In the Australian Financial Review yesterday they identified nine key issues in this election and ranked their importance as vote deciders. The rankings out of 10 were:
9 Economic management
8 Industrial relations
7 Tax, Health, Environment
5 Housing
4 National security, Education, Industry policy
In the short explanatory paragraph for education it was all about higher education and technical education/skills. General schooling doesnâ??t rate.
I thought Iâ??d try the party websites to see what they had on offer. With the Greens you get a neat and snappy rev from Bob Brown. Once you click past that it is actually quite difficult to find their policies on education. But if you go here youâ??ll find an admirable uncosted wish-list.
From the ALP site you are easily led to a plethora of policy. We might have a look at these in more detail later in the campaign when they are launched and we have the MSM reaction. Meanwhile there is an overview here.
Looking for the Liberal policy proved problematic. All I got was a â??The webpage cannot be found messageâ?? but by googling I eventually got through to their policy page which youâ??ll observe has a warning on the sidebar that Labor has no policies. If you download the pdf as invited you get a document that was emphatically not designed for the internet. On pp 13-14 of the screen version (pp 23-4 from the index) in the tiniest of small print we find that on schools it just refers to what was in the May Budget. There may be more to come, but let’s look at what we’ve got so far.
My conclusion so far is that none of the parties has cracked it in terms of making their policies accessible on the net. As luck would have it I still have the dead tree versions of the May Budget for the AFR and the Oz so I can remind you what our esteemed Minister for Education provided for us.
You will recall that Julie Bishop had great trouble in convincing people that performance pay for teachers with parents and students involved in the assessment of teacher performance was a good idea. The states flatly turned her down. Nevertheless it seems that some such scheme is going to be mandated as part of the 2009-12 funding agreement along with â??greater autonomy over staffing decisions and teacher employment arrangementsâ?? for individual schools. Thatâ??s likely to include compulsory AWAs. As the Oz headlined it at the time “To get the money, follow orders”. The headmistress knows best, irrespective of what you might think.
What’s at stake is the imposition of policies with a strong ideological bias and a mandated transformation of the administration of schools, including state schools for which the states foolishly think they are responsible.
Also mandated will be teaching a national curriculum in core subjects in Years 10, 11 and 12, including an external assessment such as public exams in Year 12. External examinations will be considered a return to the dark ages in Queensland which has had school-based assessment for over 30 years.
The largest item of the extra funding ($457.4 of the $843 million over four years) went to an ill-conceived scheme to provide up to $700 worth of vouchers directly to parents for hiring tutors to improve the basic skills of students not meeting minimum national benchmarks. This scheme has operated from Years 5 and 7 in literacy. From 2009 it will be extended to Year 9 in literacy and to numeracy for all three levels.
In a plan to reward those who have demonstrated that they donâ??t need it, grants of $50,000 per school will be given to schools that can show sustained improvements in reading, writing and maths skills of their students. That is, they can apply for the grant. Worthiness will presumably be determined in Canberra.
$101.7 million over four years will be provided for the establishment of an Australian Government Summer Schools program. Under this scheme 1000 teachers each year, selected by the Commonwealth, will attend a 10-day residential course designed by Canberra in one of the five core subjects of early literacy and numeracy teaching, English, maths, science and Australian history. Theyâ??ll each be given a bonus of $5000 for their troubles.
Thus something less than 1 in 100 teachers will receive a burst on the ‘correct’ way of teaching a core subject each year.
A further $195.9 million over to years will be chucked into the Investing in our Schools program. This is the one where schools, including state schools, apply directly to the Feds for money for capital improvements. State schools who are in marginal electorates and are frustrated by the recalcitrance of state governments can apply.
In addition to the above there were some initiatives that may be both useful and appropriate as a function of the national government, depending on the fine print and method of administration. There was an additional $127.8 million over four years for intensive English lessons for students on humanitarian visas and $77 to boost the amount of practical school experience student teachers get as part of their training.
Iâ??d make two points about the above. First, the Government intervention in the Mersey Hospital would have come as no surprise to anyone who was following whatâ??s happening in schools.
Second, the above changes do not depend on control on the senate for implementation. These changes can be wrought by administrative fiat and the power of the purse. There was no mandate for these changes in the 2004 election. But voters wonâ??t have the same excuse after Election 2007. Parents, teachers and others interested in what is becoming an ideological contest over schooling can read what the headmistress intends to do right there in the fine print.
I doubt such trivialities will get much airplay in the MSM. It is part of our mission at LP to highlight policy areas likely to be neglected. You’ve been warned!
I doubt such trivialities will get much airplay in the MSM. It is part of our mission at LP to highlight policy areas likely to be neglected. You’ve been warned!
And I’d expect nothing less. Go the Bahnisch clan and all who sail with them!
Speaking of policy areas likely to be neglected, there is an absolute bottler of an article in the AGE today about Australia’s failure on the solar power front, by Urs Walterlin. It’s a wonderful article. Stand by for the chorus of “But, but, Solar power will never work. Because, because, well, it won’t.”
As an historian I can think of one way to teach Australian (or any other history).
Teach students how to think for themselves.
Teach students how to ask questions.
I know this approach is exceedingly dangerous as students might ask inappropriate questions and not think the way Bishop and her master want them to think. But intellectual danger can be fun, so long as its based on the evidence. Well, tough!
Helen, if Germany’s solar power program is so bloody great, why are they planning to build 26 new coal-fired power stations between now and 2020?
One might draw the conclusion if it does work, it’s not working nearly well enough.
I’m noticing that this is a continuing trope from the Libs, and all their talking heads are on message. Show us your policies, nyah nyah nyah. Haven’t got any, nyah nyah nyah.
As your examination showed, Labor has plenty of policies. It’s about time they demonstrated that they’ve got a bite in them to give the Libs a scare.
Thanks, Helen.
I don’t want to derail my own thread, but my impression is that the coal power companies are out of control in Germany and Merkel is hoping to get a mandate in her own right so that she can go nuclear.
tigtog, that Australia: strong, prosperous and secure document was all I could find on policy for the Libs. The boot, if anything, is on the other foot.
Sorry Brian.
Back on topic, the tutorial voucher scheme was discussed here a while ago, if anybody is interested in a more detailed look at their failings.
The Liberals “no policy meme” is utterly ridiculous when, as noted, their only publicly-available policy document is a 20-page list of talking points.
The ideological agenda for curriculum is obvious when you check out the “National Unity Agenda” section of the document. But none dare call it “social engineering”.
Exactly, Gummo. Some might call it heavy duty social engineering and not be far from the mark.
Brian: what of the Bonnor and Caro thesis that says that education resources are being tied up in capital rather than operational spending?
Helen: just because solar power is an idea with potential doesn’t mean the Walterlin article was worth its own weight in piss.
What a patronising load of wank that is. Patronising to German workers, loading on the xenophobia, and having made the case that work in Germany was hard to come by he scuppered it.
And why Horsham or Goulburn, anyway? Because they’re more loaded down with Aussie myth than, say, Silverwater or Laverton (i.e. places where manufacturing actually takes place in this country)?
Robert, if one country is bloody well doing better than most, why bag them for not going as far as you’d like? Looks like the Germans are hedging their bets, hoping solar kicks in enough to make the coal stations redundant.
Brian, thanks for digging into this. It is indeed scary to contemplate what the Liberals plan to do to education if they win the election. Talk about the Nanny state! I hope LP can run more on this issue as the campaign progresses.
The principle is the principal.
So the AFR ranks its own election issues out of ten and we mug punters submit to the choice of ‘they’ who must be obeyed. I don’t know what criteria they used to do their ranking but it hardly surprises that the AFR would put economic management, industrial relations and tax policy at the head of their list. Nor that education would be all about vocational and skill shortages – labour fodder to drive the economic engine.
I think if you got a random sample of sufficient size in a large room and got their ranking it would be a little different. No surprises that general education policy would be up there with health and the environment (ie global warming). Jobs policy, interest rates and taxes would be second tier.
LP is absolutely right to counter the big end of town on things that really matter.
Is there any statistical information that shows that school based assessment is better without any external examinations? Eg lower rates of youth suicide for those in year 12 in QLD, better university outcomes etc?
Brian, thanks for your efforts. Tis an excellent effort.
The Principal’s power to hire and fire wins the Principals’ votes but loses all the staff votes, including teacher-aides, cleaners, etc. It might be ideologically attractive but it is dumb politics.
As I understand it, the power to hire and fire is the norm in some states, Victoria at least, but there is no evidence that student achievement is in any way superior.
There are so many variables with respect to student achievement that suggesting the pressing of one lever will have a dramatic effect is nonsense. Yet, local control has become the silver bullet.
As for:
This is a drop in the bucket. Insulting really.
wpd, interesting and informed as usual.
One of the best schools I had anything to do with was Buranda Primary, a smallish city school where the Principal specifically knocked back the option of local autonomy. It meant she had to accept whoever the Department sent along, but she spent less time on administrivia and more on educational matters.
Anyway that is what she said and she had excellent community input and involvement.
Figures like $77 million sound a lot until you split them up into states and territories and spread over four years. Then they become miniscule.
Chris (a different one), I studiously avoided educational measurement when I was studying education, so it’s not my field. I’m fairly sure that the Queensland school-based assessment system would have been reasearched to death over the years. If you google using terms like Radford, who designed the scheme, ROSBA (Review of School Based Assessment), one of the early reviews, you’ll no doubt turn up some stuff. I remember Kerry Fairbairn from our Research Branch being involved in a study.
In 1990-91 Prof Nancy Viviani did a Review of Tertiary Entrance in Queensland for the Goss government. I’ve just turned up this paper (pdf) which was done for her review.
As to the statistics you seek, I’m not sure how you would quarantine those stats from other factors, as you don’t have parallel cases to research. I understand that early studies did find less student stress in schools, but there always would be stress. I think you’d find that teachers are now so used to the prevailing system that they’d be quite put upon if they had to change because of a political directive as opposed to an educational rationale.
The assessment system certainly requires masses of interschool teacher consultation and comparison of standards of student work, which can’t be a bad thing.
Andrew E, I assume you mean Chris Bonnor and Jane Caro’s The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education . I have heard them on radio a few times and would like to read the book, but haven’t landed it yet. I think Suz might be reading it. We might manage a post on it before the campaign is over, but can’t promise anything.
Suz, the whole nasty mix would have slipped under the radar for me apart from a few articles by Justine Ferrari in the Oz. It just got lost in all the detail of the Budget and it probably will in the election campaign also.
Those involved in education who would have known were probably hoping that the Government would be voted out and they wouldn’t have to worry. Well they should worry. Education policy alone is sufficient reason for dispatching this lot to the dustbin of history.
Robert, no probs about Germany etc. I’m sure it’ll get another run. Thanks for the link to the tutorial voucher scheme thread. I didn’t have time to look for it last night.
I can only agree. In fact a Minister of Education was so impressed with Buranda that he enrolled his child and he lived 40 odd kilometres away at Redcliffe.
As for Prof Nancy Viviani, she was exceptional, recommended to Minister Braddy by Glyn Davis.
Nevertheless, her recommendations were really an endorsement of existing arrangements albeit with a political face lift. She was seduced (intellectually) by John Pitman, the then Director of the BSSS.
That would have been Dean Wells. I didn’t know him much but he seemed to gentle and genuine to be a politician.
I once met a man who was acting as forewman in an industrial cladding company who spoke highly of Wells. They used to sit together in Philosphy class when they were at Uni!