Addressing educational malaise

Desperate predicaments demand effective, carefully considered solutions. At a time when parts of the nation’s education system are barely fit for purpose, the opposition’s proposal to pay high-achieving students up to $12,000 a year to study for an education degree at university should not be dismissed summarily as an empty extravagance. If enacted in the event of a Labor win it would need to be nailed down to ensure the high-flying beneficiaries completed their education degrees and served as teachers for a specified number of years without springboarding to other courses and careers such as medicine, business or law.

The opposition proposes that the payments would go to 5000 students a year who receive an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of 80 or more to go into teaching. Only 3.3 per cent of the top 20 per cent of school-leavers go into teaching, compared with 30 per cent in 1992. That is part of the problem in the schooling system. Opposition education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek is correct when she says lifting teaching standards is critical to stopping the slide in Australia’s school results.

To maximise the benefits, such payments would need to be combined with other measures. Redressing the shortage of mathematics teachers, for example, is vital to lift the percentage of senior students studying advanced mathematics. This has fallen alarmingly, to fewer than 10 per cent nationally and to an abysmal 5.9 per cent in Queensland. About a quarter of maths teachers across the nation are not qualified to teach the subject. The fall-off in maths students will compound skill shortages in scientific, engineering and other key areas of the economy. It is also encouraging that Ms Plibersek agrees with Acting Education Minister Stuart Robert that would-be teachers should meet basic standards of literacy and numeracy before they begin teacher training degrees. Mr Robert revealed last week that one in 10 students completing those degrees failed the literacy and numeracy test that is required to graduate.

Ms Plibersek aims to double the number of high achievers studying teaching across the next decade, from 1800 a year to 3600. She also wants to add an additional 1500 places to the program that encourages professionals in other fields to retrain as teachers. Those goals are worthwhile. The third, uncosted, plank of Labor’s plan to improve teacher quality, however – improving pay through negotiations of the next school funding agreement with states and territories – could prove problematic. For years, teachers unions have been shortsighted in their opposition to merit pay, which needs to be tied to significant salary rises if the profession is to achieve the prestige it deserves.

Australia’s educational performance has suffered a long, steady decline across decades in which school funding has been increased by billions of dollars by both political sides. The trend shows extra money is not the answer. What is needed are carefully targeted initiatives that improve curriculum rigour, teacher quality and training.