Education policy and motherhood statements

I sometimes wonder who drafts education policies: when one looks at both Labor and Liberal policies one can only assume that they are designed not with education in mind but with accommodating the prejudices and assumptions that people have about education and schooling.

In fact, if you put the Liberal Policy next to the Labor Policy or for that matter next to the Green’s policy it is very difficult to find any significant points of difference. All of them want to create the best education system in the world, all of them make wonderful statements about resources, valuing teachers, promoting lifelong learning and a host of other motherhood type statements. None seem to want to come to grips with the issues that face education not just in Australia but globally.

To tackle these issues in detail is beyond the scope of a short essay such as this, but just by responding to the lead statements in the Labor Policy will illuminate some of the short comings not just of Labor’s policy but of those of the other parties as well.

If we start with the vision statement:

The Gillard Labor Government’s vision is to make every school a great school - because in the 21st century, a great school and a great education are the keys that unlock an individual’s potential and the nation’s future. Only with world class schools can we build a high-productivity, high-participation economy that gives all Australians the opportunity of rewarding and satisfying work.

Few would disagree with the statement - indeed one can see it in the policy statements not just of the Labor party but in just about every political party in the world.

However, I have yet to see any policy statement follow this vision statement up with a commitment to investigate what the obstacles are to ensuring that every school is a great school. Why is it that we are unable to produce enough engineers, doctors and nurses to meet our needs? Why is it that we have difficulty in producing students who have a sound grasp of maths and the sciences? Why do we have difficulty in attracting and keeping highly qualified and motivated teachers?

Instead we get a series of non solutions that sound good but run the danger of ensuring that the vision will not be realised:

The Gillard Labor Government will provide reward payments to the schools that deliver the greatest improvements across a range of areas. This will help drive excellence in every school and better results for every child.

Both Liberal and Labor policies advocate financial incentives to improve school performance in so doing they perpetuate the myth that schools are the sole arbitrators of educational outcomes. This is partly acknowledged in that governments recognise that schools located in areas of social disadvantage need additional support. However, providing support for schools in areas of social disadvantage is not sufficient; there is also a need to ensure that the community as a whole is supported in lifting themselves out of poverty.

There is another danger implicit in this proposal - all schools will be attracted to extra funding. One way a school may be able to improve its rating on these various measures is to develop strategies to exclude students who may well reduce a school’s chances of “winning” the reward payments.

Arguably both major parties are taking a path that will make it even more difficult to ensure that adequate resources are directed to those students who need them most. The thrust of the policy is to create a two-tier educational system where one set of schools will be little more than child minding centres with the other committed to educational excellence. If we want to see such a system in operation one only has to go to urban Britain.

A re-elected Gillard Labor Government will develop a national online assessment and learning bank for students, parents and teachers to provide a sophisticated diagnostic assessment of each student’s strengths and learning needs.

Sounds good does it not? The result will be exactly what teachers have feared - namely that education will be defined in terms of what can be tested. A student can be literate yet not understand the layers of meaning embedded in both literary and non literary texts; a student can be numerate yet unable to recognise when to use those skills to solve particular problems. While diagnostic tests have their place there is the real danger that they become a substitute for critically evaluating learning programs.

For years teachers have been grappling with the question of error analysis. For example what would you do if a student, when asked to solve this problem 5 x 4 = ? gives the answer 9? Most would assume that the student has mistaken the “x” sign for the “+” sign - in which case the answer is not wrong - the student understands what 5 + 4 is but there may be other problems with distinguishing between a multiplication sign and an addition sign.

Diagnostic tests have a place but the Gillard government, like Howard’s before it, is too keen to invest too much credence in diagnostic tests as a means of understanding what is happening in schools. In particular we should treat the statement that, “Digital technologies make it possible to accurately assess each student’s performance and provide feedback on which aspects of their learning they need to develop” with a great deal of informed scepticism. This blind faith in technological solutions fails to appreciate that somewhere in the system are fallible humans who can make mistakes in entering data, and create poorly designed tests.

Once governments become locked into funding schools on the basis of such a blind faith in technology it will create more problems than it solves.

A re-elected Gillard Labor Government will implement Australia’s first national system of performance assessment and pay to reward the very best classroom teachers.

Teacher quality: all policies speak about the need of ensuring that we have high quality teachers. Labor’s idea of paying a bonus for outstanding performance suggests that they still have not liberated themselves from the folly of economic rationalism. It perpetuates the myth that people are motivated solely by financial considerations. Teachers are no different to anyone else in the workforce; money is an important consideration but not the only consideration. People who are naturally inclined to do shoddy work will not suddenly do wonderful work because there is a financial incentive, similarly those who have always done wonderful work will not suddenly work any harder because of a financial incentive.

This is not to say that we need to give consideration to teacher incomes. Here are some of the things that could improve the quality of teaching:

A commonwealth funded pay increase of 15 per cent with the following conditions: teachers pay to be structured so that every 5th year they are required to take leave on full pay. This can be funded by abolishing long service leave and by the 15 per cent increase - in other words the take home pay will not change other than they will have one year in every five where they can take leave on full pay. The sabbatical year can be used to undertake post graduate qualifications or just paint the house.

Given the shortage of students undertaking science and mathematics at year 12 level there is a desperate need to encourage graduates in science and mathematics to enter the teaching force. Since the various political parties are so beholden to economic rationalism why not set the wages of teachers to reflect the principles of supply and demand?

Respect expertise: the Australian education system, like its British counterpart, has an ingrained bias towards academic education. One of the consequences has been the rebadging of technical or vocational courses as university programs. This in turn has led to defining the value of a particular degree in terms of employment outcomes. At least here Labor is on the right path with the establishment of trade centres. But if those centres become identified as somehow less prestigious to university oriented programs they will have failed. We need to develop a culture of respect for trade qualifications such as one finds in Germany.

Overseas students: some may remember the Colombo Plan. It was essentially designed to provide quality education to overseas students in our geographic area who would otherwise be denied access to tertiary education. Over the years this form of foreign aid has morphed into a program for full fee paying overseas students. Universities have become dependent on overseas students as a revenue stream without it they would cease to be viable. Tertiary education has become an export industry - yet one does not hear any voices of concern from the political parties that our universities may be becoming too dependent on overseas students. Nor is there any concern about the way some private VET programs appear to have been established with little interest other than taking advantage of full fee paying students.

Conclusion

An examination of education policies highlights that there is little appreciation of the way existing policies are frustrating the vision that all political parties seem to share. We want top quality education but prefer to invest in gimmicks because providing the sort of quality education this country needs is deemed too expensive. This is reflected in our solution to skill shortages - the majority of skills shortages are a product of shortcomings in education and industrial relations yet we solve it by simply importing the skills.

By encouraging skilled migration the shortcomings in the education system with respect to meeting Australia’s skill needs is disguised and so we can continue to indulge ourselves with gimmicks that do little to change the fundamental shortcomings in our education system.