Opinion & Commentary
Policy difference is in the detail
Labor and Liberal have each come up with some decent policy and some poor policy. The final verdict on education will hinge on funding
Much has been made of the similarity in Liberal and Labor policies in the long lead-up to the federal election.
In the case of school education, this is only superficially true. Labor and Liberal may be covering much of the same territory, but the details and fundamentals of those policies and their proposed methods of implementation differ in subtle but significant ways.
The policies that are common to both parties are national curriculum, merit-based pay for teachers, principal autonomy and school performance reporting. The biggest difference between the parties is how they propose to bring these policies to fruition, given the inconvenient fact that a federal government doesn't actually have any authority over schools.
The Federal Government has made some headway in overcoming this problem over the past decade or so by increasing education budgets to the point that all schools, public and non-government, are dependent on federal funds. If re-elected, the Liberal Party will continue to use that funding as a policy lever.
Labor has promised to take a different tack, preferring a "co-operative and collaborative" approach. On national curriculum, principal autonomy and merit-based pay for teachers, this might work. However, no amount of discussion and negotiation will get state governments to release school performance information if they don't want to, so federal Labor has indicated it will seek a conditional funding agreement on this matter.
There are also quite important differences in detail. Labor leader Kevin Rudd has vowed teachers' unions would not be involved in the development of a national curriculum, but Labor policy provides a central role for the usual suspects -- the Curriculum Corporation and the Australian Council for Educational Research -- which suggests a Labor national curriculum would risk becoming a lengthy and expensive committee-driven exercise in creating more of the same problems we have now.
In contrast, a Liberal government would hand-pick a small group of experts who would have an unprecedented mandate over the education of millions of children. The states would be expected to adopt this curriculum, like it or not. Clearly, neither approach is ideal.
In principle, both Labor and Liberal favour rewarding high-quality teachers with higher pay. Where they differ is in how quality would be measured.
Liberal Party policy is to roll out a series of pilot programs, but federal Education Minister Julie Bishop seems committed to including a student achievement component.
Labor education spokesman Stephen Smith has referred to student achievement as a narrow measure of teacher quality and has articulated Labor's strategy in terms of peer-review and professional development (very much in line with the Australian Education Union's proposal). The question of the inclusion of a student achievement component is a distinction and could influence whether the policy has the desired effects or is yet another giant waste of money.
On the principal autonomy issue, there is bipartisan agreement that public schools need more flexibility and decision-making power at school level, especially on staffing. But only Liberal policy acknowledges the ability to deal with poor teachers is as important as the ability to hire good ones.
The above policies are often wrongly viewed as being interchangeable. They might look similar but the policy detail shows neither party has strayed far from its traditions.
In many other policy areas Labor and Liberal strategies are substantially different, including vocational education and training and improving teacher training.
Labor and Liberal have each come up with some decent policy and some poor policy. The final verdict on education will hinge on funding.
The Liberal Party will retain the SES-based funding of non-government schools, and has not indicated it will change its block grant system of funding public schools when the time comes to negotiate the new quadrennial funding agreement.
Smith has said that under a Labor government no school would have its federal funding reduced or frozen and Labor would not dump current indexation arrangements.
Labor has been cagey about the specifics, however, saying only that it "intends and aspires" to increase funding to schools and to fund according to "need and fairness". From Smith's speeches it seems likely there will be increased funding to needy government schools, particularly primary schools.
The Liberal Party has been criticised for tying policy to funding. This is a legitimate criticism but there is a good chance that Labor's school funding policy will also have strings attached.
The policy platform adopted at the Labor Party's national conference this year calls for public funding to have greater accountability requirements, especially for non-government schools.
At this stage, it appears unlikely that voters interested in school education will be faced with the divisive education policies of the last federal election. This might make the choice less clear-cut, but it would be wrong to assume there isn't an important choice to be made.
Jennifer Buckingham is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies
