Rudd's School Reform

Interesting package of school reform on its way in Australia soon, set out in a paper entitled 'Quality Education: The case for an Education Revolution in our Schools' and a speech by the PM.

What's it all about?

Like most advanced countries, Australia is worried about skills. The goal, it seems, is to improve economic productivity through broad skill development and to improve economic participation and inclusion through targeting measures at the people and places suffering from disadvantage.

The recently announced schools part of this includes:

• First, to measure school performance on their 'value-added' and to hold schools to account for this
  
  
• Second, to invest in weak schools (with c$500k per school) to do things like provide additional coaching or learning support and to create robust networks of parents, other schools, local communities and businesses to help students transitioning to FE or work
  
  
• Third, to close or merge underperforming schools or replace the senior management
  
  
• Fourth, to improve the quality of teaching through higher rewards for principals and through developing an accelerated graduate pathway
  
  
• Fifth, to spread the talent more effectively by offering higher pay for those starting in challenging posts
  
  
• Sixth, pedagogic reform to spread specialist teaching throughout schools
  
  
• Seventh, offering give more autonomy to schools on pay and conditions (presumably only to high performing schools although it's not clear)
  
  
• Eighth, to free up teachers' time through reducing administrative burdens

How's it all going to happen?

This is essentially all out as a discussion paper at the moment. A slight snag in the federal system here is that the Commonwealth government can't just announce and do these things. It has to negotiate (blimey - what's all that about?) with the States - who do most of the public service delivery - on exactly how to implement it all. So expect some delay. Nonetheless, the Commonwealth do have the funding levers as well as the political captial at the moment so most will get through.

Lessons from the Blair years?

The list might strike you as quite familiar to much of the education reform implemented by Blair. Notable absences are acadamies or such an equivalent programme (though perhaps will come later) and emphasis on parental choice (although that's partly due to the school catchment area thing being less relevant here). I'm broadly supportive of much of the reform, though there are probably a few lessons from the Blair years:

• Keep the professionals on side. It's a difficult balance to be made here as the public rightly should demand results for their taxes. But schools aren't McDonalds and it's quite a unique profession that once lost is hard to regain the confidence of. Rudd's had a pretty tough line here so far -- "arrive in the 21st Century" was the message the unions got last week which may have to be nuanced.
  
  
• Recognise supply constraints. Ultimately there'll never be enough money, nor good teachers and headteachers to go around. So sticking resources somewhere (like in high cost academies) does have opportunity costs elsewhere. It's importance to face up to this, as indeed that one parent's choice will impact on another parent's choice.
  
  
• Keep a market-maker. Opening up public services to incentives is a high risk, high return affair. Too many financial flows rewarding all sorts of performance can start creating distortions and perverse outcomes that no-one could anticipate (e.g. like funding surplus places in below capacity schools). Better to start slow and increase over time if necessary than go for hard edged incentives straight away.
  
  
• Be patient. It's hard turning around schools, particularly in areas of entrenched disadvatage. It's all very well expecting results, but you can't recreate leadership, cultures, or teaching practices overnight.
  
  
• Get the measures right. An obvious one but you'd be surprised -- defining exactly what 'value-added' means and how to control for a host of variables outside the control of schools is pretty tough.
  
  
• Don't forget about those that opt-out. A much bigger problem here where the private sector accounts for a large share of education, in part a result of the previous government's subsidies for private schools. If you don't have a policy that takes account of this sector (even though government leverage is weak) and the second-round effects as parents transfer then it's not a coherant package.