Sorry, team, this is long...
I taught Primary School for over a decade some twenty five years ago. Even then, we always knew if a kid was up to par or not. That is easy. I don't think that is the problem. There have always been kids who are good at something and kids who are bad at that thing. This will always be the case because every human ability is distrubuted in much the same way - over a "normal curve" for those who know statistics. So some will always be better at some things than others. Not everyone is capable of running a four minute mile and not everyone is a mathematical genius. Identifying this is nothing new.
National standards will just identify this yet again. They will do nothing to fix the problem which is what we all want. Labelling a problem doesn't fix it.
In my time in education there were also good and bad teachers. There was always a group of teachers who were there because they couldn't think of anything else to do when they left school. They were generally uncaring and often damn lazy to boot. I taught with quite a few of them. Thankfully, not many of them stayed in teaching for long.
There were also the plain incompetent ones. I had to deal with a few of them too, especially when I was a senior teacher and was responsible for such teachers. In one particular case, my principal made me work with a useless bugger to prevent him being kicked out. My job was, basically, to save his arse. I told the principal that I would be doing education a favour if he failed. I still believe he should have failed. But the pressure was on and I did save his arse. Probably to the eternal detriment of the kids he taught after that...He did all the paperwork right but just did not "get" kids. He was fuckin' useless.
I suspect this has not changed much.
Eventually I left teaching. For several reasons. I was, I believe, a good teacher. My kids had a helluva lot of fun at school and so did I. They progressed in most subjects. I was damn good at teaching maths and did manage to produce one young man who went on to very great heights in computer maths, thanks to the fact that we identified him as having extra ability and fed him stuff to realise his potential. He was seven when I taught him.
But even I couldn't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. We had kids starting school who could barely communicate verbally, let alone know one end of a book from the other. Why? Because they had been neglected from birth. They had barely been spoken to let alone conversed with or had books read to them or even been paid any attention. A teacher can only work with the material he/she is presented with. You can't make concrete without cement. When it comes to language skills, the whole basis of language is listening and speaking. You cannot go to reading and writing until the "natural" side of language is in place (Listening and Speaking is what I mean here). That HAS to be in place. And if the kid has not developed that by five years of age they will almost always lag behind. So mum and dad need to do their share as well. Education starts at home and the very basis of learning is set there.
I got fed up with that. Being given stick because i couldn't fix parental neglect pissed me off.
I also got sick of educational administrators - chair warmers who had never been at the coal face. They spent all their time dreaming up ways of making themselves look like they were essential. They reinvented some wheel or other every year. "Oh this year we are going to change the XYZ syllabus!" Great. Same old stuff with new labels mostly. "School Maths" was a big project back then. But essentially, all you need is addition and subtraction (multiplication and division is just repeated addition and subtraction BTW) and some measurement. Again, changing the labels did not change the content. What the kids needed to know was still the same. But those admin people wanted to disrupt it every year...
Lack of resources was another issue. One year I had a profoundly deaf girl in my class. If I could have worked with her one on one, we could have made great progress. She was bright enough to do anything. But I had thirty-one others to teach as well. She got ONE HOUR PER WEEK of specialist one on one time. Fucking useless. This is but one example of an ever recurring problem. I got sick of that too.
And, because I was a successful classroom teacher, I was always under pressure to climb the promotional ladder. I didn't want that. I loved classroom practice. I didn't want to drive an office. But the pressure was always there and I got sick of that too.
Finally there was the issue of pay. Rates back then were low. Because of my quals, I was paid at the top of the A Scale. But it was hard going with two kids and a non earning wife. I got sick of that too.
So there you have it.
My conclusions:
1. Some kids will always be better than others and some will always be worse than others in ANY human ability. We will never get them all the same and nor should we even try. The best we can do is fully realise each kid's potential whatever that may be.
2. Get rid of any incompetent teachers.
3. Pay the good teachers well enough to retain them.
4. Put enough resources into the schools to allow special input where it is needed.
5. Measuring a problem doesn't fix it.
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Originally Posted by Swoop
I went from failing 3 subjects to passing all and getting a b-bursary (and $100/year for 3 years).
For that years test the mean and median score can be published and therefore a true picture of the candidates prowess/ability is indicated compared to the rest of the nation.
Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window. 
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