The Grattan Institute wisely points out today (in the Australian) that the three school ‘camps’ (private, catholic and public) are each fighting for more than their fair share of the education funding on the grounds that if they don’t they will get less than their fair share.
And thus the rent-seeking continues in this lovely country of ours.
Anyway the guts of the argument is that the ‘camp’ wars has meant that there has not been a proper focus on where ‘reform’ is really needed. And, apparently, the real problem is teacher quality, caused by slack entrance requirements into teaching degrees and university teaching curricula that are divorced from modern needs (or some-such).
Just as an aside there appears to be something circular about the problem; lower quality high school students leading to lower quality teachers leading to lower quality teaching, etc.
I suspect there is ‘curricula’ war going on out there too. At primary, secondary and tertiary levels there are a lot of people who seem to be very certain that they know what kids should be learning. And they are all certainly both right and wrong because the required outcomes of education are very, very subjective.
The current debate on the matter is a result of recent results that Australia has slipped down the international high school standards in the basics of reading, science and maths. Ignoring for a minute how these are measured and to what degree our fall is a result of other countries rising in standards, there probably should be a debate on whether good results in these measures are what we are after.
If I consider the modern parent, as epitomised by the clutch of mothers at my daughter’s Eastern suburbs (of Sydney) primary school, I am quite sure that they would (a) verbally parrot the tabloid TV message that the drop in our international standing is deplorable, but (b) be very unimpressed if their little Meya or Jonathon suddenly had their time cut back in human society and its environment, personal development, health and physical education, creative arts or in the large slabs of time seemingly spent doing bugger all while the teachers plan, meet, vacate or whatever.
I think the curricula issue is a result of a number of changes; (a) schools have partially taken over the role of parents in the development of character in children, maybe because we all at one point decided that parents are pretty sketchy at it and that they are also getting time poor as work becomes more consuming, (b) time spent developing character is time not spent doing maths, science and English, (c) over a period education has visibly shifted from an ‘academic’ focus to a ‘social’ focus possibly reflecting a change in the aspirations of the bulk of society and also the fact that the masses are probably feeling more entitled than they ever have, (d) the process of developing curricula has been politicised like everything else, and this always lead to lower quality outcomes since our politicians live in a system where they have to make low-quality compromise decisions in order to survive, and (e) maybe the need for great results in the basics of Maths, Science and English just isn’t there; more on this below.
The current problem, as measured by our slip in the international rankings, is being viewed by the media as a ‘sports’ problem; it’s as if we just had a crap Olympic games and we should do something about it. But why? How, as a country, do we benefit from higher results in school Maths, Science and English? Do we need to be the best or does it not matter? I am going to think about this and report back later. The subject fascinates me. I have my prejudices of course but I promise to put them aside.
offshore westerly 