When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared victory on election night, he said he wanted to unite Australians around our shared values of fairness and opportunity, and hard work and kindness for those in need. So what will it look like in Australian schools? School, after all, is where a society that believes in fairness and opportunity should begin. Equity is more involved than schools with considerable funding.
It’s about combining teachers’ passion with the respect, time, resources and conditions that enable them to do what they signed up to do: make a difference in students’ lives. Based on our research into the quality use of evidence that promotes quality in education, I suggest that equality, hard work and kindness should underpin three-way school policy.
The first priority is fairness in funding. It’s been ten years since the Gonsky Review proposed a more equitable approach to school funding. The goal was to ensure that differences in students’ educational outcomes were not the product of differences in wealth, income, or power. Since then, the approach has thinned and gone backwards.
While resources for schools increased by more than $2 billion over a decade, the Grattan Institute found that once wage increases were taken into account, private schools were required to educate less than 20 percent of Australia’s most disadvantaged students. Despite this, more than 80 percent of this additional funding was received. , COVID-19 has exacerbated the inequalities that have hardened Australia’s schooling through the historic isolation of schools.
Therefore, the basis of improvement should be reviewed. Then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a former education minister, effectively tied a hand behind the government’s back to the principle that no school would lose funding as a result of the reforms. This distorted Gonsky’s need-based aspiration.
The need-based funding required to direct public schools to be fully funded according to the Gonsky model equates to more than USD 1,000 per student each year. But ensuring that all schools receive their fair share of public funding is only part of the challenge. The second priority relates to appropriately rewarding the hard work of the teachers. This should include incentives to enter the profession, and better pay and working conditions to keep them there.
The shortage of teachers is reaching a serious level. Modeling in Queensland, for example, shows a 25 percent drop in the state’s high school teaching graduates over five years. Enrollment in secondary schools is expected to increase by 13% during the same period. As noted by Southern Cross University education professor Paci Sahlberg, teachers tend to get excited and leave exhausted.
During the campaign, Labor promised to pay up to USD 12,000 per year for high-achieving students to study education to raise teacher standards. We want to make sure that our children get the best education possible. That means we have to make sure they get the best quality education, Albanese said.
Labor also announced plans to double the number of high-achieving students enrolling in teacher education over the next decade, from about 1,800 per year currently to 3,600. Also, approximately 5,000 students who achieve an Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) of 80 will be able to receive an annual USD 10,000 payment on their four-year degree. An additional $2,000 a year has been promised to students committed to teaching in the regional areas most affected by the teacher shortage.
Providing such incentives can especially work as only 3 per cent of high achievers in Australia choose to teach for graduate study. Compare this with the 19 percent who choose science for graduate study. Three decades ago, nearly ten times this proportion of high achievers were chosen to study pedagogy.
But, unlike other sectors such as agriculture, such rankings are less reliable as an indicator of performance in education. It has been rightly argued that other skills, such as high-level interpersonal skills, are important for high-level literacy and numeracy as well as quality of teaching. We need to think more boldly and broadly about how we can motivate and evaluate people to enter the profession.
But even though such measures may attract new teachers, it is also a cause for concern. Teachers constantly indicate that they are suffering from stress, irritation, parental abuse and excessive workload, which takes students away from teaching.
The increasing workload pressure means they have less time to focus on teaching students. This eventually puts many people out of teaching. The strikes for better pay in New South Wales in relation to the government’s 2.5 percent wage cap for government employees are on a level playing field about fair pay, but also reflect deep concerns about working conditions.
Teachers do not feel respected. A 2020 study found that nearly three-quarters of teachers were underrepresented. So the challenge of keeping teachers in the profession is much more than the salary. Research has shown salary ranks after factors such as commitment to the profession, job satisfaction, and positive relationships with students and co-workers. The most common reasons for quitting include workload, stress and irritation from years of struggle in inappropriate conditions.
So promoting excellence in teaching is not just about attracting quality candidates, nor is it only about paying them at the right level once they become teachers. It’s about respecting his judgment and professionalism, as well as supporting him throughout his career. Even though the pay is low compared to other professions and the workload is enormous, teachers continue to teach because they are driven by a deep, passionate moral purpose to make a difference in children’s lives.
We understand the challenges. Let us hope that kindness, fairness and a clear moral purpose inspire Australia’s new government policy to address current problems as well as deeply embedded historical legacies. The government of Albany has a difficult, complicated job, unlike teaching.
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