Look at it from the union’s position - someone joins a union, if it turns out that they are fairly useless and their troubles take up a lot of union time, it’s a bit difficult for the union to throw them out. Really it’s up to the department to have a process (designed in consultation with the union) to decide whether they’re competent to be teaching. Big unions are big bureaucracies, just like government departments, and they have their good and bad points.

Should paying your union fees guarantee you a job irregardless of your competence?

The teacher’s union should recognise that defending incompetent teachers is in the worst interests of the majority of their members.

But they don’t, and that’s why the teacher’s union will always be a net negative on education outcomes.

And teachers should be better paid.

how do you intend to replace the lost teachers now already in shortage apart from

“Year 3: Government recruits top students into teaching on limited scholarships.”

which I’ll just assume isn’t very like to do the job given that at least Andrew E has alrady reduced wages in Year 1, and the wages are already low for anyone with a degree in a shortage area. Given a low-wage, poor conditions scenario, the idea of removing teachers is also likely to cause a lot of political controversy. More importantly, it is also likely to scare the average 18 year old. Who is going to spend 3 years to learn how to do a low wage job with poor work conditions and perceived poor job security (and essentially untransferrable skills) unless there was likely to be some reward at the end (which there isn’t for teaching) ?

The public policy reason for commitment to state education is one of educational quality. Latin America, the Middle East and Ireland contain examples of poor educational outcomes when education is handed over entirely to religious authorities. Look at the conflict in the US over basic science education and know that it could happen here: state education keeps private education honest. It is the only bulwark against collusion in favour of educational quietism and against intellectual curiosity.

It is a mistake to refer to parents’ religion as a motivator for choosing a religious school. Go to 90% of schools run by a religion/denomination and you will find students there from outside that religion/denomination. It also falls into the trap of assuming that those who fail to send their children to a school run by their professed religion/denomination are irreligious, that secularism is a figleaf (or a synonym) for atheism.

One way to make it less discriminatory would be to stick a means test on public schools

There are numerous funding programs which do exactly that. The school I went to surveyed all parents’ incomes in the hope of securing some extra funding, but because so few parents returned the completed survey the school missed out on the funding.

Per-capita subsidies are effectively a voucher system. Those whose mission it is to work the v-word into every blog thread everywhere must confront the possibility that it is not likely to work any better or worse than any other policy.

what parents are mostly concerned with is that their child will get the “bad” teacher, apparently everyone (teachers & parents) knows who they are - a very small minority in most schools. So perhaps the most cost effective and do-able thing is to improve education in the state system would be to weed out those incompetent teachers.

Most states have four-year terms. A sensible and politically feasible education reform program would go something like this:

Year 1: Government increases back-up resources and training for teachers, defers pay-rises.

Year 2: Government lays off teachers who have lost confidence of Minister - no marginal cases. Union outcry, selected examples leaked of teachers so incompetent it’s a wonder they’ve lasted this long, wins PR battle comprehensively. Remaining teachers still have to work hard but are not covering up for incompetents.

Year 3: Government recruits top students into teaching on limited scholarships. Teachers unions struggling to get members to pay dues.

Year 4: Government seeks re-election with strong education policy.