Getting the basics right

Public primary education must not be left to languish, writes SUE SIMPSON.

Lower class sizes in the early years

While acknowledging there is a need to lower class sizes in all sectors of education, the Conference recognised the overwhelming research evidence that small class sizes in the early years, when the foundations for learning are established, pays off in the later years.

The research of the Tennessee STAR project and other longitudinal studies confirm what teachers know, that smaller class size allows not only more individual student attention and better diagnosis of learning difficulties but also the exercise of a greater variety of teaching strategies. Students and teachers are happier, in particular, students suffering educational disadvantage seem to benefit.

Professor Pat Thomson, of the University of South Australia and a former school principal, outlined the research in a lengthy dissertation to the Conference delegates.

Federation will be putting together a kit for use with parents, teachers and importantly the politicians. The ACT and Western Australian Governments have plans in place to reduce class sizes in the early years. In NSW the research will be useful to counter the likely pleading of the politicians and their advisers -- that perhaps a bit more testing or teacher supervision will do the trick. Or perhaps we could be cost effective with class sizes staying the same but with a few tweaks in the form of more specialist teachers or more teacher aides.

The research is clear -- being in a small class for the early years and with a well-trained class teacher makes the difference. It's time once again for the politicians to ensure this occurs.

In this campaign we will have parent and community support.

According to the Federation's rough calculation, an additional 2500 primary teachers would be required.

A better deal for primary teachers

Primary school teachers have more face to face teaching and less release time for preparation than their secondary and TAFE colleagues. A primary school teacher spends one hour per week more in front of a class than their secondary teacher colleague. Teachers in promotions positions in the primary school in the main receive no additional release time for the conduct of their whole of school responsibilities. A head teacher in a secondary school who takes sport has a reduced teaching load that equates to four hours a week. The primary executive teacher, assistant principal and teaching deputy principal teach five hours more than the secondary head teacher who takes sport. The solution is not to have secondary teachers work harder.

The solution rests in more release time with paid relief for all primary teachers.

The Conference has called for a campaign to secure an increase of one hour per week in release time with paid relief for all primary teachers with an additional one hour's release with paid relief on top of that for teachers in promotions positions.

This is not such an easy issue to argue in the community.

How many teachers would be required to show that we properly value primary education? A rough Federation calculation puts it at around 1500 teachers. The primary teachers are there at the moment. It's the political will that will have to be forced.

This raises the perennial issue of the funding of public education. If reductions in class sizes and improved release time were to be implemented together and without any phase-in and if an assumption is made that each teacher would cost $60,000 per annum, the total cost would be (for 4000 extra teachers) $240 million per annum. If we make a more generous assumption for 'on costs', say $80,000 per annum, it would be $320 million. This needs to be put in the context of the NSW education budget being around $7 billion.

Analysis of the Commonwealth Budget papers by the Australian Education Union and citizen lobby group Priority Public shows that an additional $4 billion needs to be invested in public schools to ensure that public schools match the resource levels of private schools. Private schools are not poor and are establishing benchmarks in terms of resourcing. Private, when taking into account all sources of funding (federal and state government funding together with private funding sources), are operating just below or above the resource levels of public schools. This includes the local Catholic school.

Australia currently invests 4.3 per cent of gross domestic product on public education compared to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 5.1 per cent and the UNESCO recommendation of 6.0 per cent of GDP.

Public primary education must not be left to languish.

Make sure you support the Public Education Convention September 8!

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August 2001 contents