Concerns about the mediocrity of Australian education and the poor performance of students gets to be re-cycled on a quite regular basis. Annually, after the NAPLAN tests we hear about students performing or at least under performing on the state and territory basis of comparison. Then we have a comparison of Australian students with other overseas countries every three years.

The latter is the comparison that’s come out in recent days. Educators, particularly those in carpetlands, are ringing their hands and wondering why – why are students performing so poorly. You’ve got people running around tearing their hair out, ducking for cover, and looking to blame circumstances on anything that does not directly impact upon them.

The aftermath and reaction is all about government saying that we must do better, must do better!

The paradox is that this determination to do better is not new. It’s a resolution that happens every three years, after these results come out. Then three years on the opportunity comes again for some recrimination and the uttering of many pledges about how we are going to improve.

But we don’t improve. And we won’t improve. But we could improve.

The issue is one that could be addressed successfully and the solution is really quite simple. Take that from me, a person who was a practitioner in the educational field for over 40 years. Take it from me also, there were things that worked for us in the field : Things that people in Carpetland (a term of endearment applied to the headquarters and administrative centres of education departments)and government seem to be uninterested in hearing about. I’ll elaborate further in some following posts.