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Australian Constituency - by Craig Hill

Education - Australian Constituency

Boarding School Boost For Indigenous Students

January 31st 2009 09:08
Member for Lingiari, the Hon. Warren Snowdon MP today announced that three Territory boarding schools will receive more than $900,000 in Federal Government assistance to upgrade their grounds and facilities.

“ Yirara College and St Philip’s College in Alice Springs will receive $682,000 and $165,000 respectively, while Nyangatjatjara College in Yulara will get $82,500,” said Mr Snowdon.

“This is a terrific boost for these schools. All three have a strong track record in providing high-quality education to their Indigenous students.”

Mr Snowdon said Yirara College will use the funds to refurbish the male and female dormitories and resurface basketball courts.


St Philip’s College will construct a reception area for each of the dormitories and Nyangatjatjara College will construct perimeter fencing and gates to the complex.

This funding is being allocated as a part of the Australian Government’s Indigenous Boarding Infrastructure initiatives designed to improve boarding facilities at non-government schools which enrol significant numbers of Indigenous students.

The projects were recommended to government by the Northern Territory Joint Block Grant Authority.

“A quality education is a critical foundation for enabling all Australians to participate fully in society – both economically and socially.

“The Australian Government is committed to providing quality educational opportunities to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational outcomes,” Mr Snowdon said.

“I commend these schools for the positive contribution they have made to the welfare of their Indigenous students, and congratulate them on securing this funding.”

Media Statement
31st January 2009

Warren Snowdon
Minister for Defence Science and Personnel

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Should School be Compulsory?

October 7th 2006 22:23
Continuing on the theme of compulsory education, it's worth asking if removing every child in the country from his or her family and confining them in the artificial construct of a school is really the best way to prepare them for life.

The UK based Institute of Economic Affairs commissioned a publication Towards a Liberal Utopia? (pdf) for which they asked various authors "look forward 50 years, ignore the politically possible, and show how a liberal policy framework should look in their own areas of expertise."

James Tooley wrote a brilliant article imagining how people in 2055 would view the education of today, part of which runs as follows.

In 2055, according to my semi-structured interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders in education, people looked back on our obsession with schooling with a mixture of horror and bewilderment. They thought it only folly to imagine that all the diverse aims of education; to prepare young people for adult life, for citizenship, careers and family life, and to initiate them into the best that had been thought and known; could be sensibly realised in one venue; the school or college; and by segregating young people away from adult life. They described schools and colleges as "youth ghettoes", creating an alienated youth culture, miserably cut off from adulthood, forcing young people into compulsory idleness and irresponsibility. "The prolonged agony of adolescence" was one term that was used to describe the result. And they thought our views on teachers were odd, too. Why, they asked, were inspirational teachers given not only the same pecuniary rewards but also the same number of children to teach as teachers who lacked motivational ability? "Even back in 2005," it was pointed out to me, "you had the technological capability to allow inspiring teachers to reach millions of young people, but instead you forced all teachers into an egalitarian straitjacket."

Tooley's reflections remind me of a passage from Churchill's "My Early Life" in which he muses on how unsuited he was for primary school and how all he wanted to do was learn about the "real" world. He wanted to be with his parents ad their friends, find out what they did, learn how the trades and commerce, politics and family life worked rather then being shunted off to school to recite "amo, amas, amat..."
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Posted By: Ross - Category: Education
   


Make Year 12 compulsory? - Forget it

October 7th 2006 09:46
In all the furore over the Federal Governmen's takeover bid for K-12 education syllabi, Craig Emerson's ridiculous suggestion that it should be compulsory for students to stay at school until the end of year 12 has been largely overlooked.

This suggestion is based on the assumption that intellectual endeavours and white collar work is inherently superior to manual labour and that the size of your pay-packet is the only measure of the desirability of your job.

However, neither of these assumptions is true. Society is a cooperative enterprise and it needs people to fulfil every role, whether the hue of their collars be white, blue or any gradation on between. We need to overcome our bias against certain professions and recognise the dignity to be found in doing any necessary job well.

This irrational bias struck me when chatting to a female colleague at work who is immensely proud of her hair. She has it done on a weekly basis. In our conversation she was bemoaning the fact that her daughter was thinking of going to TAFE to study ... you guessed it ... hairdressing. My colleague was horrified. It's bizarre that we all need manual labourers and yet we don't want our daughters to become hairdressers or our sons to become plumbers - that's for someone else!

Roger Scruton put it this way when he writes against the modern educational fad of boosting self esteem.

The office cleaner who conscientiously does her job is rewarded with the friendship of the workers whom she benefits. It does not matter that her social position is a humble one; for by occupying it rightly she earns a place in society as honourable as any other. This is what George Herbert had in mind in those lines made famous by the Victorian hymn:
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweep a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and th' action fine.
It follows that a society can be hierarchically ordered without being oppressive. For every station has its duties, the performance of which is both an end in itself and a passport to social affection. And through education, ambition and hard work you can change your station, to arrive at the place that matches your achievements and which, through performing its duties, you possess as your own.

Matthew B. Crawford has also written eloquently on the subject of manual work and the benefits to be derived from it. In his essay Shop Class as Soulcraft he argues that manual work is one of the true sources of satisfaction and that many of the ills which plague modern society derive from the fact that so manly young people lack any practical skills whatsoever. Crawford is eminently qualified to contribute to this discussion as he is both postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia and he ran his own motorcycle repair shop for may years.

* Image courtesy of www.sxc.hu
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More of the Same won't fix the problem

October 5th 2006 20:41
The Australian today runs the headline that Canberra is planning to centralise the K-12 school curriculum. This should come as no surprise to those who have been following this saga as it unfolded under Brendan Nelson. I predicted in November 2005 that the National Leaving Certificate would morph into a National curriculum.

The bizarre thing is that Bishop is complaining that the states have "hijacked" the curriculum, and her solution is for the Feds to do exactly the same. Can't she see that with a National Curriculum in place when the government changes we will be in exactly same state we're in now but on a much larger scale?

Far better to allow multiple curricula to compete with one another and let ideologically driven syllabi which don't reflect the understanding of mainstream Australian will die a quick and natural death.
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Posted By: Ross - Category: Education
   


Objections to Market Based Reforms in Education

September 28th 2006 02:02
Paul Kearney has posted some excellent objections to market based reform of the K-12 education system. Here's my reply:

Preliminary remarks
Vouchers and for profit education
I have proposed a number of different alternatives to the current education system in Australia. I have discussed three different reforms: a voucher system, curriculum competition and for-profit education. These are all different. You could have a voucher system which does not allow for profit schools, you could have for profit school without a voucher system, you could have both or you could have neither as is the current set up (although the supply of some government funds to private school could be describes as a semi voucher scheme). It's important to keep in mind the difference between these three aspects otherwise the argument gets confused.

Voucher Varieties
There are many different types of voucher schemes. Vouchers can be means tested or not, they can be universal or not, they can be weighted according to the recipients SES or not and so on. It's not as simple as voucher or no voucher.

Government regulation of for profit schooling
I've never argued for complete deregulation of education. I've always argued that government would have a role in regulation a for profit education market, just as it regulates all commercial activity. The degree and nature of this regulation is open to debate and there are as many answers as there are economists. My main argument is against the complete government monopoly of school curriculum and the extent to which government involves itself in the provision of education.

Having said that I'll attempt to reply to your points as best I can

Objection 1. The market cannot provide a service where it is not profitable.
Reply
1) Just as government regulates telecommunications in the bush, so it could regulate the provision of education in remote areas.
2) Vouchers could be weighted in favour of remote areas to attract for profit schools.
3) The market may find innovative profitable ways to provide education to remote areas.
4) If for-profit, not-for profit and public schools all competed for business the schools which currently provide for remote areas would continue to operate.

Objection 2. The market is not completely efficient, and very often it is the image (brand) of a product that improves, not the product itself.
Reply
1) Yes, education is a complicated product. But parents if parents have a choice about the education they are buying and if they are spending their hard earned dollars on an education they will be very motivated to investigate the products on the market and source those which meet their needs and the needs of their children. This is more true then ever as people are having fewer children and having them later in life.
2) Yes, education is a complicated product, but we trust consumers to decide on things such as mortgages, insurance policies, health care plans and even governments. If they can get their heads around these things, they can also exercise choice in education.
3) The funds diverted to advertising education would be more than made up in the efficiency brought about from dismantling a government monopoly on education. Monopolies are universally acknowledged as being the lest efficient means to provide services.

Objection 3. The market focuses on providing chiefly those qualities that are measurable.
Reply
Since parents value the qualities you mention such as "care the teachers provide, the growing of friendships, a culture of sport, or intellect, or spirituality, or tolerance" the school's reputation will depend on their ability to provide these. Yes, they are not measurable but the word will soon get out if they are missing from a school and that school will find it hard to attract students.

The problem you highlight of a whole generation missing out on something before the mistake is recognised is the very reason a government monopoly should be done away with. With the stroke of a pen the curriculum for NSW can be changed and then every student in the state is subject to the new regime - no exceptions. Witness the wholesale abolition of tradition grammar, spelling drill and phonics in reading. They were done away with across the board, a whole generation missed out and only now are they coming back in. This could never happen in a diverse market based system. In a more flexible market based set up a new innovation can be trialled. If it works, it spreads, if not - it dies a quick and natural death.

Objection 4. The market creates greater inequality in the available choices and niche consumerism.
Reply
Inequalities can be smoothed out using means tested or income weighted vouchers. Niche consumerism encourages innovation. (see above). Studies in the US show that voucher schools are in fact more egalitarian than others. (See Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public by Terry M. Moe for more details). The fear of balkanisation under a voucher system has been shown to be unfounded. Many parents want their children to mix with others from a broad social, ethnic and religious mix and choose such schools.

Objection 5. The market can tend to a monopoly
Reply
See my introductory comments on the role of government regulation in education markets. The government could, for example, offer incentives which ease entry into and exit from the education market. This mitigates against a monopoly. The government legislates against monopolies in other markets such as the media, limiting the number of media outlets a single company can own in an given state. It may have a similar role in an education market.

*Image courtesy of www.morguefile.com
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Posted By: Ross - Category: Education
   


Would Merit Pay for Teachers Improve Education?

September 8th 2006 23:27
Ross Gittins raises the question of merit pay for teachers. His point is that it wont work because you can't measure teachers' performance. He says that if you concentrate solely on test scores teachers will "game the system" and skew their teaching in that direction, ignoring other important aspects of children's education.

I agree that educational outcomes are varied and complex and that test scores are not the only thing that matter, however, there are a number of compelling arguments in favour of merit pay for teachers:
1) Education in general would benefit by attracting teachers who are entrepreneurial and who wish to be rewarded for their efforts. Currently there is no financial motivation for teachers to innovate new and more effective teaching methods.
2) If a child, class or school has consistently poor results, concentrating on test scores would at least constitute some sort of improvement and is better and leaving the failing students to bump along at the bottom.
3) Measuring improvements in test scores and adjusting for IQ give a much better indication of teacher performance than just recording raw scores.
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