Federal Budget continues ideological attack on public schools

By Sally Edsall

The Federal Budget and its aftermath have seen the Howard Government redouble its attack on public schools. If the details contained within the Budget are not enough to demonstrate the contempt with which the Government views public schools, the extraordinary statements by Prime Minister John Howard and his Education Minister, Julie Bishop, in the week following leave no doubt.

John Howard has used Public Education Week to make a statement which further demonstrates that the Government fully intends to use the threat of withdrawing funding -- a form of blackmail -- to public (not private) schools to make education departments comply with his vision.

This is at the same time the Budget reveals that over the next five years, funding to private schools will increase from $5.8 billion to $7 billion, an increase of 29 per cent, while funding to public schools will increase from $3.1 billion to $3.4 billion, an increase of only 9.6 per cent.

This fact alone is proof that when the government talks about assisting "parent choice", they really mean that their public policy choice is to fund private schools at the expense of public schools and to encourage enrolment drift from public to private.

The following requirements for receiving funding are contained within the Budget:

"...the Australian Government will, from 2009, require that government and non-government authorities:

• "introduce national teacher training and registration standards to improve the skills of new teachers;
• "include external assessment as part of Year 12 certificates and common descriptions of levels of achievement;
• "introduce greater principal autonomy in school management and teacher employment arrangements;
• "introduce performance-based pay for teachers to encourage and reward excellent teaching; and
• "report school and student performance against national benchmarks (including literacy and numeracy results), with school and state comparisons."

The Budget mentioned a reward of $50,000 for schools which lift levels of literacy and achievement amongst students. This will be fund 1000 schools across Australia at $50,000 each to reward their "best" teachers with a bonus, as part of a plan to introduce performance pay. The $50,000 will go directly to principals to be given to the "best" teachers. Julie Bishop said: "I've been signposting [performance pay] for quite some time. If people wanted to join the dots it's all there" (Sydney Morning Herald, May 11). These "brown-paper bag bonuses" will be delivered by bypassing state governments and going directly to schools, just like tutorial vouchers and the Investing in Our Schools programs bypass state education authorities.

On May 14, John Howard announced a further aspect of mandatory comparative reporting about schools -- the requirement for public schools to report publicly, in detail, on incidents of bullying and violence. Anna Patty reported in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Private schools do not have to report incidents of violence or bullying to the NSW Department of Education. A spokesman for Mr Howard said they too would release information to parents. But while the department would be expected to release its data on public schools, private schools would continue to release information at their own discretion."

Recurrent funding

Private school funding now comprises 74 per cent of the federal recurrent (annual) funding of schools. In 2007-08, private schools will receive $5,509,193,000 and public schools $1,931,581,000.

Literacy and numeracy vouchers

This builds on the discredited Reading Assistance Vouchers program already in existence, which followed the Tutorial Vouchers Initiative pilot. This program does nothing to assist those schools where students experience difficulty to develop appropriate, and on-going programs.

Summer school for teachers

This does nothing to address the professional development needs of teachers overall. There are approximately 200,000 public and private school teachers in Australia.

Rewarding schools for literacy improvements

Australian Technical Colleges

This is despite hundreds of millions of dollars having already been spent on the existing ATCs and enrolments remaining small. Vocational Education and Training Minister Andrew Robb claims that the Government is 'on track' with its enrolment target of 2000 students for this year and anticipates that there will be close to 10,000 enrolments by 2009. This is hard to take seriously. In Victoria, The Age reports that the Federal Government is believed to have ordered the colleges not to release details of student numbers before an audit by accounting firm KPMG, but estimates that there were about 380 Victorian enrolments by March this year. Estimates given to The Age show that the colleges are costing an average of $25,000 for each student per year, at least double the $9500 to $12,000 spent training the average technical student in TAFE. Across Australia the money spent on the small number of students enrolled in the ATCs, which duplicate and undermine existing VET provision in schools and TAFE, would have gone a long way to make up the nationwide shortfall in TAFE places.

ESL funding for Humanitarian Program

Details are yet to come, but it is hoped that it will address the critical shortfall in ESL provision which the union has been campaigning on for some time.

Investing in our Schools

It remains to be seen whether this means the previous cap of $150,000 for public school projects will be restored (now capped at $100,000).

Regional and remote student funding

This is another blatant bolstering of private schools at the expense of the real needs of public schools in such areas. Some remote places, for example in the Northern Territory, have no public provision.

Aptitude tests for university entry

It is unclear what the intention of this is, but a speculative "joining of the dots" could mean that, along with the removal of the cap on full-fee paying places at universities, the undermining of common entry credentials such as the HSC.

National teacher training and registration body

Continued support for the Government's preferred, and politicised teacher registration body, through which the Government seeks to undermine state based accreditation bodies such as NSW's Institute of Teachers.

Core curricula standards

Education Ministers agreed to harmonising standards at the recent Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs meeting. Despite this agreement to work cooperatively, the Federal Government continues to use the blackmail threat via the Budget.

Payment to universities for trainee teachers to undertake practicum

If this is a boost, it is welcome. It does not, however, specify whether it would be a payment to supervising teachers. In the era of university devolution and free-for-all funding, we can only assume universities would choose how it is spent.

TAFE

Early childhood

Labor's response

The similarity is that there is nothing to meet the TAFE funding shortfall.

Where early childhood is totally absent from the Government's plans, Labor has an extensive plan for pre-school education. Aspects of this policy are welcome, for example, a commitment to universal provision of 15 hours per week of play-based early childhood education for all four year olds. This would be delivered by a degree-qualified teacher. There would be HECS relief funding for training additional teachers.

However, as with other policies, Labor has stated that there will be no distinction between public and private providers of care and education. This means that for-profit companies such as ABC Learning Centres would receive additional government subsidies, and for the first time, all private schools will be funded for the pre-kindergarten year. We can anticipate an explosion in pre-school provision in private schools.

Labor has promised a large boost in capital funding for the upgrading of vocational and trade facilities in schools. This is part of a strategy to boost school retention rates, which is a positive move. However, this large investment must not come at the expense of public schools' capacity to provide a fully comprehensive curriculum, must not prematurely stream students into 'academic' or 'vocational' pathways, and must not come at the expense of TAFE. It is certainly preferable to Howard's private trade schools (ATCs), which do nothing to address real needs in vocational and trade training.

Ultimately, the ALP's commitment to public education will be measured by the level of additional funding it proposes to allocate to public education, and its capacity to meet the $2.9 billion per annum shortfall in public school funding.

The entire education Budget, including on-going programs such as the Chaplaincy Program can be found at www.dest.gov.au/portfolio_department/dest_information/publications_resources/resources/budget_information/budget_2007_2008/default.htm.

Sally Edsall is a Research Officer.

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May 2007 contents