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The committee published its report on 21 Oct, 2002. You may read it by clicking here. The report makes 24 recommendations which I have summarised below: 1. Change a government policy document so that it no longer is as concerned with making sure boys and girls are treated equally in school, rather it is about making sure both boys and girls do well. 2. Train teachers in the difference (in learning style) between boys and girls. 3. Check whether student performance tests are accurate. 4. Give parents advice on how to teach kids who are falling behind. 5. Provide hearing tests for kids in kindergarten. 6. Give parents tips on how to help their toddlers learn letters and numbers. 7. Bring back phonics. 8. Train teachers to use phonics more. 9. More money for teacher training (in phonics). 10. Put a literacy teacher in every primary school. 11. See whether the money already being spent on kids' reading/arithmetic skills is being wasted. 12. Train teachers in techniques to improve high school kids' literacy. 13. Reduce class sizes in early years of primary school to 20 or less. 14. Pay someone to figure out how to make the middle years of school less boring. 15. Pay someone to figure out what makes kids want to stay at school (to year 12). 16. Figure out which government programs are actually helping disadvantaged kids and give them more money. 17. Train teachers in how to manage kids. 18. Much higher pay for experienced teachers. 19. Teacher training colleges to accept students based on personality tests not just academic scores. 20. Scholarships for equal numbers of men and women to do teacher training. 21. Education depts should ask fathers and other men in the community to be involved in schools. 22. Federal govt. should ask the states for statistics on education in those states, then look at those statistics. If states do not provide statistics, get ABS to do it. 23. States should be more similar in the way they run their education systems so that it is easier to compare the resultant statistics. 24. Make sure that the money the federal government spends pursuing these recommendations isn't pilfered by the states. | |