Tom Starkey is an erudite gentleman from northern England with a gift for lucid writing. Until recently, he was a teacher, but he now works in the academy. Earlier, Starkey made the mistake of tweeting something positive about me:
The contentious part was the idea that I get stick from ‘the powers that be’. Apparently, as some kind of disciple of Michael Gove and Nick Gibb, I have already had my wicked way. Educational traditionalism rules the land.
I have to point out that this is a rather parochial viewpoint. I live in Australia and Gove and Gibb have virtually no influence here. Whatever has happened to education in England, it has had little impact Down Under beyond the few who follow the discussion on Twitter.
So what is the state of play in Australia?
In the positive column sits Dan Tehan, the federal education minister, and his commitment to implementing a phonics check similar to the one in England. However, this illustrates part of the problem. Education is largely under the control of state governments and so Tehan is reduced to meeting with state education ministers and asking them really nicely to consider the phonics check. So far, only South Australia has given it a go.
There is also David de Carvalho of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and Australia’s chief scientist who have both pointed out the importance of knowledge in the curriculum (here and here). This is not quite the national commitment to a knowledge-rich curriculum that I would like to see, but it is a start. Then there is the New South Wales Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE) and the good work it has done on publicising cognitive load theory.
Apart from that, I cannot think of any top officials or political figures who advance the kind of arguments that I make on this blog. The ‘Gonski 2.0‘ review and the recent Gonski 2.0 inspired review in New South Wales seem to be running in the opposite direction. Gonski 2.0 is all nebulous 21st century skills, ineffective and impractical personalised learning and calls for the introduction of the kind of assessment levels familiar in England about ten years ago but since scrapped due to their lack of validity.
At the same time, we have a behaviour crisis in our schools, but we cannot discuss this without being derailed into a highly ideological argument about disability and inclusion. Pragmatism is not in fashion in the academy, 95% of whom are either in the identity politics and let’s-write-a-play-or-poem-and-call-it-research camp or are committed to failed constructivist views of learning.
This is why I attract criticism for my views. This is why people have complained to my bosses about me. So yes, I do get some stick.
And yet there are signs of hope. This year saw researchED return to Australia and, for the first time, it sold out. We are a ragtag bunch of classroom teachers, speech pathologists and enlightened academics. We do not always agree with each other, but that does not matter. We have not given up on our own thinking in favour of intellectual fashion. We are the misfits. And as Jarvis Cocker and Pulp remind us:
“We won’t use guns, we won’t use bombs
We’ll use the one thing we’ve got more of
That’s our minds”
Join us for the revolution.
Filling the pail 
I think Melbourne Uni, in particular Stephen Dinham @sdinhamunimelb, are doing some good work in ITT. Deakin is a trainwreck of identity politics and Monash are stuck in Constructivist nonsense. There is much work still to be done. Keep fighting the good fight.