It’s no secret that in a lot of Australian public schools, students are out of control.
They’re arming themselves with knives in Queensland, brawling over racist Facebook taunts in west Sydney, writing abusive graffitti and making threats over the internet and SMS in northwest Sydney and stabbing the shit out of eachother (west Sydney, Geelong and Brisbane).
Sometimes the parents are no better either, take for example a brawl that occured amongst family members causing a school to go into lockdown. This happened shortly after a student fight involving three teenage girls.
And that’s only within the last six months.
In South Australia alone, 1880 students were suspended in 2009 for ‘making threats or acting violently‘.
The government it seems has lost all control and in Victoria at least has gone into damage control, trying to cover up and supress the full extent of incidents occurring;
A request was made (by the Herald Sun) to WorkSafe Victoria for improvement notices sent to schools over alleged workplace bullying in the past year.
Five notices were released but the names of schools were deleted, despite the full information being released under a similar FoI request last year.
The Herald Sun also sent a request to the Education Department seeking case studies of students bullied in schools over the past two years.
The department said there were 11 incidents on its database but refused to release the reports, even though the Herald Sun did not ask for people’s names or schools.
The end result?
An overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of resources are directed at playground warriors and meanwhile students who actually need help, slip through the cracks and are ultimately failed by the system.
Take for example the case of a sixteen year old autistic child who ‘was accepted into Year 7‘, despite having the ‘literacy of a six-year-old‘.
How this happened I have no idea but I can imagine it had something to do with being understaffed and under resourced. When you’re worried about parents rocking up to beat the shit out of you or students stabbing you in the face, whether or not an autistic kid can read or write is hardly a priority.
With six years old being the usual age of grade one students in primary school, how he got accepted into year 7 is beyond me.
Oh and it gets better.
He’s now suing taxpayers ‘after allegedly being left illiterate and innumerate despite being taught at a state-run school‘.
Lawyers for the student reportedly told the Federal Court that their client’s future was “questionable” and “seriously disadvantaged” after he “missed out on the requirements of an education” at his school in Melbourne.
the boy suffers from a severe language disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and a general learning disorder.
Yet despite all of this, the public school system, who were no doubt directing all their resources into referring Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts between students, still felt it acceptable to admit him into a class five years above his literacy level.
Why the bloody hell wasn’t he placed into a special school and placed in a more academically appropriate class?!
the court also heard he is too intelligent to attend a special needs school.
Oh.
My.
God.
The kid has the literacy level of a retarded caterpillar and more learning disabilities than anyone on the planet and you’re telling me he’s too bloody intelligent for a special school?!
Seriously…?
The real kick in the nuts, and evidence that bullying has totally engulfed our public schools is delivered in the reasoning for the lawsuit, (which ironically has nothing to do with learning disabilities, autism or being put in a class five years above him);
Lawyers for the student said the state government promises a “world class” education for students, but the boy — who is also suing for future loss of earnings — had been severely bullied at school and left illiterate and innumerate.
Students are out of control, the state public school system is absolutely stuffed and the end result is taxpayers like you and me are going to foot the bill.
Buggered if I know what the average income of an autistic person with a zillion learning disabilities is, but it’s a lawsuit that should have never have happened.
Instead of trying to force multi-culturalism on Australia or forcing corporations to hire more women – why the hell isn’t the Australian government forcing reform in our public schools?
Zero tolerance and public naming and shaming are long overdue, whilst clearly the softcock policies in place are delivering little if any results.
Well, apart from big fat compensation payouts and an almost comedic series of indefensible errors.