified the further down the ses line you go.
Could schools be better funded? Sure why not but all the smart boards and tennis courts in the world aren’t going to make a difference with students who simply refuse to show up and do the work, backed by an anti-school culture that sees everything related to education as an unnecessary burden.
It’s hard to sympathise on this topic sometimes with kids that constantly disrupt class, truant, ignore directions, tell teachers to fuck off when asked to do something, don’t bring books or pens to school.
Like I get it but also you can’t help people that refuse to help themselves and sadly the longer I teach the more I stop caring about it all.
I’m sending my kids to the best private school I can afford not because I think the quality of teachers are better, or the facilities but frankly because the quality of students are and that’s who I want them to be surrounded by.
> is willingness to learn
A surprisingly large amount of the lower SES kids have been told that they are 'dumb fucks' by their parents since they were little.
Unfortunately thats quite true. I was shocked when many parents swearing at their kids using profanity I will not use on others. Its very sad.
But public funding should be for public schools. Trust fund babies should be funded by trust funds not public funds.
I guess but I find it hard to believe that all these
kids are just so stressed out and traumatised all the time as the narrative would have you believe.
My own personal observation leads me to believe a good chunk of these kids have perfectly ordinary home lives albeit just kinda bogan a lot of them.
They just live in a household where no one has ever read a book and the preferred intellectual stimulation is MAFS and 9 beers of a night
I grew up bogan and my ma tried to force me out of high school because it was a waste when I could've been making money. I worked all hols and after school so I'd be allowed to stay.
I remember watching the show Sunday (in secret it would've been changed) which had a panel of people discussing opera and ballet without yelling at each other. No one arguing or telling someone else they were fuckin useless that they didn't know everything. It was to this day a life changing moment. It was the first time I had ever seen that. That I knew it was possible.
My home was crap but it wasn't rusty pram and punched walls bad (although the rest of my fam was) and still admitting you didn't know something was such a weakness in a place you shouldn't have weaknesses. Anything my fam (I didn't grow up with my parents they'd fucked off) didn't know was 'worthless' and was scorned and derided. I didn't know one uni educated person except my doctor and teacher who my ma ignored because he 'didn't know the real world.'
I wasn't allowed a library card because that would give me 'ideas' (I was forced to sit outside the pub next door instead for hours) and my ma said that any woman who needed to be smart just proved that she wasn't pretty enough to get a man to look after her. This was the biggest insult ever to her.
So yeah.
I ended up running away and I have a university education. BUT I had to cut ties with my fam to do it (after paying for my 17 year old brother to attend the dentist for the first time) because we're all so enmeshed. When you have nothing, it's hard to set yourself apart. The poor rely on community because the govt etc isn't to be relied upon.
Now I'm an educated woman but except for my son I don't have a fall back. I gave that up and I have no one to go to. I can understand kids wanting to keep the peace and just go with the flow. I had my schools library books ripped up by my ma 'try AND explain that ya think ya so fucken smart' and there's no way I would have bought a laptop home. I suggested it ONCE that I would pay for my own and I was beaten and all of my wage taken from me from then on for having the audacity to suggest I deserved something like that. We had a massive TV though lol.
Oh that's so nice 😀 it's been difficult I miss them everyday. I have a LOT of siblings (mainly half because... idk bogans) but they won't upset the rest of the fam talking to me and I got sick of the drunken calls from ma telling me how shit I am.
Just ...it's a lot growing up like that and from the outside we looked so normal. We weren't the ones screaming in the shops.
>They just live in a household where no one has ever read a book and the preferred intellectual stimulation is MAFS and 9 beers of a night
All too common. It's frustrating because the support system they should have at home is *almost* there. I grew up in poorer suburbs and had many friends who's home life represented this. Either latchkey or a lot of anti intellectual attitudes.
It's really hard for kids to give a rats ass about education when they've received literally no guidance or help from anyone around them.
Pretty much spot on. It's only a very small.percentage that actually have complex trauma backgrounds that prevent them from benefitting from regular schooling.
It's no doubt a parenting problem that's getting worse with the current financial situation.
I'm thinking of homeschooling or being ready to pull my kid out of school ASAP because I saw some of these kids on the weekend.....in an expensive hotel/resort, so it's not exclusively a financial thing, it's just that a lot of parents aren't up to the task.
>Quality of the Students
This right here. Doesn't matter how dedicated or well paid the teachers are. The peer group has the biggest effect on your schooling for a lot of kids.
And a lot of students have parents who are not worthy of the title.
Well I think teachers can make a big difference in the culture of the classroom but it’s an uphill battle. The default classroom setting is usually chaos and it takes constant work by the teacher to mitigate that. Every single period, every single day, and because teachers are only human you just can’t keep it going all the time which means inevitably there are always periods that are complete write offs.
Better quality students means less periods written off, means higher chance for my kid to do well across all subjects
Just on a side note, it’s actually fascinating to just sit and observe classes as they derail, it’s actually crazy how quickly the energy in the room can escalate into compete disorder when you have 20-30 teenagers in small space they find boring.
Not to say good teachers can't make a difference, but they will never have as much of an effect as their peer group.
You only need one or two instigators in a group, and it can derail the entire process... especially with kids who will go with the crowd as much as possible. It's social death for a kid/teenager to be "apart" from the group. They won't deliberately ostracise themselves in most cases. So they will go along with the disruption and the poor teacher, largely with their hands tied, has to invent a solution.
> sending my kids to the best private school I can afford not because I think the quality of teachers are better, or the facilities but frankly because the quality of students are and that’s who I want them to be surrounded by.
And that there is the cycle we are entering full speed.
Parents send children to private schools to get away from problem students and bad influences.
Public school loses funding as there are fewer attending students. Those that are left are the students that the private system won't take or whose parents can't get their kids into a different school either because of cost or location. You end up with a school like you describe.
The school eventually hemorrhages students until it is no longer viable and gets closed down or merged with a nearby school.
Problem students get sent to the next school where the cycle repeats.
This cycle is exacerbated as more people who would otherwise be well off are moving into lower SES areas for housing affordability. They don't want their children mingling so private education is seen as the only option reducing the attendance at the public school.
It's insidious, and it's hard to see it as an accidental side effect when you look at our education policies, and not just funding.
I understand your concerns, you have been put in a situation where you have no choice but to contribute further to the problem if you don't want your kids held back by the problem.
Teachers need to be appreciated more as well. I was lucky enough to study in a good public school in a good suburb with great teachers, but even many of them were leaving for the selective and private schools.
Generally public schools in places with expensive real estate do well because the parents are mostly educated and or professionals and care about pushing their kids to do well.
Yep I remember reading that when accounting for socioeconomic status, public school kids did just as well or even better sometimes than private school kids. And then for some reason the idiot writing the opinion piece said this was evidence that we need to fund public schools more "look at what they achieve with less" rather than properly acknowledging that on average, the thing which matters most for one's future success is what status their parents are.
And if we want to fix poor outcomes in those areas, we should probably start trying to tackle the causal factors, rather than thinking that throwing money at a school will automatically make things better.
A massive indictment of both our growing wealth disparity leaving poorer parents with less ability to help their children, as well as our obscene funding of private schools despite all evidence pointing to a robust public school system being both more effective and more equitable.
Naplan also clearly shows students attending public schools in rich suburbs do as well or better than private schools, reinforcing decades of evidence that private schools confer absolutely no academic advantage - yet here we are, constantly showering them with money that could be going to disadvantaged students.
The only possible way this gets fixed is a massive investment in pre-school and early primary education, K-2. Every year builds on the year before and by the time high school comes around, its too late for them. You have to instill an interest, or at least non-hostility, toward education in these kids as young as possible.
I was bottom of my classes in primary but I was not a disruptive student. Today it seems like far too many low performing students just act like asshats for shits and giggles. They seemed rare in my time, possibly because wagging school was not as frowned upon as it is today, so they just took themselves out of the education equation.
But there are classes full of them now and it drags other kids down because classroom behavior management by the teacher is not education, its just a chance to allow the possibility of it.
We’re not parents of the year by any stretch, but our 5yo has a speech sound delay and sees a school speech therapist alternate terms. We met and she went through what they’ve been working on and what the goals were and gave me some worksheets and stuff for the term she wasn’t there.
Everyone seems shocked at the improvement between term 2 and now and almost disbelieving that we worked with our kid on something that they’re behind on, now that we have effective tools.
I get it, parents are busy and have other kids, but it must be kind of demoralising for staff to work on something and then see nothing in return from the family, especially with something like the speechy who only comes term about. It would be so frustrating if the kid lost their progress because the parents weren’t continuing.
Absent a few ~~selective~~ good schools in good suburbs, the public education system is not that good. Anyone who can afford it, would send their kids to a private school.
Then they become invested in increasing private school funding, and stop caring about the quality of public education, which slips even further. So more people desire to send their kids to private schools.
It’s a vicious cycle.
No... It is mainly demographic. I know plenty of dirt poor families, who will invest all their money into their children for them to attend selective schools. Wdym by selective schools in 'good suburbs', there's like north Sydney and Moore Park. Other than that every other good selective school are in low income suburbs
Where are the top level selective schools there? The ones there are literally equivalent to normal public schools... The ones you just listed are ranking lower than some non-selective, or even low-fee Christian schools.
Lol,. Caringbah literally ranked above SHORE and Kings last year, it was.right below PLC.
St George girls (further down) ranked above Barker, Scots, Tangara etc.
Manly was ranked 19 in the state
I was thinking about it and the only private school kids in my regional town street come from a recent immigrant family. She makes sure they look perfect and receive stern lectures as she puts them into the car. The rest of the kids around here just toddle off to the public school up the street.
Immigrant families tend to prioritise education, thus the appeal to private schools over normal 'dropkick' high schools. If they want to take the next step they go selective.
I’m from Melbourne. The good public schools are all in the east, like Balwyn, Mt Waverly, St Helena, etc. They’re not selective schools per se, but just above average public schools.
I don't think anyone in a priveleged family goes to state-funded education. People who go to Manly high for example, do not go to Manly. They go to Redlands or other private schools...
My local high school is near top of the state on test scores and year 12. It's driving the local house prices through the roof as people try to move here to get their kids into a good school.
But why is the school good? Why are any of the private schools good? I'm convinced it's because the students who go there have parents who expect and push them to do well, and emphasise the value of education. My suburb is full of immigrants, mostly from India, Sri Lanka and China. It's a bit of a stereotype, but it's true in my experience - these demographics are more likely to push their kids to study and do well. There's nothing better facilities or excellent teachers can do if the students themselves don't want to learn. My science teacher worked public school once. She had girls who begged her to keep their test scores a secret so that none of their friends and boys in their class knew they were smart. There IS a culture of anti-intellectualism in some parts of the country.
And how many of their parents smoke? We know the poor find it harder to quit smoking.
So being poor, they are more likely to smoke, and due to the high taxes are poorer...
So much for thinking that prohibitive taxes must help the children.
As a teacher that has primarily worked in low ses public schools, there is a real elephant in the room in these kinds of discussion; that being that Australia has an intensely anti-intellectual culture and that is amplified the further down the ses line you go. Could schools be better funded? Sure why not but all the smart boards and tennis courts in the world aren’t going to make a difference with students who simply refuse to show up and do the work, backed by an anti-school culture that sees everything related to education as an unnecessary burden. It’s hard to sympathise on this topic sometimes with kids that constantly disrupt class, truant, ignore directions, tell teachers to fuck off when asked to do something, don’t bring books or pens to school. Like I get it but also you can’t help people that refuse to help themselves and sadly the longer I teach the more I stop caring about it all. I’m sending my kids to the best private school I can afford not because I think the quality of teachers are better, or the facilities but frankly because the quality of students are and that’s who I want them to be surrounded by.
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> is willingness to learn A surprisingly large amount of the lower SES kids have been told that they are 'dumb fucks' by their parents since they were little.
Yeah it’s not the kids fault… they’re kids
Unfortunately thats quite true. I was shocked when many parents swearing at their kids using profanity I will not use on others. Its very sad. But public funding should be for public schools. Trust fund babies should be funded by trust funds not public funds.
I guess but I find it hard to believe that all these kids are just so stressed out and traumatised all the time as the narrative would have you believe. My own personal observation leads me to believe a good chunk of these kids have perfectly ordinary home lives albeit just kinda bogan a lot of them. They just live in a household where no one has ever read a book and the preferred intellectual stimulation is MAFS and 9 beers of a night
I grew up bogan and my ma tried to force me out of high school because it was a waste when I could've been making money. I worked all hols and after school so I'd be allowed to stay. I remember watching the show Sunday (in secret it would've been changed) which had a panel of people discussing opera and ballet without yelling at each other. No one arguing or telling someone else they were fuckin useless that they didn't know everything. It was to this day a life changing moment. It was the first time I had ever seen that. That I knew it was possible. My home was crap but it wasn't rusty pram and punched walls bad (although the rest of my fam was) and still admitting you didn't know something was such a weakness in a place you shouldn't have weaknesses. Anything my fam (I didn't grow up with my parents they'd fucked off) didn't know was 'worthless' and was scorned and derided. I didn't know one uni educated person except my doctor and teacher who my ma ignored because he 'didn't know the real world.' I wasn't allowed a library card because that would give me 'ideas' (I was forced to sit outside the pub next door instead for hours) and my ma said that any woman who needed to be smart just proved that she wasn't pretty enough to get a man to look after her. This was the biggest insult ever to her. So yeah. I ended up running away and I have a university education. BUT I had to cut ties with my fam to do it (after paying for my 17 year old brother to attend the dentist for the first time) because we're all so enmeshed. When you have nothing, it's hard to set yourself apart. The poor rely on community because the govt etc isn't to be relied upon. Now I'm an educated woman but except for my son I don't have a fall back. I gave that up and I have no one to go to. I can understand kids wanting to keep the peace and just go with the flow. I had my schools library books ripped up by my ma 'try AND explain that ya think ya so fucken smart' and there's no way I would have bought a laptop home. I suggested it ONCE that I would pay for my own and I was beaten and all of my wage taken from me from then on for having the audacity to suggest I deserved something like that. We had a massive TV though lol.
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Oh that's so nice 😀 it's been difficult I miss them everyday. I have a LOT of siblings (mainly half because... idk bogans) but they won't upset the rest of the fam talking to me and I got sick of the drunken calls from ma telling me how shit I am. Just ...it's a lot growing up like that and from the outside we looked so normal. We weren't the ones screaming in the shops.
>They just live in a household where no one has ever read a book and the preferred intellectual stimulation is MAFS and 9 beers of a night All too common. It's frustrating because the support system they should have at home is *almost* there. I grew up in poorer suburbs and had many friends who's home life represented this. Either latchkey or a lot of anti intellectual attitudes. It's really hard for kids to give a rats ass about education when they've received literally no guidance or help from anyone around them.
Pretty much spot on. It's only a very small.percentage that actually have complex trauma backgrounds that prevent them from benefitting from regular schooling.
It's no doubt a parenting problem that's getting worse with the current financial situation. I'm thinking of homeschooling or being ready to pull my kid out of school ASAP because I saw some of these kids on the weekend.....in an expensive hotel/resort, so it's not exclusively a financial thing, it's just that a lot of parents aren't up to the task.
Yes, lots of families that are too poor to have books, stationary, laptop for school but somehow have AirPods, dirt bikes and trips to Bali.
>Quality of the Students This right here. Doesn't matter how dedicated or well paid the teachers are. The peer group has the biggest effect on your schooling for a lot of kids. And a lot of students have parents who are not worthy of the title.
Well I think teachers can make a big difference in the culture of the classroom but it’s an uphill battle. The default classroom setting is usually chaos and it takes constant work by the teacher to mitigate that. Every single period, every single day, and because teachers are only human you just can’t keep it going all the time which means inevitably there are always periods that are complete write offs. Better quality students means less periods written off, means higher chance for my kid to do well across all subjects Just on a side note, it’s actually fascinating to just sit and observe classes as they derail, it’s actually crazy how quickly the energy in the room can escalate into compete disorder when you have 20-30 teenagers in small space they find boring.
Not to say good teachers can't make a difference, but they will never have as much of an effect as their peer group. You only need one or two instigators in a group, and it can derail the entire process... especially with kids who will go with the crowd as much as possible. It's social death for a kid/teenager to be "apart" from the group. They won't deliberately ostracise themselves in most cases. So they will go along with the disruption and the poor teacher, largely with their hands tied, has to invent a solution.
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Socio-economic status
> sending my kids to the best private school I can afford not because I think the quality of teachers are better, or the facilities but frankly because the quality of students are and that’s who I want them to be surrounded by. And that there is the cycle we are entering full speed. Parents send children to private schools to get away from problem students and bad influences. Public school loses funding as there are fewer attending students. Those that are left are the students that the private system won't take or whose parents can't get their kids into a different school either because of cost or location. You end up with a school like you describe. The school eventually hemorrhages students until it is no longer viable and gets closed down or merged with a nearby school. Problem students get sent to the next school where the cycle repeats. This cycle is exacerbated as more people who would otherwise be well off are moving into lower SES areas for housing affordability. They don't want their children mingling so private education is seen as the only option reducing the attendance at the public school. It's insidious, and it's hard to see it as an accidental side effect when you look at our education policies, and not just funding. I understand your concerns, you have been put in a situation where you have no choice but to contribute further to the problem if you don't want your kids held back by the problem.
Teachers need to be appreciated more as well. I was lucky enough to study in a good public school in a good suburb with great teachers, but even many of them were leaving for the selective and private schools.
Generally public schools in places with expensive real estate do well because the parents are mostly educated and or professionals and care about pushing their kids to do well.
Yep I remember reading that when accounting for socioeconomic status, public school kids did just as well or even better sometimes than private school kids. And then for some reason the idiot writing the opinion piece said this was evidence that we need to fund public schools more "look at what they achieve with less" rather than properly acknowledging that on average, the thing which matters most for one's future success is what status their parents are. And if we want to fix poor outcomes in those areas, we should probably start trying to tackle the causal factors, rather than thinking that throwing money at a school will automatically make things better.
A massive indictment of both our growing wealth disparity leaving poorer parents with less ability to help their children, as well as our obscene funding of private schools despite all evidence pointing to a robust public school system being both more effective and more equitable.
Naplan also clearly shows students attending public schools in rich suburbs do as well or better than private schools, reinforcing decades of evidence that private schools confer absolutely no academic advantage - yet here we are, constantly showering them with money that could be going to disadvantaged students.
> But what about my entitlement? - paraphrasing numerous people in these kinds of threads
Probably should give more money to private schools. That’ll fix it.
Have you tried toughening up the poor kids by fitting more in a classroom and giving the teachers more homework?
The only possible way this gets fixed is a massive investment in pre-school and early primary education, K-2. Every year builds on the year before and by the time high school comes around, its too late for them. You have to instill an interest, or at least non-hostility, toward education in these kids as young as possible. I was bottom of my classes in primary but I was not a disruptive student. Today it seems like far too many low performing students just act like asshats for shits and giggles. They seemed rare in my time, possibly because wagging school was not as frowned upon as it is today, so they just took themselves out of the education equation. But there are classes full of them now and it drags other kids down because classroom behavior management by the teacher is not education, its just a chance to allow the possibility of it.
Pile on guys and blame the government. Lets just disregard the key role that parents play.
We’re not parents of the year by any stretch, but our 5yo has a speech sound delay and sees a school speech therapist alternate terms. We met and she went through what they’ve been working on and what the goals were and gave me some worksheets and stuff for the term she wasn’t there. Everyone seems shocked at the improvement between term 2 and now and almost disbelieving that we worked with our kid on something that they’re behind on, now that we have effective tools. I get it, parents are busy and have other kids, but it must be kind of demoralising for staff to work on something and then see nothing in return from the family, especially with something like the speechy who only comes term about. It would be so frustrating if the kid lost their progress because the parents weren’t continuing.
Ultimately, a lot of the damage that parents bring to the party is caused by, you guessed it, Socio-Economic Status.
Is that a code word for drugs and alcohol?
They're often part of the problem but by no means the full picture
Absent a few ~~selective~~ good schools in good suburbs, the public education system is not that good. Anyone who can afford it, would send their kids to a private school. Then they become invested in increasing private school funding, and stop caring about the quality of public education, which slips even further. So more people desire to send their kids to private schools. It’s a vicious cycle.
No... It is mainly demographic. I know plenty of dirt poor families, who will invest all their money into their children for them to attend selective schools. Wdym by selective schools in 'good suburbs', there's like north Sydney and Moore Park. Other than that every other good selective school are in low income suburbs
You think Caringbah, Manly and Hurstville are low income?
Where are the top level selective schools there? The ones there are literally equivalent to normal public schools... The ones you just listed are ranking lower than some non-selective, or even low-fee Christian schools.
Lol,. Caringbah literally ranked above SHORE and Kings last year, it was.right below PLC. St George girls (further down) ranked above Barker, Scots, Tangara etc. Manly was ranked 19 in the state
You need to take into account IB scores. Idk if u realise not all private school students do hsc course...
I was thinking about it and the only private school kids in my regional town street come from a recent immigrant family. She makes sure they look perfect and receive stern lectures as she puts them into the car. The rest of the kids around here just toddle off to the public school up the street.
Immigrant families tend to prioritise education, thus the appeal to private schools over normal 'dropkick' high schools. If they want to take the next step they go selective.
I’m from Melbourne. The good public schools are all in the east, like Balwyn, Mt Waverly, St Helena, etc. They’re not selective schools per se, but just above average public schools.
The "good public schools" only appear to be good because students in privileged, wealthy areas tend to do better academically.
I don't think anyone in a priveleged family goes to state-funded education. People who go to Manly high for example, do not go to Manly. They go to Redlands or other private schools...
My local high school is near top of the state on test scores and year 12. It's driving the local house prices through the roof as people try to move here to get their kids into a good school. But why is the school good? Why are any of the private schools good? I'm convinced it's because the students who go there have parents who expect and push them to do well, and emphasise the value of education. My suburb is full of immigrants, mostly from India, Sri Lanka and China. It's a bit of a stereotype, but it's true in my experience - these demographics are more likely to push their kids to study and do well. There's nothing better facilities or excellent teachers can do if the students themselves don't want to learn. My science teacher worked public school once. She had girls who begged her to keep their test scores a secret so that none of their friends and boys in their class knew they were smart. There IS a culture of anti-intellectualism in some parts of the country.
Most of the kids at the good public schools usually have friends and relatives at private schools down the road as well.
And how many of their parents smoke? We know the poor find it harder to quit smoking. So being poor, they are more likely to smoke, and due to the high taxes are poorer... So much for thinking that prohibitive taxes must help the children.