Skip to main content

Stoopid Hendo

So every schoolkid in Australia had their English literacy tested and of course NT did pretty crap - to be expected really given how many ESL kids we have (who go 'untreated' in the classroom, i.e. no ESL methodologies employed) and how thin resources get spread. Our Chief Minister Paul Henderson said something rather disturbing about it (as reported on ABC news website):

Henderson talks up NT education results

The Northern Territory Education Minister, Paul Henderson, says national testing results represent a small step forward in the performance of NT students, and shine a light on areas that need improvement.

The National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy, or NAPLAN, results show the Northern Territory has performed the worst of all Australia's jurisdictions.

But Mr Henderson, who is also the Chief Minister, says he sees encouraging signs of improvement in the Territory compared with last year's results.

He says it is not necessarily appropriate to draw a direct comparison with other states and territories.

"There have been slight improvements this year, but they have been improvements.

"To compare the performance of the Territory as a whole - with 33 per cent of our students Indigenous and 80 per cent of those students in very remote schools - with the performance of urban Sydney is somewhat anomalous."

------

Um, excuse me can we just look at that last bit again...

"To compare the performance of the Territory as a whole - with 33 per cent of our students Indigenous and 80 per cent of those students in very remote schools - with the performance of urban Sydney is somewhat anomalous."

Is he saying the NT does bad on these tests because one third of our students are Indigenous????? WTF!

Comments

zebragirl said…
So I am sitting here in my classroom in Accra, Ghana looking for some photos of School of the Air for our UN Day. I am in charge of the Oceania room and planning some awesome displays to teach everybody about my country... and I search google images and find your photo peering at me. :)
the wonder of the internet hey. :P

Popular posts from this blog

The time Kriol went viral

Early in 2022, while doing my daily doomscroll on Twitter, I noticed Kriol becoming a topic of conversation. Excuse me, what? When part of my day job is trying to get non-Kriol speakers to pay attention to the fact that Kriol exists, I never expected Kriol to organically go viral! But it happened. And it wasn't cute. Kriol goes viral The story starts with Covid. In late 2021, the Aboriginal Health Council of WA  (AHCWA) created a few short Covid vaccination videos in some of WA's main Indigenous languages, nobly wanting to make sure remote Aboriginal residents were as safe from Covid as urban Westralians.  Made in collaboration with AIWA (Aboriginal Interpreting WA), five short videos appear on AHCWA's website - one with Mark McGowan on his own where he says: Hello, my name is Mark McGowan. I am the Premier of Western Australia. This is an important message to keep Aboriginal people safe. You can die from the Corona, or get really sick. It's time to get the Corona nee...

Subtle features of Aboriginal English that I love: agreeing or confirming by copying

Linguists aren't supposed to play favourites, but I love Aboriginal English. Maybe because it's what the love of my life speaks and separating language from people and society isn't a realistic prospect. I'm lucky to regularly be around Aboriginal people speaking English in all sorts of ways and privileged to have insights into some of the more subtle ways in which Aboriginal ways of using English differ from the suburban white English I grew up speaking.  I want to share some of these more subtle features. Not just because I am fond of them but also because they seem to be features that escape the attention of most academic discussions of Aboriginal English / Aboriginal ways of using English. I'm going to skip over the complexities of what Aboriginal English is (and isn't) and also if/why that label is worth using at all (a chapter I wrote on Aboriginal English(es) dips into some of that discussion - email me if you want a copy). For brevity's sake, let...

The pitiful state of Recommendation 11.6 of the NT Fracking (Pepper) Inquiry

Today the NT Government announced that it's ok to start fracking the Beetaloo Basin, claiming that all 135 recommendations from the 2018 Pepper Inquiry report have been met and, therefore, fracking can proceed.  Most of the recommendations - and you can go through them all here:  Action items | Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory  - are outside my field of expertise as a linguist. There's a lot of regulatory stuff, things about the mining industry, stuff about land and water management that others know much more about than me.  However, as a linguist working in the Katherine Region for 20 years, there is one recommendation that sits in my wheelhouse so, after today's announcement, I wanted to take a look at it. It's Recommendation 11.6, which says: That in collaboration with the Government, Land Councils and AAPA, an independent, third-party designs and implements an information program to ensure that reliable, accessible, trusted and accurate information...