Australia’s educational system must be one of the most over-reviewed in the OECD.
Hundreds of Select Committees – Federal and State, Upper and Lower House in the past 20 years have reviewed teacher quality and student outcomes. And we still haven’t got it right.
Now we have the Gonski Review into funding arrangements, in which Mr Gonski looks forward to an education system premised on ensuring “educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions".
The case for reform
But there is something seriously amiss with our public education system in Australia. Schools are being forced to “cheat” on NAPLAN tests, nationwide testing is failing to improve the results children from disadvantaged communities and these tests are having a detrimental impact on children and families. Teach for Australia “associates” are not ready to teach and are not staying in schools for longer than two years.
More than 18% of graduate teachers are unable to obtain on-going teaching jobs. Principals and teachers refuse to participate in a so-called “performance” bonus system. And probably most concerning, children face inequitable outcomes based on their postcode or social class.
Children from the richest 2% of all households are twice as likely as average to go to university. Students from disadvantaged communities still have extremely low literacy and numeracy achievements. This is especially so for many indigenous children.
It’s (not) your fault Ms!
There are many factors contributing to these and other problems in our public education system. Too often the first to be blamed is the classroom teacher. Nothing could be further from the truth. While there are certainly teachers in our schools who should not be there, there is no evidence from any research indicating that schools have any more such “duds” as hospitals have doctors or nurses who shouldn’t be treating patients, engineers who shouldn’t be building bridges or lawyers defending clients.
Teachers in our public schools are educated (not trained) in the same faculties of education as their private school counterparts, and research shows high performing graduates from these institutions equally take up positions in private and public schools.
First principles
So where can we look for any enlightenment about the origin of our education systems' many problems? A good place to start is with policy. This is made by ministers, hopefully on the basis of advice from education bureaucrats. These in turn should be designing their advice on peer-reviewed research and successful practice in the field.
But when we start to investigate the origin and source of the policies that are driving our public education system today what do find? Policies like mandatory national testing, publication of league tables, publishing comparative school data on MySchool, Teach for Australia, performance pay for teachers, contract teaching and so on. All these are imported from the failed education systems of the USA and England.
While there is substantial and very credible research evidence from some of the most significant educationalists in the world that these imported polices can do more damage than good, they have been adopted here in Australia often against the advice of our most eminent educators and researchers.
Former Assistant Secretary of Education in the USA, Professor Diane Ravitch, previously one of these policies' strongest supporters, has joined in such criticism. She provocatively asks “Do politicians know anything about schools and education? Anything?”
The Australian context
So which policies should we be adopting here in Australia? Well it wouldn’t hurt to look for a change beyond our so-called cultural heritage countries to those performing well on the OECD rankings.
Australia ranks in the top ten in the world in mathematics, science and literacy. Yet our results also show a very wide disparity between the highest and lowest achievers – what is called a very long “tail” where the difference can be up to three full years of education.
In the highest performing countries, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland, there is a more overall evenness of achievement between students. While there are many things we could learn from Asian countries, their cultures, values and history are very different to ours with an emphasis on authoritarianism, collective obedience and submission of the individual to the state.
Finland, on the other hand, is much more like Australia with a tradition of social welfare and egalitarian values, a history of migration and has more recently become a country that has adopted multicultural communities.
Finland
So what are the policies that have made Finland a successful education system, in which the vast majority of all students complete 12 years of schooling and all those who want to can attend tertiary education?
Finnish school children start two years later than in Australia and spend fewer hours at school. Finland has no standardised tests.
In Finland teachers are respected and well paid. Teachers typically spend about four hours a day in the classroom, and are paid to spend two hours a week on professional development. At the University of Helsinki, 2,400 people competed last year for 120 slots. Unlike Australia it’s more difficult to get into teacher education than law or medicine.
I recently spent time in Finland and spoke with a number of school principals, teachers, education policy makers and university researchers. Their first principle has been how to achieve equitable outcomes for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. This means that while there are “private” schools in Finland, if they wish to receive public funding support they are unable to charge fees.
In this way the growing student achievement gap that is so well documented between Australian public and private schools does not exist.
All Finnish schools are funded on an equitable per student basis with more funds going to schools and students that need it most – schools serving poorer communities, those with large numbers of non-native speakers and refugees, indigenous students and students who are less abled.
When students have difficulties with learning they are immediately attended to by qualified remediation teachers either in the class or in a special unit. Students may require only short time for extra assistance and then return to their normal studies. They do not fall behind and become failures to be discarded and left behind as they are in Australia.
Subsidising the wealthy?
In Australia on the other hand, we have elite schools like Geelong Grammar receiving more than AUD$6m in federal support in 2011, plus AUD$1.3m from the Building the Education Revolution Funding.
It also holds assets valued at AUD$109m, as well as more than AUD$13m in their foundation, has an annual disclosed fee income of some $57m, while spending more than AUD$20,000 per annum on each student. This compares to government spending an average AUD$13,500 per student in public schools and AUD$6800 per student in private schools. GGS' teaching staff student ratio is an enviable six students for every teacher across all years P-12 and one support staff for every two teachers.
This compares to a staff student ratio of 1:14 in public schools. Yet only 5% of its student enrolment come from the lower 50% of the socio-economic advantage scale. It should therefore come as no surprise that Geelong Grammar has an average ATAR of 83.15, which means the top 50% of students were in the top 16.85% of the State. In fact, Geelong Grammar’s annual profit exceeds that of its well known neighbour down the road, the Ford Motor Company.
While the federal Opposition defends the public funds directed to ensure Geelong Grammar makes a profit, it has expressed reservations about public funding of the struggling car industry.
Funding matters
While many commentators argue that class size doesn’t make a difference to student outcomes one has to ask why all the most expensive independent schools proudly proclaim their emphasis on small classes and at the same time have the temerity to suggest that if government support to their schools was reduced their parents would have to pay more for school fees.
Yet these very same schools continue to increase their fees despite continued government funding at rate far in excess of cost of living or inflation. Professor Richard Teese recently wrote, “the work of public education is to end failure—to disconnect success from social origins”.
Thirty years ago, Finland’s education system was a mess. It was quite mediocre, very inequitable. It had a lot of features that are at the core of our problems in Australia: top-down testing, extensive tracking, highly variable teachers.
Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland always makes the point in any interview he gives: “There are no private schools in Finland.”
Australia will never be Finland, and private schools may be a part of our education system for some time yet. But unless we effect responsible, progressive, equitable policies we will continue to lag behind the rest of the world.
Join the conversation
Comments (13)
David Glover
Communicator (logged in via email @gmail.com)
I was disappointed that an article that started out writing about the strengths of the Finnish system seemed to descend into the same old public-funding-of-private-schools-which-advantage-students rhetoric.
After saying standardised testing is a bad thing, it then proceeds to use these tests to compare Geelong Grammar to the norm. Geelong is an outlier among outliers and is not representative of the majority of private schools.
Using university entrance as a measure of educational quality is…
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Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
I agree. In such articles there is also frequent mention of the Pisa test. There is another international test called the Timss test.
They are different tests.
“Timss and Pisa test different things. Timss is more curriculum-based, focusing on mathematical understanding, while Pisa's mathematical literacy is about maths in everyday situations.
Some countries do notably better in one or the other. Hungary stars in Timss, but lags behind in Pisa. For Australia, it is the reverse.”
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6006247
In fact Australia’s record in the Timss test has been absolutely deplorable, and probably the reason this test is seldom mentioned by someone from the education system.
Tim Benham
Student (logged in via email @uqconnect.edu.au)
"Schools are being forced to “cheat” on NAPLAN tests"
Who is coercing schools into cheating? surely the police should be informed.
Mark Harrigan
Dr (logged in via email @tpg.com.au)
Ah yes, we lag behind the world, especially Finland - But oh wait - we don't. In fact according to the UN Education Index we tie in First place with Finland, Denmark and New Zealand.
But there must be a problem right? We all know there is and the major part of the reason is because of the current private and public funding mechanisms! Must be right? Stands to reason - all those public dollars going to evil private schools must be draining the public system.
But wait - the reality of funding…
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Mark Harrigan
Dr (logged in via email @tpg.com.au)
Part 1
Ah yes, we lag behind the world, especially Finland - But oh wait - we don't. In fact according to the UN Education Index we tie in First place with Finland, Denmark and New Zealand.
But there must be a problem right? We all know there is and the major part of the reason is because of the current private and public funding mechanisms! Must be right? Stands to reason - all those public dollars going to evil private schools must be draining the public system.
But wait - the reality…
show full comment
Mark Harrigan
Dr (logged in via email @tpg.com.au)
Part 2 (apologies for the space waste)
could it be that the traditional debates in this country about funding levels and class sizes are COMPLETELY ill informed and misguided and driven by ideologues who just can't abide a mixed public private funded system?
It's true that Finland does very well on PISA (probably the best international metric - Finland is 3rd highest at 536 21 points ahead of Australia's 8th at 515) - so there's probably lots to learn from them.
But why imply that it's…
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Mark Harrigan
Dr (logged in via email @tpg.com.au)
Okay - I give up - this keeps getting truncated - perhaps a moderator could kill off all the above and I'll try in two lotas
Mark Harrigan
Dr (logged in via email @tpg.com.au)
Ah yes, we lag behind the world, especially Finland - But oh wait - we don't. In fact according to the UN Education Index we tie in First place with Finland, Denmark and New Zealand.
But there must be a problem right? We all know there is and the major part of the reason is because of the current private and public funding mechanisms! Must be right? Stands to reason - all those public dollars going to evil private schools must be draining the public system.
But wait - the reality of funding…
show full comment
Mark Harrigan
Dr (logged in via email @tpg.com.au)
Damn - cut and past wrong :(
Ah yes, we lag behind the world, especially Finland - But oh wait - we don't. In fact according to the UN Education Index we tie in First place with Finland, Denmark and New Zealand.
But there must be a problem right? We all know there is and the major part of the reason is because of the current private and public funding mechanisms! Must be right? Stands to reason - all those public dollars going to evil private schools must be draining the public system…
show full comment
Mark Fabian
(Researcher Political Science and International Relations at Australian National University)
I too am dissappointed that this article ending up focussing on public/private divide, even though I am very much in favor of a largely public based education system. At my university a disproportionate number of students are from private school backgrounds. These individuals will go on to occupy gatekeeper positions in the public service, politics, business etc. They will be close to decision making centres and will have little personal experience with the kinds of individuals that attend public…
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Dale Bloom
Laboratory analyst (logged in via email @mail.com)
Mark,
Every teacher in Finland is required to have a Masters degree in education. Their hours of work are about average for OECD countries, and their rates of pay are below average for OECD countries. Their class sizes are about average in OECD countries.
Tests are important, particularly international tests and benchmark tests, because they help determine if a system is advancing or declining.
The Timss test does not show a correlation between small class size and higher student performance…
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Keita Takayama
Univiersity Lecturer (logged in via email @une.edu.au)
Looks like Finnish education has become the global symbol of educational excellence. I would prefer to be a bit more careful with this media-generated fevor over Finnish education.
See http://www.asiapacificmemo.ca/how-finnish-not-east-asian-education-became-a-global-reference
David Zyngier
(Senior Lecturer at Monash University)
Thanks to all who have been reading and commenting. You have raised many issues - the reason the focus is on funding of private schools is because that is what the Gonski Review is all about!
I hpe in funeral future to write more extensively about a new visio for education that will explore issues of teacher education, teacher quality, issues of equity and relating it all to what I have seen in Finland.