To draw from a number of quotations, education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family: it is power; it safeguards our democracy; it unlocks our freedom.
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I never actually had the traditional ‘father and son’ discussion with my Dad, but he did often repeat his simple advice, “Get as much education as you can, as fast as you can”. He clearly recognized and believed in the value of education, but it was an opportunity he never really had, with the war and post-war family constraints.
Our Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, speaks of an “innovation revolution” and of an “ideas boom”, as fundamental elements of his “strategy” for “Jobs and Growth”. This is a commendable objective, especially as Australia has enjoyed something of a competitive edge in medical and scientific innovations and technological discoveries.
It was, therefore most disturbing to see the recent four-yearly Report of The Trends in International Mathematics and Science (TIMSS) that revealed that our students had again slipped further down the international leaderboard.
It revealed that since 2011, Australia had fallen from 18th to 28th in Year 4 mathematics; 12th to 17th in Year 8 mathematics; and from 12th to 17th in Year 8 science. We were still 25th in Year 4 science. TIMSS ranks 49 countries in Year 4 results, and 39 countries in Year 8 results.
To set these results in an even more embarrassing context, we were beaten in all four categories by Borat’s Kazakhstan! We were also clearly beaten, across the board, by Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, England and the United States.
Our results have deteriorated since 2003, despite an increase in education funding by some 50 percent. Clearly, we need to carefully assess the effectiveness of our education funding.
Hopefully, our political leaders, from all sides, accept this as a wake-up call. Unfortunately, I fear that we will have little rational discussion of the issue and challenges in what is now our very combative political world that is very short-term, opportunistic, populist, and mostly negative, in its focus.
Our politicians are far more interested in just scoring political points on each other, day in, day out, than offering and debating substantive policy alternatives, especially when it comes to school education, where we also see the ‘blame game’ between the Commonwealth and State governments.
While all sides of politics mouth platitudes and generalities about the importance of education, and espouse commendable objectives, none have a detailed and deliverable education strategy, extending from pre-school to university, and including all forms of training.
Moreover, there has also been a disturbing tendency by both major parties, when in government, to cut back on spending on science, and on research and development, when so many other countries are accelerating their efforts in this respect.
Sure, Budget repair is a very important challenge, but this is a question of priorities within that challenge. The two areas of education and health should be top of the list. I also suspect that a majority of Australians would be prepared to pay more tax to guarantee a world-class response in both areas.
We can’t afford to go on excusing and rationalising. We need to act, and to act decisively. As the Trump phenomenon reveals, electorates have clear limits to their tolerance of consistently poor government.
