Would-be teachers must improve uni scores

When will this bungler learn? Between all the red tape and the disruptive students, teaching is no longer a good job.  So bright people mostly avoid it.  You HAVE TO accept dummies as teachers or you will eventually not have enough teachers for the schools. 

Victorian students who want to train as teachers will need higher university entrance scores after concerns too many young educators aren't up to the mark.

The minimum Victoria state ATAR will be 65 in 2018 and rise to 70 from 2019.

"If you want the best and brightest kids, then you have got to make sure that we've got the best and brightest teachers," Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters on Wednesday.

"For too long I think too many people who are perhaps not ready to be teachers have been getting the scores necessary to get into that course."

The average ATAR of students who began a teaching course in 2016 was about 57, according to Fairfax Media, implying some students got in with even lower scores.

Mr Andrews lifting lift teaching standards will flow through to class rooms. "We've got an oversupply of teachers at the moment, so it's exactly the right time," Mr Andrews said.

But opposition education spokesman Nick Wakeling says a high ATAR score alone won't result in smarter teachers. "While ATARs are important, universities use a range of tools to select their teacher candidates, including interviews, portfolios and written applications," Mr Wakeling said.

"Teachers need better support as they enter the classroom and more valuable professional development focused on improving their skills throughout their career."

SOURCE






Australia cuts Clinton Foundation funds

The federal government has not renewed any of its partnerships with the Clinton Foundation.

Labor and coalition governments over the past decade have paid more than $75 million to the anti-poverty foundation set up by the former first family of the United States, but questions have been raised about its accountability.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told the coalition joint party room on Tuesday agreements entered into by the Rudd-Gillard government had not been renewed.

SOURCE





Noel Pearson condemns the ABC as a ‘miserable racist’ broadcaster at Paul Keating book launch

THE country’s top indigenous leader Noel Pearson has eviscerated the ABC as a “miserable racist national broadcaster” needing “blacks to lead short lives of grief and tribulation” in order to produce bleeding-heart news reports.

In remarks that stunned an audience of senior Labor figures gathered to launch a new biography of former prime minister Paul Keating, Mr Pearson denounced the ABC for “soft bigotry” in its coverage of indigenous Australians.

Paying warm tribute to Mr Keating’s commitment to reconciliation and his historic Redfern Speech, Mr Pearson said some of his most promising reforms had been “wrecked” by “ignorant ministers and blind bureaucrats” who have been “aided and abetted by the media, not the least the country’s miserable racist national broadcaster”.

In language as scathing as some of Mr Keating’s most famous insults, Mr Pearson described the ABC as “a spittoon’s worth of perverse people willing the wretched to fail”.

“They need blacks to remain alien from mothers’ bosoms, carceral in legions, leading short lives of grief and tribulation because if it were not so, against whom could they direct their soft bigotry of low expectations, about whom could they report misery and bleeding tragedy,” Mr Pearson said.

“Between the Quadrant’s hard bigotry of prejudice from the right and the ABC’s soft bigotry of low expectations on the left, lies this common ground of mutual racism.”

Mr Keating, who co-operated with the biography, The Big Picture Leader by The Australian journalist Troy Bramston, warned Australia would never reach its full potential until it had achieved true reconciliation and had cut ties to Great Britain.

“We will never be the place we ought to be without full reconciliation with the First Australians here, and we will never be the place we ought to be while a monarch from another country is the head of state,” he said.

Mr Keating also said he always thought Mr Pearson was Australia’s answer to Barack Obama and hoped he would play a greater leadership role in the country’s future.

The ABC hit back at Mr Pearson’s remarks and said it provided more coverage of indigenous issues than any other Australian media outlet.

A spokesman said the ABC had given a platform to Mr Pearson, and other indigenous commentators, to canvass issues of welfare dependency, alcohol abuse and violence against women.

“With its 60 locations across Australia, the ABC covers the everyday experiences of indigenous communities and provides a range of programs to give voices to indigenous Australians and to showcase their achievements.

SOURCE






Real solutions to violence epidemic in Indigenous communities

Sara Hudson

Urgent action is needed to counteract the epidemic of violence in Indigenous communities.  But instead of action, the government and Aboriginal legal services are busying themselves with inquiries and racial discrimination complaints.

Rather than wasting money on yet another inquiry -- where many of the recommendations come to naught - the federal government would be much better off focusing on the social issues that lead to high rates of violence and incarceration.

In some parts of the country, the rate of hospitalisation for domestic violence victims is 86 times higher for Indigenous women than it is for non-Indigenous women.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women have drawn attention to these appalling statistics but their voices have often been ignored.

Shamed by the Chairperson of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council's scathing attack on the government's inaction on this issue, the federal government recently  announced a $25 million package for front line services to prevent violence. But this isn't new money -- just a re-announcement of the $100 million over 12 years for family violence in the 2016-17 federal budget.

Implementing good policy to counteract high levels of Indigenous disadvantage requires much more than just announcing a million dollar budget package.  To this end, we are pleased to support the voices of three outspoken and fearless Aboriginal women, Professor Marcia Langton AM, Councillor Jacinta Price, and lawyer and businesswoman Josephine Cashman at a special event at the National Press Club next Thursday.

The three women will outline some real solutions to the high rates of violence and incarceration in Indigenous communities.

Tellingly, those Indigenous communities with private home ownership and a sustainable economy also have lower crime and incarceration rates. For example, Mapoon in Far North of Queensland has a crime rate half that of the general rate for Queensland, (9293 offences per 100,000 people) and a tenth of all Queensland Indigenous communities.

This suggests that strategies to improve the economic outcomes of Indigenous communities are likely to be much more effective in reducing high rates of family violence than any other measure 'banded' about by government - like waiting with a stretcher at the bottom of a cliff to offer services.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here