Book Reviews
Going Public: Education Policy and Public Education in Australia
edited by Alan Reid
Published by Australian Curriculum Studies Association (ACSA) in association with the Centre for the Study of Public Education at the University of South Australia, 1998. 120 pages. Price: $35.
As readers would well realise, the Australian education system, especially schools, has undergone significant change over the past five to ten years. Beginning with the reforms introduced by Dr Terry Metherell in NSW, carried on by the Kennett Government in Victoria and taken up federally by Dr David Kemp, school systems have been dramatically reshaped.
Reforms include introducing Statewide testing and making schools accountable for their performance, devolving power to individual schools and giving parents greater flexibility and choice when choosing a school. The belief was that the education system suffered from "provider capture" and that something needed to be done to reduce the influence of teacher unions and centralised bureaucracies.
Have these reforms helped or hindered the work of schools? Is the public education system in crisis and, as result, is there a danger that Australia's social fabric is beginning to unravel? According to the contributors to Going Public: Education Policy and Public Education in Australia, the answers to these last two questions are clearly "yes".
The Preface suggests that the recent changes threaten "the survival of the public education system itself" and Eva Cox, in her Foreword, argues that social capital and the common good are being undermined because "education is moving towards being a private consumption item rather than a public good".
The aforementioned quotations set the context for the remainder of the book, which presents a range of chapters analysing current policies, identifying their impact on schools and putting forward political strategies to "enhance the social democratic values that lie at the heart of progressive aspirations about public education".
The one good thing about the ACSA book is that the Editor is brutally honest when he states, in the Preface, that it is "unashamedly, a partisan book". There is no pretence that the book is balanced and impartial and, in fact, there is an admission that the contributors were chosen because they would adhere to the party line. This explains why the contributors are made up of the usual suspects -- including left-wing, postmodern and feminist academics and teacher union apparatchiks.
Given the pedigree of the contributors, there should be no surprise about the arguments developed. Attempts to make schools more accountable and answerable to parents and students are condemned as a free-market ploy to destroy the public system and "residualise" government schools. Attempts to support parents' choice about schooling is seen as undemocratic, divisive and socially unjust.
Contrary to mounting evidence about declining standards and the failure of schools to educate properly, the crisis in literacy and numeracy is a manufactured one that governments are using to justify reducing funding and, once again, to attack state schools. The so-called "crisis in the basics" is also used, we are told, by governments to convince the public that teachers are not doing their jobs.
Instead of supporting all students and schools fairly and equally, conservative governments -- and the wealthy and powerful groups on which they depend -- are only concerned with bolstering the position of elitist, wealthy, non-government schools. Forgotten is the fact that the overwhelming majority of non-government students attend schools in the Catholic system -- a system which in no way can be described as elitist, or awash with funds.
Contributors to the ACSA book also argue that arrangements by the Federal Government to ensure that funding follows students, if they move from the government to the non-government system, is a calculated plan to destroy state schools. Contrary to the fact that, if students opt out of the state system then the recurrent costs of the system will be less, the ACSA book argues that State and Territory departments of education should be financially rewarded for losing market share.
Given that the Australian Education Union (AEU), in the words of the book's editor, offered "moral and financial support" for the publication, it is not surprising that Chapter 10 presents a defence of the teacher union and a critique of conservative governments. Dr David Kemp is singled out for wanting to "marginalise the AEU" and the argument is put that we can only have effective government schools if the AEU is allowed to regain its once privileged position.
To achieve this, the chapter argues that conservative governments must consult with union members and accommodate the demands of union executives -- in part because "education unions have generally remained independent of party politics".
Ignored is the reality that the teacher unions over the last 20-or-so years have been closely associated with the ALP. Not only does the AEU contribute money to the ALP through its affiliation with the trade union movement, it is also currently undertaking a marginal seats campaign to unseat the Kennett Government in Victoria.
Over the last 10 to 12 months, a coalition has emerged to attack recent changes in education and to defend state schools against the supposed dangers of the market. The irony is that this alliance of teacher unions, left-leaning academics and Labor Party spokespersons are, more often than not, the very people who controlled schools during the 1970s and 1980s -- the very time that parents were voting with their feet and deserting the government system in preference for non-government schools. The alliance's distaste for parental choice and consumer power is entirely understandable.
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