By Pasi Sahlberg and Trevor Cobbold
The latest results from the annual national literacy and numeracy tests in schools shows what we already knew: Australian education systems are not getting any better or fairer. The Better and Fairer Schools Agreement (BFSA) that the federal government is currently negotiating with the states and territories aims to address that problem. But while it may improve the learning outcomes of some students, it could make already-wide learning gaps even bigger.
This agreement, which is to take effect from January 1, lacks a clear definition of equity. That means the targets and measures to achieve it are insufficient. As a result, the BFSA risks broadening educational inequities, and jeopardising other efforts to help close the gap between the most advantaged and disadvantaged students.
It’s not that we don’t know how to define equity in education. Thirteen years ago, the Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling adopted a dual equity target to improve quality and fairness of Australian education.
First, it said, all students should complete a level of education that enables them to participate in the workforce and lead successful lives – this means completing high school. Second, differences in student outcomes should not be the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions: low income, Indigenous, regional, remote area and other disadvantaged student groups should achieve similar outcomes to more-advantaged students. The Gonski review based this “social equity goal” on the belief that students’ talents and abilities are not distributed differently among children from different socioeconomic status (SES), ethnic or language backgrounds, or domiciles.
The BFSA’s current equity goals are different. They state that “schools and education systems are equipped to provide all students with highly effective evidence-based teaching and equitable learning opportunities and support them to maximise their learning”.
The provision of “equitable learning opportunities” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for greater fairness, because this is an elusive and indeterminate concept that is difficult to measure reliably.
The failure to adopt clear equity goals raises two major problems with the BFSA targets. First, the agreement specifies that the proportion of all students completing Year 12, or its equivalent, should increase by 7.5 percentage points by 2030, from 76.3 per cent in 2022. It does not specify a target for low SES, Indigenous, regional and remote area students, only that the proportion for these students should “trend upward”.
“While equity remains a vague buzzword in education reform, governments continue to avoid accountability for improving it in schools. The lack of a clear definition can lead to misdirection of taxpayer funds … This has been the case in Australia for decades.”
Here is the problem. In 2022, the Year 12 completion rates for affluent, middle-SES and low-SES students were 82.9 per cent, 75.2 per cent and 69.7 per cent, respectively. The completion rates for students in regional, remote and very remote areas were 69.1 per cent, 67 per cent and 40.5 per cent. The targets in the BFSA would be met with just a 1 percentage point increase across the most disadvantaged students and larger increases for more affluent students. In other words, equity would decline.
The other problem is that the BFSA relies on reading and numeracy targets from those national student assessments, known as NAPLAN, to measure social equity. Strangely, these targets do not include the other NAPLAN literacy domains, including writing, spelling and grammar, and pronunciation. The broader learning categories in the Australian curriculum are also ignored.
It’s unclear how the NAPLAN targets themselves foster greater fairness. NAPLAN results are currently presented as four levels of proficiency – Exceeding (A), Strong (B), Developing (C) and Needs Additional Support (D) – which are determined by cut-off scores for tests taken each year by students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Those in levels C and D are performing below proficiency standards and those in levels A and B are achieving or exceeding expectations.
The BFSA’s “learning equity targets” require the proportion of students in levels A and B for reading and numeracy to increase by 10 per cent, and for the number in level D to decrease, with 10 per cent moving up by 2030.
These targets are too weak to make Australian school education fairer. The only specific target for disadvantaged students is that their proportion in the A and B levels trend upward. This condition would be met if their cohort in level B increases by as little as 1 percentage point, for example.
What would that mean for an education system aiming only at the agreed learning equity targets? An attractive strategy would be to focus on students who are just below level B, and less on those unlikely to achieve it. Even though the average NAPLAN scores would go up, achievement gaps between students from different equity groups could get bigger, and equity decline.
It is an extraordinary oversight that there is no requirement to reduce the proportion of disadvantaged students in level D, as those are the children who need the most help. This means the proportion of students needing additional support could increase, and equity decline, even while the BFSA targets are met.
There are international examples of similar education reforms where raising the bar didn’t narrow achievement gaps as intended. One example of careless target setting is Ontario’s Literacy and Numeracy Strategy, launched in 2004.
The aim of that strategy was to raise student outcomes while closing achievement gaps, especially for disadvantaged students. The overall result was improved academic test scores but bigger gaps. One reason was that to meet the performance targets, schools followed that aforementioned strategy of shifting their primary attention to students whose standardised test scores were just below the set proficiency levels, while leaving the majority of students who struggled with achievement without the needed support. Between 2009 and 2018, mathematics and reading test scores declined rapidly among low-achieving students.
After admitting the unintended consequences of these proficiency targets, Ontario adopted a smarter approach for better and fairer schools. Rather than continue the rhetoric of “raising the bar and closing the gap”, the education reforms became more collaborative and multifaceted, drawing in critical aspects of the education system, including whole curriculum, new pedagogies and assessments, shared leadership and community engagement. Canada now has one of the most successful education systems in the world.
Improving school results does not necessarily mean education is more equitable. International studies also show that overly directive reform efforts often cause alienation and resistance among teachers and so are less successful in improving schools.
The failure to clearly define what equity of education means and set functional targets to drive educational progress can have other long-lasting consequences for Australian schools. While equity remains a vague buzzword in education reform, governments continue to avoid accountability for improving it in schools.
The lack of a clear definition of equity can lead to misdirection of taxpayer funds and inadequate resourcing of disadvantaged students and schools. This has been the case in Australia for decades. Government funding increases have heavily favoured non-government schools since 2009, despite public schools enrolling the vast majority of the most disadvantaged students.
Ken Boston, a member of the original Gonski review panel, has pointed out that public schools in all Australian states and territories except the ACT are currently funded at 90 per cent or less of their schooling resource standard (SRS), while private schools in all states and territories except the Northern Territory are funded at more than 100 per cent of their SRS.
The OECD’s latest “Education at a Glance” report shows that government funding per student in public primary schools is about 3 per cent below the OECD average, while funding for private primary schools is 16 per cent above. It also shows that private schools in Australia are among the most highly government-funded of all developed countries.
Closing the achievement gaps between rich and poor also requires full funding of all public schools. There can be no excuse for continuing to underfund public schools when they enrol more than 80 per cent of disadvantaged students, and when more than 90 per cent of schools that have high concentrations of disadvantaged children are public schools.
What would be a better way forward with the BFSA? A basic goal must be that all students complete Year 12 or its equivalent. The agreements should include progress targets for low-SES, Indigenous, outer regional, remote area and very remote area students. This will also require schools to ensure learning progress across the curriculum and not just on the NAPLAN domains.
There need to be specific targets to achieve the social equity goals, meaning students in disadvantaged social groups achieve similar outcomes to more-advantaged students. That should lead to a significant reduction in the proportion of disadvantaged students in levels C and D in all NAPLAN domains. These targets should be supported by education policies and reforms that advance collaboration, wellbeing and engagement in all schools.
A better and fairer education system will remain a distant dream in Australia until we agree what equitable education is in practice. An alternative way is within reach. It requires a courageous determination to transform the mistakes of the past into understanding that quality and equity go hand in hand in education.
Originally published in the Saturday Paper on 21st September 2024