Australia's Education Revolution: How Kevin Rudd won and lost the education wars
by Kevin Donnelly
(Connor Court Publishing, 2009, 777 pages)
When the federal government launched its My School website on 28 Januaty 2010, which rated the performance of schools according to the performance of their students in literacy and numeracy aptitude tests, the site experienced a meltdown due to the demand for this previously secret information.
Designed to cope with l.7 million simultaneous hits, the website was quickly overwhelmed. Moreover, it had opened at 1:00 am, which meant that people stayed up or got up especially that night because they could not wait to gather this vital information at a more convenient time. In its first thirteen hours, the website had a massive 4.5 million hits. This extraordinary event indicates that there is widespread concern about the quality of our teachers and schools. So much about the quality of the lives of individuals and families depends on it. So much about the productivity of our economy depends on it. And, so much about the quality of our culture depends on it.
For these reasons, Kevin Donnelly's new book, Australia's Education Revolution: How Kevin Rudd Won and Lost the Education Wars, is indispensible.
The picture of the education revolution that emerges from this analysis is of a steady-as-she-goes financial boosting of already bloated education budgets and a reinforcement in "new" national curricula of intellectually stifling politically correct agendas that already plague the current state-based curricula. Although some policies are likely to produce some improvements, this is primarily a reinforcement of the educational status quo dressed up in political spin. Billions of dollars of additional public spending that will bolster the beneficiaries of the educational status quo is not a revolution.
Donnelly sounds the alarm: "Ironically, in addition to being centrally mandated, Rudd's education revolution is being developed, implemented and managed by the very education bureaucrats and groups responsible for the last 30 years of educational failure."
Moreover, Donnelly is unimpressed by the Marxist arguments produced by the education establishment about the relationship between class, privilege, and educational success. It is an argument that conveniently sidesteps the issue of teacher quality and the power of teacher unions:
Also ignored is the evidence that educational success or failure is not simply caused by a student's socio-economic background. Whether a student achieves or not is also dependent on his or her motivation and ability, teacher expertise and dedication, effective classroom practice and the impact of the broader school environment.
When criticising education policy, Donnelly recognises that the system, flawed as it is, does have some value, and does provide benefits. But it could provide so much more.
The current situation is unfortunate for many reasons, both economically and morally. It represents a colossal waste of government resources. However, spending more money on education is politically easy to sell. It sounds responsible, expressing sensible priorities shared by many aspirational families. However, there is no need for more spending, but rather a need for better value for the education dollars already spent.
Poorly-educated young people who stumble through their introduction to tertiary study or the workforce soon discover the limitations of what they thought was a good high school education. These stumbles sap confidence, and can instil hang-ups and a sense of inadequacy that can poison their adult life. Many of the teachers whose shortfalls in skills and knowledge produced these problems are themselves the products of an inadequate education, being former victims of the system who later became part of the problem.
Donnelly recommends the introduction of education vouchers, which means that governments would provide an agreed amount of funding for each school-age student that would be allocated to the school chosen by that student's family: "Overseas experience proves that vouchers raise standards and better meet the needs and expectations of parents and communities."
Donnelly's measured language makes vouchers sound almost innocent but they pack a punch. Their consequences could be revolutionary, the education reform equivalent of tearing down the Berlin Wall, since they could empower families to tear down decades of institutionalised ineffectiveness and enhance the pockets of excellence that remain in the system. But to make vouchers work, additional complementary reforms are needed.
Because vouchers would see students stream away from underperforming schools, it would pressure suddenly fearful school administrations to change to survive. But for this to happen, more power has to be given to principals to hire and fire teaching staff and better reward the best teachers. To deal with underperforming principals, school communities need to be given the authority to hire and fire the principals. He also wants schools to enter partnerships with businesses or philanthropic groups or tertiary institutions to break their isolation and link them to their communities and to extra educational and other resources. Tn addition, the decentralisation of the curricula would also be necessary.
Gradually, school communities would demand curricula that reflect their values and this will put pressure on schools to introduce more intellectual diversity.
In the place of the cultural left using schools to implement its narrow political and social agenda, Donnelly advocates a liberal education with curricula encompassing "the best of what was thought and said", an approach that could accommodate great and worthy ideas from many sources.
For those on the Left who see socialist administration, union-dominated industrial relations, and political correctness as providing the solution to most problems, recognising their fundamental role in undermining the quality of the education system is virtually impossible.
The sources of the problems go deeper than can be fixed by re-jigging a few policies, the mass distribution of computers, or the adoption of conservative rhetoric in policy statements. The Rudd government's education revolution will probably provide improvements but not solutions.
Donnelly finds that the education bureaucrats and the powerful and intrusive teachers unions are the main cause of the problem. Marginalise them and the quality of education will improve.
Consequently, at the heart of Donnelly's argument is the recommendation that, in education, decentralisation is the path to world's best practice.
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