Schools Minister David Kemp did not go far enough this week.
He said that parents were entitled to information about school and student performance and that there was a veil of secrecy over this information by self-interested pressure groups.
Quite right, but his solution to bringing back literacy standards falls into some of Labor’s old traps. How can he, as a states’ righter, respond to the charge that he is imposing federal aims on state education functions? How can he ensure his national objectives are met without having an overlay of federal bureaucrats … the very thing he has condemned about Labor’s education policy?
There is a cheaper and perhaps better solution.
At present the Federal Government has budgeted $2.8 billion for education, nearly all of it is in handing out money to others or monitoring others’ performance. Virtually none of it is spent on educating.
The Budget provides $4.8 million for curriculum development; $1.4 million on key competency measures for schools; and $1.3 million for a national survey of Australia’s literacy skills.
There is a far better and cheaper way of surveying and improving literacy and numeracy. The federal government should set a voluntary Year 6, Year 10 and Year 12 annual exam in literacy (including audio and visual comprehension), numeracy and some other key subjects.
The thing would be marked and set externally using student numbers and school codes so there can be no sex, race, geographic, religious or school bias. It could be run for much less than the $6.5 million on the programs mentioned above and do a better job.
Those who think the exam a completely lunatic, foolish idea need not sit it. Those employers who are satisfied with the cryptographic hieroglyphics that pass as school reports these days need not inquire whether prospective employees took the Federal Literary and Numeracy Exam; they can rely on the elephant stamps on reports of school-based assessment. Those parents who are happy with state- and school-based subjective assessment need not send their children to the exam or to schools that prepare for it.
But if Kemp took up the idea, the hearts and minds of the parents, students and employers would follow. And literacy and numeracy would improve.
Well, it cannot be any worse than what has happened with the present system over the past 10 years. Literacy standards have fallen, according to tests done on a few thousand students in 1975, 1980, 1989 and 1995.
The teachers, of course, would squeal, as they did this week at Kemp’s speech. For 20 years teachers have opposed objective testing of their students or their schools for the simple reason it puts them under the spotlight, makes them accountable and exposes their short-comings. Consequently, literacy standards have fallen and more parents have sent their children to private schools … achieving exactly the opposite of public-school teachers’ aims.
Since the New Schools Policy, under which all the data is swept under the carpet so that everyone can live in a fool’s paradise believing that school is equal, private school students have increased from 26.4 per cent of the total to 29.4 per cent.
Parents are not swallowing this drivel, and those can afford it are taking their kids out of public schools. The teachers are their own worst enemies.
Kemp is right. Information is essential to making good choices. At least with a league table of schools those public schools doing well might retain or attract students. And poor private schools might lose students. As it is there is a general bias (a view based on poor information) that all private schools are better than all public schools.
Kemp wants a return to concentrating on literacy standards; publication of comparative schools data so parents can make informed choices; and a focus on what he calls “”key national priorities”.
But he does not say how he will do this without an overlay of federal bureaucrats, even if a slightly smaller one than Labor’s.
No; he must take the thing by the short and curlies and watch the minds and hearts follow.
Why continue spending money on a passive literacy survey of a few thousand students, when for similar money we can test everyone (or at least all who want to be tested) and force up literacy standards while doing so?
Some important things might flow from this. When objective, comparative tests were made it was easy to demonstrate improving standards over time. For example, the calculus that was taught in university in the 1940s was taught in Year 11 in 1970. This should result in well-deserved pay rises for teachers.
While we do not have measurable standards it is easy to make teachers the scapegoat. More importantly, with such standards teachers can rightly argue they have done their job and that parents should do theirs and take responsibility for their children’s behaviour problems and teach in the home things that have been foisted on teachers in the past 20 years.
Under the present system the teachers get unfairly blamed for everything that is seen to go wrong and little credit for improvements which at present are not measured.
If students, parents, employers and taxpayers could once again measure results, teachers would be more greatly appreciated.