Educational Roulette – Mind the Gap

February 11, 2013 By 2 Comments

I stumbled upon this infographic this week. I’ve edited it to suit the layout of my blog.

It shows the inequities in educational outcomes between groups of higher and lower socioeconomic standing, across a number of countries.

In short, your educational achievement can be predicted at birth based on little more than your parents’ bank balance.

Of course,  there will always be exceptions at all points on the spectrum, but education boils down to luck. A game of Roulette.

In Australia, these inequities were highlighted in the Gonski Report and its recommendations aim (in part) to address them.

Last week I wrote on the ABC that I believe that government approaches to education reform really do miss the point.

This infographic only serves to reinforce my opinion.

How increasing class sizes, paying the top 10% of teachers more money and cutting teachers’ preparation time will help to close this educational gap is well beyond my grasp of education and pedagogy.

By clicking on the infographic below, you’ll view it in its original format, complete with sources. 

Achievement Gap Infographic Edited

Filed Under: Education, Social Justice Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Make A Difference – It’s easy & it’s free!

May 17, 2012 By 3 Comments

Sometimes I feel I’m guilty of talking too much. Especially about issues that really require action.

So I’m always inspired when I meet people who actually DO STUFF.

One such person is Jenni Iloski from Bondi Youth Accommodation, an organisation that has been working with homeless youth for over 30 years.

Jenni is the coordinator of a program called Green Light Movement that aims to help young people who have experienced homeless to learn to drive.

Learning to drive is a skill, often taught by a parent or family member, but young people who have experienced homelessness often don’t have that family support. As a result, learning to drive is a challenge.

Green Light Movement is a reduced fee, learn to drive program that provides supervised driver training for young people, who do not have family support to learn how to drive.

They provide a car, professional driving instruction and volunteers to supervise the required 120 hours of supervised driving.

HOW CAN YOU HELP??

Green Light Movement is currently registered for the Project Local initiative. An initiative supported by the local papers e.g. Wentworth Courier, which promotes local projects and enables community members to vote for which project they would like to receive $2,500.00

They’ll use the $2500 to pay for comprehensive insurance, Car registration & Compulsory Third Party Insurance $538

PLEASE VOTE! – It takes 2 mins and costs you nothing to help make a difference in the life of people who really need it.

HOW TO VOTE

  • Please register via http://projectlocal.com.au/ and vote for Green Light Movement In the ‘select your local paper’ section, scroll down to ‘Wentworth Courier’
  • You will need to register and then you will be allocated 10 votes
  • Go to the ‘current ideas’ tab and view Green Light Movement
  • Vote! – You can give them all your votes (As I did) or distribute to other community ideas too.
Help spread the message by sharing on Facebook, emailing family and friends or tweeting – you can do all this by using the buttons below!
Filed Under: Social Justice, Youth Tagged With: , , ,

What’s Wrong With the Juvenile Justice System?

May 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Originally posted on The ABC Drum.

In the wake of two teenagers being shot by police in Kings Cross, The Sydney Morning Herald has been running a series of articles focusing on the  effectiveness of the juvenile justice system.

The facts presented by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics within the articles are startling.

As a result of a ten year study, the Bureau report that domestic violence cases involving 10 – 17 year-olds have increased by 167 per cent, while other violent crime, break and enter and malicious damage to property all rising 21, 13 and 47 per cent respectively.

Approximately 5000 young people per year have their first contact with the juvenile justice system, but of particular concern is the rate of recidivism of those juveniles brought before the courts. Of the 4938 juveniles who came before NSW courts in 1999, over 2600 of them reoffended, on average four times before 2010. For Indigenous kids the rate of recidivism was 84 percent.

What is going wrong with our juvenile justice system? Why are kids released only to return a few months or years down the track?

The fact is: If we want to stop these kids re-offending, we have to stop them offending in the first place.

We must address poverty in earnest. We need to be creative in how we run our schools. We need to provide genuine learning and employment opportunities. Provide better funding for youth workers, outreach programs and schools. We need to support families.

The government must realize that society as a whole is responsible for our youth, and funding in this area should not be seen as a cost but an investment.

You can read my full article on The ABC Drum…

Filed Under: Social Justice, Youth Tagged With: , , , , , ,
« Older Posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 3,273 other followers

%d bloggers like this: