Muslim school fakes it

They send their dumber kids to TAFE so that their results do not show up as attributable to the school

YEAR 12 students at a private school in Sydney are forced to complete HSC subjects at TAFE if it appears they will not score high marks. Malek Fahd Islamic School, in Greenacre, joined the top 10 HSC performers in the Herald's league table for the first time last year, ranking ninth - a jump from 15th position the previous year. Malek Fahd students, who pay fees to attend the school, make up close to half the free HSC chemistry class at Bankstown TAFE this year.

Ken Enderby, who co-ordinates the Bankstown TAFE HSC program, said in recent years students had told him they had to take HSC subjects at TAFE because they could not sit them at Malek Fahd. He said one Malek Fahd student who was asked to leave the school achieved a lowest score of 60 per cent and a highest score of 72 per cent at TAFE. "I have had parents in tears because their children have not been allowed to sit subjects at the school," he said. "I'm happy to have those kids here. These are very good students - well behaved and a pleasure to teach."

Twenty-one year 12 students from Malek Fahd enrolled at Bankstown TAFE this year to complete studies in subjects including physics, mathematics and chemistry, all offered at the school. Of the 24 students enrolled in the Bankstown TAFE HSC chemistry class, 11 are from Malek Fahd. Mr Enderby said eight students from Malek Fahd were taking legal studies at the TAFE.

The principal of Malek Fahd, Intaj Ali, said yesterday his school offered 11 HSC subjects, including advanced English and mathematics, biology, business studies, chemistry, physics, studies of religion, and legal studies. Dr Ali denied that he had encouraged poorer performing students to study at TAFE. "No, no, no," he said. "There is no such thing. It is only when they want to change a subject." The 71 students who completed the HSC at the school last year achieved 126 results in band six, which are marks of 90 per cent or more.

Dr Ali said the school had gradually increased its subjects and its student numbers. Since the school was established by Australian Federation of Islamic Councils in October 1989, the student population has grown from 87 children from kindergarten to year 3 to more than 1700 children from kindergarten to year 12.

The school has rapidly improved its performance in the Herald's HSC results league table, which is based on the number of student scores of 90 per cent and above divided by the number of examinations attempted. Malek Fahd only receives credit for the subjects that are completed at the school. TAFE colleges receive credit for Malek Fahd students who sit their examinations at TAFE.

Mr Enderby said 13 Malek Fahd students were at Bankstown TAFE last year. The HSC co-ordinator at Granville TAFE, Dougal Patey, said some Malek Fahd students also studied at his institution.

Year 12 students at Malek Fahd pay about $1600 in fees for the year. The school received $3.6 million in state funding and $9.3 million in federal funding in the 2006-07. The funding had increased 14 per cent over four years. It earned $2.4 million from fees and recorded a surplus of $3.4 million for the year ending in December 2006, $500,000 more than the previous year.

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Another failed computer system

When will they ever learn? Large organizations are constantly commissioning their own systems and getting a shambles for their money. Britain has just spent $25 BILLION on a health service system and it is not working yet. And we won't mention Australia's submarines. Large organizations should only buy already-proven systems and programs.

RATEPAYERS have pumped almost $30 million into fixing Brisbane City Council's ``basket case'' computerised payroll system - and it still doesn't work. Lord Mayor Campbell Newman admitted the council kept pouring funds into a "black hole", but blamed the previous Labor administrations under Jim Soorley and Tim Quinn, which he said were responsible for its implementation.

"It was poorly conceived and poorly executed," Cr Newman said. "Every year we just keep pouring money into the black hole to fix it, to work around it, to patch it. It is a basket case of a system which has cost ratepayers this sort of money (and) we just have to cop it."

But Labor claims Cr Newman has had every opportunity to provide an alternative. The human resource information system (HRIS), introduced in 2005 was supposed to cost only $6 million but has now blown out to $31 million, with up to $2 million already being spent this financial year.

Cr Newman's comments come in response to a further list of concerns raised by state Auditor-General Glenn Poole in an interim report. Issues raised include paying staff too much, lack of accountability, monitoring and compliance problems and inefficiencies. Cr Newman would not reveal how much council employees had been overpaid, but said in the past there were instances where people weren't paid at all, including himself. "At times I haven't been paid, councillors haven't been paid. The pay system has caused us huge problems," he said.

The report also said the council had developed a formal policy on salary overpayments and recoveries, which was in the final stages of approval. The Courier-Mail revealed just a month into the system's implementation that a quarter of the council's 8000 staff were either receiving no pay, were overpaid or underpaid.

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Public hospital patients being treated by a mad killer psychiatrist

It sounds like a pulp novel but it's actually happening in a NSW government hospital



NINE years after he shot and killed his wife, George Sliwinski was back in his job as a psychiatrist, treating mentally ill patients in public hospitals. Dr Sliwinski himself had a history of mental illness. This led him to either leave or be dismissed from four medical facilities in the 1980s. In 1987, after a decade of chronic drug and alcohol abuse, he shot his former wife, Alice, four times, a month after their divorce. One of the shots, to her head, killed her.

But Dr Sliwinski was released on parole in 1990. And he was employed as a resident medical officer at the Central Coast Mental Health Service in July 1994, shortly after successfully appealing to the Medical Tribunal of NSW to be re-registered. The Australian Medical Association publicly opposed the re-registration. Dr Sliwinski was employed as a psychiatric registrar at Gosford and Wyong hospitals in 1996, and continues in this role. But, to this day, many of his patients are unaware of his past - and there is no obligation for DrSliwinski or authorities to tell them.

The case of Dr Sliwinski raises difficult issues of a patient's right to know the record and background of their doctor and the ability of someone to redeem themselves and begin a new life. In 1994 the Medical Tribunal said it had "some difficulty" deciding whether he was fit to be a doctor. But it concluded he was suitable because he did not intend to kill his wife, had no history of violence and was supported strongly by three psychiatrists who gave evidence that he had been fully rehabilitated and was very unlikely to relapse.

And yet questions remain unanswered. The Health Department will not reveal how it monitored Dr Sliwinski to ensure he met strict conditions imposed by the tribunal, such as regular urine and/or blood tests, psychiatric treatment and constant supervision. The tribunal also appeared to be unaware that Dr Sliwinski's wife alleged he had a history of violence against her. It found the killing was an "isolated occasion", despite her allegations, set out in an Apprehended Violence Order summons issued in the year before her death.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists - which is responsible for ensuring the suitability of psychiatrists - has refused to comment on what processes it undertook to assess him. And in the 1990s the NSW Medical Board was not required to independently notify employers of a doctor's restrictions. A spokeswoman for the board, Edwina Light, said it was prohibited from revealing why DrSliwinski's strict conditions were lifted in 1999.

Doctors are not legally obliged to tell patients they are working under conditions or have been deregistered in the past, and the Health Department has no policy requiring disclosure.

Dr Sliwinski went on trial in the Supreme Court for the murder of Alice on October 1, 1987, a month after they divorced. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the fourth day of his trial, in 1988, and was sentenced to a maximum of eight years' jail. He had shot Alice four times but said he could not recall the incident and successfully argued diminished responsibility because of his intoxicated state. In sentencing him, Justice Ray Loveday said there was no motive for the killing and described it as "quite bizarre".

According to the tribunal's 1994 judgment, he had been abusing alcohol and a cocktail of prescription drugs, mostly tranquillisers, for almost a decade and had sought psychiatric help several times from 1979, including stays at psychiatric hospitals in 1985 and 1987. He feared "dying and going mad". His drinking dated back to the late 1960s, when he drank on the job as a medical trainee because he found attending cancer wards difficult. His father died of bone cancer when Dr Sliwinski was 11 and his mother had schizophrenia.

The drug addiction began in 1977 after his first wife, Barbara, left him with their children and a doctor gave him Serepax after he was unable to administer anaesthesia due to a panic attack at Moree Hospital.

However, in its judgment in 1994 the tribunal concluded that Dr Sliwinski was not an intrinsically violent person. "[The shooting] does not indicate a tendency to vice or violence or any lack of probity. It has neither connection with nor significance for any professional function. There is no evidence that the appellant [previously] committed acts of violence towards his ex-wife or any other person ." the tribunal said.

However, a summons was issued to Dr Sliwinski over an allegation that he assaulted her by attempting to choke her in August 1986. The AVO application, seen by the Herald, alleged that Dr Sliwinski, who had been drinking heavily, said to his wife, "If I hear you have done anything to foul up my career I will kill you", and had assaulted her three or four times during their five-year marriage. The AVO was withdrawn by his wife.

Three years before the killing, he was twice told to take sick leave from his job as a psychiatric registrar at Morriset Hospital due to his depressed mental state and concerns that he was suicidal.

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Attack on fatherhood defeated by Christian party

The Rev Fred Nile from the Christian Democrats has successfully amended a NSW same-sex reform bill some feared would see the genetic father's name deleted from birth certificates of children born to lesbian partnerships. The amended bill was agreed to by the NSW lower house late yesterday. On Tuesday, Mr Nile's amendments found the support of all members of the MLC bar the four Green Party members.

The Attorney General John Hatzistergos said he accepted Mr Nile's two amendments because `it is not the Government's intention to modify the way birth certificates are issued in the sense of removing the names of mothers and fathers'.

Mr Nile has thanked his colleagues in the Legislative Council for their support `in ensuring we retained recognition of fathers and paternity under the law'. "I'm pleased we have managed to look beyond our own political differences and agenda and come together in recognising the important role fathers play in the lives of children," he said.

Mr Hatzistergos argued that the reforms were primarily aimed at ensuring the children of same-sex couples had the same rights that every other child has in a family, such as access to workers compensation, access to victim compensation benefits, and the rights of inheritance. "At the moment, if the birth mother were to pass away, the same-sex partner who has been in a relationship with the birth mother and who has been raising that child would have no legal nexus to that child. This legislation simply reflects reality, and that reality is based on decisions that have already been made by this Parliament," he said.

Earlier, Christian groups, including the Sydney Diocese's top ethical body, had raised serious concerns about the reform. In its briefing document released earlier this week, the Social Issues Executive of Sydney Diocese says it was concerned that the change to identify `social parents rather than genetic parents' would deny children `the possibility of knowing about their genetic origins'.

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