Yesterday, Australian Prime Minister Gillard announced the Government's detailed response to the Gonski report. You will find the official transcript here, you can download the final report here.
It seems to me that there are two very separate sets of issues. One is the proposals themselves, the second the funding.
On the first, I like some of the elements in the model including the per pupil payments. but also detest the rigidity and doctrinaire approach. On the second, I have already put up the internal UNE response in UNE's response to the higher education funding cuts. The extraction of money from a sector encouraged to expand to meet other Government objectives doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense to me.
What do you think?
12 comments:
Not one word about how people learn!
Gonski is about funding not education.
My own view is that the Uni's are now surviving as credentialling institutions. When they lose this role they're history.
I would like places that educated citizens and persons not ones that produced office fodder.
None of which will even get remotely near discussion.
The extraction of money from a sector encouraged to expand to meet other Government objectives doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense to me.
Yup. that's what I think too. Obviously as an academic I'm pretty disappointed.
Evan, you make a fair point. it is a combination of funding model plus perfomance measurement. The first doesn't make it a bad thing, but an education revolution?!
As part of my research, I was mugging up on the dawkins revolution; it reminded me that that was where some current stuff came in.
LE, suspected you would feel that way. Reading the commentary, its messier than I thought.
Driving around this morning I listened to the WA Premier's (unenthusiastic) take on the funding. I haven't checked his figures, but he said for WA it meant $200M extra funding over 6 years provided WA put in an extra $100M in the same period.
He said this translated to $33M extra Commonwealth funding per year for WA, whereas his latest budgeted education total annual spend was $4Bn
If he's right that's not so much a 'revolution' as a small extra drip in the bucket. Who knows?
kvd
It is interesting that two of the independants are supportive that the source of the money for primary and secondary education is from the tertiary sector. This might do a bit of harm in Armidale for Windsor.
As for schools... I think that the government has been beating up the slightly poorer academic records of school kids that have been reported. Schools have to keep students "studying" until year 12 even if they dont want to be there. This means that they harm the study environment for others as well as artificially depress the average results. This is an administrative cause of the problem.
If you fund teachers and educational equipment for students that dont want to be at school you are doomed to failure. The solution needs to be finding better pathways for those that are not in school.
sorry... the last line should have been:
The solution needs to be finding better pathways for those that do not want to be in school.
And I'll add:
School does not suit everyone just like university does not suit everyone.
kvd, as i understand it, WA is already spending more per head on public education than the Fed's benchmarks. So they lose control without any real gain. For some reason, the WA Government is disinclined to accept arguments that they should accede for the national good.
Rod, I hadn't picked up Mr Windsor's comment. No, it won't do him any good in Armidale. In fact, it puzzles me.
I agree with you, Rod. We need more pathways, not blind adherence to rigid rules.
Also Jim, I think we're about at the point where nobody's actually listening to this government any more. Might be more worthwhile to compare and contrast the Liberal's plans.
Bet you can't find them :)
kvd
True and I couldn't!
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