Thursday 20 November 2014

Life as an irregular student: The pitfalls of deregulated universities

Life as an irregular student: The pitfalls of deregulated universities



6



Education Minister Christopher Maurice Pyne (AKA Liar Liar Pants-On-Fire)


Deregulating university fees will penalise students with
learning disorders, increase inequality and send Australia backwards as a
nation, writes Tim Lubcke.




On the way to work this morning, as I write this, I heard Christopher Pyne again defending the deregulation of university fees
on ABC local radio. I had to switch stations. It seems to me that those
in favour of it have lived a fairly benign existence and are honestly
unable to see how much they risk undermining further Australian
prosperity.




I know what it’s like to come at education with an irregular brain.



I was perhaps six or seven when a teacher slid the piece of paper in front of me. It was the first test of my schooling life.



When he told us to turn over the page and begin, what would dominate
the next 15 years of my life came crashing home. The page was
unintelligible. I just didn’t get what was being asked of me. It was
like being handed a foreign language with everyone around you expecting
you to understand it.




I panicked and after some time, broke down. More than two-and-a-half decades later, I still vividly remember that moment.



Dictation was by far the most difficult task I experienced over those
early years, however it wasn’t isolated to one subject. Year after year
teachers lamented to my parents about my “stubbornness” in class and
refusal to learn. One teacher said it looked as though I wrote with my
feet.




If it wasn’t for the sanctuary of the private world of my bedroom, I
would have believed that I was stupid, as I was being told in school. At
least in that one place – and the support of my parents with text books
and equipment – I could learn about the natural world, and play with
electronics and basic mechanics.




From that, I knew that I was able, but needed to learn by myself.





By the time I looked towards tertiary education, in my early 20’s, an astute teacher recognised the traits of dyslexia.
She insisted that I was tested, which confirmed as much. While some
suggestions came of it ‒ such as using computers rather than hand
writing ‒ the central point was that I had learnt how to learn for
myself.




Successfully landing a place in a degree in environmental science, I
was not a great student. In the first couple of years, I passed with the
occasional credit. Yet when I was given autonomy in my final year of
the courses, that’s when I began to prove my value.




Dyslexia is nothing more than a story of a square peg and around
hole. When I was able to define my working style, I could flourish.




Since the completion of my degree, I’ve gone on to demonstrate my value.



Although I completed a degree focused on ecology, I quickly moved
towards data management, and technical project development and
maintenance. I’ve designed a number of automated data validation and
analysis packages, project databases, websites, remote research
facilities and portable chemistry devices.




Again, it has been in those roles where I have been granted autonomy that I’ve added the most value in environmental research.



The discussions regarding the deregulation of university fees,
however, I recognised would have stopped me entirely from pursuing this
path.






Schooling has been hard and completely unenjoyable from start to
finish in my case. I went on because I saw the value to my career. That
value would be lost if I had acquired debt that I would live with for
decades; seven years on, I have just under half of my HECS debt
remaining as it is.




I’ve also heard talk in interviews from senior figures of various
universities suggesting that deregulated university fees would allow
them to provide a range of scholarships to students from humble
backgrounds. That sounds nice, but I know that an unremarkable dyslexic
student such as I was would be extremely unlikely to receive this
particular boost.




I come from a working class family, where I am the only one to have
even completed secondary education. I am very conscious of debt and how
debilitating it can be.




I can confidently say that I would not be where I am today if Howard
deregulated university at the turn of the century prior to my
application to my course.




Earlier this year, I wrote about the failing green sector
— something that has led me to contemplate my career path and indeed
the possibility of completing another degree to move into a more secure
career. Yet, I am unwilling to start something that might grow in
exponential cost as I go further along the course. Uncertainty has left
me in limbo.




Deregulation of university fees strips the Aussie fair go from
education and I feel for my children, who would be stuck with very
difficult choices as young adults.




The value of a candidate is impossible to define on purely academic
measures, as I hope my career thus far illustrates. Moreover, with the
recent passing of Gough Whitlam, we are reminded just how much it
changed the lives of Australian’s (especially women) in opening the doors to universities in the 1970’s through free education.






Debt is debt and the most responsible students will be wary to take
on too much of it. We risk generations of hardworking, diligent students
avoiding such debt and in turn, growing skills shortage which
inevitably will take us backwards as a nation.




Creative Commons Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License



Saturday 8 November 2014

Barry Spurr Is Not The Only Problem With Pyne's Curriculum Review | newmatilda.com

Barry Spurr Is Not The Only Problem With Pyne's Curriculum Review | newmatilda.com

Barry Spurr Is Not The Only Problem With Pyne's Curriculum Review



By Angelo Gavrielatos





Culture
wars in education serve a greater purpose for conservatives by helping
to distract from the real issue facing our schools. The Minister wants
us to forget about Gonski, writes Angelo Gavrielatos*.




As
220,000 young Australians complete their Year 12 exams, the correlation
between their results and the resource standard of the school they
attended should be a cause of national concern.



That is a truth that makes some, including our current Federal
Government, uncomfortable and one which makes them want to change the
subject from school funding reform to almost anything else, including
the review of the Australian Curriculum announced earlier this year.



They need to change the subject because it is hard to ignore the
findings of the Gonski Review, which diagnosed inequality as the problem
in our schools and more funding – targeted and accountable funding – as
the solution.



Differences in ability and motivation will inevitably exist between
children, but differences in results that flow from disadvantage are
not.



It is within our power to deliver a more equitable funding system
that supports the needs of all children and gives them a chance to reach
their potential.



If the Government had intended to fully implement the Gonski reforms there would have been no curriculum review.


Setting up a review of a curriculum that is yet to be fully
implemented was always going to be a distraction, even before the
revelations of the shocking racist emails of one of the subject reviewers, Professor Barry Spurr, had been exposed.



The Review is based on the extraordinary suggestion that poor
performance in our schools can be blamed on a so called sub-standard,
politically-biased curriculum being forced onto students by a shadowy
clique of leftist academics and educators.



No mention of the fact that 100,000 students with disability do not
get the support they need in schools, of our class sizes and workloads
(higher than the OECD average), or the fact that 40 per cent of
secondary school maths classes are taught by unqualified teachers.



These are all hard problems that can’t be solved by slogans, rhetoric or stunts.


The Gonski Review set us on the path towards a fairer system, which
would see all schools reach a minimum resource standard and give their
students a better chance of reaching their full potential.



But the Abbott Government has chosen to walk away from these issues,
abandon the Gonski agreements with the states and territories and begin
an insidious dismantling of the architecture behind the Gonski reforms.



If it is allowed to get away with it, we could return to a funding
system which exacerbates the resource gaps between schools and the
achievement gaps between students.



We know that the Abbott Government does not support the Gonski
needs-based funding reforms. Earlier this year it abandoned the six-year
Gonski agreements with the states and territories, committing only to
the first four years of increased funding.



Because two-thirds of the extra funding was to be delivered in the
last two years of the agreements, that effectively ended the attempt to
lift all schools to a minimum resource standard.



It was like stopping a three-storey building after erecting just the
first level, but what’s worse is the way the Abbott Government is now
attempting to undermine the building’s foundations.



Then PM Julia Gillard Announces the Gonski Reforms in 2013
Then PM Julia Gillard Announces the Gonski Reforms in 2013
Gonski is not just about putting more resources into schools, although that is an important part of it.


It is about rethinking how we fund schools, by moving to a system
that is needs-based and sector-blind and making sure state governments
and private school authorities are made fully accountable for where the
money goes.



It recognises that we can get the best results by targeting funding to the schools where it is most needed.


The principal of any public school that has received extra Gonski
funding this year will be able to tell you how it has made a difference,
whether through more literacy programs, speech pathologists or other
support for staff.



Education Minister Christopher Pyne is on the record as saying he and
Tony Abbott feel a “particular responsibility” for private schools that
they don’t have for public schools. Where does that leave the majority
of Australian children who attend public schools?



In opposition the Abbott Government promised to increase the
‘disability loading’ which is paid to schools that educate students with
a disability from 2015. This promise was abandoned on Budget Night,
leaving over 100,000 students with disability without any funding at
all.



Minister Pyne is also conducting a review of the low-SES funding
loading – a Gonski measure – which sees schools which educate high
numbers of students from low-income families given extra funding to
recognise the extra challenges they face.



The problem is the review is invitation-only and conducted in secret,
with the majority of organisations invited representing private
schools, which educate a disproportionately low number of students from
low-income families. There is no doubt this review will be used to
water-down the loading and divert money from needy schools.



The Abbott Government has also passed changes to the Australian
Education Act through the House of Representative which, if passed by
the Senate, will quietly delay the requirements of state governments and
private school authorities to report on how they are spending Gonski
funding and the mandatory “school improvement plans” which were part of
the Gonski agreements.



There will be no way of tracking the allocation, let alone whether
the money is being used for the implementation of programs for the
students for whom it was intended. This is setting up the Gonski reforms
to fail.



Opponents of Gonski push the line that giving schools more funding
doesn’t make a difference, and that Australian test scores have dropped
in the last decade.



They fail to point out the decline in Australian students test scores
took place from 2003-2012, a time when schools-funding was based on the
flawed Howard Government formula, delivering some of the biggest
increases in funding to the wealthiest private schools.



To use that to conclude that accountable, needs-based, targeted
funding will not assist in lifting overall student performance and close
student achievement gaps is ridiculous.



Meanwhile, every year that we delay needs-based funding, another
cohort of disadvantaged students misses out, and gaps in achievement
grow.



The two to three year achievement gap between advantaged and
disadvantaged students is unacceptable as is the difference in retention
rates of students from low-income families who have only a 60 per cent
chance of finishing Secondary School, compared to 85 per cent for those
from wealthier families.



What’s worse is that recent research has shown that gaps in
achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged schools have grown in
just the last three years, while the Gonski reforms were being designed.



A better, more equitable school system is achievable, but it can only
happen if we have governments which are willing to embrace the idea of
needs-based funding and increase resources to close the gaps in
achievement and opportunity between advantaged and disadvantaged
students.



* Angelo Gavrielatos is the Federal President of the Australian Education Union




PrintPrint  
 
 
googleplus