Competition 'to lift school standards'

IMPROVEMENT in the school system will be driven from the bottom.

IMPROVEMENT in the school system will be driven from the bottom, with a panel member of the Gonski review of school funding arguing the nation's top-performing schools need stiffer competition, not more money to lift their game.

In a speech today, Ken Boston, former NSW Education Department head and head of curriculum in Britain, says the decline in Australia's performance internationally is a result of a fall in the number of students from affluent backgrounds scoring at the highest levels.

"Schools at the upper end of the scale don't need more public funding to improve: they need stiff competition from beneath, and that is precisely what Gonski will give them," his speech says.

"If we can raise achievement in the poorest-performing schools, we will raise achievement in all of them. A rising tide raises all boats."

Dr Boston will deliver his speech to a symposium on digital education held by the Australian Publishers Association in Melbourne today.

Speaking to The Australian ahead of his presentation, Dr Boston said the Gonski model, endorsed by the federal government on Monday, directed the bulk of the new funding to disadvantaged schools, both government and non-government schools that are doing the "heavy lifting" for students who need more assistance.

"If you find that Mount Druitt and Rooty Hill are getting kids into Sydney University, and into the most desirable courses at increasing numbers, that will concentrate minds wonderfully.

"Once schools with middle- and lower-range performance start increasing, the other schools, government and non-government, will start to think about where they're heading. I think increased performance in currently poor-performing schools would give the incentive to drive up and that that will produce the result we want."

Dr Boston said the vision of the last radical reform of school funding under the Whitlam government to fund schools based on their need had become dominated by the need to "achieve a balance between allocations to the three sectors, based essentially on political rather than educational imperatives".

"The great hope was that schools would finally be funded according to need but very quickly it became about market share," he said. "What we have now is a situation in which every school sector is looking for what they can get and looking to see no one else gets any more, rather than sitting back and asking what does the nation need and what do our schools need."

He identified a need for an independent external audit process of school performance and a wider range of tools for teachers.

"Gonski is the last best hope for Australian education," Dr Boston says in the speech. "It sees education as a public good for all, not a positional good for the few."