Monday, September 19, 2005

A VERY INTERESTING CONTRAST IN THE CITY OF SYDNEY

A lot of parents don't want their kids taught by whining feminists and Leftists who can't teach anyway. When lots of parents are prepared to pay twice for their child's education -- once via their taxes and again to a private school -- it is a pretty emphatic example of voting with your feet against a failed system

Public education in Sydney's inner suburbs is dying, with low enrolments threatening the viability of a number of schools. Department of Education figures reveal that at least six public schools within a five-kilometre radius of the CBD catered to fewer than 100 students last year. And at three of the schools - Fort Street at Millers Point, Plunkett Street at Woolloomooloo and St Peters Public School - student numbers are hovering around, or have dropped below, 50.

The data, obtained from the State Government by the Port Jackson District Council of Parents and Citizens Associations through freedom of information laws, shows a detailed school-by-school pattern of decline in public education over the past 17 years, with the inner west and eastern suburbs recording the sharpest drop in enrolments. Student numbers at eight primary schools and two high schools in the east and inner west have halved in the past decade, while a further six primary and three secondary schools in the area have lost at least a third of students.

Over the same time, private schools in these areas have recorded strong growth. Enrolments in non-government schools in the inner west and inner south have grown by almost 18 per cent in the past seven years, while in the eastern suburbs private schools now have a 60 per cent share of the market.

Dr Cappie-Wood said recent figures showed the decline in NSW public school participation was slowing and in some areas stopping. A range of initiatives was slowing the decline further, he said. More than $100 million had been spent on upgrading schools in inner suburbs, including more than $4 million on Dulwich and Marrickville high schools since 2001. According to the figures supplied under FoI, student numbers in both primary schools and the secondary school in Marrickville halved between 1994 and 2004.

More here




OUTSOURCING TEACHING TO INDIA

I last posted on this back in June 21st. The following is something of an update:

"When engineering student Jeff Bowman needed help in calculus last year, a professor at the University of North Dakota suggested he get tutoring. Bowman, who lives in the Caribbean and takes courses online, found a tutor - in India. A working electrician, Bowman would log on to the Internet before work, around 3 a.m., and get one-on-one help from one of dozens of overseas tutors the university hired through a U.S. company called Smarthinking. "I kind of doubt that I would have been able to pass it (calculus) without help," says Bowman, 45. "When I want help, I don't care how I get it."

Soon, help like this could come to public school students. Thanks to President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, kids in struggling schools are eligible for free after-school tutoring in reading and math. In many schools, local teachers, non-profit groups and even churches are approved to provide it. So are for-profit companies. Many are investing in technology that allows students and tutors to communicate via special Internet chat rooms and Web-enabled telephone service. Several companies cautiously are considering the practice of "offshoring" a portion of their online tutoring to countries including India.

Despite some educators' worries that offshore tutors might not meet certification requirements, one U.S. company already has conducted a pilot program with Indian tutors. Indian firms are eager to offer - and in some cases expand - their services here. "This is a very good, upcoming field because there is a huge demand for teachers," says Basak Somit, manager of e-learning for Career Launcher, a New Delhi-based education firm. "The sort of queries which we are getting over here, it's tremendous."

Career Launcher piloted a tutoring program last year with eSylvan, a division of Baltimore-based Educate Inc., through Educate's retail operations. The sessions, staffed by five tutors, weren't part of NCLB; families paid privately. Somit says difficulties getting teacher certifications forced them to pull out of the pilot, but Career Launcher is developing its own program and hopes to launch sessions directly through schools this year.

Outsourcing long has been a contentious labor issue. U.S. teachers never have faced overseas competition, but a perfect storm of factors - better technology, rising numbers of struggling schools and millions of dollars in new federal aid - could change that, making "education process outsourcing" a reality. Indian tutors work, on average, for the equivalent of about $200 monthly, putting in six to eight hours a day, five to six days a week. That means they earn the equivalent of about a $1.40 an hour, compared with upward of $20 to $30 an hour for many U.S. tutors.

Public schools last year spent about $218 million on tutoring with an anticipated price tag of $500 million this year, says J. Mark Jackson, a senior analyst at Eduventures, a Boston market research company specializing in education. Outsourcing tutoring is "perfectly feasible," he says, but "politically it would be a disaster" for a for-profit company. "It's a very politically charged debate. The person who's not doing that work is the local teacher."

While workers in other professions suffer from outsourcing all the time, observers say it is unlikely that any community's public schools will be totally outsourced. So companies that want to peel off even a small portion of teachers' work must make the case for it locally, Jackson says. "You want the local community, where the teachers have such strong power in the political process, supporting what you want to do."

Liz Pape, CEO of Virtual High School, an online school that serves more than 6,000 students, says rural areas can benefit from online teaching. "If your child happens to be in a very rural, somewhat isolated area and is going to a high school where there are no teachers who can teach A.P. statistics, wouldn't you want your student to take a course in A.P. statistics from a teacher in Massachusetts?" she says.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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