‘Great expectations’ meets ‘business as usual’ in the battle of the platitudes

Call me old fashioned, but I like my revolutions to result in fundamental changes. I want them to toss out the oppressive, unjust and self-serving regime and replace it with something that is equitable, inclusive and exciting. Even if reality doesn’t always work out exactly that way, it’s a pretty uninspired revolution that doesn’t even try to overthrow the worst excesses of the status quo.

And there is plenty in the Australian education status quo that needs profound change.

A task force of the council of state and federal education ministers has admitted that public schools are suffering a $2.9 billion annual funding shortfall. Meanwhile, under John Howard’s leadership federal funding of private schools has blown out by $3.6 billion a year in inflation adjusted terms. Bloated private school subsidies have created massive inequity with the public sector, exacerbating divisions within Australian society and undermining the very essence of a fair go for kids.

To top it off, John Howard’s education ministers used funding blackmail to impose their government’s narrow ideological agenda on public education. Under a threat of losing part of their meagre federal payments, schools were forced to have flagpoles, display posters about “values” and implement inappropriate report cards. Damaging and divisive “performance-based” pay for teachers loomed large on the Howard government agenda that also included direct funding for chaplains, a history curriculum that sacrificed educational outcomes to politics and an ill-informed attack on literacy teaching.

TAFE has been beggared by ten years of federal funding cuts. Public payouts to private and for-profit providers ballooned, undermining standards and threatening to privatise vocational education and training by default. In a climate of growing skills shortages and unacceptable youth unemployment, it is hard to believe that TAFE was so badly abused.

TAFE was also subjected to the Howard government ideological attack. Using their favoured tool, funding blackmail, they tried to force Australian Workplace Agreements and training packages onto colleges. To top it all off, the previous federal administration set up a semi-privatised and highly inefficient system of Australian Technical Colleges to compete with state-based TAFE.

Universities faired no better under the ancien régime. While OECD countries were busy boosting public investment in tertiary institutions as a share of GDP by an average of 48 per cent, John Howard slashed his government’s contribution by 7 per cent. Students were forced to pay more to receive less.

Universities were increasingly forced into the hands of the private sector and full fee paying students, with appalling consequences for standards and independence. At the same time the federal government imposed a set of punitive industrial relations conditions designed to bust the tertiary education union. The Coalition destroyed student unionism and changed institutional governance arrangements to suit its own objectives. Again, the favoured tool was funding blackmail.

Across the board, it was a miserable 11 years for the ideal of public provision of education creating a fairer, more cohesive and successful society. By early 2007, a revolution was a very attractive prospect for teachers, students, parents and supporters of public education.

While sending mixed massages, Labor’s behaviour in opposition occasionally gave cause for hope. For a while they opposed Voluntary Student Unionism. They spoke out about some aspects of the private school funding formulas, even though they failed to oppose it in the Senate where it really counted. Former leader Mark Latham, now living in self-imposed internal exile, was prepared to raise the question of whether some private schools really needed multiple swimming pools and world-class performance spaces. And they regularly made an election issue of university funding.

So in January of last year when Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and Shadow Minister Stephen Smith unveiled the manifesto of Labor’s “education revolution”, expectations were raised that there was something in the air.

Would this be the upheaval that would close the doors on the years of Howard’s ideological war on public education, teachers and academics? Would it see the federal government put real money into public schools, TAFE colleges and universities? Would it unchain public institutions from the picket-fence values imposed by blackmail?

The answer was a resounding “no” to each question. Ignoring the core issues of equity, social transformation and inclusion, Labor’s opening shot in their revolution focused exclusively on economic values of education. Using terms like “investment in human capital” and “underlying performance in [this country’s] economic performance”, Kevin Rudd’s Manifesto was based solely on the proposition that “education should be understood as an economic investment”.

This was no storming of the Bastille. It was an instrumentalist view of education that saw it purely in economic terms. It consequently ignored issues of equity and the role of public provision in promoting social cohesion, and hence denied the need to reinstate the balance in favour of public institutions.

The New Directions paper and those that followed it did contain some useful promises, flowing from the focus on the economic value of education. These include increased federal responsibility for early childhood education, reductions in HECS for maths and science students at universities, and financial assistance for information technology infrastructure for schools and families.

While completely agreeing with the central proposition that quality mass education is the foundation of a resilient economy, it is what’s not in the document and what has been ruled out since that have been the greatest causes of disillusionment.

In May 2007, Stephen Smith buckled to pressure from the private school lobby and committed a future Labor government to continuing with the Coalition’s so-called “Socio Economic Status” (SES) funding models for private schools. Throughout the year, leading up to the election, Kevin Rudd and his team worked hard to get the message out that there would be no revolution in private school funding.

Not only did this mean that there was no hope of ending the grossly unfair system that is delivering $1.5 billion to Australia’s 162 wealthiest private schools in this four-year funding period and much more in the next. It also meant that there is no relief in sight for the continuing spectacular growth in low-fee private schools that are undermining the enrolment base of public education, particular on the outer urban fringes of the capital cities.

This “revolution” would perpetuate the sweetheart deal with the Catholic Education Commission where its schools are not exposed to the funding formula, unless it would actually increase the amount of money they receive. Over the next four years, this so called “funding maintenance” will deliver more than $1.6 billion to Catholic systemic schools beyond what they should receive under the funding system. Other non-Catholic private schools will get about $418 million extra under a similar system.

Most profoundly disillusioning has been the failure to repudiate the Coalition’s war on public education. In Kevin Rudd’s election night acceptance speech, he punctured the euphoria of ridding this nation of John Howard by saying: “I want to put aside the old battles of the past, …, the old battles between public and private.”

This was not a revolutionary moment for those Australians who were hoping that a newly elected Labor government would recognise the need to redress the imbalance in school funding. It became crystal clear that this was not a government that would bring to an end to the aggressive use of federal funds to pursue an agenda that says that competition is better than co-operation, that private is better than public and that greed is better than compassion.

In effect, Kevin Rudd is continuing John Howard’s dream of enslaving increasing numbers of Australians to private consumption of education while relegating those who are more difficult to educate to the public system. He’s joining the battle alright, but not on the side of the people with pitchforks.

This tinkering at the edges is not a revolution. It barely qualifies as “reform”. Apart from the issue of school funding, the Rudd government is committed to continuing the push for A to E report cards, school “leagues tables”, and so-called voluntary student unionism at universities.

In the few months since the election, there has been precious little in the way of announcements from the new Minister. If this is really a revolution, it looks like it might be on hold while she pursues her other portfolios which include workplace relations and the urgent task of repealing WorkChoices.

About the only thing Julia Gillard has done is muse on resource sharing between public and private schools. In an environment where government funding of private schools is feeding intense competition for students between the sectors, it is almost impossible to see how this can work.

The cadres are still waiting to hear how the yawning funding shortfall for public schools, TAFE colleges and universities is going to be fixed despite promised budget tightening. They are still looking to see if there will be some relief from compulsory flag poles and other distractions. They are hoping the dreaded workplace relations stipulations on universities will be lifted.

The election of a federal Labor government will prove to be a positive outcome for public education, if only because it removes some of the Coalition’s rabid ideologues from decision making. But don’t insult the public by calling this a revolution.