Indigenous ‘carve out’: Is this a return to the ‘reading wars’?

Aboriginal children can undoubtdly reach higher standards than they do but to do that, they need good teachers not second-rate ones. Guess which they are going to get

Two cheers for recent moves to ensure trainee teachers are better equipped to teach English and literacy. Not three. Not yet anyway.

As this newspaper reported last week, all non-Indigenous trainee teachers must pass a test known as LANTITE (Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education students) during the first year of their degree. Why this hasn’t been the case forever beggars belief. And we wonder why NAPLAN scores are on the slide.

Isn’t it bleedingly obvious that basic literacy and numeracy must start on day one – for teachers and students alike?

The new standards released by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership require trainee teachers to be taught to use explicit instruction – a practical step-by-step teaching method that has been championed for years by many people who have looked closely at what works and what doesn’t.

Noel Pearson has been a terrific supporter of explicit instruction as the obvious way to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged kids with evidence-based education. In a speech to the Centre for Independent Studies in 2021, Pearson was characteristically blunt: “I want to start with one brief thing about evidence: we need no more evidence about what works.

“The evidence has been well known about what works for children’s reading, numeracy and learning generally. It is just that there has been a concerted effort to impede the known and very effective means by which children could learn in Australian schools – and it is the disadvantaged that have suffered the most.”

The evidence, said Pearson, was that direct instruction worked best for children.

The interminable delay in arriving at this point, where teachers receive early training in direct instruction, reveals how education has become a battleground where activists play and students suffer.

Many years ago, when writing about the evidence behind phonics – the explicit instruction method for teaching kids to read – I was horrified to discover that many on the loud left regarded it as some kind of political project of the right to hijack education. No kidding. The so-called “reading wars” were a shocking indictment of the education class.

Will the caveat to these new reforms prove to be yet another indictment of the education elites?

The new rules that require more rigorous literacy and numeracy training do not apply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trainee teachers. The carve-out is aimed at addressing the teacher shortages, dismal school attendance rates and educational gaps in many remote Indigenous communities.

The new standards say: “In the case of First Nations language speakers, recognition of First Nations language proficiency by the relevant cultural authority is an acceptable alternative standard.

“(University) providers must have an established process to confirm recognition of First Nations language proficiency.’’

The shortage of teachers in regional and remote parts of Australia, especially in remote Indigenous communities, is a diabolic problem for the students most in need of education to improve their life chances. There is no quick fix.

Different rules – for a time – for Indigenous trainee teachers may be needed. But if this carve-out from more effective teaching standards leads to a permanent two-tiered teaching profession, Indigenous teachers and students will suffer the most. Unless closely monitored, these lower standards for Indigenous trainee teachers risk reinforcing the curse of low expectations for these teachers and their students alike.

Apart from what this caveat means for Indigenous students, one wonders what it means for Indigenous teachers. Does it mean that newly trained Indigenous teachers who have reached the same standards as their non-Indigenous peers can teach only in Indigenous schools?

The ultimate aim should be for Indigenous teachers to be as equipped as other teachers so they can move between schools, experience different forms of education – public and private, regional and city, Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

How often we see well-meaning affirmative action policies, which might make sense as special measures for a limited time, becoming permanent. Through complacency or cowardice, positive discrimination often continues long after it has become counter-productive.

Like the reading activists who were blind to the clear evidence of explicit instruction, those who favour two-tiered teaching standards now may be too invested to ever see the light that comes from evidence-based pedagogy.

As the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination recognises, there may be rare circumstances where measures of positive discrimination may be necessary, but these must not be continued “after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved” lest they become a new and permanent form of discrimination.

The education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students remains one of this country’s biggest public policy failures. Just as we don’t need more evidence about what works in schools – because we know – we don’t need more reports tracking the numbers of Indigenous educational disadvantage.

We know that Indigenous students in remote schools start well behind students in mainstream schools and rarely catch up.

We know the reasons Indigenous kids fall behind, and stay behind: dismal rates of school attendance and differences in teacher and teaching quality. We don’t need new reports, either, about the link between poverty, violence, poor health, family dysfunction and educational disadvantage. We need solutions.

Last Friday the Northern Territory’s new Opposition Leader, Lia Finocchiaro, promised to tackle the former. She committed to using income management tools, ignored by the Territory Labor government, to ensure that parents send their children to school.

“We want greater accountability and responsibility of parents in getting their kids to school because we know a lot of these kids engaging in the justice system aren’t being supported to access an education,” Finocchiaro said.

“Nothing is off the table. We have to be getting kids to school, we have to be protecting young people who are being neglected and on a pathway to crime, and we have to be giving these kids an opportunity to change their lives before it’s too late.”

On education, Pearson deserves the last word.

“Aboriginal children are no different from other human children,” he said.

“They have the same capacity and they have the same learning mechanism … there’s nothing sui generis about Indigenous children. They’re human. If they’re taught with effective pedagogy, they will learn.”

We should remain vigilant about the ultimate aim of these new literacy and numeracy reforms: to ensure they are nationwide and colourblind, so every student prospers from well-trained teachers. The education gap won’t be filled by entrenching a second-class approach to literacy and numeracy for Indigenous children.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/indigenous-carve-out-is-this-a-return-to-the-reading-wars/news-story/dc08aa1e35caa459ccc18803b2a1d031

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Enabling greenwashing: ‘Climate Active Carbon Neutral’ stamp under fire for lacking ACCC certification

A Senate inquiry has taken aim at the government’s Climate Active Carbon Neutral labelling program, slamming the initiative for promoting greenwashing, while the regulator said it could not give it a stamp of approval for the program because its rules were not clear.

The Climate Active label is being used by about 700 companies, products, buildings and events that pay an annual licence fee to call themselves carbon neutral with the government’s backing. It is administered by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).

On Monday, the ACCC said the trademark certification process for the scheme had been suspended after several attempts at clarifying its rules.

“The ACCC has not made a final determination on the CTM,” ACCC mergers and digital division manager Tom Leuner told the inquiry, referring to the Climate Active Carbon Neutral Certification Trade Mark.

“We didn’t have clarity on the rules because they cross-referenced others. There was a bit of back and forth and they resubmitted the rules several times over a long period. Eventually they advised us that they were seeking to redo the rules and then review the whole scheme.

“They asked us to pause the assessment,“ he said, adding there was “nothing” currently stopping businesses from using the label.

“They don’t have exclusive IP use, but they can just keep using it in the meantime,” Mr Leuner said.

Documents on the Climate Active website say the stamp “confirms that a carbon neutral claim has met a robust standard and is a legitimate and visible stamp of approval”.

When asked by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young whether the statement was misleading, Mr Leuner sidestepped the question saying the regulator’s functions were in relation to consumer-facing claims by businesses.

“A government department’s claims, I’m not sure how that would interact with our, sort of, legislative functions,” he said.

Polly Hemming, a director at The Australia Institute, said the scheme facilitated greenwashing by allowing products or companies to be certified as carbon neutral through purchasing offsets, rather than cutting emissions.

“Climate Active needs to be referred to the Auditor General. There are so many administrative failures,” said Ms Hemming, who worked as a communications manager for Climate Active in 2019 and 2020.

“Not checking the offsets, EY being paid $1m by the department to carry out due diligence on the members while having those members as clients, while also assessing the veracity of the international offsets. There is so much that is wrong with that scheme.”

Ms Hemming argued the government’s scheme was encouraging greenwashing and misleading consumers into thinking businesses or products with the stamp were actively taking climate-positive actions, when that was not necessarily the case.

“It’s cheaper to pay a certification fee to Climate Active and to buy some offsets from a wind farm than it is to implement the technology that you need or go 100 per cent renewable, or change your business practice or change your business model. Effectively, it’s a really unfair situation for businesses who are trying to do the right thing.”

“If the government wants to keep a voluntary carbon offset scheme, then the most Climate Active can be described as, as it used to be, the National Carbon Offset Standard.

“All the department is saying is, these businesses have provided us with a list of their emissions for part of their businesses, and they’ve bought some offsets, and they may or may not be reducing their emissions across their value chain,” she said.

Last year, the Albanese government announced a review of the certification, originally introduced in 2017 and rebranded in 2019, with proposed updates including removing the term “carbon neutral” and implementing stricter reporting requirements.

Once that policy review is completed, the department would likely seek to re-engage with the ACCC, DCCEEW deputy secretary Jo Evans told the inquiry.

She added, however, there was nothing “unusual or improper” in continuing to use it as is.

“We take very seriously the use of our Climate Acive logo and we make sure that it is used in circumstances that comply with it,” Ms Evans said.

The department said members of the program had achieved “better emissions reductions than others” and that it was not aware of any company that had misused the trademark.

After the review is complete, all 700 businesses certified will be forced to go through a re-assessment process, Ms Evans said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/renewable-energy-economy/enabling-greenwashing-climate-active-carbon-neutral-stamp-under-fire-for-lacking-accc-certification/news-story/837f7cf5650d461418a7c2b44190109e

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Sydney University pro-Palestine camp shows topsy-turvy world of warriors for radical chic

Like children with matches in a summer bushland tinderbox, the pro-Palestinian protesters at our universities seem to have no idea about the lethal forces that are their playthings. Islamist extremism, anti-Semitism, Arab grievance, Jewish defiance, great power politics and social cohesion in Western liberal democracies like our own are all in the mix.

These are tensions not easily grasped or resolved by undergraduates looking for the revolutionary cause of their era. When they bandy around terms like “Israeli genocide” and “apartheid state” or talk about a colonial power usurping the rights of an Indigenous people you know that facts, history and context have no place in their considerations.

Politicians of the left in the US, Britain and here do little to chastise or correct them because they are in the ugly electoral game of courting the ever-growing Muslim vote, holding off ever more radical leftist rivals, and appealing to the young and impressionable. National values and interests play second fiddle to the spineless mathematics of political power.

At Columbia University in New York City, which has led the way in what has become a global campus campaign, Jewish students this month were advised to stay away from classes, and now the whole university has switched to a remote learning model. Even one pro-Palestinian protester, Linnia Norton, seemed shocked at the hatred they had unleashed, telling a reporter; “There were people outside of campus one time with signs that said, ‘Death to all Jews’ – that is awful and nobody should be having to experience that on their campus.”

The Students for Palestine protesters at the University of Sydney are unashamedly derivative, posting on Instagram that they have been “greatly inspired” by the movement at Columbia. They have chanted “Intifada, intifada”, cheering on Palestinian armed uprisings that have visited terrorism on Israel repeatedly since the 1980s, taking thousands of innocent lives.

Whatever your view of Palestinian aspirations and the Israeli government, no rational approach to this issue should ignore the human reality. It seems incomprehensible that these privileged students could see the Hamas atrocities of October 7 last year and the horrible war they were designed to trigger and use those events not to condemn and campaign against Hamas but to advocate the terror group’s agenda.

On Anzac Day, after bathing in the warm and reassuring camaraderie of the dawn service at Bondi, I went to the Sydney University students’ “occupation” site to see for myself. From a distance, the whole thing looked like topsy-turvy world to me. These are students who promote and enjoy sexual liberation, gender equality, embracing of gays, bisexuals and transgender people, imbibing of alcohol, and no doubt free expression, democracy and individual rights; how could they offer comfort to the Islamist extremist terror group Hamas, which would readily throw them off a rooftop on any of those counts?

And yes, like topsy-turvy world, this mob inverts logic and consistency. This is a movement that deliberately targeted Anzac Day for “glorification of war” while it refuses to condemn Hamas for instigating and continuing a war with unspeakable barbarity against civ­il­ians. The protesters do not even denounce Hamas for the way it deliberately triggered war: slaughtering 1200 people, including babies, women, teenagers and the elderly, while taking nearly 250 hostages for raping, torture and murder, with about 130 unaccounted for more than six months on.

As I walked into Sydney’s tent city I saw a sign scrawled on the walkway declaring this was the “Gaza camp”. There were Palestinian flags, tents emblazoned with “From the river to the sea” (the obliteration of Israel as a slogan), a stand for Socialist Alternative with a copy of Introducing Marxism on display, and a lot of young people milling about in Palestinian keffiyeh – clearly this lot had skipped the unit on cultural appropriation.

Unusually for people running a demonstration, they were very shy. I asked two women why they had “from the river to the sea” on their tents and they denied knowledge or responsibility for the tent daubing – I am certain if I had stuck around they would have denied it three times before the cock crowed.

Another group of students told me they would speak with the ABC or SBS but not with The Australian, and when I asked them why I saw no posters or banners calling for the release of hostages they broke eye contact and scattered without response.

When the protesters gathered for an open-air meeting, in keeping with their “people’s movement” schtick, they said they could not speak freely while I was watching and asked me to leave. Before leaving I posed the hostage question again – they offered no answer.

Why are the hostages conscientiously unremembered as a political inconvenience? Like the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, these protesters want to wipe away October 7.

It troubles me that young students can turn their backs on a family such as the Bibas family. I witnessed videoed brutality and terror from October 7 that I would dearly love to unsee, but a video of the Bibas family, without overt violence, haunts me like no other, and should haunt the free world.

On the morning of October 7 last year at kibbutz Nir Oz, Shiri Bibas, 32, is seen holding her two beautiful red-haired boys, Kfir, 9 months, and Ariel, 4. (We’ve since learned Shiri’s husband Yarden had been dragged off bleeding from the head and is believed to be dead; Shiri’s parents later were found murdered). In the video Shiri appears to be uninjured but is surrounded by Hamas terrorists telling her what to do and where to go, and she is confused and terrified, clutching her boys. Her blameless terror and fear for her boys are a violation of humanity.

This mother and her boys remain unaccounted for, with some reports suggesting they were alive early this year, and Hamas claiming they were killed later by Israeli attacks. So cowardly and depraved is this abomination that the best we can hold any slim hope for is that this woman and her two boys somehow have endured almost seven months of horror.

The only person at the university who would engage in a meaningful discussion with me was Josh Lees. He is not a Sydney University student but clearly had a leadership role at the camp.

Lees is an organiser of the Palestinian Action Group and a writer for Red Flag, the newspaper and website of Socialist Alternative which claims to be the nation’s “largest Marxist revolutionary group”. So much for student autonomy.

“What’s your view of Hamas?” I asked Lees. “It’s not about Hamas, we’re opposing the genocide in Gaza,” he diverted.

And so it went, repeatedly, with this professional activist refusing to condemn Hamas or its bloodcurdling terrorism. After five unsuccessful attempts for a view on Hamas I switched to asking about his view of what Hamas did on October 7. “My view is that nothing that happened on October 7 can possibly justify a genocide that’s been taking place,” he said.

I persisted, suggesting the point was not what the events did or did not justify but more simply, did he have a view about 1200 people massacred and up to 250 taken hostage. “You wanna ask me about something that happened six-and-a-half months ago?” he deflected.

“One human being to another,” I implored. “Do you have no view about what happened on October 7?” Silence. “You can’t find it in your heart to condemn the atrocity that occurred on October 7?” Nothing.

Eventually he muttered in rhetorical tone, “Israel can defend itself, but the Palestinians can’t?!” This was a sickening characterisation of the October 7 bloodlust as self-defence.

The conversation was abhorrent and pointless. Pushed on hostages Lees claimed Israel had 10,000 hostages – facts do not matter on this campus.

These protests at some of our most prestigious universities are deeply disturbing and metastasising across our public debate. Sydney University trumpets three values of “trust, accountability and excellence” and it champions diversity, yet it tolerates a protest demonising Jews and Israel, and encouraging armed uprising by Islamist terrorists against a liberal democracy.

This, while the Islamist extremist threat re-emerges on our shores, pointed among the young. And the type of Islamist society promoted by Hamas and like-minded groups is the most brutally intolerant version known to humankind – anathema to the claimed values of any university or Western democracy.

Columbia University proclaims its mission cannot succeed without “thoughtful, rigorous debate” that is “free of bigotry, intimidation and harassment”. But right now Jewish students and staff are being physically intimidated and blocked from attending classes, so that most are too fearful to attend.

The Sydney students chant “Intifada” and “Revolution” on social media and claim Israel is “murdering tens of thousands of people”.

The university says it wants all its students to be able to express their views and it has beefed up security as a precaution – vice-chancellor Mark Scott seems to have switched from the staff-run collective model at the ABC to a student-run collective on campus.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/sydney-university-propalestine-camp-shows-topsyturvy-world-of-warriors-for-radical-chic/news-story/65f07cfffaa04ed9b77c85106d2c10c8

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NSW and Origin in talks to extend Eraring power station for up to four years

Coal, wonderful coal

Australia’s biggest coal power station may stay open for four more years, with the NSW government working on the safety net solution to head off the threat of blackouts hitting the state’s electricity users.

The NSW state Labor government and Origin have been locked in talks over the future of the Eraring coal power station for months after an independent expert urged an extension. While The Australian understands an agreement remains unconfirmed – an extension guaranteeing an extension of two years, with an option for Origin to extend the lifespan by a further two years.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Penny Sharpe did not comment on the timescale of the extension, but confirmed no deal had yet been reached.

“The NSW Government is engaging with Origin on its plans for Eraring Power Station and will not comment while the process is ongoing,” said Ms Sharpe.

An Origin spokeswoman declined to comment on details of the negotiations, but pointed to comments in the company’s quarterly report published on Tuesday.

“We remain in discussion with the NSW government on the closure date for the Eraring Power Station,” the company said.

While sources stressed a deal could yet collapse, there has been widespread acceptance that a deal would be done – though talks have dragged on for months – amid dire warnings should Eraring shutter as scheduled from 2025.

The Australian Energy Markets Operator last year warned NSW risked unreliable electricity supplies from 2025. Market executives have also warned allowing the state’s largest source of electricity – typically producing about a quarter of NSW’s electricity would stoke prices for households and businesses, already buckling under high interest rates and soaring inflation.

But opponents to extending Eraring said NSW could have adequately replaced the lost generation, and the closure would have been a signal for would-be renewable energy developers to rapidly accelerate work.

Environmental voters are unlikely to welcome taxpayers underwriting Eraring, though the full details of a risk sharing mechanism may not be revealed.

Such a deal has been used by Victoria in the past, as the state Labor government struck deals with AGL Energy and EnergyAustralia to keep the state’s two largest coal power stations open.

EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn will close in 2028, while AGL’s Loy Yang A will shutter in 2035 – giving the state enough time to bring online sufficient quantities of renewable energy. The terms of both deals remain a closely guarded secret, but they are a guiding principle for any extension of Eraring.

Eraring has in recent years been losing money. A rapid rise in rooftop solar has seen wholesale prices plunge to zero or below during sunny days, which explains why Origin in 2022 announced the retirement of the coal-fired power station in August 2025 – some seven years earlier than initially expected.

But Eraring’s fortunes changed in 2023 when the coal cap allowed Origin to recoup costs above $120 a tonne for coal, which returned the generator to profitability.

The scheme will end in June, and Origin is facing higher costs for coal that will dent the financial returns of Eraring without an unexpected move in Australia’s wholesale electricity market.

Should it return to a loss-making entity, a risk-sharing agreement with the NSW government would likely see the taxpayer compensate Origin beyond 2025.

Such a scheme would be politically sensitive to the Labor government, which has won favour with large swathes of the electorate with its commitment to renewable energy.

Moving to curtail political hostility, the Labor government is talking tough – insisting it will not be held hostage.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/nsw-and-origin-in-talks-to-extend-eraring-for-up-to-four-years/news-story/e28cd6ac0746fba39cc5858556a3d8d1

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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