We risk losing education race, Julia Gillard warns

JULIA Gillard says Australia is at risk of losing "the education race" with its Asian competitors.

JULIA Gillard says Australia is at risk of losing "the education race" with its Asian competitors, warning it could become "the runt of the litter" unless there was sustained reform.

After more than four years of education reforms and increased spending under Labor, the Prime Minister yesterday produced OECD figures indicating that Australian education standards were falling relative to those of Asian nations like Korea, Singapore, Japan and the Chinese city of Shanghai.

Ms Gillard told The Australian that Labor could demonstrate its reform program was "making a difference" and delivering real improvements, but the figures showed other nations were also lifting school standards, with the average Australian 15-year-old student as much as six months behind an equivalent student in leading nations.

"There are disturbing signs that countries in our region are getting in front of us and we need to address that," Ms Gillard said.

"We don't seem to be extending as far as we can the kids at the top and we have a pool of kids who don't meet the standards, and that's highly correlated with disadvantage kids from poorer households."

The Prime Minister pledged a fresh effort to lift education standards but did not commit to new funding proposals in the face of the figures, produced by the Program for International Student Assessment, which compares educational standards among 15-year-olds across the OECD.

With the government attempting to curb funding to deliver a promised budget surplus, Ms Gillard said that in the search for reform she would consolidate existing education strategies and focus on the upcoming Gonski review into schools funding.

On taking office in 2007, Labor promised an "education revolution" including extra spending, transparency on school results, the recruitment of more teachers with better pay and the provision of extra funding for vocational education and training.

Since then, education spending has risen as a share of GDP, partly on the back of economic stimulus infrastructure spending under the Building the Education Revolution school building program. The government's budget estimates show education spending falling as a share of GDP over coming years as the BER spending declines.

However, it will remain close to 1.9 per cent of GDP, compared with 1.6 per cent under the Howard government.

Yesterday, as the latest round of NAPLAN testing in Australian schools revealed improvements in some areas, but continued to highlight poor results in disadvantaged areas, Ms Gillard said that with difficult political issues such as the carbon tax dealt with last year she would intensify her focus on education.

She said many Labor reforms were "living and breathing" in the nation's schools.

However, the new OECD figures for 2009 showed the region was in the midst of an education race as governments realised the key to future well-paid jobs and economic development lay in education.

"Four of the top five performing school systems in the world are in our region and they are getting better and better," the Prime Minister said.

"On average, kids at 15 in those nations are six months ahead of Australian kids at 15 and they are a year in front of the OECD mean.

"If we are talking about today's children tomorrow's workers I want them to be workers in a high-skill, high-wage economy where we are still leading the world.

"I don't want them to be workers in an economy where we are kind of the runt of the litter in our region and we've slipped behind the standards and the high-skill, high-wage jobs are elsewhere in our region."

Ms Gillard said her advice, based on the PISA figures and work by consultants the Nous Group, was that in 2000 Australian 15 year olds ranked equal second in the OECD on reading literacy. But in the 2009 PISA figures the ranking tumbled to ninth.

Australia's results in maths literacy had fallen from equal fifth in 2003 to 12th, while in science literacy Australian students placed 10th in 2009 down from 4th in 2006.

While standards had improved in real terms, other nations had overtaken Australia during this period in relative terms.

Attacking former prime minister John Howard for having failed to invest in education, she said the forthcoming discussion paper on Australia in the Asian Century was aimed at maximising the nation's opportunities from the rise of the Asian middle class for manufacturing, services, tourism and resources.

"We're positioning so our nation can seize those opportunities and come up winners," the Prime Minister said.

"But in order to do that we need to be very focused on this challenge that we win the education race."