Catholic schools counter ‘doom and gloom’ narrative on school inequity

‘Doom and gloom’ explanations for educational inequity in Australia, such as school funding, the share of students at non-government schools and segregation, lack evidence, a Catholic Schools NSW report says.

Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney.

“Doom and gloom” explanations for educational inequity in Australia such as school funding, the share of students at non-government schools and segregation, lack evidence and take policy attention away from “substantiated drivers of inequity”, a new report by Catholic Schools NSW says.

By global standards, Australia’s school system is actually “highly equitable”, the report Data, Not Drama states, attributing inequity largely to declining student attendance among disadvantaged cohorts.

CSNSW also noted Australia’s immigrant school students get higher PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores than non-immigrants before and after accounting for socio-economic status, and lead only a few countries where immigrants outscore non-immigrants.

As the NSW Council of Deans of Education and state Education Minister Prue Car meet on Friday for the Equity in Education: From Policy to Playground conference, CSNSW chief executive Dallas McInerney says “the ‘evidence-light’ narrative that the Australian school system is an equity wasteland” is a “disservice”.

Referring to segregation as a “red-herring”, the CSNSW report states that while Australia is above-average in segregation, based on OECD data, it is also above-average in equity – “demonstrating the lack of an association between the two in Australian schools”.

The report also says there is “no association” between equity and the share of students attending non-government schools, based on OCED PISA data.

“Australia (36 per cent) has more than double the share of non-government school students than the OECD average (16 per cent), yet is above-average in equity,” the report says.

“Conversely, New Zealand has fewer than 6 per cent of its students attending non-government schools, yet is below-average in equity.”

CSNSW also argued that OECD analysis stated that “for rich countries already investing heavily in education, there is little evidence that additional funding improves student performance”.

“While it is important that all Australian schools be funded to the level of their need, it is also important that advocates identify a sound basis for the proposition,” the report says.

CSNSW blamed inequity on poor student attendance rates.

“Critically, attendance remains lower for equity cohorts than for other students; for example, attendance was 88.6 per cent for all students, but only 82.1 per cent for low-SES students and 77.4 per cent for Indigenous students. Equity is … too important for its analysis to be reduced to a simplistic ‘doom-and-gloom’ narrative.”

Mr McInerney said while the narrative that the Australian school system was a “wasteland … might animate the staffrooms of some education faculties, an overly negative portrayal is a disservice to our teachers and students”.

Australian Secondary Principals Association chief executive Andy Mison said school funding and increasing segregation were the biggest issues facing education.

Referring to the same PISA data, he said the “gap in achievement between high-performing students and kids that need help is getting wider and wider.”