Shades of Hawke as Garrett rides out on his schools crusade

GIVEN schools are back after the Christmas break, it's only natural that Peter Garrett, the federal Minister for School Education, believes it's timely to remind one and all that Kevin Rudd's education revolution, now rebadged as Julia Gillard's national crusade, has been a resounding success.

In a recent media release Garrett also boasts that initiatives planned for 2013-14, such as a new funding model arising from the Gonski report and the commonwealth-inspired national plan for school improvement, will guarantee more effective schools and higher standards.

According to the Minister for School Education: "Students starting their education journey this year will be part of an education system that will be in the top five in the world by the time they leave Year 12 by 2025."

Like Bob Hawke's promise that "by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty", Garrett's grandiose statement is empty political rhetoric. One only needs to look at the government's record to date and the flaws in proposed initiatives to realise Australian students will never be among the top five. In the 2007 election campaign, Rudd, the then opposition leader, promised a digital revolution by providing a computer for every Year 9 to 12 student across Australia. Just over five years later it's clear how wasteful and ineffective the program has been.

In addition to schools having to cope with inadequate internet connections, lack of teacher professional development and suitable software, there is also the reality that computers have been superseded by new technologies such as tablets and e-readers. The much vaunted $16.5 billion Building the Education Revolution, in addition to covering much-needed playgrounds and sporting fields with bricks and cement, has proven a prime example of financial mismanagement and waste.

The Gillard-inspired national curriculum, beginning with history, English, mathematics and science, and compulsory for all Australian schools, represents another example of a statist and centralised model of public policy that will do little to raise standards.

Take the example of teaching reading in the early years. Notwithstanding Garrett's statement that the more effective phonics and phonemic awareness method is included in the national English curriculum, the reality proves otherwise.

While the document nods in the direction of phonics, where children are taught the relationship between letters and groups of letters and sounds, the preferred approach, as expected given those responsible for the English curriculum are responsible for the current malaise, privileges a whole-language approach.

Whole language, where learning to read is supposedly as natural as learning to talk and children are told to look and guess and work out the meaning of words by their context, has been the prevailing orthodoxy in Australian schools for many years.

As a result, Australian Year 4 students are ranked 27th in the world in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, outperformed by other English-speaking nations such as England, the US and New Zealand.

The government is running out of time to finalise a new funding regime as the current socioeconomic status model expires at the end of the year. Garrett's media release promises that the ALP government is committed to "delivering a fairer funding system" and, as a result, will "deliver better results for our students".

On both counts the minister is wrong. The government-endorsed Gonski report discriminates against non-government schools by arguing that their level of funding will be adjusted to take account of a school's "anticipated capacity to pay".

Even though many state schools charge fees and serve wealthy communities, they will not face the same impost.

Parents who send their children to Catholic and independent schools, in addition to paying taxes for a system they do not use, face the prospect of fees escalating as non-government schools will be denied the same minimum level of funding guaranteed to government schools.

The federal government neither owns any schools nor employs any teachers, and under the Constitution school education is a responsibility of the states. As a result of the ALP's national curriculum, national testing, national teaching standards and national teacher registration and certification, all roads lead to Canberra.

The proposed National Plan for School Improvement represents the culmination of this command-and-control model of public policy.

Implementation will be a condition of funding and, as a result, schools will be forced to dance to Canberra's tune.

Expect increased compliance costs, red tape, bureaucratic interference and schools and teachers being forced to comply to centrally mandated education fads resulting in less room for diversity and innovation.

Finland consistently performs near or at the top of the table in international tests and one of the reasons is that local control is preferred to centralised, top-down management.

Another example proving the benefits of autonomy can be seen in Australia's non-government schools.

Catholic and independent schools achieve world's best results because they have the freedom to manage themselves.

Gillard and Garrett promise that their national crusade in education will put Australian students among the top five nations in international tests but, as a result of adopting an inflexible, statist model, their promise, like Hawke's, will never be realised.

Kevin Donnelly is director of Education Standards Institute.