Labor’s education report card is one step forward, two steps back

Amid the usual clamour for the Budget to ‘show us the money’, the Queensland Government has signed the federal government’s agreement for it to ‘fully fund’ their public schools. And not a moment too soon – with the Budget imminent and a federal election following shortly thereafter.

This represents a step forward in some ways, and backwards in others.

On the positive side, the Albanese government has made a valiant attempt at attaching stringent conditions to the additional funding over the course of the decade-long agreement.

In return for the federal government lifting all public schools to the full Schooling Resource Standard, state governments are expected to work with all three school sectors to ‘screen and intervene’.

This means a Year 1 Phonics Check, and an equivalent numeracy check, with the data used to identify students in need of further support, and for this to be provided through evidence-based teaching for all students, with additional levels of intensive support provided on the basis of need (‘multi-tiered systems of support’.)

These reforms are intended to support improvements in NAPLAN achievement by 2030: a 10 per cent reduction in students scoring in the lowest NAPLAN category and a 10 per cent increase in NAPLAN proficiency, plus a ‘trend upwards’ for disadvantaged student groups (those with low parental education, in regional areas, or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students).

In theory, this should be an opportunity for competitive federalism to shine: with common goals, states and territories should be able to find the most effective methods of reaching them.

But this is unlikely to happen, for one key reason: states and territories bear no real consequences for getting it wrong.

As only some of the bilateral agreements between the federal government and each jurisdiction have been released, it’s difficult to know the precise obligations for states and territories — or what will happen if these reforms are not undertaken, and the targets not met.

This brings us to the backwards step: these reforms have further entrenched the already-pervasive attitude that the federal government should pay for services that are, constitutionally and historically, state government responsibilities.

It’s well-known that the NDIS’s runaway costs are in part due to cost-shifting from the states to the federal government, for example. But in the education area, the fixation on ‘Gonski’ funding means the question of which level of government is best placed to fund public schools has largely been avoided.

Nor has the ‘cooperative’ federalism model been particularly successful at leading to real change. Forget student outcomes, for a moment: governments began working on a ‘Unique Student Identifier’ for school students in 2009, and it was embedded in the last funding agreement. But this new agreement commits states and territories to do by 2027 what they have already had 15 years to do.

Considering this should be a relatively simple bureaucratic fix, the inability of these agreements to achieve it does not bode well for student outcomes — a much more difficult beast to wrangle.

Perhaps with funding no longer a sticking point, all stakeholders will put the finger-pointing away and focus on using the money effectively to implement highly effective practices at the classroom level.

But this, too, would be optimistic. With its position on early childhood education, the government has effectively provided a get-out-of-jail-free card for schools.

In announcing a guarantee to three days’ access to early childhood education and care, ministers Clare and Aly framed it as ‘helping to make sure children don’t start school behind’, as well as the ‘next step’ in universal childcare for Australia.

If school results don’t pick up, the argument is sitting right there, ready to be made: blame it on the quantity, quality or access to early childhood education.

In other words, the fingers will merely be pointed at a different sector. This sector, conveniently, currently has no way to measure the quality of its education output.

A ‘Preschool Outcomes Measure’, which aims to provide formative assessment in the two areas of executive function and oral language and literacy, is beginning trials this year. But as it’s not a test, and it won’t be used to benchmark, the finished form is unlikely to represent a way to assess the educational outcomes of a sector in which spending has increased by the billions.

The question remains a live one: what will the next generation of Australians get for what is put in?

Trisha Jha is a Research Fellow in the Education program at the Centre for Independent Studies and a former high school teacher.

Photo by photographystory