“The Schooling Challenges and Opportunities paper is a disappointing contribution to the Gonski review”, said Independent Education Union Federal Secretary Chris Watt.
“In the first instance the paper incorrectly attributes academic selectivity as the key and fundamental enrolment gate-keeper for non-government schools, while in fact the evidence is that these schools overwhelmingly enroll students primarily on the faith, ethnic or cultural preference of their family.
“The paper discounts achievement of the non-government school sector, for example the Catholic system, in achieving PISA results that are of both high performing and not only above average equity, but higher in both measures than other Australian systems.
“Analysis of PISA data by researchers like Ludger Woessmann also shows that these schools still have statistically higher results even after accounting for SES background.
“Not only that, the paper makes little or no attempt to examine any data other than PISA and NAPLAN results, avoiding consideration of schools contributions to other socially important contributions such as community commitment and engagement.
“It acknowledges civic and social engagement as a no doubt desirable outcome but strangely fails to examine research such as the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth.
“The paper also suggests in apparent contradiction that “there is not necessarily a lot that schools [the ‘better schools’] themselves are doing that is ‘better’ “and then almost immediately stating that “the greatest influence on performance is what happens in the classroom – that is, the effectiveness of teaching.”
“Most extraordinarily, the paper provides little examination of the fundamental issue of ‘location, location’ on student opportunity and access preferring only to deal with selectivity, academic or financial.
Chris Watt
Federal Secretary
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