Gonski 2.0 report: the assessment is they’ve flunked it

The 140-page document fails to fulfil the terms of reference the panel was given by the government. It doesn’t address how the extra $23.5 billion of taxpayer money being put into the school system over the next 10 years should be spent. It doesn’t examine the most effective teaching and learning strategies schools can ­implement to improve results.

It recommends yet another ­review of secondary schooling — a truly epic hospital pass. And it ­focuses excessively on “general capabilities” such as collaboration and creativity without providing evidence they can be taught or ­assessed in isolation from particular disciplines.

Nevertheless, the report does raise some worthwhile questions. One of its main recommendations is to move towards assessing students based on growth in learning rather than an age-based or year-based curricula. That is, teachers would be given a new online ­assessment tool to continuously measure student learning over time, with the aim of better tailoring teaching towards individual students. This idea is worth debating and an example of some of the potentially positive education initi­atives made possible by new technologies.

But the report simply recommends the new assessment scheme while providing very little evidence it would improve student outcomes to the extent claimed. Countries with similar approaches (such as New Zealand — which has lower international test scores than Australia) aren’t discussed.

And while more data is almost always a good thing, there are many questions the report doesn’t address. How would a year of “learning growth” be measured? How would this be different for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities? Wouldn’t this potentially lead to a big ­increase in teacher workload? And would the benefits outweigh the costs?

Much further research would need to be done before this new ­assessment system could be justified — let alone implemented.

The report also recommends giving principals more autonomy and less red tape. It identifies the problem of principals having too many administrative responsibilities, leaving them insufficient time to focus on teaching and learning. Reducing this administrative burden would be a positive move.

The report also focuses on lifting the quality and status of the teaching profession; recommending better matching supply from teacher education degrees with demands and eliminating out-of-field teaching (teachers not being qualified in the subject they are teaching). And that teacher shortages might be addressed by creating alternative, non-traditional pathways into the profession.

Relatively simple and inexpensive reforms like these have the potential to greatly improve teaching quality and student achievement. But given the huge injection of more billions of taxpayer dollars into the school system, we were entitled to expect a more concrete justification of why this money must be spent — and what it should be spent on. The Gonski 2.0 report flunks on both counts.

Blaise Joseph is a policy analyst and Jennifer Buckingham is a senior research fellow in the education program at The Centre for Independent Studies.