Pressed into action
Various media outlets reported that Education Minister Gillard competently equipped herself with a recent address to the National Press Club in Canberra.
The title of the Minister’s speech was unsurprisingly called ‘Delivering the Education Revolution’ (Minister for Education, 2010). The complete address can be read on the website reference below.
While the Minister covered a wide spectrum of government education initiatives Ms Gillard announced some new elements and made certain comments that should interest everyone involved in improving schooling quality in Australia, irrespective of the education sector.
Student ID numbers
The Minister’s most contentious announcement concerned the government’s introduction of identification numbers for all school children.
“A single number will remain with a student throughout their schooling so we can ensure that each student’s individual improvement, or where they are struggling, can be accurately followed across schools, systems or states,’ Ms Gillard said.
Civil libertarians and teaching unions will be up in arms with this government oversight measure and not without justification.
In attempting to offset obvious community concern regarding privacy and student access issues the Minister stated she would ask ACARA to investigate how student progress could be measured using existing national testing data.
These two explanations seem contradictory. Using national data will hardly provide individual student test data on which to determine if, in the Minister’s estimation, ‘value added measures’ can be applied to all students.
It seems highly improbable that a mere number identification will provide the nuance indicators that determine educational progress.
By the Minister’s own admittance, this evaluation will involve individual student evaluation. Not identifying the student is fatuous where ‘individual improvement’ is involved.
The Minister: ‘To track progress systematically, to focus on the progress made by each student, and to evaluate the performance of schools and teachers with full rigour, we need to be able to analyse the gains made by individual students from year to year.’
Note the key words and phrases: ‘each student’: ‘evaluate the performance of schools and teachers’: ‘we need’ (presumably this involves one or all of the government, ACARA, Canberra bureaucrats?).
This government-backed exercise will mean every student’s progress will be open to infinite evaluation and detailed review.
Presumably teachers and schools will also be branded where individual student and/or class cohort results are poor.
But don’t worry: the NAPLAN procedure incorporates only one test, on one day during a student’s complete school year.
Whatever happened to the teacher’s role in the classroom?
Aren’t they meant to be the primary determinants of each child’s learning progress?
Are their exam results not then discussed with fellow teachers to determine remedial teaching programs or other individual learning needs?
Given the extent of such personal learning detail don’t teachers then consult with the child’s parents to discuss and evaluate the student’s schooling progress?
If the government wants to become the ‘big bother’ for education oversight in Australia what need is there for individualisation in learning?
It would be far cheaper – and in the government’s view probably infinitely more convenient – if students learnt from a front of class video screen with a robotic teacher transmitting knowledge from some cavernous bureaucratic studio in the DEEWR basement.
Immediately all those rebellious teachers would be conveniently eliminated from the education equation.
But parents shouldn’t be worried. They could receive results of their child’s progress by email and watch a pre-recorded video by keying in their child’s individual student number through MySchool.
Indeed the government could craft a highly profitable marketing sponsorship program with Hungry Jacks to provide complementary burger vouchers for families participating in this school and pupil evaluation charade.
The Minister’s fetish for performance transparency reveals the real reason for the government’s total intrusion into school learning:
‘Gone are the days when we could have teachers in classrooms with the door closed.’
Minister, where have you been and who’s giving you advice? Those days disappeared years ago.
Future reform priorities
The Minister: ‘We will examine how every school can get the right support and scrutiny to make sure it is performing well and improving in the areas where it needs to improve. This may involve external assessment and inspection of schools and it will certainly involve strengthening school-based performance management of individual teachers.’
Who is ‘we?’ The education police, the government, the ACARA storm troopers?
‘External assessment’ will clearly anger dedicated teachers who know they are performing above and beyond the call of duty to teach young people.
What does ‘external assessment’ mean when the government has publically stated its intention that public school principals will be given greater autonomy in the management (assessment?) of their staff?
Does the school inspector override the wishes and professional judgement of the principal?
The Minister’s comments will bring no joy to independent schools which should be under no misconception: they will be subject to far greater government or bureaucratic oversight in future.
Presumably ‘every school’ means just that: independent schools will not escape this assessment process.
The Minister again: ‘As Australians we have an obligation to the future, an obligation to ensure the Australian school students of today and tomorrow each get a world class education.’
Who is ‘we?’
Does the Minister mean the government will assume the loco in parentis role for Australian school students?
The glowing prose of ‘world class education’ may sound visionary in Parliament but what does that phrase actually mean in practice?
The ACARA national curriculum program being created will automatically equate to Australian learning and schooling standards.
Will ACARA implement strategies that are truly ‘world class’ when past curriculum deliberations have rarely risen above regional and state infighting about who has the best learning standards and why improved standards are difficult to implement across Australia?
Nothing was presented to detail what ‘world standards’ actually are nor did the Minister comment regarding their appropriateness for Australian student learning.
A summary
The populist media was quick to praise the Minister for her eloquent address delivery and her sharp witted comments to assembled journalists.
Closer examination of what the Minister both said and forecast reveals that the implications of the Government’s Education Revolution may raise greater community ire and questioning than the Minister received from compliant journalists at a jocular National Press Club lunch.
A transcript of the National Press Club address by The Hon Julia Gillard, 24 February 2010 can be read on the following site: http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/Gillard/Media/Transcripts/Pages/Article_100224_143429.aspx
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