Reflections on public education and training
ANGELO GAVRIELATOS offers his reflections on public education and training as an alternative to that offered in the Futures Project's consultation paper.
The provision of comprehensive public education (preschool to year 12), which embodies the principles of community and inclusiveness is vital for the future of our society.
Federation has consistently supported comprehensive education since its expansion through the Wyndham scheme of the 1960s, and accordingly reaffirms the critical importance and centrality of comprehensive education within the Department of Education and Training.
As stated in the Vinson Report: "In recognition of the centrality of the role of public education in preparing students to live in an inclusive democratic society, the public education system should seek to retain the maximum degree of comprehensiveness compatible with meeting the needs of a diverse range of students."
The value of comprehensive education
Comprehensive education is best understood in the context of the role and value of Australia's public education system. Public education is a defining institution in Australian society. The pursuit of educational excellence for all, regardless of cultural, religious, racial or economic background, geographical location or special needs, has directly shaped Australia to be one of the most tolerant, socially-cohesive, non-violent and multicultural societies in the world.
"It is the socially representative nature of a genuine comprehensive school which delivers the ultimate socio-political benefits of public education. It is the socially representative comprehensive school that creates a tendency, a disposition towards broadmindedness, liberalism and a tolerance of and indeed acceptance of diversity". (Lyndsay Connors, Chairperson, Public Education Council, December 9, 2003)
Failed government policies
One of the main casualties of the changes wrought on NSW public education over the past 15 years has been comprehensive education.
Consistent with the prevailing socio-economic orthodoxies of recent years, which has included the elevation of economic imperatives above sound educational policy, politicians and compliant education administrators have undermined the core of our universal public education system. Furthermore, by creating a hierarchy of schools, they have reinforced a social hierarchy contributing to a fragmentation of community.
Under the guise of "choice", allegedly aimed at maintaining student numbers and stemming the flow of students to private schools, the ongoing restructuring of comprehensive high schools has created an insecurity which has contributed to increased enrolments in private schools. Significantly, private schools have remained immune to restructuring and never ending change.
As noted in the Vinson Report: "Each set of structural responses to challenges facing public education in New South Wales has contributed to the need for another set. So, for example, the decision to increase the number of selective high schools (and to a lesser extent, specialist high schools), while enticing more able students to stay in the public system, depleted the ranks of academically oriented students in many comprehensive high schools. This resulted in a change in the composition of those schools from a balance of academic and other students, to a predominance of non-academic, ambivalent students, whose retention rates were lower. This reduced the number of students at the HSC level, and the range of HSC subjects available to those who remained. This in turn contributed to the development of some of the stand-alone senior colleges, and more recently, multi-campus colleges, which can again offer a wide choice of subjects to the full range of students."
Lessons unlearned
The Director-General's comments in the foreword to Excellence and Innovation show that the Department and Government have learned little of the inimical effects of imposed structural and policy change in the public education system: "... for increasing numbers of people, education is assuming the status of a commodity -- reflecting choice, values, lifestyle and aspirations... parents and the community want to make choices and need to be confident about the choices they have made. This will require some changes, at all levels, to what we do and how we do things and how well we respond to our clients."
Director-General Dr Andrew Cappie-Wood acquiesces to the ideology of choice, the 'education as commodity' mindset. Business managers talk about 'clients'. Public educators talk about students and parents and caregivers and communities. We talk about the rights of every student, regardless of background, to receive a quality public education, to excel in their local community, with family, friends and neighbours welcomed into one of the most important social institutions in our nation's history -- the local public school.
Instead of stemming the drift in enrolments from public to private schools, the cumulative effect of the ideology of 'choice' and its resultant structural and policy 'reforms' has been as destructive to public education as increased government funding of private schools.
Between 1990 and 2003, student enrolments in government schools in NSW decreased by approximately 4.5 per cent from 72.1 per cent to 67.7 per cent. This decrease was more evident in secondary schools, where enrolments fell by nearly 6.0 per cent from 69.2 per cent to 63.4 per cent.
And this has happened during a period when the ideology of choice has been promulgated at every turn by governments and the Department. Rather than arrest this decline in enrolments, this approach has aided it.
TAFE
The Federation recognises TAFE as the pre-eminent provider of vocational education and training in Australia. Having described TAFE the cornerstone of vocational education and training in its policy, the NSW Government and DET must move beyond rhetoric and support TAFE so the needs of the diverse range of student groups at TAFE can continue to be met. With the current skills shortages being experienced across a range of trade areas, TAFE's role is even more critical.
TAFE NSW delivers programs to over 500,000 students a year in a variety of educational, industry and community settings.
Angelo Gavrielatos is the Senior Vice President.
Futures project threatens public education
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November 2004 contents
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