Fearless Conversations: School funding squeeze is hurting young Australians, educators say

SA’s educators needs to stop being so polite and start demanding proper funding for schools, experts say. But what can save unis struggling with the loss of international students?

Public education communities should be loud in demanding proper government funding, one of South Australia’s leading school principals says.

Reducing the load on teachers would lift educational levels, Glenunga International High School principal Wendy Johnson said.

Universities are also being squeezed for funding, putting at risk the breadth of what can be taught, Flinders University vice-chancellor Colin Stirling said.

Speaking at a forum in the Fearless Conversations series addressing major issues facing SA, the education leaders said funding must be addressed.

“We’re so polite about things that we don’t want to rush to the barricades and talk about how you fund schools,” Ms Johnson said.

“Instead, we do it in a very polite fashion.

“As a result, taxpayers or people generally, don’t necessarily get the message because they’re used to having messages pummelled into them by social media.

“It’s a challenge for schools, particularly government schools, where they can’t get the funding for a coat of paint on a hall but they look across the road to a private school. And they see they’re establishing a $40m sports complex with an indoor pool, squash courts, and so on.

“We don’t want to develop a rivalry between public and private schools – but we do want all of our schools to be properly funded.”

Fearless Conversations is a collaboration between Flinders University and The Advertiser and Sunday Mail, with the education forum being the 8th of 13 weekly events.

Study Adelaide chief executive Karyn Kent, Glenunga International High School principal Wendy Johnson and Flinders University vice-chancellor Colin Stirling. Picture: Keryn Stevens

Ms Johnson said Australian student results were often compared unfavourably to those in countries like Singapore and Finland.

Unlike Australia, teachers there were given time outside the classroom to prepare lessons and assist students individually.

She hoped the Covid-19 experience of families homeschooling would demonstrate the work of a teacher shepherding 150 students was incredibly demanding.

Professor Stirling said being “at loggerheads” with the federal government on funding was one of the biggest issues confronting the university sector.

Last year, the federal government told universities to take in more students but reduced the overall funding per student.

“As an institution, we’re facing significant financial pressures, mainly from the Commonwealth Government changes in the job-ready graduates funding model,” Prof Stirling said.

“Frankly, that means universities will have to do very much more with very much less in the future.

“And that means we have to look at every course we teach.

“Where they’re losing money, we have to ask whether we can continue that or not.”

Prof Stirling said the teaching of Italian was one area, among several others, under review, but “there’s been no decision made”.

Both Ms Johnson and Prof Stirling said it was an “urban myth” that schools and universities were churning out young people with inadequate skills.

Ms Johnson said there was a revolution in teaching from the sausage factory model of stuffing children full of content which they could only blurt out for an exam.

Young people now had an unprecedented volume of information, literally at their fingertips through their smartphones.

“The challenge for us really in schools is to teach students how to manage the information flow that they’re subjected to all the time,” she said.

As well as reading, writing and numeracy, young people were taught to think critically, be innovative and creative, “all the sorts of things that our employers tell us they want”.

Ms Johnson challenged claims Australian students were falling behind.

They were more skilled and articulate than school leavers of two or three decades ago, she said.

Professor Stirling also rejected claims university graduates end up without useful degrees.

Some professional degrees, such as medicine, were tailored to a specific job but many were about building transferable skills.

He recalled talking to two ministerial advisers who said unis were producing too many lawyers.

He told them many law graduates go into other fields, to which both advisers said: “Oh yes, I’ve got a law degree.”

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

Travel bans on international students are taking a toll at the human level as well as wiping $250m off South Australia’s biggest export earner.

While university leaders are considering whether plans for bringing back international students are too meagre under new Covid-19 conditions, students in SA look likely to spend a second end-of-year holiday stuck here.

Among them is Charlene Kwok, 17, from Hong Kong, who has not been able to see her family for nearly two years.

“I’ve always felt homesick but I keep myself busy by going out with friends, eating lots and doing school work,” the Glenunga International High School year 11 student said.

She frequently facetimes with her parents and on occasions such as a birthday they’ll each buy a cake, cut them at the same time and “blow out candles from my screen to theirs”.

Ms Kwok, who was drawn to Adelaide because it was culturally diverse, fascinating and affordable, said her homestay family was incredibly welcoming.

International student Charlene Kwok, 17, with her Homestay family, Georgia, 17 and Georgia’s mum Melinda Burr at Glenunga International High School. Charlene hasn’t seen her family in Hong Kong for almost two years. Picture: Matt Loxton.

Her homestay “sister”, Georgia, said it had been heaps of fun to have Charlene live with the family.

Mum Melinda Burr said they had hosted students aged 8 to 18 over the past six years.

It had been “so rewarding” for her children to discover first hand that “we are not all the same but we’re not that different either”.

The pipeline of new international students coming to SA remains frozen by Covid-19 restrictions.

SA was the first state to get approval from the federal government to bring back students but the plan has stalled because of outbreaks and the ongoing spread of Covid-19 in NSW and Victoria.

The plan was now so old it may need to be updated to help reboot the economy, Flinders University vice-chancellor Colin Stirling said.

It was not just education providers being hit.

“Local businesses, landlords and so forth, the cafes, the coffee shops, the restaurants, they’re all missing this vibrancy that we had in Adelaide just two years ago,” he said.

The plan was drawn up before vaccination rates were trigger points for easing restrictions and if the pilot program of 300 students went well, expectations had been that would only grow to 3000 or 4000 a year.

“We need to be returning more like 10,000,” Professor Stirling said.

Conditions were now very different, with incoming students and South Australians double-vaccinated.

“That’s a very different proposition,” he said.

The economic impact of Covid-19 on SA had been profound and there was an opportunity to rapidly restore the state’s biggest export earner.

Hong Kong international student Charlene Kwok with her homestay “sister” Georgia. Picture: Matt Loxton.

StudyAdelaide chief executive Karyn Kent said there was hope on the horizon.

“The value to the state has declined by about $250m between 2019 and 2020 to $1.85bn,” she said.

“We expect another decline this year but there are lots of signals about 2022 and Australia reopening again, which are very positive.”

Victoria and NSW are pushing ahead with their plans to bring back students but Ms Kent remained optimistic SA would still be “one of the first” to welcome students.

There were operational issues, such as accommodation infrastructure at Flight Training Adelaide, the student complex at Parafield where arrivals will be housed outside the medi-hotel system used by returning Australians.

As well as the financial benefits, Ms Kent highlighted how international students build lifelong links with Australia, which strengthen both trade and security of the nation.

Students are also willing to work in regional SA, taking up jobs such as allied health where it is hard to recruit domestic graduates.

On a recent trip to the Limestone Coast, every local practice wanted to hire a particular physiotherapy student.

UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS

Changes by the federal government to steer students toward university courses where Canberra thinks jobs will be future is having a limited effect at South Australia’s biggest public school.

“For most of our students, they’re intent on pursuing their passion,” Glenunga International High School principal Wendy Johnson said.

“So if they have a passion for a course, that’s now become more highly expensive, they’ll still pursue it.

“A lot of young people, don’t think about too far into the future. They’re actually thinking about what course do I want to get into, and I’ll worry about paying off the loan later.

“(However), for other families with significant financial difficulties, it is a really tough choice.”

The federal changes last year made courses such as teaching cheaper but others such as economics more expensive.

The reforms come as university admission processes are already changing with more options for students to be eligible.

Flinders University vice-chancellor Colin Stirling said only about half of students now enter directly from school, where the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank is used.

“The other half, come maybe two, three, or 20 years later,” he said.

“They come in with a different set of experiences which we can use as part of their entry into university.”

The university tracks the entry against success rates and has found no difference or “sometimes they are even more successful than our base ATAR group”.

Ms Johnson said at the school level, the move to a learner’s profile as an assessment of a student would be more useful than an ATAR or SA Certificate of Education alone.

“The important aspect of a learner profile is it enables future employers future universities to see the whole student not just the academic grades of a student,” she said.

“So they can actually see the 21st century skills, creativity, innovation, collaboration, and they can actually see how the student has developed the skills and to see evidence of the students developing those skills.

“So with enables a university or a future employer, to make a much better assessment of a student who’s going to be really successful in terms of undertaking a university course, which is, after all, education for life, we know that if students only do the academics, they end up not being as successful.”

MERGERS ON THE TABLE

A merger of South Australia’s universities will be on the agenda in the state election in March but Flinders University vice-chancellor Colin Stirling urges a cautious approach.

“It’s interesting that it keeps coming up in SA,” he said.

“To me that speaks to the recognition that universities are a big part of our economy.”

The Australian Labor Party has said, if elected, they will establish a university merger commission to advise on whether it would be beneficial.

The Liberal Party will leave it up to the universities.

Prof Stirling said combining the research effort of universities would push up global rankings, and “that’s potentially interesting and potentially worthwhile”.

However, it would not change what was being done.

“You simply put it together bundled in a different package, and it scores more highly, so nothing’s changed,” he said.

University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Peter Hoj.

UniSA vice-chancellor David Lloyd.

A merger would risk reducing competition and student choice.

“Students in this state choose the three different public universities for different reasons,” he said.

“We offer different things and a different culture and a different experience and different courses.”

The three unis “compete tooth and nail” for students, consistently updating and improving what they offer.

He noted a merger in Manchester had been successful, but it took billions of dollars and took years to effect.

UniSA vice-chancellor David Lloyd and Adelaide University vice-chancellor Peter Hoj have each said there is merit in the concept but they are not leading a push for it.