carcajou

My comments stand, and are correct. Schools in WA CANNOT exclude ANYONE. They may suspend, but exclusion is a completely different process beyond the school, is subject to factors beyond the school, and is not in the school's control. There is no shame in getting confused by a press release and not understanding the difference, or thinking that it is just a technicality (it absolutely is not). It does mean you need to pay more attention if you are going to try to "correct" other posters who are already correct.

What can be debatable, is if there are 8 exclusions, and hundreds and hundreds of assaults just on teachers, whether that is an appropriate result or grounds for continued criticism.

I will also no longer post on this topic, to prevent thread drift.

Dorothy

That is not correct that students cannot be excluded. I have first hand experience of having a child excluded from a public school in WA and it was at the school's level. No involvement from anyone else.

carcajou

Yes it is correct. A school cannot make a unilateral decision to exclude a student without anyone else's involvement. This is enshrined in law in the School Education Act of 1999. It is against the law in Western Australia for a school to unilaterally exclude a student on its own with no other involvement.

Among other things - there is a tribunal involved - the tribunal is not appointed by the school or the principal - and at least one person on the tribunal cannot be associated with the school. Final decision does not rest at the school-level either. Both of those things are also legal mandates in the Education Act. They cannot be waived off just because a school or principal finds it inconvenient or badly wants to get rid of a student, or because posters on here don't like it.

Consequently I would submit to you, if this child really was excluded unilaterally by the school with nobody else's involvement, and it was after the passage of the relevant sections of the Education Act - the school unlawfully did not follow the legal process and the exclusion quickly and easily would have been overturned by the Minister. I would suggest you have a good read of the Education Act and evaluate options if you believe the school acted outside those legal requirements.

A principal may, however, unilaterally exclude a student if they are beyond the compulsory education age - which in Western Australia is, again, mandated by law in the Education Act - of 17 years 6 months. For virtually all students that will mean they have either finished Year 12 by that point or are nearly to the end. However the exclusion decision can be appealed at which point the other process is followed.

Dorothy

Firstly, my son is now a) deceased and b) would be well above the age for high school anyway.

Second, you seem to be like a dog with a bone on this issue and insist that only you can be correct when your assertion is not the experience of other posters. Of course what happened to my child was all a figment of my imagination, because you say so.

For the above reasons I will bow out of the discussion and defer to your infinite wisdom - on this as well as every other topic on this site

quoll

I’m sorry that your son was treated that way but I would concur with carcajou on this one. Permanent exclusion is not really an option for the public school system without a huge process and, even then, the Education Act requires that some provision for an educational process must be made for every child of mandatory school age. If a child has apparently been permanently excluded by a school but is of mandatory school age then parents certainly have recourse to processes to ensure that an education option is available, the school can’t just do it off their own bat.

Dorothy

Did I say anywhere that he wasn't provided an alternate education? Christ on a bike!!! WE WENT THROUGH THIS 6 YEARS AGO.

Stuck in Auckland

I think regardless of private or public if parents take the attitude of "let the school deal with it" they miss the opportunity of a founding education.

Examples in my experience of both:
Parents in state took their child out a week early (school holidays) to enjoy lower flight accommodation costs. Child was falling behind in English, and teacher had taken time out to call them in to discuss initiatives for them over the holiday, but they missed the meeting as already on holiday.

Parents at private school cancelled their holiday to spend time with their child struggling with times table.

Not really a private v state, just the examples of individual parents priorities I have seen having our daughters in both systems.

carcajou

First, I am very sorry for the loss of your son and that you had to go through that awful experience.

Second - I am correct that there is legislation on this issue that clearly spells out what the exclusion process is. In fact, as you noted - I insist and assert that there is.

I am not going to argue the point with you anymore, because people can just read what is in the Education Act and that will settle it.

I did note in my previous post, as the Act says, that a principal can exclude a student above the compulsory education age - as you implied your son was - but the process applies if there is an appeal.

There will be others reading this thread who have found it illuminating and insightful to find that these things are actually governed by an Act of State Parliament, and are not subject to the whims or arbitration of a school.

I encourage anyone with a child going through a substantial disciplinary process at school to be very familiar with their rights under the Education Act, and to consult a lawyer with experience in education law about their situation.

As well - I don't care if you interact with me anymore on threads.

astera

I agree.

Also, I cannot speak for SA, but if I was looking at QLD then I would ditch the UK school system in a flash to move my kids over.

Back in the day I used to think that the UK system was top-notch, second to none, the benchmark by which all others shall be judged, the system that every nation in the world aspires to emulate, etc. As I said, that was back in the day.

Nowadays my opinion might not have shifted 180 degrees in the opposite direction, but I definitely no longer hold the UK system in high regard. In fact if I was to return to Singapore for instance, where international schools abound, I would put any British international school at the bottom of my list.

What gets to me more than the academic inconsistencies (even in maths they appear to jump around and pretend to move forward without actually mastering each step of the way) - and the need to actually do 1/2 the teaching myself - is the lousy attitude presented by way too many teachers (the ratio seems to shoot through the roof compared to Australia) and that fake attempt at discipline intertwined with cold-faced indifference.

Maybe it's just the poor climate and bleak existence compared to living in the sun that seeps into every aspect of life, education included, but I wouldn't hesitate even for a split-second to make the switch and put the kids into a good Australian school. Just make sure you do your homework and work out where to live, which are the good schools in the vicinity, etc.

Pollyana

Yep, that's Queensland

I feel so sorry for those kids in schools without ar con. At least when we were cold in school we had heating and could put on more layers. Imagine doing lessons in 30 (or even 40) degrees plus without air con.

moneypenny20

Weirdly, (or not, it's my family after all) neither of my daughters ever complained about the class room heat. They'd moan about the air con in the computer rooms and about how noisy the ceiling fans were in all all the classrooms but not about the heat. Quite a few schools are now putting air con in more classes but in all honesty I'd want funds going on teachers, buildings and educational material over very expensive to buy and to run machines are that only needed for eight weeks a year tops.

Disclaimer: No idea what happens in classrooms where they get high 30s to 40s. F*** that for a game of soldiers.

I'm at a loss as to how the climate could affect the education system but I'd like to believe he was making a silly joke. I don't know anywhere with a bleak existence other than in Charles Dickens novels.

astera

It was just a dig about people being miserable due to lack of sun and how it spills over into everyday aspects of life in some places.

Scandos seem to cope with it quite well though, they're happy with life, their countries tend to top all sorts of "quality of life" rankings, etc. And Finland, albeit one of the colder nations in Europe, might well have the best education system of them all!

To me every trip to the UK (especially flying in from Singapore or Australia) seems to draw up that conclusion rather quickly, usually by the end of the first day of being back and paying attention to everything around me.

Having said that the vast majority of my trips have been during January/February, when it is most miserable and gloomy, so it was always going to be an uphill struggle to see things in a positive light.

Pollyana

Some of the most glorious winter days are in January, frosty fields in sunlight are just beautiful. And when escaping from 39-40 degrees in Aus nothing is miserable and gloomy -personally speaking! The pure delight of standing in the rain!!!

Each to their own I guess.

carcajou

Climate can affect the learning environment in a variety of ways; behaviour management, especially, gets more challenging, the hotter it gets. In Northern Australia many schools have the flexibility to adjust the start/end of the school day based on the temperature and a lot of schools there do move to a much earlier start in the hot season.

Overseas, it also affects building construction; in the Arabian Peninsula, for example, school often gets canceled even when there is just a little bit of rain, because the buildings are designed to keep things cool, and not to drain water - so you have water pooling on slippery surfaces, hallways flood and it becomes a health and safety risk. In parts of the Former Soviet Union, there can be substantial heating issues in frigid climates and so the school day gets substantially shortened in winter months. Whereas in some parts of Canada it can be the opposite, the kids are safer in a well-heated school building.

As for installing air conditioning, the cost per school varies enormously depending on a number of factors including how big the school is, how much extra capacity the grid can take and how much that will cost to be upgraded if needed, etc. So let's just take a middle-of-the-road example and say a high school of 1,000 kids is getting air conditioning installed, at a cost of $250,000 to $300,000. Or even double that to $500,000 to $600,000.

That sounds like a lot of money but that one-time cost of $300,000 is going against an ongoing annual budget for a school that size of around $10 million. The electricity bill will surely go up on an ongoing basis, but you are looking at the low five figures annually for that.

That $300,000 might instead pay for three or four extra graduate (lowest salary) full-time teachers, or two or three experienced full-time teachers (highest salary) - at either configuration, for one year only. A school that size is going to already have between 125 and 150 teachers, so adding three more to the pot, for one year only, is not going to move the needle much.

As well this money all has to come from somewhere; school budgets are generally written / planned by Education Departments two years in advance, so in Western Australia for example, this is the year schools will really feel the pain from the recession, as the budgets for last year and the year before were written in 2014 and 2015, and those funds allocated, before the state recession hit. So for a special expenditure like an air conditioning initiative, that money can't just be sloshed around from one bucket to another within the Education Department; it's just not there, and that money would need to come from a dedicated state or federal government initiative, and probably top state or federal political leadership would need to be involved and sign-off. Or it would need to come from outside sources like the P & C committee. So, you can't just take that money and say "air-conditioning, nah, let's go spend it on something else."