Dimensions
154 x 233 x 10mm
Why is it that the middle class is deserting public schools for private schools? What is the private sector offering students that state schools now don't? It's not just about money. What has gone wrong with the once-excellent state system and why are governments failing to stop the drift?
Joanna Mendelssohn, in this examination of what has happened to Australian education, draws upon her own experience as a parent facing the dilemma: Which school?
She writes that her daughter was betrayed by incompetent teachers working in an uncaring State system. She found that by moving her daughter to the private sector she received the attention and quality teaching needed to remedy her reading difficulties. In this quest Joanna meets teachers, parents and students from public and private, selective and religious, across states who take her through the changes in education and their consequences for the children and grandchildren of today's parents.
In his book Mendelssohn argues that national priorities must be urgently reconsidered and suggests an agenda for change beyond the orthodoxies of left and right to focus on children, training and teaching quality, extra curricula value, flexibility and accountability to parents.
