Education and Public Debate

by Dr Tony Townsend
Faculty of Education, Monash University

Is it just me, or has the past few years seen a number of seemingly unrelated things occurring that might reflect upon, and perhaps have long term implications for, our education system?

First, we have the Pauline Hanson debate, and I refer in particular to the interview, and the responses to it, on ‘Sixty Minutes’. It seemed that at least fifty to sixty percent of people who made the effort to comment, and the show went to some lengths to demonstrate that the level of response was unusually high, were in favour of what Mrs Hanson had said. Only thirty percent disagreed with what she had to say. Then we had the Tampa affair where all of the prejudices people had been identified in the Hanson years were used by John Howard to win the ‘unwinnable’ election. Again, around 70% of the Australian population indicated some concern about ‘people jumping the queue’ and referred to boat people as queue jumpers rather than refugees.

Interestingly, these figures approximately reflect the school retention rates at about the time Mrs Hanson went to school. Then, only 30% of students stayed on until year 12. Perhaps if we knew the age and educational background of the respondents to ‘Sixty Minutes’ and looked at the people who seem to be hard on ‘refugees’, we might be able to make a comment on how education might make people more tolerant.

Retention rates are in the news again in Victoria, because after peaking at 81% in 1991, the last year of the previous Labor government, they drifted down with the Kennett years. By 1995, they were down to 69.8%, a more than 10% drop in just five years. I started to wonder whether the downturn was evenly spread across all socio-economic and ability levels, but I had to conclude that this was unlikely to be the case. Those that drop out are much more likely to be those that need the most additional help, or don’t have access to computers to do their CAT assessments because the school only has so many and their parents can’t afford one, or have parents who themselves were not successful in school. These students are more likely to come from the western suburbs than the eastern or southern suburbs of Melbourne. The Department of Education in 1995-96 allocated funds to support students at risk, most of whom come from the inner city western suburbs. The total amount allocated was 16 million dollars at an average of just over $10 per student for the year, an amount that would make only marginal difference, I would think. Since the new Labor government came to power, things have improved a little, but not much.

The literacy study by ACER, seemed to indicate that literacy had not improved over the past two decades and may have even slipped back a little. The reasons why this is the case have not been adequately considered. For a start, 53% of students who came from a non-English speaking background were judged to be illiterate on the test. Since people from this group make up around 15% in total of the Australian population, then approximately 7-8% of the 30% figure in 1995 is likely to come from this source. In 1971, the people from non-English speaking backgrounds comprised just over 10% of Australia’s population. If the same percentage of NESB children were illiterate, and this is perhaps unlikely given that language tests were much more stringent than they are today, then around 5% of the sample in the early 1970s might be accounted for in this way. It could be argued that on these figures alone literacy levels have improved marginally rather than slipped back. Neither of these figures take into account the problem associated with older children who migrate. If an NESB family with children between the ages of 7 and 10 comes to Australia, the opportunities for these children to have developed English literacy in just a couple of years is small, particularly if English is not spoken or understood at home. No one has bothered to mention the possibility that the 28% of people illiterate in the early 1970s might now be the parents of the children who are illiterate today. Yet teachers will tell you how much parent support and assistance counts for in terms of the academic development of their child.

The federal government’s response to these issues is to suggest advertising literacy rates school by school so that parents could choose which school they send their child to. Again, it seems that some schools will be seen to perform better than others and perhaps the government knows which ones. If we add this response to the now common practice of advertising VCE results for the same reason, then parental choice is obviously all that is required to solve the problem. The federal government also suggests that we need to look at teacher training. Did someone tell it that the teachers who teach in schools where literacy levels are low probably trained at the same places as teachers where literacy levels are high? Did someone tell it that high VCE scoring schools and low VCE scoring schools also probably have teachers trained at the same universities? These league table responses suggest a rather simplistic view of the situation. Perhaps this is what their solution would be. Have all the students in the eastern suburbs go to private schools and all the students in the western suburbs go to schools in the eastern suburbs. There are already reports that suggest the elite government secondary schools cannot take any more students and that parents are moving their families to the eastern suburbs with the hope of improving their child’s chance of entering one of these schools. There are waiting lists. How does this solve the problem?

The conflict of interest debate rages on as well. Has anybody thought there might be a conflict of interest for the people making decisions about education? I wonder where the politicians who made the decisions related to parent choice sent their children, to government or non-government schools? In recent times we have seen both state and federal governments cut funding to state schools whilst maintaining or increasing funding to private schools. The elimination of the federal New Schools Program has opened the door for many new non-government schools and many new private schools were developed and became eligible for government funding. Since most of these schools will hope to attract their new clients from existing government school numbers, then we could see the possibility of having new schools built while other schools (where already there has been a high capital investment) decline to be only partly filled. There is a double sting in the tail with this one. As well as there being overcapitalisation of school buildings, with both government and non-government facilities competing for the same clients, such a move opens the possibility for even more government school closures.

There is another alternative. Schools with diminished numbers could become the centre of community development and learning. The excess space could be used for retraining activities, adult education programs, elderly citizen meeting places or places where health and social services could be housed. Money would be saved by not duplicating facilities and the services people require could be brought closer to home. Schools of the Future enable school communities to address these issues and having strong community presence and support might make the government reconsider the value of shutting the school down.

Harold Hodgkinson, a noted American demographer, has demonstrated that educated people are less likely to be poor, unwell, need social service or turn to crime than those the education system has failed. He argues that in general fifteen per cent of the state’s resources is spent on what might be considered to be preventative programs and eighty five percent on ineffective ‘cures’ when the system has gone wrong. He argues for every dollar we spend at the front end (on education, on health and social maintenance, on good public transport), we can save five to six dollars later, by not having to spend it on crime, poverty, public housing, transport and health problems. Now is the time to redress the massive cutbacks, both state and federal, that education has suffered in the past decade. If we don’t frontload the system now and ensure that all children are literate and numerate, have both the skills and the attitudes that will see them gainfully employed and provide them with a safe and wholesome environment in which to grow, we will all suffer as the growing numbers of unemployed turn to other methods to fill in their time or generate their funds. These other methods are invariably anti-social in some form or another and we will all bear the cost. A strong, well-supported education system is the avenue to social harmony and wealth. We are all responsible for making it happen.