What is preventing Australian education being in the top five?

Education lecturer and former teacher, David Zyngier, outlines the real reasons why Australian students are lagging behind those in other high-performing OECD countries.

The Australian Education Bill 2012 was introduced to parliament by Prime Minister Gillard’s exhortation for a crusade to make our students among the top five performing countries in the world by 2020.

In her speech to Parliament Julia Gillard repeated a fallacy that teachers are the biggest factor in student performance. Once again the blame is being shifted downwards – shifting responsibility to those who can have little or no impact on the lives of students and families in their care.

In fact all the evidence shows that the greatest variable in student performance is the socio-economic status of their parents.

Given the recent announcements in Victoria, NSW and Queensland of further cuts to already disadvantaged schools and students – while either maintaining or increasing funding for private schools – the issue of equity in education needs close attention.

Prime Minister Gillard told a private school forum that “every independent school in Australia will see their funding increase” under the government’s new funding plan. “This plan will lift school standards, not school fees,” she said.

Mr Abbott on the other hand told the same forum that because 66 per cent of Australian school students who attend public schools receive 79 per cent of government funding “there is no question of injustice to public schools here. If anything, the injustice is the other way.” Abbott reached this conclusion because the 34 per cent of students who attend independent schools get 21 per cent of government funding.

Competition and equality

Australia has the most competitive education system in the world – parents with a reasonably high level of disposable income are able to exercise wide choice. It has long been established that there is a significant relationship between the socio-economic background of students and their educational performance at school.

It may sound self-evident, but disadvantaged students are more likely to be in disadvantaged schools. And this is more likely in Australia than in most other OECD high performing countries. We have a higher proportion of students in schools where the average student’s socio-economic background is below the national average.

A learning market

Australia has the largest non-government school sector in the world. OECD education leaders Finland, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have relatively few private schools which mainly cater for international students.

Moreover we subsidise a fee-charging, autonomously-run independent school sector with public funds. This is not found anywhere else across the OECD countries. In effect the middle and upper classes earning over $100K per annum are being subsidised by the taxes paid by the 1.5 million Australians on the basic wage of $32K per annum.

Research shows that the movement of these children from a low SES school to a higher SES school in Australia undermines the “quality” (cultural and social capital) of the remaining student body in low SES schools. Professor Richard Teese has termed these schools as “sinks of disadvantage”.

The argument for school choice has been that the subsidisation of places in higher socio-economic schools or the awarding of more scholarships would reduce this problem. This might be the case for the token student fortunate enough to win a coveted scholarship, but system-wide it makes little or no difference. If a school wants to charge fees then that’s their choice; but then that school needs to be self-sufficient.

A recent analysis of NAPLAN results indicate that these same disadvantaged students are already three – five years behind their wealthy private school peers. As Connell wrote in 1993 in Schools and Social Justice, “if a poor child wants to do well in education then they should have chosen richer parents”.

Public first

Public schools, designed to create a stable, educated and prosperous economy and society have been essential to a well-functioning democracy. But can we remain so without a strong public education system and with a system that does little to address inequality?

The strong relationship between the socio-economic status of a school population and its educational results has not changed and this remains the greatest threat to achieving the PM’s laudable goal.

David Zyngier is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, having previously worked as a state school teacher and principal. His research focuses on teacher pedagogy, democratic education and Culturally, Linguistically and Economically Diverse (CLED) learning communities. David is also a member of the Editorial Board of Teaching and Teacher Education (Elsevier) and Creative Education and in 2011 was appointed Expert Commentator for the Australian Council of Education Leaders (ACEL).