New CIS research: How schools should spend the $23.5b Gonski 2.0 money

Australian schools should use the extra Gonski 2.0 funding to improve early literacy and numeracy, give teachers fewer classes and more time outside the classroom, and provide classroom management training for teachers, new research from the Centre for Independent Studies finds.

In Getting the most out of Gonski 2.0: The evidence base for school investments, education policy analyst Blaise Joseph outlines the importance of school investments being evidence-based and cost-effective, and proposes three key investments with the potential to significantly improve Australia’s lagging student literacy and numeracy results:

1. Early literacy and numeracy. Intervention to help students who are underachieving in literacy and numeracy is more effective in early primary years than in later schooling. In particular, primary schools should invest in training for teachers to improve teaching of reading and phonics instruction, which they do not receive from teacher education degrees.
2. Give teachers fewer classes and more time outside the classroom. Australian teachers spend more time each day teaching in class, relative to the OECD and the top-performing countries. Teachers should be given fewer classes each day so they can have more time outside the classroom to develop and improve their teaching.
3. Classroom management training for teachers. Australia has high levels of classroom misbehaviour, compared to the OECD and top-performing countries, which has negative effects on student achievement. Teachers could benefit from undergoing training to learn and foster evidence-based classroom management techniques, to make up for gaps in knowledge offered by teacher education degrees.

“These three approaches wouldn’t necessarily cost much more money, if for example school professional development budgets were prioritised towards more important training like phonics instruction and classroom management, and if class sizes were increased to offset the cost of fewer classes per teacher,” Mr Joseph said.

“One important caveat is that only NSW and the ACT have accreditation standards for teacher professional development providers, which means much of the compulsory training teachers attend isn’t necessarily evidence-based. States and territories should have more rigorous and transparent standards for professional development providers.”

The report also critiqued two common school investments, arguing they are not adequately evidence-based or cost-effective:

1. Smaller class sizes. Reducing class sizes would be expensive, have the potential to reduce teacher quality, and have only minor positive effects on student achievement. Furthermore, relative to the OECD average and high-achieving countries, Australian class sizes are not especially large.
2. Technology. The extent of any positive effects for education technology is uncertain. Australia already invests in and uses significantly more school technology relative to the rest of the world, but this by itself has not helped to improve literacy and numeracy.

Mr Joseph also said the additional Gonski 2.0 money — $23.5 billion from the federal government over the next 10 years — would be ineffectual in boosting Australia’s academic performance unless the money is spent on evidence-based policies.

Blaise Joseph is an Education Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies and a former teacher. He is author of Getting the most out of Gonski 2.0: The evidence base for school investments and The Fantasy of Gonski Funding: The ongoing battle over school spending.