Schools left to drown in an ocean of red tape

READING Schools Education Minister Peter Garrett's defence of the Gonski-inspired school funding model and National Plan for School Improvement in yesterday's paper, I was reminded of US president Ronald Reagan's comment: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' "

Garrett and Julia Gillard expect that education authorities, schools and their communities should take on faith their promise that no school will be worse off under the new funding model.

They also believe the public should accept the Prime Minister's promise that Australia will be among the top five countries in international tests by 2025.

Nothing can be further from the truth. Based on its record, the government cannot be believed when it argues its approach to education will lift standards. Under its education revolution, from 2008 to last year only three out of eight sets of National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy results have shown any significant improvement.

Instead of recognising its approach has failed to lift standards, all we have is more of the same: increased micro-management and centralised control, empty rhetoric about empowering schools, promises about additional resources for disadvantaged students and recycling failed education fads.

Worse, by imposing additional layers of bureaucracy represented by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership and what Garrett describes as a "new performance entity", all the government is doing is duplicating what the states do and further drowning schools in red tape.

Garrett's admission that "any school sector that agrees to our new funding approach will have to implement these reforms" says it all. The promise that no school will be financially worse off and that "all Australian schools will be funded under the same approach" is also far from true. Under the Gonski-inspired model non-government schools are discriminated against.

Unlike government schools, non-government schools must contribute at least 10 per cent of funding towards the Schooling Resource Standard, the base level of funding, from local funds.

The fact the Labor government is committed to introducing a funding model for non-government schools based on a "new individual measure of parental capacity to contribute" also suggests that fears about means testing are justified.

When she was education minister, Gillard argued policy must be based on sound and reliable evidence. Garrett's statement yesterday that the government's plans for education are "evidence-based" makes the same point.

If only the government followed its own advice. Take the argument underpinning the Gonski funding model that socioeconomic background is the main cause of education disadvantage.

The evidence is clear: socioeconomic background is not the main reason some students do well and some underachieve.

According to research by Gary Marks, from the University of Melbourne, "socioeconomic background has only a moderate relationship with educational outcomes, not a deterministic relationship so often claimed".

Marks says: "Contrary to several of the prevailing orthodoxies in the sociology of education, economic background does not have a strong relationship with student performance. It accounts for less than 10 per cent of the variation in tertiary entry score and university participation."

A recent paper, The Impact of Schools on Young People's Transition to University, makes a similar point when it concludes, "For Tertiary Entry Rank, the average socioeconomic status of students at a school does not emerge as a significant factor, after controlling for individual characteristics including academic achievement from the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test."

If elected, the Coalition promises greater school autonomy, less regulation and red tape, increased parental and community engagement and a more rigorous, academically focused curriculum. One hopes it will also minimise the commonwealth's involvement in education on the basis that it does not employ any teachers or manage any schools.

Kevin Donnelly is director of Education Standards Institute.