By Noel Towell and Alex Crowe
Australia continues to spend less on public education than other developed countries and more on private schooling and tertiary study, according to the latest snapshot of global educational achievement by a major intergovernmental agency.
And while Australian women are outperforming their male counterparts in education, women’s employment and pay rates still lag that of their male peers, a trend consistent across the 40 countries surveyed in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s latest Education at a Glance report.
The report, released on Tuesday night by OECD secretary-general Mathias Cormann, a former Australian finance minister, also shows that Australia is not alone in facing an education workforce crisis, noting widespread teacher shortages.
Cormann said the problem was most acute in the most disadvantaged areas and that money alone would not be enough to attract and retain teachers.
“Comprehensive support and recognition of the unique challenges faced by teachers in disadvantaged areas are essential to attract and retain motivated educators,” Cormann says in the report’s introduction.
The OECD found the wages of Australian teachers tracked well against international counterparts – with about a 24 per cent increase between 2015 and 2023 for a mid-career high school teacher – but the difference in workload was stark. Early high school teachers have to teach 813 hours annually, compared with the OECD average of 706 hours a year, the report says.
It also found Australian government spending on private primary education was well above the international norm – about $13,700 annually per student in private schools compared to the OECD average of $11,800.
Annual government funding for public primary education in Australia was lagging by comparison, at $17,360 per student per year compared with the OECD average of $17,875.
University of Melbourne education expert Pasi Sahlberg said if current funding trends continued, Australia would see growing educational inequity.
Sahlberg, who has studied global education systems, said Australia is seen internationally as an “educational lone wolf”.
“Many of the OECD countries have taken a very different pathway and are aiming to seriously try to address the inequalities that have been increasing in education systems around the world,” he said.
“Australia is probably speaking more about equity and fairness, and the others are doing it.”
Just 53 per cent of young Australian women without a high school qualification are employed, the OECD found, compared with 74 per cent of their male peers, and while that gap narrowed between men and women with tertiary qualification – 87 per cent to 92 per cent – women in the group were earning 5 per cent less than men.
Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe said on Tuesday night that the underfunding of public schools meant students risked falling behind their international peers.
“This report makes it clear that Australia is a global outlier in its failure to fully fund public education. It’s a shocking position for our country to be in.”
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