Great stuff - although I was completely distracted by the graphic skills...maybe I need to get off the Ritalin.
It was really good but aside from getting the kiddies off dexies and removing age based year groups he didn't really offer up much in the way of practical alternatives (but that might be expected a bit much in a 12 minute presentation).
Sounds like he's advocating a Steiner style system which I would seriously consider for my kids if all the parents weren't such sanctimonious hippy twatbags.
Hmm maybe I'm overly political but considering the headlines I can here thinking this was about the coalition breaking election promises and dumping Gonski in a nasty political double-backflip.
First they fought it tooth and nail.
Then when most of the states signed up, and they realised parents wanted it, they backflipped and said they were 100% consistent with government ("no election issue here folks! move along now")
Now Poodle's dumped it without even sitting down and reading the details.
More money for Catholics schools, and secondly more for rich private schools. Less for public schools. That's ultimately why Gonski's a goner.
Oversimplified perhaps, but Lib and Lab fundamentally different philosophies of life and society...
Lib = Fairness in public inputs. Everyone gets the same amount from the public purse, e.g. equal Government assistance to all and then opportunities and outcomes will be what they will be. Result => longer, fatter tails = greater disparity of wealth distribution = higher mean individual wealth but larger population of the very poor.
Lab = Fairness in market outcome. Adjust each person's allocation from the public purse, e.g. allocate Government assistance to try to engineer a more equal set of opportunities and outcomes. Result => shorter tails = lesser disparity of wealth distribution = lower mean individual wealth but smaller population of the very poor.
If you want to maximise the average person's wealth and you're ok with a greater wealth disparity/inequality across society then you're Liberal (with a capital "L").
If you want less wealth disparity/inequality across society and you're ok with the average person having sub-maximal wealth then you're Labor.
So, Libs if you care about the mean. And Lab if you care about the tails.
It's not really possible to discuss education without getting political. The developed world we live in was created by politics. The industrial revolution and the rich created the wealth, and the socialists forced them to share it with the working classes who did all the hard work.
I agree with most of the images portrayed by the cartoon. There is only one problem: Who pays for it? Everything else flows on from that.
The right wing are happy to provide private education to their young to allow them to reach their full potential. They are not happy to pay taxes to support the spawn of the working classes in reaching their full potential.
The middle classes will mortgage themselves to the hilt to pay for private education for their children because they naturally want the best for them, and/or have fallen for the marketing that says you don't love your kids if you send them to state school hell.
The left wing perfectly reasonably want their progeny to have the full benefit of a rich and modern education system but there is no way they can afford the fees of private schools.
All of this will fall at the hurdle of how do you work out if the kid is learning stuff?