Category: Education

A little news item can tell a big story. This week the Guardian reported on a survey that revealed that Australian parents want schools to teach more social skills. It raises many questions: whose job it is anyway, what will fall off the curriculum to make space, how will we know if it works? But in one sense it is certainly timely: right now the Gonski 2.0 Review is giving us a once-in-a-decade opportunity to have our say about what schools should and shouldn’t do. (more…)

Several wealthy Melbourne private schools are set to get large windfall gains from the Turnbull Government’s Gonski 2.0 funding model after revisions to their assessed student need. Many of the schools will get increases of $1-$3.2 million between 2018 and 2027 because their student need has been revised upwards due to implausible stories about disabilities. (more…)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone lacking a rewarding occupation must be in want of a degree. A university education is not only a good in itself, but an indispensable passport to a satisfying career and a secure lifestyle. It follows that universities should be open to all, that everyone should be encouraged to take a  degree and that greater public investment in higher education is the key to national progress and prosperity.  All of which, as we are now discovering to our cost, is nonsense – a dangerous fallacy that politicians on all sides are unwilling to confront.  (more…)

The Government has called for submissions into the “Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools” – aka the “second Gonski  review”.  Gonski was about money and equity, this review is about what schools should do. (more…)

The Times Higher Educational Supplement (THES) has published its 2018 World University Rankings. Rankings are rankings are rankings. They are not Holy Writ! Still they can be interesting fodder for drawing some interpretations and implications. I admit I may be partly biased as Oxford has come out number 1! (I was at Oxford from 1967 to 1970 and did my doctorate there.) The rankings are based on five key criteria: teaching, research, citations, income from industry and international outlook. (more…)

NAPLAN is not unlike some kids I have known: conceived in haste as a result of a rush of blood, a bit of an erratic upbringing (from a variety of guardians), confusion as to purpose in life and fervent hopes that he/she/it will turn out right in the end. Each year there is a birthday, accompanied by a mixture of hand wringing, pious hopes and future plans that might show it was all worthwhile. (more…)

Many of us who write about vocational education and training (VET) are asked not to use the word ‘crisis’ as it undermines confidence in the system.  Unfortunately it will take a lot more than a change of language to restore consumer confidence, as private training providers continue their financial collapse and students are left stranded. (more…)

Many claims have been made about the Turnbull Government’s Gonski breakthrough. It seemed to grant the wishes of advocates for greater equity and efficacy in the funding of schools – so much so that I had to re-cast the recommendations in the recent CPD report, Losing the Game, written with Bernie Shepherd. We had always stressed an urgency to support the most needy schools and the importance of a Schooling Resourcing body. At the penultimate hour both priorities were thrown into the legislation. (more…)

Every profession has them: those people with an extraordinary range of interests and talents who change the lives of others and sometimes the profession itself. Bernie Shepherd, who has just lost his battle against cancer, was one of these. He was a science teacher with great interest and ability in English and the arts, a school principal who established a different type of school, a consultant who carried a new method of assessing students across NSW – and a retiree who pioneered analysis of our school system by tapping into the data behind the My School website. (more…)

Amidst this week’s flurry of activity over the ‘Gonski’ legislation we seem to have forgotten serious problems, both old and new. In this first of two parts Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd consider the problems we still need to solve. In the second part they’ll indicate the new emerging problems we don’t even recognize. Losing the Game, their new publication with the Centre for Policy Development, has just been released.   (more…)

Amidst this week’s flurry of activity over the ‘Gonski’ legislation we seem to have forgotten serious problems, both old and new. In this first of two parts Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd consider the problems we still need to solve. In the second part they’ll indicate the new emerging problems we don’t even recognize. Losing the Game, their new publication with the Centre for Policy Development, has just been released.   (more…)

The objections raised by Catholic leaders to the Turnbull Government’s Gonski 2.0 funding model raise as many questions about the governance and operation of the Catholic school system as about Gonski 2.0. One of these questions is: who pays for the teachers in Catholic schools?  (more…)

School funding is a very complex issue in Australia. It’s now a poisonous political cocktail. David Gonski who had been the poster boy for Julia Gillard’s bold education reforms has now been showcased by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Education Minister Simon Birmingham announcing their new deal for school funding.   (more…)

Before the advent of the “free enterprise market economy” model’s dominance of economic thinking, there was a distinction made between private and public goods.  The idea was that some things had to be provided for a healthy, well-ordered society: such basics to our notion of civilization as universal water reticulation and sewerage (the most significant public health measure ever), electricity and gas services, public transport, education and telecommunications. These were to be provided generally and largely (as possible) equally to all, and NOT at the direction of “market forces”, which would discriminate in favour of the rich.  For most of the last century these were provided by government monopolies, to guarantee fair and equal access. Seems quite sensible. 

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Gonski 2.0 appeared to be a gift horse but over the space of little more than two week it is looking more like a Trojan horse.  
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The 2017 Federal Budget provided little new funding for vocational education and training, with its main focus the Skilling Australians Fund.  This Fund appears to only exacerbate the uncertain future of the VET sector with its narrow student application, dependence on revenue generation and outcomes focus.  (more…)

When childcare issues have hit the news lately, it’s either been about the Federal Government’s new $1.6 billion package to help make childcare more affordable, or about massive fraud cases where rogue Family Day Care operators have pocketed millions of tax payer dollars.   (more…)

When you are a school principal there are some days you don’t forget. For me it was the day the government ambushed my school by establishing a selective school down the road. No warning, no consultation – it just seemed like a good idea at the time. It was argued that it was a good idea for the selected, but even then we knew that it wasn’t a good idea for those not similarly blessed. We now know that it has done nothing for overall levels of student achievement.  (more…)

While we readily recognise the new Asia to be culturally dynamic, and changing rapidly, we have yet to develop a more sophisticated understanding of Asia-Australia relations – and indeed also of the discourse of Asia literacy.   (more…)