Mark Latham's policy that good teachers in bad schools should be paid more is a good idea. It represents a recognition from the Labor Party that market forces apply in education as they do in every other walk of life.
If teachers are paid the same regardless of whether they are at a "good" government school in a middle-class suburb where most students come from two-parent families -- or at a "bad" school in an economically depressed area where many of the students come from single-parent families suffering poverty, it is obvious what the outcome will be.
And this is precisely what has occurred. The best and most experienced teachers in the government system are overwhelmingly concentrated in schools which are selective or situated in affluent locations.
The conclusion from research conducted both in Australia and overseas is that the main reason why students from "bad" schools perform poorly compared to students from "good" schools is not because of students' background. It is because of the qualities of the school itself, particularly the standard of teaching and educational leadership offered by the headmaster or principal.
The great myth of education policy in this country is that non-government schools outperform government schools because government schools must teach any student that wishes to attend, while non-government have the privilege of choosing who they enrol.
In fact the reason why non-government schools achieve higher outcomes is because they employ better teachers than do government schools, and they are largely free from the dictates of state education departments and teacher unions.
The idea of using salary incentives to attract teachers to bad schools, and more generally to improve the pay of good teachers is hardly new or radical.
Over the last few decades both Liberal and Labor politicians have supported the concept. For example, it was a plank of the education policy of the first Kennett government in 1992, and nearly ten years, Latham himself floated the proposal in What did you learn today?
And yet nothing has happened.
This year a teacher at the top of the pay scale in a government school in Sydney will be paid $59,000 per year regardless of their competence, and regardless of the type of school at which they teach.
Why?
Because the union of teachers in government schools, the Australia Education Union (AEU) is implacably opposed to both merit pay and differential salaries because such measures require an assessment of the performance of individual teachers and of their school.
As recently as November last year the Victorian Branch of the AEU said its gravest fear was the introduction of performance-based pay scales.
Since the 1970s the AEU has consistently argued that instead of paying good teachers better, governments should employ more teachers to reduce class sizes.
Such a strategy increases the unions' membership, but its educational worth is dubious.
This is appreciated by parents who are increasingly choosing non-government schools ahead of government schools even though in many cases non-government schools have larger class sizes and fewer resources than their government counterparts.
Providing a bad government school with additional poor or inexperienced teachers is of little value. But if such a school could replace half of its teachers on salaries of $59,000 with the same number of teachers each paid $85,000 the result would be quite different.
This is precisely the sort of policy being pursued by the Blair Government in an effort to deal with what it calls "underperforming schools".
Whether Latham has the courage of his claimed convictions time will tell, but so far the signs are not good.
The Howard government's university legislation, which would give universities the same sort of flexibility that Latham wants for government schools is being blocked by Labor in the Senate.
Likewise, notwithstanding his cries about the "crisis of masculinity" Latham refused to support the Coalition's measures to allow for male only teacher scholarships.
The lesson of the last Labor leader who attempted to confront the AEU should not be forgotten.
In 1999 John Brumby the then leader of the Victorian Labor opposition suggested something very similar to what Latham is proposing. A few months later Brumby was forced to quit after a caucus revolt orchestrated by the teachers' union.
Unfortunately for Latham he can't have it both ways. He can't reform government schools and satisfy the demands of one of Labor's core constituencies.
If Mark Latham was serious about the policies he's announced he deserves to be applauded. The only problem is he isn't. If he was serious he wouldn't have committed himself to implement his policy "in cooperation" with the AEU -- which is precisely what he has done.
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