Last week, the Victorian Premier’s office issued a media release:
Parents To Save Money On Students’ Digital Devices
The Premier chose to bury the lede, presumably because she surmised that idiot parents care more about whether their kid’s laptop is free than whether the cursèd thing is corrupting the kid’s education. Whatever. The Premier’s release eventually got to the important stuff:
From 2027, primary schools will benefit from updated guidance to help set sensible limits on device use in the classroom. This will mean that primary schools will be required to limit digital device use to a maximum of 90 minutes per day for students in Years 3-6, and minimal device time for those in Prep to Year 2.
Of course that “90 minutes” should be zero minutes, and the “minimal device time” should be zero device time. And, the Premier offers not a word on the systemic corruption that these “devices” cause in secondary schools. Nonetheless, one must applaud this semi-sanity.
It seems very likely that this semi-sanity is due to Ben Carroll, the Victorian Minister for Education. I am never going to warm to Carroll. He is a useless stooge for ACARA and he threw Kylie White under the bus, leading to VCAA being in the hands of the current nitwit. I am never going to forgive Carroll for his cowardly treatment of White and for dooming VCAA to a new reign of arrogance and incompetence. But it has to be said that Carroll is generally a very good education minister. He is generally concerned about the right things and he is generally looking to do the right things about them.
Progress indeed! I don’t think you would warm to any successful politician – his behaviour is entirely in line with current norms. I do suspect his mother having been a Business Manager (bursar) at a school seems to have influenced him. He’s taking some big calls in a Government that has otherwise pretty much given up – and deserves credit for it.
Far be it for some rando internet chatter (ie me) to suggest, but praps you should give him a call and tee up a meeting and talk to him. Take a programmed CAS and show him how that shit is shitty. Leave a copy of your Arena article. Point at a bad VCE question from recent times.
I do remember Carroll once hiccupping on the word VCE during a radio interview – “well, we want to ensure the VEC is…” or something like, which did not fill me with hope.
Thank you, SMT. The more randos who contribute to this blog, and generally, the better.
As for your suggestion, I *might* be able to meet with the Minister (more accurately, his office), but it’s not a gimme, it would take work and I think it would do no good.
I met with Carroll’s staff when the 2023 chaos broke, and I met with the previous Minister’s staff before the 2022 chaos broke. Both were hard meetings to get, even though in each case I had a fortuitous “in”. The Ministers are simply not interested in meeting with anyone lacking official stature.
Also, although I am sure Carroll is unaware of the cataclysmic depths of VCAA, and of maths ed generally, he is aware enough. You can’t look to a government minister for a revolution, which is of course what is required.
I keep open the idea of meeting big shots. But it’s not generally going to help what I do. If I look for a meeting, it would have to be in special circumstances, where I can get across a sharp and very specific message. VCAA’s daily incompetence is not enough.
I used to have a nice question that I asked students. If you put all the people in the world in Tasmania, how much space would each person have? I asked my Year 7 students this recently. One student got the correct answer in a flash by typing the question into his computer. (The answer is surprising.) I asked him if he could show me the working. Sure enough the computer included the working. I started to wonder: what questions can I usefully ask students these days?
The same questions as always, but without the computer in the classroom.
I gather that, from 2027, government primary schools “must not invite or allow families to purchase or bring their own student digital devices for primary students to use at school in Years F-6”.
This leads to two questions in my mind.
1. Does this mean that the government will provide primary schools with the extra money required? (Of course a school might adopt a policy of no computers – but I doubt it.)
2. When students move from grade 6 to grade 7, will parents will get a shock when they have to pay for a computer for their children?
I have no idea about Q2. I’m pretty sure some extra money is being allocated to address Q1, although apparently not enough for some whiny bitch union rep.