Home Page > News and Events > Imported solutions of little help in the crisis in our schools

By Geoff Riordan, UTS
SMH, 6 July 2006
Opinion

RECENT months the media have carried stories of public school buildings that are in such disrepair that teachers have had to carry out basic maintenance.

From unhygienic and inadequate toilets to leaky roofs, rooms with threadbare carpet and walls unpainted for years, there are many examples that support education consultant Brian Caldwell's claim in yesterday's Herald that successive NSW governments have neglected their responsibility for maintaining schools to reasonable standards. However, his attribution of the dramatic drift to private schools to this government neglect and his solution of public-private partnerships are other matters altogether.

There are many reasons for this drift, and while they may include parental rejection of poor facilities, perceptions, founded or otherwise, about academic quality, the level of pastoral care, student discipline, a school's level of accountability to parents and the extent to which the school recognises and supports parents' aspirations for their children all play a part in parents' decisions. The way schools and school issues are presented in the media also plays a part.

NSW public education has had many successes in recent years. The dominance of selective public schools in HSC results and the dramatic increases in enrolments in some public schools, such as at the Northern Beaches Secondary College, demonstrate clearly that public education can be successful and extremely popular with both parents and students. While large investment in infrastructure is clearly needed, so, too, is imagination, innovation and a restatement of the compelling case in favour of public education. That case is that it is uniquely placed to serve all members of the community and to provide world-class education opportunities for all, based on children's needs and ability, and not just for some religious, upper socioeconomic or other subgroups within the community.

Revitalising public education should not be undertaken as a reaction to the drift away from public schools, but rather, as being critical to a society wherein all people have the opportunity to develop their educational and vocational potential.

The test of this is the extent to which as a society we do not resent the success of others - the tall poppy syndrome - but rather celebrate success as an indication of the fair workings of an inclusive society that provides rewards to anyone prepared to have a go.

Without such a revitalisation we will continue to envy the opportunities afforded to the lucky few. In a fairer system the gap between the best and the worst examples of school buildings and facilities would be narrowed by raising the standards in most schools - not limiting those of the elite.

The further revitalisation of public education will need an ongoing investment in people and innovation as well as in buildings. Hopefully we might enter a new era in Australia where wealthy individuals may be inspired by the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to give their money to worthwhile causes, rather than invest in them for further profit. We could test this by inviting wealthy companies and individuals to donate to an education foundation that was administered by government and business representatives.

A foundation should not replace government funding, but rather, it should be added to increased funding by governments. In this regard, Caldwell is right to name the issue as one of government neglect. The Commonwealth's new Investing in Our Schools program for capital works is a welcome if insufficient move in this direction.

The critical issue here is that, as recent experiences in NSW of public-private partnerships in other areas have shown, such partnerships can create more problems than they solve: the profit motive does not always marry well with government responsibilities for the provision of public infrastructure and services. Private funds are needed, but as donations and not business investments.

Caldwell has been an advocate of public-private partnerships in schools for several years. In 2004 he wrote, with Jack Keating, a monograph for the Australian Council of Deans titled Adding Value to Public Education: An Examination of the Possibilities of Public-Private Partnerships. Caldwell's support for such arrangements are based on his assessment of their success in Britain. Surely we have learned enough from our own experiences to be able to devise our own solutions to Australia's unique problems, rather than import solutions from Britain.

What Caldwell has done is to identify a real and critical problem. What NSW needs to do is to devise a local solution.


* Geoff Riordan is associate dean, Faculty of Education, at the University of Technology, Sydney.

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