Schools need to focus less on China's languages and more on its successes

AUSTRALIA's school education system is in a state of malaise. Unless the Chinese approach to schooling is adopted, Australia will languish at best as a mid-table performer. While the Gillard government's Asian white paper promises much, it is significantly flawed. This is largely because it looks backwards and not forwards.

The sharpest indication of this is the declared emphasis on children learning an Asian language. It would seem any language, as long as it is broadly Asian, will do: South Asia, North Asia, Central Asia: take your pick.

When the government mentions Asia it really means China. Even so, the Asian white paper stresses a deeper engagement with Asia through linking every school in the country with an Asian counterpart. Asian languages are a core part of the curriculum. Indeed Education Minister Peter Garrett said in August last year that he would consider including Mandarin in the national curriculum.

Australia is starting way back in terms of Asian language study. Already just 5.8 per cent of Year 12 students in 2012 were studying an Asian language. Only 300 students from a non-Chinese background studied Chinese.

Fewer Year 12 students studied Indonesian in 2009 than in 1972. The knock-on effect was palpable. Indonesian language enrolments at tertiary level dropped 37 per cent from 2001 to 2010, while there was a 40 per cent growth in undergraduate numbers.

We should not be placing emphasis on teaching Asian languages but instead strive to ensure that we become as good as the Chinese are at teaching English. Those who defend the Asian language push argue that to not teach an Asian language is somehow akin to xenophobic tendencies. Kevin Rudd, the Mandarin speaker, is the shining example of bilingual proficiency. Julia Gillard's special adviser on Asia, Ken Henry, in August last year railed against the lethargy Australian education manifested in regard to Asian languages.

"There is also a view that we don't need to do much ourselves in language because everybody in the region is going to speak English. That's just nonsense." Ahem, it isn't, actually.

While I was in China last year, I was astounded to see the emphasis on learning English. The message was plain: Chinese students need to learn English as this is the international language of the internet and business. And Chinese students are keen to try out their English, as I discovered last year when teaching Chinese students English in Beijing.

By 2040, "the expectation is that Asia will have 3 billion middle class people", according to Henry.

That China is the market of the future has in some ways prompted James Packer to enter the Asian education debate. Speaking at an Asia Society lunch in Sydney earlier this month, Packer stressed the need to increase Asian exposure.

"Our federal and state governments must actively work with the university sector to make Australia even more attractive to Chinese students and their parents," he said. "The government can and must do more in China and Asia through our trade missions and Australia to help market our country and lifestyle to potential students."

What Packer is advocating makes sense. It is not about teaching Asian languages as such, but about recognising the potential market here for Asian and Chinese engagement, specifically in business. How this is achieved is through education and by increasing the number of Asian students studying in Australia, not being taught in Mandarin, but English.

At a tertiary level, this is occurring, but offshore. Monash University has opened a campus at Suzhou in Jiangsu province. The Monash graduate school, only the third foreign university in China, will accommodate 1500 PhD students from China receiving Australian degrees.

Another way of enhancing links with China and Asia is Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's initiative for a new Colombo Plan. Scholarships would be offered for Australian students to travel, undertake tuition and meet accommodation expenses. The plan has been embraced by the business community.

Tony Shepherd, president of the Business Council of Australia described the Colombo Plan as a "great idea".

"If the business community has a complaint about university education, it's that some graduates don't emerge work-ready enough. This addresses that issue," he says.

Still, while the university sector may be responding to business, school education is largely failing to look to Asia.

To be fair to the government, the national curriculum does place a long overdue emphasis on Asia. This is well beyond an Asian language emphasis but more strategically, including Asian literature, historical awareness, geography and political understanding.

For too long, the Australian curriculum, delivered at state level, has been denying Asia existed, let alone studying it. You can, for example, in Victoria know a lot about American slavery, Renaissance Italy and even French Revolutionary awareness, but zero about Asia. The cultural hegemony and cultural arrogance this embodies is often erroneously touted as a way to preserve Western values. This is moribund xenophobic twaddle.

Even so, Victoria has at last begun to show some Asian consciousness. Last September, former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu announced during a visit to Nanjing that the state would begin to investigate the delivery of a new course - aimed at students with no background in Chinese - to study Chinese. But instead of a focus on solely speaking the language, there would be emphasis on cultural elements.

This course would see 1500 Year 9 students, over five years, going for an "immersion experience" in schools in Victoria's Chinese sister province, Jiangsu. The value-added aspects are not just greater exposure to Chinese but consolidation of basic skills in maths, science - even English - because of the way they are taught.

Asian students, and particularly Chinese, are world leaders on international tests. This is not necessarily due to the intense pressure from tiger mothers to force their children to succeed. China has a 2000-year history of examinations. The gateway to imperial service was through passing exams.

There is also a profound cultural sense that success comes not through chance or which class you are born into, but from hard work. This resonates throughout Chinese society; even in folk tales the heroes succeed and prosper through diligence and application.

Arguably the greatest factor is the quality of teaching. Your pathway from primary to secondary and then tertiary education is through exams and the all-important gaokao or "equivalent" Year 12 exam for university entrance.

How different this is to Australia, where socio-economic factors are often blamed for low achievement, not to mention school facilities and funding streams. In China, outstanding teaching and highly motivated students are the factors for success. A street vendor cooking kebabs may have academically highly successful children.

Were Australia to adopt the Chinese system of unwavering observance of achievement and quality, significant improvement would be possible. It beggars belief that the Prime Minister declares that under the National Plan for School Improvement, by 2025 Australia will be in the top five world standard education systems. This will only occur if there is a root and branch reformation of school instruction. The international figures unambiguously articulate why the Chinese approach works.

The latest Program for International Student Assessment, in December 2010, showed the maths proficiency of Year 9 students in Shanghai, the top education district in the world, was 3.5 years ahead of their Australian counterparts. Similar gaps are apparent in science and literacy.

That prompted Andreas Schleicher, deputy director of the OECD's education division, to say, "Maybe it's time to change some of our stereotypes. What you see today in the school system in Shanghai is what you are going to see in the labour market tomorrow."

The success of Chinese education is not linked to funding and buildings, but to the quality of teaching and student motivation. If this is a Chinese stereotype, then it is surely a desirable one.

A report by the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University, released last month, says the focus on education should be about quality and not resources. The report, commissioned by the Independent Schools Council of Australia, notes:

"A substantial body of research shows categorically that the correlation between education spending and achieved qualitative outcomes is weak. A reasonable level of funding is unquestionably the bedrock for good educational performance, but more money does not equal better performance."

It is unimaginable that China would have a Gonski-like report, because the country has an entirely different focus. This is on first-class teachers who are dedicated, committed, thorough, accountable and disciplined. They can teach in modest circumstances and still lead the world.

I intend to return to China and learn from teachers who are utterly professional, forensically concerned with detail and accuracy and see it as a moral and ethical responsibility to educate for excellence.

Australia can argue about standards, curriculum and funding. This will not deliver international outcomes that even approximate to China's success. What has to change is the way we educate. The Chinese know, and we have much to learn and copy.

Christopher Bantick is a Melbourne writer and senior literature teacher at a Melbourne boys' grammar school.