Developing A Uniquely Australian School Education System

The Hon Peter Garrett AM MP is Australia’s Minister for School Education & Minister for Early Childhood and Youth. In the wake of the Gonski Report “Review of Funding for Schooling”, Peter Garrett has said, “Given that this government has provided record levels of investment in education … the next natural step  The next natural step for us is to look closely at the funding model itself.” To discuss the next step in Labor’s reform of Australia’s schooling systems, Peter Garrett addressed The Sydney Institute on Friday 12 April 2012.

DEVELOPING A UNIQUELY AUSTRALIAN SCHOOL EDUCATION SYSTEM

PETER GARRETT

I acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we meet – and pay my respects to their elders, past and present.  I extend that respect to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are here today.  I also acknowledge Gerard Henderson, Executive Director of the Sydney Institute, Anne Henderson, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

Education is the key to our prospects as a nation, so it’s a pleasure to have this opportunity to outline the context and goal of the most significant Commonwealth reforms to school education for decades.  The fact is the breadth and depth of education reform by this government is unprecedented. This is acknowledged even by our critics. However, the overarching design of the reform is less well understood.

This evening I want to lay out for you the shape and substance of this design and explain why the government has embarked on a task of this magnitude and what we are intending to achieve. Ensuring a world class education for its citizens is a nation building enterprise. And for education reform to be successful for all Australians it has to be a national enterprise.

A shared national enterprise but a national enterprise nevertheless.

School education is unique in public policy terms because it reaches into every household in a way that is manifestly different from other arms of government. We all recognise its importance on a personal level; it provides experiences that stay with us forever. But education’s reach is broad: education also provides us with a productive future workforce; education delivers an informed citizenry.

Above all, education is a great enabler; creating scientists and mathematicians, artists and tradesmen, doctors, lawyers and … politicians. It unlocks potential that lies within every person, it lifts us up to realise our dreams and ambitions.  Whilst human beings are much more than just workers and our school systems must recognise this, it is the case that the benefits of education to each individual aggregate to strengthen communities and workplaces.

As the Australian philosopher Raimond Gaita reminds us, every individual is “unique and irreplaceable”.

But school education is not something that can be left to chance or personal circumstance.

It is not in the nation’s interest to allow this to happen, particularly at this moment in our history. If we are to have a productive, prosperous and sustainable future, it will be built on the capacity of our people. And capacity building starts at school. I sometimes fear that the mentality summed up in Donald Horne’s Lucky Country has returned with a vengeance.

We are all benefiting from the resources boom in the same way we rode on the sheep’s back.

But we need to build the foundations of a modern economy that is diverse and resilient, that produces quality services and highly paid jobs, that ensures long term prosperity as we exploit our natural advantages in the one off export of mineral wealth.

With the world going through a period of flux and seismic economic shift, as the Asian century unfolds, we are well placed to emerge as a high skill, high wage, modern economy. But only if we do the hard yards of preparation now.  We should be a nimble, creative, empathic and problem solving people. So as we reap the benefits of our mineral resources at the same time we must prepare for the time beyond the boom.

Here the standard of our education, as is widely acknowledged, is crucial. We can continue to create a better society – and Australia is already an exemplar of this – through the quality of the citizens developed in part by our schools.

A school education system that delivers opportunity to each and every citizen is the hallmark of successful democratic nations. Historically, the Australian education system has tended to drift along without direction or rational reform.  It’s an education system that has emerged without national planning or preparation or a great deal of design. And evidence is beginning to appear that it is no longer serving us as well as it should.

It was a desire to seize the reins and to redesign and revitalise school education that guided my predecessor as Education Minister, now the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I believe that the impact of the Labor government’s education reforms are as significant and will be as long lasting as any education reform initiated by any Australian government. A bold claim but I believe, justifiable. Why improve?  So why the need to improve our education system?

Some facts

The OECD Program for International Student Assessment or PISA results are an international league table of sorts. The best world education systems deliver high equity and high outcomes. That is, their best students achieve very high results and they don’t have an extended cohort, “an equity tail”, of underperformance.  Australian students perform well in PISA, with achievement above the international average in reading, maths and science. But between 2000 -2009 our results declined while other countries improved.

The Gonski Review into school funding, which I will come to later, underlines this. 2009 PISA data tells us that 25 per cent of Australian students from the lowest SES backgrounds are failing to reach minimum proficiency levels across all of the literacy domains tested. This means they don’t read or write at the level they should. Their numeracy skills are poor. It inhibits their growth in Maths and English and in all other school subjects. They fall slowly further behind.  By Year 9 the data tells us that the gap between these students and their peers from high SES backgrounds is equivalent to almost three years of schooling.  Without competent literacy or numeracy skills, these students are effectively excluded from meaningful participation in much of the high school curriculum.

Their long term personal and work prospects are grim. Most of these are kids from poor families. There are other factors that intersect and compound this disadvantage. Indigenous students, students with disabilities, kids from the bush – most don’t do as well as they should.

They all do it tougher than my kids and probably yours. This is not just their problem, or their mum and dad’s problem. This is our problem. Doing nothing is not an option. Every educator, every business leader and every parent says this to me in a variety of ways and in a variety of forums.  And while our performance languishes, other countries have identified what they need to do and are improving at a rate of knots.

With widespread agreement about the importance of education, it’s the debate about how we boost results that is beginning to command everyone’s attention. So what should we do to improve?

At the high equity/high performance end of the PISA results sits Finland and some of our near neighbours in East Asia.  Finland has very high university entrance requirements for studying teaching.  In Finland school students have regular play periods, there is no or little homework and no full cohort testing. By way of contrast you may also have noticed recent reporting on East Asian education performance. Four of the world’s five highest-performing systems are Hong Kong, Korea, Shanghai and Singapore.

In Shanghai, the average 15-year old mathematics student is performing at a level two to three years above his or her counterpart in Australia, the USA and Europe[1]. The East Asian systems are in many ways totally different to Finland in relation to student testing, teaching methodology, the role of kids play, the length of the school day, the amount of homework, the methods of teaching and the curriculum. So, if Australia is to learn from the “best” overseas systems there are a range of questions to be answered.

Do we centralise our bureaucracy, or devolve it? Do we give hours of homework or none? Do we double teacher’s pay or make it easier to sack them? Do we have sample testing or full cohort testing? Do we let teachers write the curriculum or make sure everyone is taught the same one?  Do we prioritise English, maths and science or see the arts as fundamental to a fully rounded education? Are decisions best made at the centre of large systems or by individual schools? What do we learn from looking overseas? A few things jump out.

In these high performing countries they began reforming and planning for long term success some time ago. Not success in five years or ten but, in the case of Finland, for well over a generation. Careful, long term planning.

Finland, in particular after World War II, decided education was the driver for an economic shift away from declining primary industries and into the knowledge economy. They made a conscious decision and knew that results would only come over the long haul. A good lesson for Australia! Secondly all these different systems developed their education model in response to their context, their history, their cultural mix and ethnic diversity, their conceptual understandings of how knowledge is constructed and how it should be transmitted.  And most importantly they had a clear line of sight to what they believe education should deliver. What a student should know, understand and be able to do at the end of the schooling process. These are important lessons to learn.

The individual programs and policies in these successful systems are worthy of close examination but our education architecture needs to be purpose built. It needs to deliver for all students, reflect our challenges, respect our history, and suit our context and our perspective of our future. It needs to be an Australian education system that is both high equity and delivers excellence and responds to our specific needs, reflecting Australia’s history of finding the right balance that suits us.

Our challenge is to reconcile the specific history of how school education has evolved in this country with a better system that is ready for the twenty-first century. One thing is clear maintaining the status quo is no longer good enough.

In 2007, we inherited a patchwork system of different standards of curriculum, of teaching, of teacher training, of access to technology, of equity programs and of school funding. We knew that we could do better. In 2007, we began to build a new architecture for Australian schooling – transparency, accountability, measurement, investment in what counts – investing $65 billion over four years and doubling the school education budget.

There were clear problems with the existing system. Eight different curricula, eight teacher accreditation systems and so on. Some of these flaws in Australian education invited national solutions. Some required national leadership. And what was overdue was an all encompassing framework in which schools could flourish.

The challenge

We made clear choices regarding which elements of education needed to be common and universal and which should be determined closer to the ground. In all of this we were clear that schools should not resemble franchised outlets of mass education isolated from neighbourhoods, but should be unique, lively, and fully engaged and integrated with their communities.

At the same time common high quality curriculum and outstanding teachers are necessary in every school. Our answers are different to East Asia and different to Finland and Europe.

They are specifically Australian responses. Because states and territories and school sectors run schools, any reform requires their close collaboration and often their agreement.

The national education architecture has all been delivered through the prism of these tensions. What should be local or jurisdictional and what is the role of the Commonwealth. First cab off the rank was transparency. Publicly accounting for public expenditure is an important principle. In education this had an important further dimension. Allowing a light to shine on schools was also a catalyst for an ongoing debate about improvement.

And about failure. We didn’t know what was happening in schools for far too long. My School was a very big rock thrown into the centre of the education pond. Concurrently we began the process of introducing a high quality Australian Curriculum which sets out a consistent approach to what students learn across the country. A curriculum is a common learning entitlement. A powerful cultural statement about who we are as a nation and what is important for our future citizens to know. It should not be greatly different in remote Far North Queensland than in the suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne. And just like the railroad tracks meeting at the borders we are now seeing an Australian curriculum rolling out across the country.

Nor should it be compromised by the teacher in the classroom. The common thread that runs through the successful education systems of East Asia and Finland is teacher quality. But what does teacher quality look like and are we creating the conditions to produce quality teachers?

We have moved decisively into the teacher quality debate, attacking it at all points.  Preparation and training, standards to identify quality, teacher rewards and educational leadership.

We have introduced new minimum teacher training requirements, set the bar higher in terms of entry levels to teaching and made sure that teachers have content qualifications.  We have introduced national professional standards for teachers and school principals. The teaching standards have created the opportunity to introduce merit pay. For the first time, old yearly salary progression systems are breaking down.

From next year, every teacher in the country will be entitled to effective performance management and support. For some of them it will be the first time this has ever happened.

But getting the national architecture right is only half the battle.

We all know that the hard work of education happens in the nation’s schools. An Australian education system needs to be founded on quality schools. Our schools are filled with tertiary educated, creative individuals who can manage, organise and problem solve.  In too many cases “the formula” gets in the way of the better solution, the local solution.

We are working with State and Territory governments to try and change this. We call it Empowering Local Schools. It has similar names in different states and territories but is a change driven by Commonwealth investment and quickly gathering momentum. Commonwealth investment will allow schools to control more of their finances, their staffing or their governance.

States and territories and non-government sectors have enthusiastically embraced this initiative.

We have introduced National Partnerships with States and Territories to improve the literacy and numeracy results of Low SES students and to raise the bar on teacher quality. This is the first time that focussed partnership investment in education, driven by the commonwealth has taken place on this scale.

We are able to see what is working and to use this knowledge to target investment.  And while it’s still early days, we’ve already seen improvement in schools receiving funding under the National Partnership for Literacy and Numeracy, including in Year 3 Reading where 70 per cent of schools improved and in Year 5 Numeracy where 75 per cent of schools improved. And there are other reforms, National Trade Cadetships, computers in schools.

We have constructed, piece by piece, new national education architecture that balances school empowerment with national standards. We have put design back into the system.  Robust, long term policies that will bear fruit over the next decade. A significant accomplishment.

Funding choices

This brings us to school funding.  How schools are funded has long been a point of contention in education, the media and the community. Acres of print, too much of it ideological, vituperative and unhelpful has been used in coverage of this issue. But school funding remains an issue that needs to be addressed.

Australia has a unique system of schooling, based on the organic growth of government, independent and Catholic schools delivering education through States and Territories.

We have eight separate education jurisdictions and a non-government sector that is larger than in most other comparable nations. Government schools provide access for all students irrespective of personal circumstance and remain the backbone of our education system.

They educate the majority of Australian students and do most of the heavy lifting.

Non-government schools provide choice via a wide range of religious, cultural or pedagogical beliefs and complement government schools. They provide a valuable educational counterpoint in policy and practice and are integral to Australian education. A mixed education system has always existed in Australia.

The Gillard Government recognises what the sectors offer and respects them for their role and contribution. Our composite schooling model has come about through some unique circumstances. I won’t go into details here, but if I mention Henry Parkes, the Public Instruction Act of 1880, sectarianism, the Goulburn strike, the “state-aid” debates in the Labor Party, the Karmel Report and the Schools Commission, the education historians in the room will know what I am talking about.

Fifty years after the Goulburn strike, non-government schools are funded by all Australian governments. They are firmly established as part of the education landscape. Today, one fifth of the nation’s students[2] are currently enrolled in 1700 Catholic schools. And 551,000  students are enrolled in 1,083  independent schools – Christian, Anglican, Lutheran, Steiner, Montessori, Islamic, Seventh Day Adventist and so on.

These days, only the most blinkered of advocates see government and non-government schooling as an either/or proposition. If we start with the present Australian schooling system and deal with what is in front of us we can quickly dispense with the weaker arguments. Firstly the purist pro-government school line, that non -government schools shouldn’t be funded.  As a serious proposition, it is dead and buried. And dead and buried not because of some failure of will by government, but because it’s bad policy. Non-government schools are the clear choice of roughly 40 per cent of the population. They are a distinctive and valued part of Australian education.

Also easily rejected is the full privatisation of government schools as if through the magic of the market, successful schools would flourish and poor schools would wither on the vine.

Failing schools would be forced to close down as parents voted with their feet.  Except of course a sizeable whack of kids would be left behind, sitting in failing schools waiting for them to close before moving on to the next failing school.

We all have a responsibility for all kids.  We can’t leave kids behind because their parents’ haven’t exercised “choice” or have made poor choices or their chosen school hasn’t been good enough.  Every school must be able to deliver quality to every student. Labor is unequivocal about this.

The latest funding argument characterises government school funding advocates as choosing “equity” over “excellence”. According to this argument, government schools in their misguided desire to promote “equality of outcomes” not only sacrifice excellence but are opposed to it.

Non-government schools must be “saved” from the reductionism and conformity of equity arguments. Any discussion of school funding is a covert attempt to destroy non-government schooling and reduce quality. This is the puerile undergraduate libertarianism of Ayn Rand applied to Australian education. I reject this argument.

We can have both equity and excellence and it can be delivered through both government and non-government schools. It already is. Despite increasingly hysterical comments from Opposition Education spokesman Christopher Pyne, there is no secret plan to undermine non-government schools. As an aside it would be a pleasing development if he also supported the parents who choose government schools and defended their choices.

Our track record demonstrates unwavering even handedness. We have invested $2.5 billion in National Partnerships across all three sectors. Our More Support for Students with Disability policy, our Chaplains program, computers in schools, the BER… each and every initiative distributed across government, independent and Catholic schools.

The Gonski Report

Each reform has been consciously implemented to avoid favouring one school over another or one sector over another.  We have established our bona fides for entering the funding debate.

The Report of the Review into Funding for Schooling. In 2010, we commissioned the first comprehensive review of school funding since the Karmel Report nearly four decades ago.

David Gonski, Ken Boston, Kathryn Greiner, Bill Scales, Carmen Lawrence and Peter Tannock have done a terrific job. Their recently released report has been widely praised by education stakeholders.  It tells us why we need to act. This is an historic, once in a generation opportunity – a genuine game changer in education. The Report provides the platform we needed for a proper national conversation about how schools should be funded.

The review panel found that: “Australia lacks a logical, consistent and publicly transparent approach to funding schooling.” We will never realise the full potential of our school system and achieve the highest standards for students while the school funding system is broken. Essentially, the way schools are funded is a mess. I once, I think accurately referred to it as a “dog’s breakfast”.

Gonski found that similar schools are funded differently, there is little relationship between the way schools are funded and the costs of effective education, and the respective roles of the Commonwealth and the States and Territories are not rational or coordinated. The Gonski report found that our broken funding model is now getting in the way of school and student performance.  Some kids are being left behind.

The education gap between indigenous students and the rest is a national tragedy. It is a similar story with our cohort of poor performing students. When these students are left behind we lose their potential as scientists, tradesmen engineers, Nobel laureates, artists or sportspeople.

The current funding model is also unfair. It is unfair within and across the government and non-government school sectors. The anomalies cause division and animosity. So the real debate, which the Opposition is pretending isn’t happening, is all about the level of funding and where it should be targeted and not about government versus non-government schools.

Christopher Pyne attacked the Gonski Report within minutes of its release. A 286 page report that took over a year to prepare, with 26 findings and 41 recommendations – read, reflected and rejected within the space of half an hour. It simply didn’t serve his purpose – which is to amplify division and fan hostility.

Labor has a different view. The Gonski report gives us a clear reason to act and recommends a funding model that is a good starting point. A new funding model called a Schooling Resource Standard or SRS.  Under this system, schools would receive a base level of funding per student.

There would be extra money to recognise schools and students where needs are higher and the challenges are greater – in relation to poverty, location, disability, Indigeneity and English proficiency.

The SRS funding model would allocate education funding on the basis of school and student need.  But the panel members also concluded that significant further work was needed to test and develop the different elements of this kind of system. The model proposed is very different to the way schools are currently funded. Shifting nearly 10,000 schools onto a new funding model would be a huge undertaking. It would impact on all existing arrangements and school funding providers, and has significant implications for governments.

We are taking the next steps carefully and methodically. We have a tight work plan that will investigate and test the Gonski SRS model. The work plan was agreed by Education Ministers at last week’s Ministerial Council- a significant step forward. I have established a Ministerial Schools Funding Reference Group of all key stakeholders and State and Territory governments.

The Ministerial Reference group met for the first time a fortnight ago.

State, territory, Catholic and independent sector representatives have been included in working groups to look at the various elements of Gonski’s model. The Strategic Policy Working Group which does the hard graft and provides advice to Ministerial Council is overseeing the work. We expect that stakeholders will remain committed to the task. States and territories are equal partners in this and the Ministerial Council will remain the key decision making body under COAG.  COAG meets on Friday and school funding is on the agenda.

We are talking to parents, teachers, schools and communities across the country.  It is a national conversation on schooling.  Nothing has yet been decided and no funds have been committed. That’s because there is important work yet to be done. We need to look at the model, test it out, consult closely with stakeholders and discuss it at Ministerial Council and COAG. This was explicit in the Gonski review report and it is the prudent way to act.

We need a model that we are confident will work, and where this confidence is shared by stakeholders and governments. It is simply premature to be talking dollars. Any new system must meet our test that no school will lose a dollar per student. Any new model must also be an improvement on the current situation. It must be fair, effective and sustainable. I am working towards having legislation introduced into the Australian Parliament this year.

I am confident that this period will come to be recognised as the time when a unique Australian school system with a distinctive flavour emerged.  An Australian school system with a national architecture. Delivering high quality education through a mix of vibrant local schools.

An Australian school system that understands reconciles and celebrates its history and that recognises that education is an enterprise shared by states and territories, schools, systems, parents and the community.

An Australian school system where all stakeholders share a common understanding of fairness and school funding is no longer a divisive issue.  An Australian education system that sets us up for the future. The Gillard Government recognises the national importance of school education and has acted decisively and responsibly.  And our education partners and our stakeholders have acted with maturity and integrity in the interests of all. Australian students deserve no less.

ENDNOTES

[1] ‘Catching up: learning from the best school systems in East Asia’, Dr Ben Jensen, Grattan Institute Feb 2012.

[2] over 712,000 students