Opinion & Commentary
The time is right to consider radical ideas in education reform
The so-called ‘long-tail of under-achievement’ in Australia has been talked about so often by so many people that it is almost a cliché. According to international studies, like the OECD’s PISA testing program, Australia’s group of low-performing students is larger than many developed countries and is very stable.
The figures from our own national testing program are more revealing and more damning. The following statistics are based on the 2008 literacy and numeracy test results.
In Queensland, 11% of Year 3 students failed to reach the minimum reading literacy standards and 6% failed to meet the minimum numeracy standards. That is, they did not demonstrate the most basic elements of literacy and numeracy for their year level. A further 18% just met the minimum standard.
Similar proportions of students performed at this standard in each year level tested. Somewhere between one in four and one in five Queensland school students is, at best, barely literate and numerate.
The state-wide averages don’t tell us much about which kids are not keeping up. A deeper look into the statistics reveals that the failing are kids are most likely to be from homes with no parent employed, kids who are indigenous, and kids who live in remote areas.
When you put all of these risk factors together, it is not a pretty picture. Indigenous children who live in very remote Queensland have failure rates of 58%. A further 28% just met the minimum benchmark in reading. That’s a rate eight times higher than the national average.
Thanks to the publication of school-level results this week, we even know exactly which schools are not up to scratch. The statistics published by the Queensland government this week put the low performance of some schools into stark relief.
This is not new. Dreadful results in international testing last year prompted the Queensland government to commission a report into the problem. The report’s recommendations were, for the most part, reasonable but rely on governments to put them in place. Queensland’s kids can’t wait that long.
We know how to improve education for our most disadvantaged children. There is evidence aplenty. The challenge is applying it.
One of the biggest obstacles to reform is the way that governments stymie school-driven innovation and improvement with layers of bureaucracy and tight controls on what schools can and can’t do. What’s more, even when governments have demonstrably failed to educate students, sometimes for generations, they refuse to get out of the way and give someone else a go.
Some of the most promising education reforms for disadvantaged children have emerged from a growing movement in the United States called charter schools. These are independently-run public schools. Charter schools have to adhere to some of the conditions of public schools, such as open enrolment and no fees, but they are run by non-government charter management organisations.
Charter management organisations take control of existing schools or sometimes just part of a school, or set up new schools. They have the same level of funding as public schools, but have a lot more freedom and flexibility in staffing and finance management. On the other hand, there are much higher standards for outcomes.
Since the first charter school opened in 1992 this sector has swelled to 4700 schools in 40 American states, with 1.4 million children enrolled and 365,000 on waiting lists. This is a tiny proportion of all school children in the US -- something like 2% -- but these schools are having a profound impact on education.
Not all charter schools have been successful but some have been spectacularly so, especially those established specifically to serve the most needy poor and minority children.
Such schools have been a god-send for thousands of disadvantaged students in the US, opening new possibilities and creating hope. In many cases, they have closed and sometimes reversed the seemingly intractable achievement gap between black students and white students.
To create the same possibilities here we don’t even need to wait for a voucher system. State governments just need to create legislation that allows competing non-government entities to manage existing public schools. Alternatively, public schools could themselves decide to become self-governing organisations. All that is required to begin this process is political will.
Jennifer Buckingham is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. Her new publication Schools of Thought: A Collection of Articles on Education was released in August.
