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Tuesday, 14 February 2012

The ABC Four Corners Program on February 6, 2012 visited three Australian schools to discuss the issues around quality teaching and its impact on student outcomes.  The program can be found at ABC iview and at 4corners .

Four Corners looks at the impediments to better teaching. Imagine running a business where you can't choose your own staff. Where you don't have control of your own budget to invest in innovative programs to improve the product you create. That's the situation many state school principals must deal with.

The Four Corners transcript for the program states:

"Money is being spent in the wrong places. Experts point to a growing body of research that says good teachers are the major determining factor in how a child performs at school. They claim that too little money is being spent on improving teacher performance. To make matters worse, state school principals are not empowered to make decisions about how their schools are staffed and run. As a result, some good teachers go unrewarded and bad teachers cannot be sacked. "

As one educational researcher puts it:

"Outside of the home environment and the family situation, the biggest impact on a kid's education is teacher effectiveness. The quality of the instruction the teacher provides that student... If you have a teacher, one of the top performing teachers in Australia compared to one of the least effective teachers in Australia, that can be as much as a year's difference."


"If you want the school to have the best staff, you have to choose them and they have to be able to match the needs of the school." - School Principal.

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