The stats and impact on you
If you have a child or a sibling in the school system right
now, or plan to, this then affects you. Australia has been on decline since the
~2000's and more rapidly since ~2006 regarding education performance (maths,
science and reading). The proportion of top performers has dropped
significantly, and the proportion of low performers has risen dramatically.
This matches the rising social inequality and performance gap suffered by
lower-income earners. In the OECD rankings, we rank 39th out of 41 regarding
'quality education'. Most people I am connected with on Facebook – you are my
peers. You are generally around the same age or older than I. We had mostly
good educations and made it through school before the sharp decline. The
quality of education is now lower than ever before. We were lucky, and we
shouldn’t be pulling up the ladder after ourselves.
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| Source: https://www.oecd.org/australia/pisa-2015-australia.htm |
Media representation
It is interesting how this issue is represented by different
media groups. For example, Nine frames it as "What needs to be done about
Australian students falling behind the rest of the world". The Herald Sun:
"Australian students fall behind in maths and science testing",
"Australian students going backwards on literacy". The Australian: “Australian
students fall behind rest of the world”, "Gonski 2.0 skims over key
indicators such as discipline in schools". Note the problem being
presented as a problem with students.
Compare that to other media groups who don't victim blame,
but frame the problem as an educational one, such as The Guardian: "Report
revealing Australia's educational decline a 'real worry', says
Birmingham". The ABC: "Australian schools are in 'absolute decline'
globally, says PISA report".
We can’t create a shitty, decaying education system, then
blame students for ‘falling behind’. Our education system should strive to be
the freely accessible ladder between social class, not a greasy snake, and
Australian media should not be complicit in this.
Catholic and private schools
Private and Catholic schools are outperforming public
schools. This trends with rising social inequality, and to address this, the
Coalition government decided to fund around 200 non-government schools almost
$750 million for “needs-based” funding. Even the Labor Party have pledged $250
million to Catholic schools. How is that right? Do high performing, private
institutions really deserve money in excess of that of a public school, payed
by the taxpayer? Do they actually need it? The Gonski 2.0 report, which
determined private schools should receive reduced funding, have instead seen a
higher proportion of taxpayer money as 'transitional' funding from the
Coalition federal government. 24 of the private schools (100%) who were meant
to have a taxpayer funding loss have all received an increase in 2018 so they
can 'cope' with the Gonski 2.0 transition. Is that a joke?
The Germany case
In the year 2000, Germany was astonished at its low
international education assessment ranking and underwent massive education
reforms. Within 10 years, their education outcomes increased significantly in
all the previously discussed metrics. Admittingly, it has fallen over the past
5 years or so, and I haven't done any research as to why. A quick summary of
how they achieved this incredible change in such a short time: changed school
structure to reduce impact of socio-economic background on student outcomes,
they increased affordable access to German language training programs, standardisation
and increased transparency of student performance data and metric collection,
and increasing quality of teachers through further education and more stringent
training.
To address the decline in Australian education outcomes, the
Gonski Report was commissioned by Julia Gilliard and the Labor Party. The key
points of the report were funding reforms, of which Catholic and private
schools (and the Coalition government) have been deadset against. Also an
additional $5 billion injection. It also recommended standardisation, and good
data collection of student outcomes to determine effectiveness of reforms.
More detailed recommendations: “[Significant increases in
funding should be delivered to the] government sector due to the significant
numbers and greater concentration of disadvantaged students attending
government schools”. The funding should: “consist of separate per student
amounts for primary school students and secondary school students provide
loadings for the additional costs of meeting certain educational needs. These
loadings would take into account socioeconomic background, disability, English
language proficiency, the particular needs of Indigenous students, school size,
and school location”, “be based on actual resources used by schools already
achieving high educational outcomes for their students over a sustained period
of time”, and “recognise that schools with similar student populations require
the same level of resources regardless of whether they are located in the
government, Catholic or independent school sectors”.
The Gonski Report/s
The report was then removed from public access by the
recently-elected Coalition government in 2013. Thankfully, it was preserved by
Pandora, an Australian web archive (see references). The Gonski 2.0 report was
commissioned by the Turnbull Coalition government, published in April 2018 (see
references). It had 23 main recommendations, one of which is measuring student
performance and education outcomes. The Labor government have pledged $280 million
for an independent education institute to measure and evaluate these changes,
so we can make informed, evidence-based policy. The Coalition has agreed to deliver
~$2,300 per student to schools per annum, which is far below the ~$13,000
recommended by the Gonski Report, but it’s a step in the right direction. Their
reforms also included the transition packages to private and Catholic schools.
The key point of the original Gonski Report (2011), was “The
decline in performance…of achievement indicates that Australia must focus on
raising performance across the board if it wants to improve its productivity
and competitiveness as a nation”. Sadly, these recommendations have not been
taken seriously, and we’ve seen a continued increase in performance inequality.
If I planned on having kids, I’d be worried.
What are your thoughts?
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