Education Minister Jason Clare must ensure new schools pact benefits nation
Despite billions of dollars in funding, Australia’s student outcomes remain stubbornly stagnant.
The latest NAPLAN results confirm the sobering truth that our school system continues to underdeliver despite this investment. The real test for education ministers is to turn well-intentioned policy into impact – and finally reverse decades of decline.
The national assessment that measures Australian students’ literacy and numeracy skills shows that around one-third of Australian children aren’t proficient.
Students from rural and regional areas, from Indigenous backgrounds, or from low-income households are more likely to fall below proficiency than to meet it. Around one-third of all disadvantaged students need additional support if they are to have any chance of meeting year-level expectations.
In recent years, some have pointed to a stabilisation in test scores as evidence of progress. In truth, we’ve merely paused a long-term decline.
While other countries saw steep learning losses during the pandemic, Australia’s results didn’t fall much – because there was little upward momentum to begin with.
So far this century, Australia has experienced one of the steepest declines in student achievement among OECD nations. The outcome of this is that the average Australian 15-year-old is more than a year in achievement behind equivalent students from the early 2000s.
Perhaps the most damning evidence came earlier this year, when national Civics and Citizenship testing showed that just one in four year 10 students could demonstrate a basic understanding of our democratic institutions and civic responsibilities.
Yet parts of the education establishment try to dress up the recent stagnation as success. The deeper danger lies not only in the flat results, but in the institutional complacency that has enabled them.
Education unions have long questioned the legitimacy of NAPLAN itself, rather than engage with what the results reveal. Bureaucracies have prioritised red tape over effective classroom tools for teachers. And governments continue to make big promises without consequence when student outcomes don’t improve.
The result has been a school system more focused on preserving the vested interests of adults than meeting students’ needs – and a generation of learners have paid the price.
This is all a far cry from the lofty goals promised by Gonski-era education reformers.
Gonski reform was built on a powerful promise: that needs-based funding would lift outcomes for all students, especially the most disadvantaged. It was noble in intent, but the legacy is now clear: locking in a high-spend, low-impact education system.
Since 2008, per-student public funding has effectively doubled to more than $21,000, with total public expenditure on schools reaching around $90bn this year. These additional dollars have largely been absorbed by rising teacher salaries, more staff to support shrinking class sizes, and a ballooning expansion of disability adjustments that is NDIS-like in scale.
The question now is whether this next phase of funding will finally be matched by reform that lifts outcomes, rather than just costs.
Having been re-elected and reappointed to the portfolio, and secured new 10-year funding agreements with the states, federal Education Minister Jason Clare now has both the mandate and the moment to lead real change in Australian education.
If this new Better and Fairer Schools Agreement chapter is to break from the Gonski past, it will need to be judged by more than dollars spent or agreements signed, and instead by Clare’s ability to convert national agreements into system-wide improvement that tackles long-term deficits.
First, funding must be tied to measurable results and accountability.
The BFSA for the first time introduces new national and state targets for student achievement – with ministers committing to lift the percentage of students who are proficient in literacy and numeracy in NAPLAN and halving the gap for disadvantaged groups by 2031.
But these must become more than aspirational statements, and have accountability to match. Performance must be tracked transparently, publicly reported, and directly linked to further funding decisions.
Second, the government must finish the job on teacher training and teaching practice. In Clare’s first term, he did well initiating new standards for university teacher trainers – too many of whom aren’t provided with what they need to be ready for the classroom.
This has meant additional practical experience during training as well as reforms that, in theory, require new teachers learn about effective teaching practices and the science of learning that underpins great teaching – with non-compliant providers effectively disqualified.
But there is currently little to no confidence that the desperately needed quality assurance will actually take effect.
The hard part is not just defining new standards but enforcing them. If it’s anything like similar reform effort in the UK, it will require being tough and placing unforgiving penalties on universities that don’t lift their game.
Third, Clare must make education central to the government’s wider productivity agenda.
Education is too often treated as a social policy issue: important, but separate from the engines of economic growth. But that’s a mistake, as Australia’s long-term productivity challenge cannot be solved without serious improvements in school performance.
Literacy and numeracy are the foundations of workforce participation, higher learning and human capital accumulation. Education economist Eric Hanushek estimates that returning Australian student achievement to the level back in the 2000s would add around 6 per cent to the lifetime earnings of each student. This will require not only bringing education bureaucrats together, but also business leaders and industry, to better position education reform efforts toward economic objectives.
NAPLAN results are a critical barometer of the performance and direction of the education system – and one that must be watched in the years ahead to measure the effect of new policy directions.
Australia cannot afford another decade of high-spend stagnation.
Glenn Fahey is program director in education policy at the Centre for Independent Studies.
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