SHINY-BUMMED BUREAUCRATS

Ask any teacher what is the biggest problem in their classrooms these days and they will say ‘discipline’. Or lack of it. Plus absenteeism which is part of the same issue. But teachers and school principals can rest easy. A bunch of pen-pushers and politicians in Spring Street have come up with a doozy of a solution. A new plan that’s guaranteed to make our troubled schools oases of learning and tranquility.

The Brumby Government and the Education Ministry, led by the intrepid Bronwyn Pike, have decided that school principals should have less power –not more – when it comes to disciplining students.

When the new rules kick in, in a couple of months, school principals will only be permitted to suspend recalcitrant students for five days instead of ten. And they’ll almost need a Supreme Court order to actually expel a delinquent.

Before a student is removed from school the principal will have to justify his or her decision with the Education Department and virtually get permission from the regional director.

This is Noddyland. They are emasculating principals. Drowning them in ‘guv’ment forms’ and demeaning their authority.

Who knows best whether, and for how long, a disruptive and uncontrollable student should be suspended or expelled?

The coalface teachers, headmasters and headmistresses? Or some shiny-bummed bureaucrat?

Nobody can tell us exactly why the new rules are necessary but it seems the government feels that suspended and expelled students often end up in the criminal justice system. No shit Sherlock.

Is that the schools’ fault? Or is it lack of parental control and discipline at home? Parents who don’t know, or care, where their kids are or what they are doing.

If an individual principal is not competent then sack them. But don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater and don’t make a tough job even tougher for a hard-working and community-spirited bunch of professionals.

It’s perhaps indicative that in The Age today the Education Minister’s spokesman, Cameron Scott, has a new expression for troublesome, disruptive, delinquent, loutish adolescents. He calls them ‘challenging students’. Enough said.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009