Money can't buy school quality

AUSTRALIA has a long way to go to achieve school reform.

TONY Abbott's attempt to neutralise education as an issue by committing the Coalition to Labor's funding reforms for four years was smart politics. At its core, the Gonski proposal was fair and sensible. The Opposition Leader also made the right policy call in promising to dismantle the powers of the federal education minister to interfere in the management of individual schools. That has been a major sticking point with several states and also raised concerns in the non-government school sector. But money alone will not remedy the most serious problems besetting Australian schools.

Yesterday's war of words after Mr Abbott's announcement that he and Kevin Rudd were now on a "unity ticket" on school funding was superficial. Education Minister Bill Shorten said the Coalition had put lipstick on its inadequate policy and opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said voters could support Labor or Liberal and "get precisely the same funding envelope regardless". What really matters, however, is what education authorities do with those envelopes - a point parents and employers appear to understand better than teachers' unions and some education faculties.

For more than a decade, this newspaper has detailed serious problems in classroom teaching from basic literacy and numeracy in the early years of school to the lack of specialist maths and science teachers in senior secondary schools and the ongoing disadvantage of indigenous and other students in remote areas. Unfortunately, a new generation of parents is finding that little has changed, even as the national curriculum is rolled out. Literature remains scarce in many English programs; some Year 3 students are being given inane, ideologically driven social studies topics such as: "How do Aborigines feel when rivers and creeks are polluted?" After the arrant waste of much of the $16 billion Building the Education Revolution stimulus, it is critical that the windfall from next year, which will lead to a doubling of school spending over the forward estimates, is well directed. Schools have all the laptops and buildings they need.

The most promising aspect of Labor's plan is the commitment for better teacher training and ongoing professional development; a concentration on reading in the early years of school; and the improvement plans to be developed and implemented annually by every school. The government envisages that the extra funding should be sufficient for schools to employ two specialist literacy and numeracy coaches, a lead curriculum teacher to help implement the national curriculum or four teachers' aides to improve student support. Backed by a rigorous approach to implementing the curriculum, such measures should lift standards, discipline and results. Most responsibility should rest at school level, backed by state or non-government authorities. Recent experience has underlined the inability of central government to deliver services competently and Mr Abbott is right to back away from escalating the commonwealth's role running schools.

Parents know lack of resources will not be a problem under either party. The vital issue now is for the warped mindset that prizes equality of outcomes to be banished and replaced by the pursuit of excellence. Given budget constraints, this could be the last chance to get education reform right for a long time.