Productivity push will rest on reforms to education

Fixing the flawed curriculum is the final piece of the education puzzle for federal Education Minister Jason Clare.

Education Minister Jason Clare has three more years to bed down his fundamental reforms to education. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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Education reforms will be the building blocks for Anthony Albanese’s productivity pledge, at taxpayers’ expense.

From childcare to schools, through to vocational training and universities, Australia’s “can do better” education system is a handbrake on employment, innovation and economic growth.

Jason Clare’s reappointment as Education Minister gives him three more years to build upon the foundations of his first-term reforms. The plain-speaking minister from Sydney’s western suburbs – the first in his family to finish year 10 – knows the power of education to pull people out of poverty. His priority will be to improve the quality of teaching degrees.

Universities must meet his end-of-year deadline to produce back-to-basics course content that ensures teaching graduates can walk into a classroom with the skills they need to ensure children succeed at school. Unless Clare can choke off the supply of poorly trained teachers, the rest of his reforms will fail.

Having strongarmed the states and territories into signing 10-year agreements for school funding, Clare must ensure they improve the quality of teaching and student wellbeing. The stone in his shoe will be the stubbornly high levels of truancy and high school dropouts – a legacy of pandemic lockdowns.

Another pay rise could be on the cards for childcare workers.

The missing link in Clare’s chain of reforms is the national curriculum, deplored by primary school principals as “impossible to teach’’. The chorus of complaints from teachers, principals and even Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson warrants an immediate review.

Universities, which must feel like they just spent three years in the naughty corner, can look forward to more positive attention. The Australian Tertiary Education Commission, to be set up by the end of the year, will focus on stabilising funding, and force co-operation between the squabbling sectors of university and vocational education.

Andrew Giles, who remains as Skills and Training Minister, will need to ensure more apprentices finish their trade training if Australia has any hope of plugging skills shortages.

The political shemozzle of foreign student intakes should be sorted out swiftly with the appointment of Clare’s new wingman, Julian Hill, as Assistant Minister for International Education, Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs.

The ministers must find sensible long-term solutions for a sector still suffering whiplash from last year’s policy U-turns.

Despite delivering a 10 per cent pay rise to childcare workers last year – courtesy of taxpayers – the Albanese government will be under pressure to hand over even higher wages. The Fair Work Commission made a provisional ruling last month that wages for 150,000 early childhood educators should rise by up to 28.4 per cent, to bring gender parity to the female-dominated workforce.

New Early Childhood Education Minister Jess Walsh is now poacher-turned-gamekeeper. During her long tenure as Victorian secretary of the United Voice union, Walsh led childcare staff strikes in support of wage rises 12 years ago. Now the former union heavyweight is in a powerful position to deliver on her own demands.