EduResearch Matters

EduResearch Matters is a blog for educational researchers in Australia to get their work and opinions out to the general public. Please join us here. We would love to get your comments and feedback about our work.

It’s one thing to extend preschool. But where is the supply of the remarkable teachers we need?

Early Childhood, Early childhood education and care, teacher recruitment, , , , , , ,

Rachael Hedger on early childhood reform: implications for our children, the sector, and the economy.

This week, Victoria and New South Wales jointly announced a universal preschool year for all 4-year-old children, offering 30-hours of fully subsided ‘pre-prep’ or ‘pre-kindergarten’. Victoria plans to implement this change from 2025 whilst NSW will begin from 2030.

This announcement demonstrates a significant investment in families and young children, improving workforce participation for mothers, and therefore providing a substantial boost to the economy.

The news is music to the ears of the Early Childhood sector who have advocated for the importance of early learning for decades. The Thrive by Five Campaign, part of the Minderoo Foundation, have advocated for equal and early access to early learning to politicians and the government for some time now. Whilst parents may have concerns about putting their child into an Early Years setting for 5-days per week, at this stage, the opportunity is optional. As the people who know their child best, parents have agency here as to whether they take up the offer, considering what will work best for them within their own family dynamic.

Whilst it’s great to have Commonwealth and State level government support, this initiative is not without its complexities.

A key consideration in these early stages is whether these States have the infrastructure needed to uphold this promise. As it stands, there will be considerable issues in rural and remote areas, with 44% of regional families and 85% of remote families living in a ‘childcare desert’.

Australia’s disadvantaged children have a lot to gain from regular preschool attendance. AEDC data reveals that children in the poorest areas of Australia are three times more likely to demonstrate developmental vulnerability than children in wealthier areas. Universal access could help reduce this statistic. However, attendance alone is not enough to close the equity gap. These children need high-quality, accessible, play-based opportunities provided by knowledgeable and experienced educators.

Crucial to effective Early Childhood education is a rich, play-based program of teaching and learning. The first five years is when a child’s brain develops the most. These years are vital for setting the foundation for life-long learning and children’s ability to form meaningful relationships. It is through play that children engage and interact with the world around them developing creativity, imagination, problem solving, and social and emotional skills. To facilitate valuable play opportunities for children, they need educators who understand the theories that underpin effective play pedagogies. We need educators who are specially trained to support, guide and care for children successfully.

The most significant matter in implementing this reform will be the distinct lack of Early Childhood educators across the sector. Before the announcement on Wednesday, there were an estimated 6000 vacancies for educators in birth-5 settings, with a predicted 39,000 educators needed by 2023. The reform will be directly dependent on a strong Education and Care Workforce Strategy that recruits and retains Early Childhood educators. At present, the lower-than-average pay and conditions results in huge staff turnover as they leave the sector to look for more prosperous opportunities. This greatly impacts children’s learning as they cannot establish and build meaningful, positive relationships with a consistent caregiver.

Working with young children is a rewarding profession. To see children flourish and grow on a daily basis is a beautiful experience. Simultaneously, it is hard work. To care for young children’s needs involves feeding, cleaning and toileting, keeping them safe at all times. To educate young children involves observing, assessing and documenting their learning, preparing resources and the learning environment, and maintaining relationships with families. It involves engaging in play opportunities, extending children’s thinking through questioning and conversation, encouraging new language, and supporting children’s physical, social and emotional development. Few people understand the complexities of balancing the differing demands of this role. Childcare is often seen as only child-care, and this is perhaps why it is underrated and undervalued. An Education and Care Workforce Strategy would need to attract, retain, value and appropriately pay educators for the vital work that they do with young children.

Accompanying the announcement this week, there was mention of incentives to encourage the uptake of Early Childhood Education degrees. Some Eastern universities are looking to offer fast-tracked degrees ranging from 3-years to as little as 18-months. Many will provide up to a year of credit for Certificate III and Diploma qualified applicants, shortening their study time considerably. This approach questions the quality of the Early Childhood educators that we look to produce. If governments invest billions of dollars into the sector only to staff it with employees that have not been adequately educated, we defeat the purpose of what we’ve set out to achieve; quality education for our young children. Teaching is an art form. It takes time and commitment to understand how children learn, the theories that underpin practice, and experience in how to effectively educate Australia’s diverse children. Rushing educators through an Early Childhood education degree will not deliver quality outcomes and would be a disservice to our children.

The reform announcement this week is long overdue and should be celebrated. It is a guaranteed boost for the economy and offers more choice for working parents, but we should tread with caution from here. The biggest and best investment that we can make is in our youngest citizens. They are our future. Australia is beginning to put the economy where it belongs – in our children’s hands.

The main question now is if, or when, will the other States follow?

Rachael Hedger is a Lecturer in Early Childhood Education and Course Coordinator for the Early Childhood Initial Teacher Education degrees at Flinders University. She is undertaking a PhD (Deakin University) in which she explores on how arts-based practices can support children’s science learning. Her research interests focus on how drawing can be used as a vehicle for exploring science concepts, focussing on process and exploration. She is a supporter of learning through play pedagogies and encouraging pre-service teachers to be advocates for young children’s learning. 

Why kids under five must start learning to code

digital technology in schools, Early childhood education and care, mathematics, Maths curriculum, teaching coding, Teaching coding in schools, , , , ,


There’s a lot of pressure to learn coding in primary school to develop 21st century computational skills. But I think we should start in preschool.

Schools and governments recognise the need for teaching 21st century skills. We can see the evidence for that in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. But just as we teach preschool children the fundamentals of reading, we must now include computational thinking and coding.

While many early childhood services may have digital technologies, how they are presented and taught to young children, requires more focus and perhaps, upskilling of educators.

In my research we use cubettos. These are simple wooden square box robots with a smiley face that come with coding boards with colourful plastic pieces which make the robots move. We also uses bee-bots, small plastic bee-shaped robots with simple programming buttons on their backs, and blue-bots, clear cased bee-shaped robots that respond to commands sent from a computer or iPad.

I have been exploring how children learn to use them, and how educators support their use, as an extension to my PhD research. With 3-5 year olds, they realise that the pieces you put in the coding board, or the buttons you push, make the robots move in particular ways, and you can start explaining how they move and why they follow our commands.

Learning the basics of robotics at this age will set the foundation for primary school learning. It’s a great introduction to pre-maths, algorithms, counting and problem-solving: they learn this is the ‘recipe’ that moves the robots along.

While some early childhood education services have some robots to play with, what’s missing is the opportunity for richer learning that these devices offer.

Some educators will have a blue-bot or bee-bot and they might push the buttons to create a code for the children, but they’re not necessarily taking the next step to explaining the concept of coding.

The aim for my research is to think about the best way to equip educators to teach coding to pre-schoolers through play, for example whether it will be creating an instruction manual or workshop or something else.

Screens and play

Another aspect of technology is the use of screen technologies among the 3-5 year old age group, both real and replica or broken, which I call ‘imaginative’ technologies. Children want to use real technologies in play, but imaginative technologies are the next best thing. Children today live in a digital world and, given the opportunity, will readily use technology to meet their play needs.

Through my research, which has included interviewing 84 educators in the New England region alongside my colleague Dr Marg Rogers, I have found some educators are reluctant to incorporate real technologies into their classrooms for use by very young children.

Some educators and parents believe early use of technology will reduce their child’s creativity and imagination. Others encourage it. I have found with people holding such strong views, discussions on the subject can be a minefield.

Many services don’t provide real technology for children. They might use an iPad or camera, but it’s very controlled and directed, and the children are not given enough time with the technologies to develop skills and to learn.

The anxiety around using screens could also be further compounded and confused by current national guidelines on screen use.

National guidelines out of step

The current national guidelines recommend children under two are not exposed to any screen time. But this is really out of sync with home or modern life. So, it’s an interesting question for technology researchers like myself – do we follow the guidelines and not give technology to children? But children see technology and in their imaginative play, they want to copy what adults do.

They see people on phones, taking photos and typing on computers from an early age. How can you then have a ‘home corner’ in early childhood education centres that don’t have any of that? How many restaurants take orders on a phone or iPad? How can children re-enact what goes on in a restaurant without technology? Same with a doctor’s surgery or a supermarket. Technology is everywhere.

In a new research project, I will ask children aged 3-5 what they want in their imaginative play spaces and if they can make (out of recycled materials), what they need to in order to have an imaginative play space reflective of the real thing. For example, having iPads in a restaurant to take the orders or look up recipes. I believe real technologies also need to play a larger role in early childhood education.

And I don’t believe we can stop children accessing technologies.

I think it’s a bit disrespectful to not let children use technology in their play. How does it compute in their brains that technology is everywhere in their world, but they are not allowed to use or understand it? It must be confusing for them. I have found, educators need to support children’s technology use in positive ways. I’d like to see non screen-based coding, and iPads with select apps chosen for the learning that’s possible, including to document their own learning, in the preschool years.

Children need to learn how to use technologies and when it is appropriate to use them. Hopefully further research will help to guide the provision of technologies and guidelines for its use, support children’s ethical behaviour and reduce some of the discomfort educators and parents feel around the inclusion of working technologies in children’s lives.

Jo Bird is a senior lecturer at the University of New England, Armidale. Her PhD explored children’s use of digital technologies in imaginative play and the educators’ provision of the various devices, both working and imaginative. Her research interests include children’s play, the use of technologies by both children and educators and early childhood leadership. She loves presenting, both her research and inspiring others to use technologies in creative ways with children and to recognise their leadership worth.

How to make sure your vote really counts

civics and citizenship education, , , , , ,

Millennial voters and Australian citizens aged under 45 made up 43 percent of the voters in the 2022 federal election. Analyses show that their vote mattered in swings against the major parties and revealed just how discerning young voters can be.

But clearly, for their votes to count, and to ensure their most preferred candidate is elected, understanding how the preferential voting system works is essential. This requires civics learning, so that young people can be informed citizens, with experience of voting systems.

However, results reported in 2021, from the National Assessment Program – Civics and Citizenship (NAP-CC, 2019), conducted every three years since 2004, showed that the proportion of Australian school students with the skills and knowledge required to be active and informed citizens has not changed since 2016.

At the national level, only 38 per cent of Year 10 students, and 53 per cent of Year 6 students, attained the stated proficiency standards regarding core aspects of Australian democracy, and their roles and responsibilities as citizens. So, there is significant room for improvement in building understanding of civics and citizenship education.

The Australian Curriculum: Civics and citizenship includes developing understanding of the electoral system as part of the focus on exploring how the people, as citizens, choose their governments; how the system safeguards democracy by vesting people with civic rights and responsibilities; how laws and the legal system protect people’s rights; and how individuals and groups can influence civic life.  It also aims to develop students’ knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the values, principles, institutions and practices of Australia’s system of democratic government and law, and the role of the citizen in Australian government and society. There is a specific focus on the preferential voting systems. 

So, what is the preferential system, and how can students be engaged in effective learning about the processes involved?

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) explains that there are many different types of preferential voting systems in use across Australia and the world.

Some preferential voting systems make it compulsory for voters to mark a preference for all candidates on the ballot paper, whereas others require a defined number of preferences to be indicated. Australian federal elections use a preferential voting system where voters are required to:

·       mark a preference for every candidate on the green ballot paper (House of Representatives)

·       mark a preference for a designated number of preferences on the white ballot paper (Senate)

The AEC explains that the preferential voting system used for the House of Representatives provides for multiple counts of ballot papers, in order to determine who has acquired an absolute majority of the total votes (more than 50% of formal votes). During the counting process, votes are transferred between candidates according to the preferences marked by voters. 

The AEC provides multiple online, plain language resources that schools and community members can access. One document explains that at each polling place, when voting closes, officials sort all ballot papers by first preference votes, which are then counted for each candidate. Informal votes that are incorrectly filled in are identified and removed from the count. All the ‘1’ votes are counted for each candidate in an electorate. If a candidate gets more than an absolute majority – they are immediately elected. Even though they are elected, a full preference count is completed to show how the electorate voted. If no candidate has an absolute majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded from the count. The votes for this candidate are then transferred to the candidate numbered ‘2’ on each of their ballot papers, the voters’ ‘second preference’. This process continues until one candidate has more than half the total formal votes cast and is then declared elected.

The National Electoral Education Centre (NEEC) at Old Parliament House in Canberra provides onsite experiential learning experiences for students visiting the national capital to engage and inform young people about voting and elections. Students meet DemocraBot and are immersed in DemocraCity, a brand new interactive virtual world, to learn about representation, enrolment, and voting and to experience the electoral process in action by running their own election in a dedicated polling place. Students vote, count the votes, and declare the election result, while taking on the roles of voters, ballot box guards, scrutineers and polling officials!

The NEEC also offers online education programs and resources for primary, secondary and adult groups.. One of these programs links learning about voting and the preferential system to Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive objectives that describes learning in six levels in the order of: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Students are challenged for example to: examine why sometimes the person with the most first preference votes is not elected in a federal election; debate different systems of voting (full preferential, partial preferential, first past the post); make a flowchart to show how the preferences flowed in a real election at your school, and construct arguments for and against full preferential voting. Understanding the preferential system also requires critical thinking and knowledge about who the candidates are and their policies and standpoints on critical issues.

Voters also need to know what to do when they get to the ballot box, so the AEC provides images of the ballot papers and simple instructions about how to make sure that your ballot paper is completed properly for the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Get Voting resource provides a step by step guide to running a mock election in a school as a hands-on way of developing understanding of the preferential systems.  As the introduction to the Democracy Rules resource says: ‘Teachers play a critical part in shaping young people’s understanding of their role as citizens and future electors. In fact, the work of the teaching profession helps to guide the democratic development of our nation’.

There is no lack of resources available to teachers to ensure that young people can build their knowledge and skills. But since Civics and Citizenship is not often a designated subject in school timetables, the challenge is for schools to ensure that they do plan multiple opportunities for students to experience and learn about voting and elections.

 Understanding the preferential system matters, so that students can be active, participatory citizens, capable of thinking about their choices and registering their vote for the candidates that they most and least prefer. But this learning should also be part of whole school approaches to Civics and Citizenship education that empower young people to have voice and agency. They should not be citizens-in-waiting, but have opportunities to be citizens now. This involves learning about and participating in critical debates about issues they are concerned about. 

Results from triple j’s What’s Up In Your World survey, conducted in May, 2022, that surveyed more than 1,600 18-29 year olds, show that young Australians are highly politically engaged, but extremely disappointed with leadership from the major parties. Only two percent believe that politicians are working in the best interests of young Australians.

Ariadne Vromen (May 30, The Conversation)  pointed out that Prime Minister Albanese wants to change the way we do politics in Australia. With a new government there is an opportunity to re-engage citizens in policy-making and politics; and this includes young people in schools.   She reported the OECD’s view that ‘when citizens are more engaged in politics and involved in decision-making, the more likely it is that good policies will result that can address critical, difficult issues. Citizens will be more invested in the outcome when they see their views are heard and acted upon’.

It’s clearly a good time for a renewed focus on civics and citizenship in schools.

Libby Tudball is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, at Monash University. Her research and publications focus on teacher education and the humanities and social sciences, with a particular focus on civics and citizenship education.

We all love a good story (and you can join in)

Arts-based approach to teaching literacy, Literacy teaching, Reading, Reading aloud, teaching literacy, teaching reading, , , , ,

The role of story for humankind is a given: we live storied lives. Reading rich literature is always pleasurable (and sometimes challenging). But it is much more than a source of entertainment. Quality literary texts enable us to nurture our imaginations, understand who we are and what our place might be in the world, value different perspectives, develop empathy and compassion, question, laugh, cry, wonder and help us to heal. As Olivia Fialho (2019) writes:

the purpose of literature lies in the experience itself, in its power to prompt us to connect deeply and conscientiously with our emotions, deepening our senses of who we are, what we are in this world for, and how we are in a relationship with others.

Olivia Fialho

Opportunities to share our literary reading with others helps us grow together as a rich and diverse community and enables the envisioning of alternative possibilities and different ways of knowing, doing, being and becoming. Every child and young person is entitled to easy access to a rich diversity of literature in their homes and classrooms. 

Australia is privileged to have many talented authors, artists and illustrators, designers and publishers who create high quality literature for children and young people from birth to adulthood.  Rich literature should be a foundational resource in the teaching of talking, listening, reading, writing and viewing. Unfortunately, too much emphasis on overly contrived texts in literacy learning can fail to engage and nurture early learners’ imaginations and creativities and sustain their love of reading. If we want to nurture empathy in our learners so they can understand different perspectives and explore alternative ways of doing, being and becoming, we must ensure rich literature is at the heart of every home, library and classroom.

Thirteen peak Australian professional associations, organisations, foundations and councils representing thousands of English and literacy educators and community groups have partnered to develop an online, free Literature Symposium under the umbrella of We all love a good story. Sessions include short keynotes, conversations with authors, artists, educators and young learners and panel discussions to explore the power and pleasure of literature from many perspectives. Each highlights how and why rich and imaginative literature should be a central in both homes and classrooms.

Program dates, details and a once-only registration link can be found here.

The first of these presentations launches on Wednesday 8 June and the series will conclude in mid-November. After each presentation is released, it will be available on YouTube for use by teachers, librarians, school leaders, early years educators, parents, carers, and all interested in ensuring there is rich literature in every home, preschool, classroom and library.

The organisations are: 

Australia Reads                                                    

Children’s Book Council Australia

Australian Children’s Laureate Foundation     

Indigenous Literacy Foundation 

Australian Council of TESOL Associations        

Primary English Teaching Association Australia                     

Australian Literacy Educators’ Association                                     

Australian School Libraries Association            

Reading Australia      

Australian Theatre for Young People                

Sydney Theatre Company

Foundation for Learning and Literacy               

WestWords

Robyn Ewing AM is formerly a primary teacher and currently Professor Emerita and Co- Director, Creativity in Research, Engaging the Arts, Transforming Education, Health and Wellbeing  (CREATE) Centre, University of Sydney. A former past president of ALEA and PETAA, she is Co-Convenor of the Foundation of Learning and Literacy.

Jo Padgham is currently co-convenor of the Foundation for Learning and Literacy, a former primary principal and system leader in the public education system and past vice president of the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association. Jo has been awarded ALEA Life Membership, ALEA Principal Fellow, Fellow of the Australian College of Educational Leaders, ACEL Award for Collaborative Practice and the ACT Women’s Honour Roll.

How the brilliant democracy sausage reveals the secrets of school funding

P&C Associations, parent associations, School funding, , ,

WATCH: There’s a snag in school funding.

New Education Minister Jason Clare is like any other student on their first day of school – there is a lot to learn about the problems facing the education system in Australia. But, in this case, Mr Clare can discover the answers by revisiting one of the highlights of the recent election campaign – the democracy sausage. 

Federal election day 2022 has arguably marked a new beginning for Australian federal politics and policy, and the road forward will be tough. Education is one of the portfolios that was policy-lite during the campaign, from all sides of politics. But it is through equitable education policy, that many of the key challenges facing Australians can be addressed. 

A key to understanding this is the humble democracy sausage.

The distribution and availability of a sausage on election day represents a country with the fourth most segregated schooling system and a major housing crisis connected to gentrification.

Approximately $8billion dollars in non-government or private funding flows through the school system each year. Those who receive the most are the very advantaged school and the very disadvantaged schools, probably due to targeted philanthropic donations to both. External income raising for a school is time intensive and in most public schools done by Parent and Citizen organisations. Basically, the quality of resources available to teachers is connected to parents’ inclination and willingness to donate funds, time and skills to a school. The least willing are middle income earners in gentrifying suburbs. 

The democracy sausage and volunteering

Volunteer organisations barbequing sausages on bread has become a familiar sight on election days in Australia. It has a hashtags and a hashflag (automatic emoji of a sausage on bread). Facebook community pages advertise where to find a sausage on election morning when choosing where to vote. There is even a dedicated website to tracking the availability of sausages and other stalls around the country. 

DemocracySausage.org 2022 Federal Election data suggested that 43.4% of Australian voters had access to a sausage on election day based on Australian Electoral Commission poll booth attendance statistics from the 2019 election. DemocracySausage.org’s data correlated with publicly available data about schools shows that only 46.9% of school-based polling booths provided access to a sausage.

This incorporates data from © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Electoral Commission) 2022, DemocracySausage.org and ACARA School Profile 2021

Information on other treats provided by school-based fundraising, like whether a polling booth had a cake stall, halal or vegetarian options, or coffee, mapped against a school’s socio-economic school ranking (Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage – ICSEA), reveals something Mr Clare should pay attention to. 

The provision of options outside the sausage shows there is not much difference between different school communities. However, when the percentage of booths that provided variety is mapped against the ICSEA value of the school, things look different.

This incorporates data from © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Electoral Commission) 2022, DemocracySausage.org and ACARA School Profile 2021

Schools within the middle socio-economic range are less likely to have a P&C provide a variety of options for voters. So, what does this data mean for Education policy?

The ability to volunteer is related to demographics

That more than 50% of schools are unable able to field fundraising barbeques is a reflection of a nationwide trend in all community volunteering over the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, a two-thirds drop in people willing to volunteer was reported, with work commitments and family care being the reason for less people being willing to volunteer. 

Variety in election barbeques is directly related to the number of volunteers an organization can field. The more options, the more people are needed. This reality explains why school P&Cs in the medium-to-high ICSEA ranked areas are less likely to provide variety in their election day stalls. 

Schools in middle income areas are most likely to be schools in areas which are gentrifying. This means that the homeowners in the area are most likely to be double-income earners juggling high mortgages or rents alongside expensive child-care. They are, therefore, less likely to donate time or money to public schools. The families in these areas who earn higher incomes, and therefore have less financial and family pressure, are also more likely to bypass the local public school and enroll their children in schools in the higher ICSEA ranked areas. Those are the P&Cs they will donate to. This means that it is harder for P&Cs in the medium-ranked 50% of schools to attract donations. They are also less likely to attract the large philanthropic donations of low and high ranked schools. 

Australia’s market-driven approach to school funding means that schools are more reliant on an active Parent and Citizens Association. Parents and teachers are exhausted in at least 50% of schools. Teachers are exhausted because they are under-resourced. Parents have volunteer fatigue. The downward spiral in school-based volunteering will severely affect schools going forward. School funding, and subsequently quality, is affected by housing affordability and participation in the community. 

The market-based approach to schooling is not working in Australia and it has to change. So next time you buy a democracy sausage, remember your access to this little symbol of Australian civic duty is determined by enormous inequity in Australian schooling policy.

Dr Naomi Barnes is a network analyst and theorist interested in how ideas influence education policy. She is a senior lecturer in literacy teaching and has worked for Education Queensland as a senior writer and has worked as a secondary English, history and geography teacher in government, Catholic and independent schools.

The map in our header comes from https://democracysausage.org/federal_election_2022

Everything you never knew you wanted to know about school funding

Gonski, private schools in Australia, School funding, , , , , ,

Book review: Waiting For Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools, by Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor

With the 2022 federal election now in the rear-view mirror and a new Labor government taking office, discussions about the Education portfolio have already begun. As journalists and media commentators noted, education did not figure largely in the election campaign, notwithstanding the understandable public interest in this area. One of the enduring topics of education debates –  and the key theme of Waiting For Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools, by Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor – is school funding.

It is easy, and common, to view the school funding debate as a partisan issue. Inequities in school funding are often presumed to be an extension of conservative government policies going back to the Howard government. Waiting for Gonski shows how inaccurate this perception is, and how far governments of any political persuasion have to go before true reform is achieved. 

The first part of the book is an analysis of the context that gave rise to the Review of Funding for Schooling in 2011, commonly known as the Gonski Report. Greenwell and Bonnor devote their first chapter to an overview of the policy arguments and reforms that consumed much of the 20th century, leading to the Gillard government establishing the review. This history is written in a compelling, detailed and interesting way, and contains many eye-opening revelations. For example, the parallels between the 1973 Karmel report and the 2011 Gonski version are somewhat demoralizing for those who feel that school funding reform should be attainable in our lifetimes. Secondly, the integral role that Catholic church authorities have played in the structure of funding distributions that continue to the present day is, I think, a piece of 20th century history that is very little known. Julia Gillard’s establishment of the first Gonski review is thus situated as part of a longer narrative that is as much a part of Australia’s cultural legacy as are questions around national holidays, or whether or not Australia should become a republic.

Several subsequent chapters detail the findings of the 2011 Gonski review, its reception by governments, lobby groups, and the public, and the immediate rush to build in exceptions when interest groups (particularly independent and catholic school bodies) saw they would “lose money”. The extent to which federal Labor governments are equally responsible for the inequitable state of school funding is made more and more apparent in the first half of the book. Greenwell and Bonnor sought far and wide for comments and recollections from many of the major players in this process, including politicians of both colours, commentators, lobbyists, and members of the review panel itself. This certainly shows in the rich detail and description of this section.

Rather than representing a true champion of equity and fairness, the Gonski report is painted as one built on flawed assumptions, burdened with legacies that were not properly unpacked, and marred by a multitude of compromises, designed to appease the loudest proponents of public funding for private and catholic schools. The second Gonski review, officially titled, Through Growth to Achievement: Report of The Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, is given less emphasis perhaps because this second review was less about equity and funding and more about teacher quality and instructional reform – a book-length subject in itself.

Waiting for Gonski is most certainly an intriguing and entertaining read (a considerable achievement, given its fairly dry subject matter), and is highly relevant for those of us working towards educational improvements of any description in Australia. My main criticism of the book is that it tends to drag a little in the middle third. While the details of machinations between political leaders and catholic and independent school lobbyists are certainly interesting, the arguments in these middle chapters are generally repetitions from earlier chapters, with reiterated examples of specific funding inequities between schools. 

A second concern I have is the uncritical focus on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to support claims of widespread student academic failure. While it’s true that PISA shows long-term average declines in achievement amongst Australian school students, these assessments are not the only standardized tests of student achievement in this country. The National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is briefly touched upon in Chapter 8, but not emphasized. The reality is that while average student achievement on NAPLAN literacy and numeracy tests have not increased – after their initial boost between 2008 and 2009 – nor have students’ results suffered large scale declines. Figure 1 demonstrates this graphically, showing the mean scores for all cohorts who have completed four NAPLAN assessments (up until 2019).

Figure 1. Mean NAPLAN reading achievement for six cohorts in all Australian states and territories. Calendar years indicate Year 3. (Data sourced from the National Assessment Program: Results website) 

It seems somewhat disingenuous to focus so wholeheartedly on one standardized assessment regime at the expense of another to support claims that schools and students are ‘failing’. For example, in Chapter 3 the authors argue that,

 “…the second unlevel playing field [i.e. the uneven power of Australian schools to attract high performing students] is a major cause of negative peer effects and, therefore, the decline in the educational outcomes of young Australians witnessed over the course of the 21st century” (p.93) 

In my view, claims such as these are over-reach, not least because arguments of a decline in educational outcomes rely solely on PISA results. Furthermore, the notion that the scale and influence of peer effects are established facts is also not necessarily supported by the research literature. Other claims made about student achievement growth are similarly unsupported by longitudinal research. In this latter case, not because claims overinterpret existing research, rather because there is very little truly longitudinal research in Australia on patterns of basic skills development – despite the fact that NAPLAN is a tool capable of tracking achievement over time. 

Using hyperbole to reinforce a point is not a crime, of course, however the endless repetition of similar claims in the public sphere in Australia tends to reify ideas that are not always supported by empirical evidence. While these may simply be stylistic criticisms, they also throw into sharp relief the research gaps in the Australian context that could do with addressing from several angles (not just reports produced by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], which are liberally cited throughout).

I hope that the overabundance of detail, and the somewhat repetitive nature of the examples in this middle section of the book, don’t deter readers from the final chapter: Leveling the playing field. To the credit of Greenwell and Bonnor, rather than outline all the problems leaving readers with a sense of despair, the final chapter spells out several compelling policy options for future reform. While structures of education funding in Australia may seem intractable, the suggestions give concrete and seemingly-achievable options which would work presuming all players are equally interested in educational equity. The authors also tackle the issue of religious schools with sensitivity and candour. It is true that some parents want their children to attend religious schools. How policy can ensure that these schools don’t move further and further along the path of excluding the poorest and most disadvantaged – arguably those whom churches have the greatest mission to help – should be fully considered, without commentators tying themselves in knots over the fact that a proportion of Australia’s citizens have religious convictions.

Questions around school funding, school choice and educational outcomes are perennial topics in public debate in Australia. However, claims about funding reform should be underpinned by a good understanding of how the system actually works, and why it is like this in the first place. This is the great achievement of Greenwell and Bonnor in Waiting for Gonski. The way schools obtain government funding are obscure, to say the least, and there is a perception that private schools are not funded to the same extent as public schools. Waiting for Gonski clearly shows how wrong this idea is. As the book so powerfully argues, what Australia’s school funding system essentially does is allow children from already economically advantaged families to have access to additional educational resources via the school fee contributions these families are able to make. The book is a call to action to all of us to advocate for a rethink of the system.

Education is at the heart of public policy in many nations, not least in Australia. Waiting for Gonski is as much a cautionary tale for other nations as it is a comprehensive and insightful evaluation of what’s gone wrong in Australia, and how we might go about fixing it. 

Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools by Tom Greenwell & Chris Bonnor. 367pp. UNSW Press. RRP $39.99

Sally Larsen is a Lecturer in Learning, Teaching and Inclusive Education at the University of New England. Her research is in the area of reading and maths development across the primary and early secondary school years in Australia, including investigating patterns of growth in NAPLAN assessment data. She is interested in educational measurement and quantitative methods in social and educational research. You can find her on Twitter @SallyLars_27

Lazy, crazy mathematicians and other myths we need to bust

mathematics, Maths curriculum, STEM education, , , ,

Creating opportunities for students to develop ‘healthy’ images of mathematicians and mathematics is paramount. The images of mathematics or mathematicians that students hold have a huge impact on their learning outcomes. For example, the perceived negative image of mathematicians by students could result in unhappiness in mathematics classrooms or a loathing of mathematics (Hatisaru & Murphy, 2019). 

Why is it important? Maths matters because it impacts life quality, income and national development.

Since 2009, I have aimed to understand school students’ images of mathematics and mathematicians (Hatisaru, 2020). What views do they have about mathematicians and their work? What are the connections between students’ views about mathematicians and their attitudes towards mathematics? What views do they have about the needs for mathematics? How do they perceive their mathematics classroom?

Students’ images of mathematicians and mathematics are developed throughout years and impacted by several different factors. From the investigations of myself and others it is clear that experiences in mathematics classrooms contribute to students’ perceptions. Other factors include representations in media and popular culture, and family or society related factors. 

For example, Wilson and Latterell (2001) found that in movies, literature, comics, and music mathematicians are portrayed as insane,  socially inept. Darragh (2018) too.

Ucar et al. (2010) examined the image of mathematicians held by a group of 19 elementary school students and observed that the students described mathematicians as ‘unsocial, lonely, angry, quiet who always work with numbers’. (p. 131).

Picker and Berry (2000) introduce a cycle of the perpetuation of stereotypical images of mathematics and mathematicians (for example ‘mathematicians are weird’ or ‘mathematicians are asocial people’). According to them, this cycle begins with exposition of different cultural and societal stereotypes via TV, cartoons, books, other media, also via peers and adults through negative repeating phrases. 

Among students there is a dominant male perception of mathematicians (e.g., Aguilar et al. 2016;  Picker & Berry 2000). In Picker and Berry’s study, which included participants from 5 different countries, students sometimes associated negative or aggressive behaviours to mathematicians such as being large authority figures, crazy men, or having some special power.

Darragh (2018) examined 59 young adult fiction books to identify the depiction of school mathematics in them. Mathematics was more commonly portrayedto be “nightmarish; inherently difficult; something to be avoided: …” 

“Mathematics teachers in particular bore the brunt of negative portrayals and were depicted as ridiculous, sinister, insane, and even dispensable; in short, they were positioned as villains.”

Students then meet teachers who lack awareness of stereotypes of mathematics and mathematicians, and sometimes they themselves hold certain stereotypes. Through teachers and the media, students are affected by certain attitudes such as ‘they must be quick at mathematics to be good at it’, or ‘mathematicians are a privileged group who have the special ability to do mathematics’. These messages and others, according to Picker and Berry, contribute to the formulation of the perceptions of mathematics and mathematicians in students’ minds. Jo Boaler, too, indicates that in her writings on the (important) role of holding a Growth Mindset in mathematics.

Over time, Picker and Berry continue, students develop attitudes and belief systems towards mathematics and mathematicians that may lead to generalisations or stereotypes. The cycle completes with the exchanging of students’ views with others. As a part of society, each student now contributes to others’ images of mathematicians and mathematics.

Given that some students hold negative images of mathematicians and mathematics, and their images are impacted by school-related factors, it is important that school educators are aware of student images. 

For about four years now, in my interactions with schoolteachers in several different conferences, workshops, and professional learning events, I have noticed that some teachers use the phrase ‘Since mathematicians are lazy …’ often when they introduce some ‘short-cut’ methods or procedures to their students. Once, for example, the context was solving the problem: 27 + 28 + 13 = ? The teacher’s language practice was: ‘Since mathematicians are lazy, they add 27 to 13 first, which is 40, and then add 28 which gives 68’. 

In fact, the mathematical behaviour behind this solution is ‘efficiency’ (Cirillon & Eisenmann, 2011) rather than ‘laziness’. The mentioned ‘lazy mathematicians’ know that, according to the associative property, 27 + 28 + 13 = (27 + 28) + 13 = (27 + 13) + 28. In this case, adding 27 to 13 first is a lot easier than adding 27 to 28 as 7 and 3 makes 10. 

Using this property for solving a problem such as 138 + 44 + 12 + 6 = ? makes the calculations even easier: adding 138 to 12 gives 150, and adding 44 to 6 gives 50. The sum of 150 and 50 is 200. Once again, the reason for mathematicians’ desire to use these approaches is not ‘laziness’ but their desire for ‘efficiency’. They also see mathematics as a connected body of knowledge. That is, they use the same property in solving algebra problems (e.g., 17x + 21y + 43x + 19y = (17x + 43x) + (21y + 19y) = 60x + 40y).

In the short term, ‘mathematicians are lazy’ types of messages may appeal to students, but in the long term, they may contribute to the development of (negative) stereotypical images of mathematicians in students. It may prevent students from ‘seeing’ the reasons behind mathematical procedures, and the beauty and connectedness in mathematical ideas. Furthermore, they are morally wrong: Are mathematicians really ‘lazy’? Have we met all mathematicians? Have we measured their relevant attitudes? Were they found to be ‘lazy’ based on those measurements?

While we cannot control messages in the media or popular culture, as also Cirillon and Eisenmann tell us, we could carry and share best messages with our students. My suggestion to schoolteachers, and all other actors in mathematics education including parents and family members, is that we use alternative phrases. Why not use: ‘Since mathematicians are creative …’, ‘Since mathematicians seek to find alternative approaches …’, or ‘Since mathematicians desire to use more efficient ways …’.

These messages are not only more representative and morally more appropriate, but they also have more value in developing images of mathematicians and mathematics in students that are closer to the reality. Moreover, they could contribute to establishing ‘healthier’ relationships between students and mathematicians and mathematics.

Vesife Hatisaru MEdB, MEdM, PhD, MEdD is a lecturer in Mathematics Education (Secondary) in the School of Education, Edith Cowan University Joondalup, and an adjunct senior reseacher in the School of Education, University of Tasmania. She had a long career as a secondary school mathematics teacher before entering academia.

Be brave: how to Indigenise the curriculum

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Acknowledgement: I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which I live and work and pay my respect to Elders past and present. Western Sydney University acknowledges the Darug, Eora, Dharawal (also referred to as Tharawal) and Wiradjuri peoples and thanks them for their support of its work in their lands. I also acknowledge the important feedback provided by Associate Professor Corrinne Sullivan on this article.

This year’s theme for National Reconciliation Week is Be Brave. Make Change. Coincidentally being brave has motivated me throughout my tertiary teaching career as I have sought to tackle colonial hegemony in the curriculum. It is also my ‘go to’ phrase when approached by fellow educators who wish to decolonise or ‘Indigenise’ their curriculum but don’t know how or where to start. It is our job as educators to challenge the engrained power structures and ways of knowing that have privileged many of us, to varying extents, for so long. This is, understandably, a daunting prospect.

I have a hunch that the anxiety felt by educators (particularly non-Indigenous educators like myself) is partly rooted in a misconception that decolonising and Indigenising are the same. Yin Paradies (2020), Aboriginal-Asian-Anglo Australian of the Wakaya people and anarchist radical scholar explains that ‘Decoloniality/decolonisation is about deep awareness of colonial pasts, cognisance of present colonial conditions and striving for “a future … free from the colonial past”’ (quoting Ming Dong Gu 2020 ). Colonisation functions via multiple and intersecting power structures such as racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, capitalism and other ‘isms’. While a manifold task, the acknowledgment of the ongoing impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and re-centring of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experiences, perspectives and knowledges is urgent in the decolonial project.

In the Australian educational context, decolonising curriculum requires us to unsettle, challenge, and eventually dismantle the power structures of colonial systems that shape the way educational institutions create and share knowledge. Indigenising curriculum is the embedding of Indigenous histories, voices, experiences, knowledges and ways of learning into our teaching. These are ‘too often unknown, hidden and silenced’ (Bodkin-Andrews et al. 2018) due to ongoing settler colonialism.

At this point, I’d like to acknowledge the elephant in the room and ask: can we ever truly decolonise our curriculums if the very institutions in which we teach and learn are continued manifestations of settler-coloniality? While the answer is obvious, I’m hopeful that we can Indigenise our curriculums as a step toward a decolonial future.

Tips to Indigenise curriculum

Tip 1: Reflect and critique

I prompt you to start by looking at the way your subject/discipline has perpetuated colonial power structures in the past, and continues to do so in the present. I then ask you to consider how you perpetuate and privilege colonial/Western structures of knowledge and power in your teaching. You can begin by asking yourself the following:

·         What issues or topics are covered in my teaching/subject?

·         What theoretical and conceptual lenses are they approached from?

·         Who’s voices, scholarship and perspectives are included – who’s are not?

·         What are the gaps and silences in the teaching content?

·         What assumptions are being presented?

·         What are students asked to do?

·         What are teaching staff asked to do?

For those of us who teach into the arts, humanities and social sciences, these questions may be answered quite easily. For those who teach maths or physical sciences, the relevance may be unclear. Perhaps a ‘way in’ for teachers of STEM subjects, is to focus not so much on the learning content, but on the methods of teaching/learning. These can be Indigenised (and decolonised) too.

Tip 2: Survey your curriculum

My next tip is to systematically work through all aspects of the curriculum to identify specific places where colonial content, methods, and theoretical and conceptual lenses can be challenged and alternative knowledges and forms of knowledge making can be embedded. This means looking at lesson plans, reading lists, supplementary teaching material, assessment tasks, guest speakers, case studies, and field work/excursions. Conducting a whole-scale survey ensures a ‘check-box’ or tokenising approach is avoided: instead of inserting one week or one topic area on ‘Indigenous issues’, Indigenous teaching/learning practices, issues, ways of knowing and understanding are embedded throughout.

Tip 3: Make changes

The next step I suggest is perhaps the most anxiety provoking. This is to make the curriculum changes. Remember that this is an ongoing process so changes can (and should) be made over time. It is imperative to ensure the changes you implement are informed, meaningful and respectful, so take your time, do your research, seek feedback, and invest in continued interrogation and critique of your teaching practise.

Changes you make may include the embedding of experiential learning activities, centring of student voice (e.g. yarning), and incorporation of Indigenous perspectives and issues. Many educators are rightfully anxious about ‘speaking for’ Indigenous and other groups who they do not identify/belong. If you have the networks and resources, guest speakers and teaching collaborators are a great way of overcoming that barrier. If this is not possible, there is a plethora of multimedia and web material developed and presented by Indigenous Australians, and readings and other resources that are written by Indigenous Australians and/or prioritise Indigenous voices. I also often use contemporary Indigenous art as a ‘way in’ for my students to examine contemporary issues. Checking-in with Indigenous colleagues or your networks for feedback and advice is also important.

Reconciliation Australia’s Narragunnawali has been developed to ‘support schools and early learning services in Australia to develop environments that foster a high level of knowledge and pride in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and contributions’. The implementation of Reconciliation Action Plans, Professional Learning for educators and curriculum resources are the key foundations of the program and another great place to start.

A means of transformational learning

In my experience, Indigenising curriculum has facilitated profound transformational learning experiences for students, providing them with knowledge and understanding that they have taken into their future careers and everyday lives. I have taught nearly 3,000 university students in the past four years who have entered careers in urban planning, criminology and policing, social work and community welfare, heritage and tourism, law, psychology and teaching. For many, my subject was the first time they had been presented with these ideas and perspectives. As one student noted:

…this was the first time since either primary, high-school or even other social sciences units within University that I learned that cultural imperialism is not a past event, but rather a perpetual mega-structure that sustains the social structure of ‘whiteness’; a structure used to marginalise, perpetuate disparities of ascriptive differences, and sustain the privileges of those who prosper under the ‘white’ identity.

Some of the students have subsequently acted upon this new knowledge and understanding. A student I taught in 2021 now volunteers in two Aboriginal organisations and has stated:

Without [this] syllabus I would not have found my vocation as an active and unwavering advocate for Indigenous rights, narratives, cultural differences and political and/or representative voices.

Another student (criminology/law) will now embed the learning in their future career:

The information around different groups and especially marginalised groups will help me accommodate and implement practices more suitable and sensitive to these people. An example of this could be through knowledge of culturally sensitive meetings and dispute resolution services that cater to many different languages and cultural practices. A member of the Indigenous community may opt for a more culturally appropriate option if given the chance due to the differences between Indigenous and white Australian practices.

Final thoughts

The most recent Australian Reconciliation Barometer report indicated that 89% of non-Indigenous respondents and 93% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents support formal truth-telling processes in relation to Australia’s shared history. It also found that 83% of non-Indigenous respondents and 91% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents agree that it is important for Indigenous histories and cultures to be taught in schools – as a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Australians’ are therefore on board with a shift in our education sector that privileges alternatives histories, perspectives and ways of knowing. One of the barriers seems to be that educators lack the knowledge and training on how to achieve this and are therefore anxious about making a start. While my tips are not hard and fast ‘rules’ (I am still learning too), I hope they have provided some inspiration and momentum. I leave you with the words of Yin Paradies (2020), ‘the best way to make amends for colonial pasts is for everyone to mend and make decolonial futures in the present’.

Alanna Kamp is Lecturer in Geography and Urban Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University, Research Fellow in the Young and Resilient Research Centre, and member of the Challenging Racism Project and Diversity and Human Rights Research Centre. Alanna has taught at WSU for 14 years and since 2020 has been the unit coordinator of People, Place and Social Difference, a 1st year core unit with over 1200 students annually. She won the inaugural Western Sydney University Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor Academic Award for Excellence in Indigenous Teaching in 2021.

What we really mean when we talk about teacher quality

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Anyone who’s being paying attention of late can tell you that we’re in the midst of a critical teacher shortage, and that attracting people into the profession is a problem, as well as retaining them into and beyond mid-career. Some people, like education workforce researcher Barbara Preston, have been predicting the current situation for years now, even while Governments of all persuasions have simultaneously castigated universities for preparing too many teachers, but that’s another story for another day.

Teaching has an image problem, and while this isn’t entirely the fault of the media, my research suggests that the print media both creates and amplifies discourses about teachers that aren’t helpful to the profession or to society more broadly. 

For research about to be published in an upcoming book, I created and analysed a corpus of over 65,000 articles published in the twelve national and capital city daily newspapers from 1996 to 2020. The Australian Teacher Corpus (ATC) comprises every article from these sources including three or more references to ‘teacher/s’. 65,604 articles – or about 63 every week for 25 years – felt like a lot to me, and one of the first things I did after creating the ATC was to look into how many articles would be included in a similar corpus about other occupations. As Figure 1 highlights, there were more articles published about teachers in the Australian print media over this timeframe than about any of the other occupational groups I investigated, and over twice as many than for nurses, the occupation often thought to be commensurate with teaching in terms of professional education, working conditions and status. 

There’s a density of media coverage about teachers that exceeds that of other professions, possibly because of the inherent ‘human interest’ factor in stories about schools and teachers: we pretty much all went to school, have children and young people dear to us who go to school, and/or are involved in school as parents. School is something the vast majority of us understand, for better or worse, and that’s reflected in the amount of media coverage of teachers and their work. 

In my analysis of the ATC, the issue of quality, and specifically teacher quality emerged as significant. Quality is in the top 1.5% of words in the ATC by frequency – there are over 200,000 different ‘word types’ in the corpus, and quality comes in at around rank 300. About 200 of those top 300 words are grammatical words like the, at, in, of, etc, so that means quality really is quite prominent in the ATC. In one part of the analysis I identified discourses shaped around the quality of teachers, teaching and education as three key concerns within the corpus and set about tracing these over the 25 year period, looking at how prominent each was over time. 

Figure 2 shows the growth of these discourses of quality particularly over the years from 2007 to 2013, from the Rudd-Gillard Education Revolution of the 2007 electionto the Australian Education Act of 2013. At almost every point from the mid-2000s to 2020, teacher quality was the most prominent of these three discourses. 

There’s a problem with the problem of teacher quality. Over this same period of time, it’s been used to justify tighter controls on who comes into the teaching profession (almost like it’s too hard to criticise the quality of current teachers, but prospective teachers are fair game); to pivot discussions about education from difficult questions of equity and funding to easier questions of performance and quality (Mockler, 2014); and to justify ever-increasing mandates and performative accountability measures for the teaching profession and initial teacher education (Barnes & Cross, 2020). 

None of these are great, but the biggest problem of all with teacher quality is that it links poor performance (on international tests such as PISA, literacy and numeracy outcomes, or whatever the flavour of the day is) to teachers themselves rather than to their practices. When it happens so consistently over such a long period of time, the discursive effect is to make teachers look like a bad bunch, a club we could forgive the ‘best and brightest’ for not wanting to become a member of. 

When we talk persistently in the public space about needing to improve teacher quality there is an implied, consistently negative judgement about the intentions and actions of teachers themselves at work. A negative judgement about teachers’ hearts and minds, rendered even more problematic than it might otherwise be because teachers are largely in it for the love of the job rather than for the enormous salaries they don’t earn or the 55+ working hours per week they do put in (Stacey, et al., 2020). 

Discussions of improving teaching quality, on the other hand, assume that teaching is practised rather than embodied (Gore, Ladwig & King, 2004), and that good teachers can and will work over the course of their careers to  continue to develop and shape their practice to the benefit of their students. It’s the difference between denigrating the profession as a pack of ‘dud teachers’ and recognising that teaching is a complex, difficult endeavour, a craft that takes time and intellectual effort and commitment to master. 

The teacher shortage will not be solved by attempting to shore up teacher quality, and any media outlet or political party that thinks it will is barking up the wrong tree. 

In just the last week, we’ve once again had bipartisan agreement that teacher quality is an election issue, with solutions proffered on both sides of politics and widely reported in the media as evidence of the ongoing crisis of teacher quality. If, to quote the Shadow Minister for Education Tanya Plibersek last week, “having an acting education minister who calls public teachers ‘duds’ doesn’t help keep highly experienced, highly competent people in the classroom”, neither does banging on about how teacher quality is an enormous problem in need of a fix. 

What might get us out of this current squeeze is a real commitment to addressing teacher burnout and demoralisation (Santoro, 2018), to improving teachers’ working conditions and to extending the kind of respect to them that understands that teaching is hard, that teaching is complex, and that the quest for teaching quality is one that extends over the course of a career. Now there are election promises I could get behind. 

Dr Nicole Mockler is an associate professor of Education at the University of Sydney. Her research interests are in education policy and politics, professional learning and curriculum and pedagogy, and she also continues to work with teachers and schools in these areas. Her new book Constructing Teacher Identities will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) in June this year.

How to fix education: cut tests, defund private schools

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In the final part in our series of what the next government should do to save Australian education, Jill Blackmore, Amanda Keddie and Katrina MacDonald ask: What is the problem of schooling in Australia and how can we fix it?

Education has been politicised over the last three decades, yet it has not been a key feature of the current election campaign. To be sure, we have heard public statements from Federal Education Minister (acting) Stuart Robert about ‘dud’ teachers in our public education system as well as his approval of increasing student demand for private sector schooling. Amid both parties’ support for parental choice in education and concerns about Australia’s under-performance on standardised international and national tests such as PISA and NAPLAN, the focus in this election campaign has largely been on how teacher quality might be improved through attracting and retaining better teachers. While quality teaching is important, this focus misrecognises the ‘problems’ of Australian education in a number of ways.

First, the yardstick of a successful education cannot be measured by student performance on standardised tests. These are highly narrow indicators of school success but continue to be put forth as evidence that our teachers and schools are effective/ineffective. For decades, education policy and practice has mandated the multiple purposes of education (academic and social). It is more important than ever before as we witness the social and economic costs of rising global and local conflict and the continued degradation of our environment that schools develop students’ critical, social and relational capacities as future active citizens to change a world on the brink of destruction. Although, it is promising to see the inclusion of sexual consent education in the Australian Curriculum as well as efforts to better recognise and integrate Indigenous perspectives and learning, it seems that politicians remain focused on narrow academic outcomes as the indicator of school success. Decades of research has told us that the testing culture in schools continues to degrade quality teaching and learning. Standardised testing of literacy, numeracy and science is not the problem. The problem is the way it has been weaponised to blame schools, teachers and students within a marketized and competitive education systems where under-performance on these tests is equated with bad teachers and schools (Smyth, 2011). How might this be different? Some have suggested that testing a randomised sample of schools to represent the diversity of schools in Australia might be a good way of gauging school performance on these markers.  Many countries reject standardised assessment, and have adopted this practice, such as New Zealand did in 2018.

Second, the emphasis on teacher quality in current political arguments tends to focus on teachers as individuals rather than as part of a feminised and (now) marketised profession that continues to be maligned publicly including by our elected representatives in government (Barnes, 2021). Raising the status of the teaching profession is a laudable goal amongst Labor’s education policy promises. Teachers are underpaid relative to other professions. They are overworked, confronted with increasing violence from students and parents, and they are operating in marketized systems where they must prioritise improvements on the measures that count (i.e., narrow academic outputs) lest their school becomes labelled as failing. In this pressurised environment, teachers are exhausted by increasingly untenable amounts of administration, accountability checklists and external demands (Heffernan, Bright, Kim, Longmuir, & Magyar, 2022). Teaching is therefore no longer attractive to many and even those who become teachers are disenchanted and exit because of the conditions of work and lack of professional autonomy. Both major parties have a commitment to attract high academic performing students into the profession through various programs and incentives. These initiatives may raise the status of teaching to some extent for some schools but they will do little to change the devaluing of the profession as feminised or the marketized system that has de-professionalised teachers.

Third, improving Initial Teacher Education is another policy focus for both major parties. Again, as it is situated within a competitive marketized system, Initial Teacher Education has been damaged as a consequence of JobReady policies. Federal funding to Education faculties has declined at the same time as they are expected to teach more students. This has led to a degrading of teacher education courses. Competitive market and education policy pressures have led to a burgeoning of shorter courses provided by multiple providers and intensified measures of accountability. Teaching is a complex profession that will not be mastered through short university courses. Teacher quality that leads to creating active, informed and critical citizens who can change the world for the better requires degree courses that foster deep, critical and broad learning about this complex job.

Fourth, both parties are silent on the gross funding inequality within and between our education system. In 2020, the total gross income available (including state and federal recurrent funding, equity loadings, fees and charges) per student was $16,020 for public schools, $17,057 for Catholic schools and $22,081 for independent schools (Australian Curriculum and Assessment and Reporting Authority). The reality is that public schools are chronically underfunded according to the minimum Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) (less than 1% of public schools will receive the minimum funding by 2023). In addition, the Catholic Education Office and ‘Independent’ schools have fewer accountability requirements. These schools are, of course, selective in who they accept (on the basis of ability to pay but also other factors such as religion and gender) which segregates children and fortifies inequality. Public schools, on the other hand, are left to support the most disadvantaged students with less resources. 

Fifth, both major parties support the right for parents to shop around and select the ‘best’ school for their children. What politicians don’t divulge is how this practice has been highly damaging for school equality. School choice policies over decades have encouraged competition, stratification and residualisation within and between education sectors assisted by the public availability of standardised testing data (MySchool) where schools are ranked on their performance. This has increased inequality between schools, students, communities, families and teachers – the ‘good’ schools get more students and more funds while ’bad’ schools get less students and less funds. What politicians don’t say is how school choice privileges already privileged parents and students who have the capacity and resources to select schools (including moving house to be close to ‘better’ schools). 

State governments are ostensibly responsible for public schooling in Australia, however federal governments can do a lot to improve education. If political parties are serious in this endeavour, the following (at least) needs to occur:

  • Remove standardised testing of narrow academic performance of all schools to testing of a random representative sample of schools
  • Improve the work conditions of teachers and school principals through greater pay, less intensive workloads, greater access to specialist support, greater time for professional development and planning, and greater security of employment (e.g. reducing casualisation)
  • Stop blaming teachers especially those in the public sector for problems that the system and society have created (schools cannot cure the ills of neoliberal, capitalist societies)
  • Implement the Gonski funding recommendations fully and immediately as they intended. This means equitable and fair redistribution of resources on the basis of need. This will mean recalibrating federal and state funding models to reduce or remove funding to ‘independent’ schools that do not need this funding.

From left to right: Jill Blackmore AM Ph D FASSA is Alfred Deakin Professor in Education, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Australia and Vice-President  of the Australian Association of University Professors.  She researches from a feminist perspective education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; leadership, and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; and teachers’ and academics’ work. Recent projects have focused on school autonomy reform and international students’ mobility, identity, belonging and connectedness. Her latest publication is Disrupting Leadership in the Entrepreneurial University: Disengagement and Diversity (2022, Bloomsbury). Amanda Keddie is a Professor of Education at Deakin University. Her research examines the processes, practices and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in education settings. Amanda’s qualitative research has been based within the Australian, English and American schooling contexts. Follow her on @amandamkeddie. Katrina MacDonald is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Deakin University’s Strategic Research Centre in Education, Research for Educational Impact (REDI). Her research and teaching interests are in educational leadership, social justice, spatiality, and the sociology of education through a practice lens (feminist, Bourdieu, practice architectures). Katrina’s qualitative research has focused on principal’s social justice understandings and practices, and the impact of school reform policies on the provision of just public schooling. She tweets at @drfeersumenjin