The key findings of the latest OECD report Education Policy Outlook 2015 – that school funding in Australia is a mess and school performance is stagnant or declining – will be surprising to precisely no-one.
The report says that school funding in Australia “lacks transparency and coherence”, and it is difficult to determine how individual schools are funded. This is despite a “comprehensive and independent” review of school funding which led to the development of a new federal funding model embedded in a new education act, and detailed funding agreements with the states.
It is possible, at least, to now work out how schools are funded if you have sufficient time and interest – but it is not easy. And since the current federal government has decided it will not implement the funding model in full, things will change again from 2017.
A certain amount of complexity in school funding is the inevitable result of having two levels of government providing funding to three distinct school sectors in eight states and territories. It is difficult to envisage how it would be possible to make funding more uniform and consistent in any kind of incremental way that tries to appease all interests. A more coherent school funding system will come about only through a brave and radical change to a student-centred voucher system, in which all children are allocated an individual educational entitlement they can use at any school.
Fortunately, improving the literacy levels of Australian students does not depend on funding reform. It requires one thing only – for teachers to use proven, evidence-based reading instruction in the early years of school and to provide effective interventions for struggling readers. Regular readers of ideas@thecentre will be familiar with this argument.
However, one of the most striking things about the OECD report is how strongly Australia features. Australian governments have been very busy with educational policy reform over the last eight years or so, and their efforts have largely been focused on the right things, from the OECD’s perspective at least, things like increasing school autonomy, improving teacher quality and developing school leadership.
Whether or not Australia’s initiatives to achieve these goals will be effective are, as yet, not known and possibly never will be, since another key finding of the OECD report is that trillions of dollars have been spent internationally on education reform without rigorous evaluation to determine whether they have worked. Australia is no exception.
Dr Jennifer Buckingham is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.
Home > Commentary > Opinion > School funding mess no surprise
School funding mess no surprise
The report says that school funding in Australia “lacks transparency and coherence”, and it is difficult to determine how individual schools are funded. This is despite a “comprehensive and independent” review of school funding which led to the development of a new federal funding model embedded in a new education act, and detailed funding agreements with the states.
It is possible, at least, to now work out how schools are funded if you have sufficient time and interest – but it is not easy. And since the current federal government has decided it will not implement the funding model in full, things will change again from 2017.
A certain amount of complexity in school funding is the inevitable result of having two levels of government providing funding to three distinct school sectors in eight states and territories. It is difficult to envisage how it would be possible to make funding more uniform and consistent in any kind of incremental way that tries to appease all interests. A more coherent school funding system will come about only through a brave and radical change to a student-centred voucher system, in which all children are allocated an individual educational entitlement they can use at any school.
Fortunately, improving the literacy levels of Australian students does not depend on funding reform. It requires one thing only – for teachers to use proven, evidence-based reading instruction in the early years of school and to provide effective interventions for struggling readers. Regular readers of ideas@thecentre will be familiar with this argument.
However, one of the most striking things about the OECD report is how strongly Australia features. Australian governments have been very busy with educational policy reform over the last eight years or so, and their efforts have largely been focused on the right things, from the OECD’s perspective at least, things like increasing school autonomy, improving teacher quality and developing school leadership.
Whether or not Australia’s initiatives to achieve these goals will be effective are, as yet, not known and possibly never will be, since another key finding of the OECD report is that trillions of dollars have been spent internationally on education reform without rigorous evaluation to determine whether they have worked. Australia is no exception.
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