Opinion: Our last chance to fix education

Opinion: The number of teachers deserting the job out of sheer frustration should be of great concern to all Australians. As should the fact that our students are inexplicably falling behind, writes the editor.

• Crisis: ‘Last chance’ to fix education system
• Plan for change as kids fall behind
• ‘Real world’ school works for students

Australian teachers are amazing. They accept less pay than they can earn elsewhere to teach and inspire the next generation, and yet their best intentions to inspire, lead and educate are being undermined by a quagmire of bureaucracy.

The number of teachers deserting the job out of sheer frustration and the lack of respect they are afforded should be of great concern to all Australians.

As should the fact that Australia is a first-world country with a standard of living second to none, but our students are inexplicably falling behind other nations.

The Best in Class series, launched today in The Courier-Mail alongside our sister mastheads across Queensland and interstate, is about examining the problems within our education system and finding the critical solutions.

Education Minister Jason Clare, in an interview with Joe Hildebrand to launch the series, is right to say now is Australia’s “last chance” to get it right when it comes to our education system.

He has tasked Sydney University chief and education supremo Mark Scott with supercharging the way teaching is taught to attract more people into the profession.

There is no more important job than teaching. Yet the profession is mocked, and is often seen as the “last resort” to study at university.

This must change.

Over the past 10 years, teaching enrolments have plummeted by
16 per cent.

And up to half of teachers desert the profession in the first five years of the job.

Mr Clare also notes Australia has a messy education system.

States and territories oversee primary and secondary schools with different rules, and then feed kids into a national tertiary system.

Mr Clare says the national agreement that is supposed to harmonise the system is effectively useless.

We agree.

Our students deserve better, and so do our teachers, who are tasked with navigating this unwieldy system in a bid to try to get the best out of their pupils.

Cluttered curriculums must be cleared up and become more in sync across the country, and funding models must be equitable.

It may not be a case of more funding, but simply a better use of the funding available.

Between 2009 and 2018, overall funding for government schools rose from $26.4bn to $39.2bn.

Yet over the same period, performance dropped by 22 per cent in both mathematical and scientific literacy, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Reading performance was unchanged. This suggests simply throwing money at the problem without an appropriate plan to lift academic results is useless.

Best in Class is a groundbreaking series that will
be a frank and fearless examination of what is going wrong in our schools.

It will pull no punches.

But it will also examine what our schools are doing right – and how that can be replicated across the board.

Whether this is our last chance to get this right is debatable. But it is a critical moment, and we as a nation must work as one to give our children the world’s best education system.

Originally published as Opinion: Our last chance to fix education