Saturday, September 23, 2006

BRITISH TRUANCY PROBLEM

Parents of truanting children at 1,000 primary schools face “fast-track” legal action and fines of £50 after figures indicated that a rise in absences among children under 12 had helped to push truancy figures to a record high. Statistics published yesterday show that, despite government spending of £900 million since 1998 to reduce the number of unauthorised absences from school, 30,000 children still skip classes regularly. These regular absences account for a third of all truancies at secondary school. The truancy rate in primary schools, measured as a percentage of half-days missed per pupil, rose by 7 per cent last year to 0.46 per cent, while in secondary schools truancy rates fell by less than 1 per cent to 1.22 per cent. Overall, the rate rose from 0.78 to 0.79 per cent in the state sector, while private schools also experienced a rise of 0.14 per cent.

The figures for primary schools will be of particular concern for ministers, just a month after primary test results fell well below government targets. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that although the majority of truanting still occurred in secondary schools more effort was needed at primary level to prevent children and parents developing bad habits. Under a new scheme, 1,000 primary schools with poor attendance records will be asked to draw up a list of persistent truants. Their parents will be given 12 weeks to improve their children’s attendance or face automatic prosecution and a 50 pound fine. If this is not paid within 28 days, the fine will rise to 100 pounds.

So far the fast-track scheme has been implemented in only 200 secondary schools, where it has resulted in a 27 per cent fall in persistent truants in a year, with 3,500 of the 13,000 worst offenders returning to class. Mr Knight said that there was no single reason to explain the rise in truancy, although a contributory factor may be the high number of parents taking their children on holiday during the school term to take advantage of off-peak prices. “We have asked schools to be much tougher about authorising holidays during term time,” he said. “There are cultural things going on with truancy. The rate has increased across the board, in independent schools as well as state schools. We have to shift the culture to break the truancy habit, particularly among younger children.” To reach this age range, the Government has set up a £40 million pilot scheme of parent support advisers to help the families of truants aged 8 to 13.

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT, a union representing teachers and head teachers, said that parents who allowed their children to play truant were denying them access to an education and a decent future. “More work has to be done to discourage those parents who condone truancy by taking their children out of school for holidays, shopping trips or telling them to stay in and wait for the gas man,” she said. Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that punitive initiatives such as the fast-track scheme could put a strain on the relationship between head teachers and parents. A better solution could be for holiday companies to work with schools to use newsletters to promote affordable holidays.

Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, said: “We need to focus on the causes of truancy and disaffection — mixed-ability teaching, poor discipline and low levels of reading ability. That is why the Conservative Party is committed to setting children by ability.”

Source







JAPAN: DOES AN EMPLOYER HAVE A RIGHT TO MANAGE?



Within hours of victory in his party presidential race Shinzo Abe, Japan’s right-wing incoming prime minister, suffered a heavy legal blow to his nationalist agenda when a Tokyo court ruled that it was unconstitutional to force patriotism on school teachers. The ruling will undermine Mr Abe’s plans to revise Japan’s basic education law and was described by one of the teachers’ victorious lawyers as “a blow to government high-handedness” in the sphere of education. ]

In the largest such legal action in Japan’s postwar history, 401 school teachers sued the Tokyo metropolitan education board over its insistence that they should stand, visibly respect the flag and audibly chant the words to Japan’s national anthem, Kimigayo, at school ceremonies. The original idea behind the scheme was that teachers should set a clear example to pupils — a generation that Japan’s political old guard regard as lacking the sort of patriotism that supposedly drove Japan’s economic growth. Teachers who failed to comply were sent to a humiliating series of “re-education” classes.

The teacher plaintiffs, of whom 370 have been reprimanded by their schools and about a dozen sacked over “anthem infractions”, have been fighting the case since 2004 and yesterday, after two years in court, were told that the education board’s behaviour was an infringement of freedom of thought as guaranteed by Japan’s constitution.

Judge Koichi Namba said that the metropolitan government — itself under the control of Tokyo’s strongly nationalist governor Shintaro Ishihara — had been wrong to punish teachers for their failure to sing the anthem. The court ordered the board to pay 30,000 yen (about £150) to each of the teachers. The ruling said that teachers were constitutionally under no obligation to stand, sing or even play the piano as an accompaniment to the anthem.

Yoko Adachi, who has been teaching history for 35 years and was punished for failing to stand for the anthem, said: “The Hinomaru flag and Kimigayo anthem are things you should never be forced to respect. If I simply followed the directive and bowed to pressure from the education board, then I wouldn’t be able to teach real Japanese history in class.” Sawa Kawamura, a teacher in a school for the disabled, said that the education board’s directive had produced a bizarre situation where wheelchair-bound children were not allowed to collect their graduation certificates until they had been pulled up on to the school stage where the national flag was displayed.

The teachers’ court battle has become the cause célèbre of liberal Japanese who regard patriotism drives in schools as a return to dark episodes of the country’s history. Patriotism is the chief strut of the incoming prime minister’s platform. Next week Mr Abe assumes the leadership role being vacated by Junichiro Koizumi. He won the presidency of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on an overtly right-wing ticket — promoting the view that Japan’s problems could be solved by a surge of countrywide nationalism. His core position has been badly damaged by the ruling in favour of the teachers.

Source







Breaking the Leftist stranglehold on journalism education in Australia

"Journalism courses run by the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of Western Sydney and the private Brisbane college Jschool have been judged the best by their students"

JSchool? It's a private journalism school run by the excellent Professor John Henningham, who you might recall is the man whose famous survey established what your ears and eyes already suspected - that most journalists are far to the Left of the public they are meant to serve.

The question now is why Henningham's private school is held in higher esteem by its students than are many of the expensively maintained (by taxpayers) journalism schools run by universities such as RMIT and the University of Technology, Sydney (of which more in the next post).

Are private colleges forced to be more responsive to their students? Are they more likely through necessity if nothing else to understand the society from which they draw their students and livelihood? Are they less likely to be the rigid ideological factories that so many media employers now suspect university schools have become?

And do we really need so many taxpayer-funded journalism schools that produce far, far more graduates than will ever get media jobs and aren't much respected by the students they purport to teach?

Bravo Professor Henningham for shining another light on production of groupthink in the mainstream media.

(Comment above by Andrew Bolt)

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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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