Who to vote for?

Let me preface this blog entry by declaring that I have an extremely limited knowledge of politics.  I generally look at the party's education and environmental policies and make my voting decision based on these two areas.  My postal voting papers arrived on Friday and I decided I needed to have a closer look at what the main political parties were saying.  So, I diligently logged onto the world wide web to educate myself.  First, I looked at Labor's education policy.  I have known a little about this, given that they are currently in power.  National curriculum, hmmm.  I don't really have any strong feelings on this, perhaps because I've always worked in the private system where it is not as big an issue as in the public system.  Performance based pay.  I'm in two minds about this.  Firstly, how is a teacher's performance calculated?  It's a murky area and a bit scary if Australia decides to go down the high stakes testing route that the US has taken.  On the other hand, why should I get a lower pay than a teacher who has been teaching exactly the same stuff for the past twenty years and hasn't made any efforts to further their own learning, try new things and improve their teaching?

Then there is Julia's ingenius 'Teach Next' program.  Professionals complete an eight week course and then begin teaching in the classroom. When I first read about this scheme on Warrick's blog (you can read his thoughts here), my first response to this was 'Oh dear.'  After looking into it a little bit more, my response is still 'Oh dear.'  Rachael Jacobs, in The Age on Friday, summarised the issue perfectly:

While Teach Next shortens the pathway to becoming a teacher it doesn't address the central issue that teaching isn't widely regarded as an attractive career option, with particular shortages in the maths and science fields.

Teaching is viewed as difficult, undervalued and underpaid. Teach Next doesn't propose a reduction of class sizes, an increase of support for behaviour management, an increase of teacher aides, or more support for students with special needs. It proposes no overhaul of the pay structure or opportunities for career advancement that is required if the profession is to have any meaningful attractiveness. Maths and science graduates are aware that they can be paid more than double the salary of a teacher using their skills in a different profession.

Those who do choose to "graduate" from the program present a slap in the face to those who spent four years developing their teaching skills through a traditional pathway. But more importantly than the animosity that results in the staffroom, Teach Next's most negative impact will be on our children.

Eight weeks can't address the intricacies of the psychology, philosophy and practice of education. When teachers learn on the job, they'll learn inevitably learn from some costly mistakes and it will be the students that ultimately suffer.

I also read another article on The Age website (which I can't seem to find again) in which one of the graduates of a pilot version of Teach Next was interviewed.  The eight-week qualified teacher described the wonderful job he was doing and relayed a conversation in which he told students, "... you need this on your SAC."  Now, if he had been through four years of training, instead of eight weeks, surely he would know that teaching is not just about stuffing kids full of information for a test.  It's just a little bit more complex than that.

There are my thoughts on Labor's education policy.  I also looked at the Greens site and their policies are all a bit fluffy for me.  Liberal's site kept crashing ... does that tell you something?  I declined to look at the Australian Sex Party's site or the Shooters and Fishers site ... did you even know that Australia has a political party called Shooters and Fishers?  It sounds remarkably like an American redneck movement to me.  Well, there you have it, my uneducated political rant for this Monday morning.  But the question still remains, who do I vote for?