By Adam Hanieh
Australian education is presently undergoing some dramatic changes that will profoundly affect the type of education we receive and its role in Australian society. They are integrally related to the direction of the Australian economy and its "reform".
One of the major trends is towards privatisation of education. This is happening through a process called devolution.
Devolution is a term that comes quickly off the lips of any education department bureaucrat in any state in Australia. It means that certain management functions are no longer carried out by the education department, but instead are the responsibilities of individual schools. Principals are able to contract out school-related work, buy educational resources and even attempt to sell their schools.
Eventually individual schools will become responsible for their own financial management, including hiring and firing of staff and the salaries of teachers. Government policy documents have promoted enterprise bargaining for teachers' salaries and conditions.
The Victorian Schools of the Future scheme plans to give schools block grants that include a component for teachers' salaries. Earlier this year there were moves by the South Australian government to abolish the Teachers Registration Board. This would have paved the way for schools to advertise for teachers without minimum qualifications.
Devolution is often sold on the rhetoric of "community control" and "local empowerment", but the facts demonstrate a different outcome. What would happen if schools were run like businesses?
Competing schools
Image becomes all important. For the school to attract the best clientele (the parents with the most money) their graduating students need to be impressive. Or, to use market-speak, their final "commodity" must be "packaged" the best. Students with special needs are neglected in favour of those who can enhance the competitive edge of the school.
Inevitably, schools for the "disadvantaged" receive even less funding or are closed. There are markets for the elite, and then markets for the rest of us.
Schools need to compete in order to attract students. Where this can lead is graphically illustrated in the UK, where a commentator wrote in 1990:
"... schools begin to offer free gifts in the effort to attract custom. Longsands Community College in St Neots, Cambridge, has struck a deal with the Alliance and Leicester Building Society under which pupils will receive a free FiloFax ... a school in Warwickshire offers 10% off bathroom fittings in a local store to all parents who enrol their children. Many schools are ... obtaining advice from public relations consultants ... several schools in Kent have accepted sums ... to put up advertising posters in their grounds for Wella hair care products and Weetabix."
Parents who can't afford to send their children to more expensive schools have no choice but the underfunded (maybe McFunded?) and overcrowded schools at the lower end.
One money-saving area will be teachers' wages and conditions. With a deregulated market, schools catering to a wealthier clientele will be able to pay teachers more, while poorer schools will inevitably mean poorer teachers. The result is worsening conditions for teachers in the majority of schools, with all the ramifications of this for students.
National curriculum
There are parallel changes within the school curriculum. What schools teach has traditionally been the business of state governments, with the federal government pulling the purse strings through the budget. However moves are well under way to establish a national curriculum.
This has two components — national statements and national profiles. The statements outline the basic knowledge and skills distinctive to each area. The profiles provide a framework for reporting student achievement in each of the areas.
It might sound OK. Doesn't it make sense to have a nationally based curriculum? Isn't it useful to be able to accurately state what level of achievement students are at? Doesn't the present system reek of the crazy different-railway-gauge-in-each-state mentality?
If we look a little closer, these changes are directly related to the economic policy of the federal government. The then minister of education, John Dawkins, said in 1990, "... an efficient and flexible work force is arguably the most important part of federal efforts on micro-economic reform, and can only be achieved if school and tertiary education policy are negotiated and coordinated nationally".
The national curriculum project took its lead from three reports, the Finn Report (1991), the Mayer Report (1992), and the Carmichael Report (1992). The major emphasis of all these reports was tailoring education to suit the needs of industry. Business needs a flexible, literate, numerate and skilled work force. Vocational training is the order of the day.
Finn was a director on the board of IBM Australia, Mayer was director on the board of McPhersons Ltd (one of Australia's largest plastic companies) and also a director of National Mutual Life Insurance, and Carmichael has spent the last decade helping the Labor Party cut living standards as a leader of the ACTU.
These reports have been severely criticised for the emphasis on basic skills training. They omit any development of critical thinking.
The national profiles also have a number of major problems. These profiles claim to "... provide a framework which can be used by teachers in classrooms to chart the progress of individual learners; by schools to report to their communities and by education systems as reporting on student performance, as well as being amenable to reporting student achievement at the national level".
In Britain, results such as would be gained from the profiles are used to rank schools on a "league table". In Kentucky (USA), schools are funded on the basis of student results. The end result of a system like this is that teachers need to bargain with their students to do particular courses and ensure funding. Teaching is narrowly restricted to getting the highest possible exam result, not the subject material itself. Students are put under enormous pressure to get the best results.
Defending education
Many teachers view these changes as just the latest educational fad, which will change with a new government. This is a dangerous view, for similar changes are under way in all Western countries. Britain, New Zealand and the United States all show a horrifying picture of our future.
The one country where some of these attacks have been defeated is France. On January 16, a million people demonstrated in Paris in defence of the public school system.
Yves Baunay, national secretary of the French Secondary Teachers Union, says: "Our experience in Paris demonstrates that if we are assertive in defending and improving public education, then we will be strong enough to turn back the moves to privatise public schools. The best form of defence is attack."
A strong, visible campaign that unites parents, students and teachers is the only way that education can be defended and improved.