‘Crisis’ point: New three-pronged plan to fix Australia’s schools

Teachers are quitting in droves and student scores are declining by up to 22 per cent. Now authorities are planning the biggest overhaul of our education system in years.

Australia’s entire education system is in need of massive reform, with the federal government warning the nation is in a teaching “crisis” and launching the biggest overhaul of the sector in a decade.

Education Minister Jason Clare is waging a triple attack on systemic problems in tertiary and secondary education as well as a revolutionary drive to focus on early learning, saying now is Australia’s “last chance” to get it right.

The Minister told The Advertiser the number of teachers deserting the job was “scary” and has tasked Sydney University chief and education supremo Mark Scott with supercharging the way teaching is taught to attract more people into the profession.

Over the past 10 years teaching enrolments have plummeted by 16 per cent and up to half desert the profession in the first five years on the job yet demand for teachers is at record highs and shortages abound.

A study by Monash University which surveyed almost 5,500 teachers found a staggering 70 per cent believed that the public did not respect them.

Jason Clare with students from Telopea Park School in Canberra. NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The Minister also said Australia’s messy education system — in which states and territories oversee primary and secondary schools with different rules and then feed kids into a national tertiary system — needed “serious reform”.

The national agreement that is supposed to harmonise the system was effectively useless, he said.

In the decade between 2009 and 2018 overall funding for government schools rose from $26.4 billion to $39.2 billion and yet over the same period performance dropped by 22 per cent in both mathematical and scientific literacy, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), while reading performance was unchanged.

Mr Clare also declared he would deliver more access to preschool, which would revolutionise the lives of disadvantaged and indigenous kids.

“The first five years are everything,” he said.

Jason Clare with students from Telopea Park School in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

In a frank interview with The Advertiser, Mr Clare said he was stunned when he learned the burnout rate of teachers.

“One of the things that’s blown my mind is that 30 to 50 per cent of teachers quit in the first five years,” he said.

“Now some teachers are telling their kids don’t become a teacher when we need them more than ever.

“That’s scary. That tells you we’ve got a crisis and we’ve got to turn it around.”

Mr Clare also said the current arrangements between states and territories and the commonwealth was a mess, with a national agreement that essentially does nothing.

“That agreement doesn’t have any targets for what we should be trying to achieve or any practical framework to get there,” he said.

The Minister said a critical focus would be ensuring kids from poor and working-class backgrounds, kids from the bush and indigenous kids all had the same access to education that those from wealthier families did.

“If you’re a child from a poor background you’re less likely to go to preschool, your less likely to finish high school and you’re less likely to go to uni,” he said.

“That’s the awful truth.”

Mr Clare said of his three-pronged overhaul: “All three together constitute the biggest review and reform of education in more than a decade …

“This is our last best chance to get this right. If we don’t act now it will be too late.”

Originally published as ‘Crisis’ point: New three-pronged plan to fix Australia’s schools