Your government will protect you

He was a "ticking timebomb" waiting to go off .. a prisoner who warned authorities he would kill once freed, and carried out his threat just eight days later. The prisoner, with a history of violence and mental health problems, brutally bashed a man to death as he slept in Brisbane's City Botanic Gardens. But he will not be tried for the 2005 murder of Brisbane father John Simpson, 56, because health authorities have deemed him mentally unfit.

The case has sparked calls from the victim's family, mental health support groups and the State Opposition for an inquiry into the release of mentally ill people with violent tendencies. Mr Simpson's daughter has called for an inquiry into the man's release "in the public interest" to prevent similar tragedies. "We believe we are entitled to an explanation as to how someone so dangerous could be released into the public like a ticking timebomb waiting to go off," the daughter, who wanted to be identified only as Jodie, 27, said in a letter to the State Coroner this month. "His release from jail has put the public's safety in jeopardy because it appears that the system does not have a safety net for violent, mentally ill people who have been released."

Jeff Cheverton of the Queensland Alliance, a non-government agency representing mental health groups, said prisoners with mental health problems were not given the follow-up and referral to treatment they needed on their release. Mr Cheverton said there should be graduated release of prisoners with mental health problems. Psychiatrists treating the man charged with Mr Simpson's murder had warned of his psychosis and potential danger for the past decade.

Before Mr Simpson's murder, the man - who cannot be identified under mental health laws - had been serving a three-year jail sentence at the Maryborough Correction Centre after he attacked a Sunshine Coast taxi driver with scissors and a hammer in 2002. Sentencing the man in 2003, Brisbane District Court Judge Garry Forno recommended that Queensland Corrective Services transfer him to a health institution so he could get appropriate care and the public would be protected.

However, Corrective Services decided he did not meet the criteria for an involuntary treatment order. Police and Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence said that while in jail, eight different psychiatrists had decided he was not psychotic, but displaying threatening and disturbed behavior.

Before his release from Maryborough jail in 2005, the man told prison staff he was going to kill people, including a homeless man. Police were warned and put out a statewide computer alert before his release. But it was to no avail. After being arrested for the killing of Mr Simpson, the man told police he had needed to kill to "rejuvenate his brain" and he had caught a bus from Maryborough to Brisbane and gone to the gardens because he "wanted to commit a murder".

State Coroner Michael Barnes said he could "well understand" Mr Simpson's daughter's concerns and would look into them. In March this year, the charges of murdering Mr Simpson and the attempted murder of a fellow patient at a mental health unit in 2002 were dropped after Mental Health Court Justice Anthe Philippides decided the man was of unsound mind. She ordered he be detained in a high security mental health unit.

The Queensland Police Union said the Government needed to build a "modern purpose-built" mental health facility to house violent offenders if they were not going to be jailed. "Murders and suicides are all too common now and compulsory detainment and treatment is the only way to reduce these terrible consequences," union president Gary Wilkinson said.

The man's adoptive mother said public systems had failed her son, who was left for her and her husband to pick up from prison.

The above article appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 20, 2007




The importance of good teachers

SCHOOL students who have good teachers take half as long to learn their course material as those with poor teachers, new research shows. The report provides the first objective evidence of which teachers are adding value to the academic performance of their students - and which teachers are letting children down. "The top 10 per cent of teachers achieve in half a year what the bottom 10 per cent achieve in a full year," says the author, economist Andrew Leigh, of the Australian National University.

Dr Leigh tracked three years of numeracy and literacy exam scores for 90,000 primary school students and matched them against 10,000 teachers. Good teaching - measured by improvements in exam scores - has almost no relationship with teacher experience, qualifications or any of the criteria currently used by most schools to hire or reward teachers. Instead, the best teachers appear to be good at their jobs because of innate factors like personal drive, curiosity and ability to relate to students. "Most of the differences between teachers are due to factors not captured on the payroll database," said Dr Leigh. The study shows female teachers are more likely to improve student literacy, while males are better at teaching maths.

Surprisingly, it shows students in large classes performed better than those in small ones - although it doesn't claim a causative link. It also finds no positive effects of teacher qualifications on test scores, a finding which challenges the Federal Opposition's policy of paying teachers more for better academic qualifications rather than for observed ability.

The study is likely to receive a frosty reception from teacher unions and state education bureaucracies which say exam scores cannot be used to measure teacher quality. But it has been seized upon by private schools and the Federal Government. The executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, Geoff Newcombe, said Dr Leigh's "groundbreaking" findings paved the way for teachers to be partly rewarded by the exam score improvements of their students. "It's complex but we can't stick our head in the sand and say it's too hard," he said.

The Federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, said the report supports her policy of introducing performance pay for teachers next year. "This makes a mockery of education union and Labor Party claims that teacher performance cannot be measured," she said.

The schools data for Dr Leigh's study, which includes year 3 and 5 numeracy and literacy exam scores and information about individual teachers, was provided by the Queensland Education Department after NSW and Victoria had refused to make their information available. As well as being used to identify, reward and retain the best teachers, Dr Leigh says his methodology could be used to send the best teachers where they could contribute most. If indigenous students had teachers from the top quarter rather than the bottom, then the findings imply the two-year black-white test score gap could be closed within seven years. [A very simple-minded extrapolation]

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Teachers reject payment by results

Predictably. Businesses get payment by results but teachers are high-minded noble idealists, of course

NSW school principals are designing their own plan to reward quality teaching in defiance of the Federal Government's push to link performance pay to student results. The body representing 460 high school heads has rejected the Government's "ideologically driven" model. They are wary of Labor's alternative, saying it is still too thin on detail.

The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the council's plan would be "based on merit rather than performance". "[The federal Minister for Education] Julie Bishop's performance pay is going to be based on results of students in tests and that is a very narrow performance measure," he said. "But teachers who take on additional responsibilities, who undertake additional professional learning, who contribute to the further development of other teachers, merit extra pay."

From January 2008, first-year teachers in NSW Government schools will earn an annual salary of $50,250 and receive an increase each year for the following nine years up to $75,000. They will then receive no further increase unless they take up a position as a head teacher, deputy principal or principal. Top principals earn $119,000. In all there are 21 pay points in teaching, based on merit, years of experience and school size. The principals suggest creating extra salary steps for teachers who, for example, complete master's degrees and use them to help their colleagues. This would recognise the collegiality of the profession, where a number of teachers may contribute to a pupil's development.

The state Minister for Education, John Della Bosca, has also said he is open to a system of merit pay not based on student results. Mr Della Bosca and his state and territory colleagues last month rejected Ms Bishop's proposal to pilot performance pay in schools from next year, saying they would develop their own plans. Since then, Ms Bishop has said schools will be rewarded with up to $50,000 for outstanding results in numeracy and literacy. Schools could divide the money among their best teachers.

Federal Labor has said it would reward quality teaching using a merit-based system that took into account extra qualifications, professional development and working in rural and remote areas.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has said that from 2009 he would tie Commonwealth funding to the states and territories to the introduction of performance pay for teachers, giving principals more autonomy to hire and fire and providing parents with more detailed information on school performance. That information should also include cases of bullying and violence. The principals' plan is separate to another being devised by the national teacher union, the Australian Education Union.

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Some attack on bloated hospital bureaucracies at last

QUEENSLAND Health does not have enough money to fund over-budget hospitals requiring key staff. Director-general Uschi Schreiber has imposed a staff freeze on districts that have blown their budgets, despite admitting the personnel were needed for "effective health service delivery". A cap has been placed on theatre-booking clerks, radiology/medical imaging clerks, ward receptionists, human resources officers and indigenous liaison officers.

Ms Schreiber has told her district health managers that the freeze would remain until the end of the financial year. In a memo obtained by The Courier-Mail, Ms Schreiber said: "I would like to bring to your attention consistently strong growth in administrative staff numbers, most notably at district level. "Whilst appropriate staffing levels for both clinical and administrative employees is a key component of effective health service delivery, this must continue to be balanced with the need for budget integrity."

The correspondence said districts, area health services and divisions would be banned from hiring any more administrators if they were above "affordable levels". She said if the extra staff was for essential, day-to-day activity, approval would have to be sought from an area general manager or an executive director.

Peter Forster's Queensland Health Systems Review, which evaluated the department in the wake of the Jayant Patel scandal, found that the department was putting budgets in front of patient care. It also revealed that the department was overburdened with bureaucrats, and recommended central office be cut to 644 positions. More than 160 had been identified as surplus.

In a statement to The Courier-Mail, Ms Schreiber's office said the 644 cap was an "annualised figure and the actual number fluctuates slightly throughout the year". There were 657.65 positions in February this year. Eleven positions were child and youth health positions "transferred to corporate office pending machinery of Government changes" and 31 were special project positions with a "set life span". "Queensland Health is actively managing administrative staff numbers and maintaining a lean corporate office," the statement said. "Administrative staff positions are established only where a strong and compelling need can be demonstrated and at the district level such positions must support clinical services. "The director-general has issued a memorandum to ensure active management of administrative staff numbers continues and appointments are linked directly in the districts to the support of clinical services, rather than an increase in bureaucratic positions."

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