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campusreview.com.au
Room for improvement
OECD report on Australian education
reveals the good and the bad.
By Loren Smith
“When schools can provide extra staff, they can address larger
classes and provide extra support for students who need it,” federal
president Correna Haythorpe said.
A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW
T
he title of the ‘Australia’ section of the OECD’s latest annual,
education-centric report could be ‘Nevertheless’. This is
because most negatives seemed to be counterbalanced
with positives. For example, Education at a Glance 2018 revealed
that while our university fees are relatively high, we are one of the
few countries with an income-contingent student loan scheme,
which encourages equity of access to university.
Another mixed finding was that while the proportion of public
education funding has declined (and indeed, at 9.3 per cent in
2015, is below the OECD average of 11 per cent), private funding for
education has risen.
Yet some of the report’s revelations, whether positive or negative,
were clear-cut.
THE POSITIVES
•
•
•
t 6 per cent of GDP, our total education spend is above the
A
OECD average of 5 per cent.
We have the highest ratio of international students studying
nationally to domestic students studying internationally in
the OECD: 26 to one.
We have the seventh highest number of 25 to 34-year-olds
with a university qualification.
THE NEGATIVES
•
e have a long way to go in early childhood education: we
W
are 12 per cent below average in three-year-old enrolment
in this sector, and we spend less per child than the average
OECD country.
• School teachers in Australia have it harder: our face-to-face
teaching times are well above the OECD average, and our
average primary classes have three more students than the
average of 21.
The Australian Education Union suggested that the latter point
indicates a staffing shortage, which should be redressed.
Despite the report being a ‘glance’, at a hefty 400 pages, it is
important to consider its totality as it relates to Australia.
Dr Steven Lewis is well positioned to do this. A research fellow
at the REDI (Research for Educational Impact) Centre of Deakin
University, Lewis focuses on OECD education programs, as well
as international education policy more broadly.
Though he had mixed feelings about the report, he said it
contained “generally some very good news stories for Australia”.
This view holds even more weight, considering his research
requires him to critically analyse the impact of OECD data.
Specifically, he was pleased by our university enrolment
rates, which he labelled “quite a significant achievement”,
given its associated lifetime benefits, and our overall increased
education expenditure. Yet, he was disappointed with the shift in
funding from the public to the private sector.
As for what’s changed for Australia in recent years,
Lewis pinpointed the “excellent” vast increase in enrolments in
primary and early childhood education since 2005.
WHAT’S THE USE?
But how can this data be used, if at all? Lewis thinks we shouldn’t
simply look at high-performing countries and copy them, as
what works for them won’t necessarily work for us. Rather, we
should assess our long-term policy goals in light of the data.
For example, if a goal is to increase access to university, we can
use the data to see if this has been achieved – across unique
demographic groups.
“It’s easy to talk about rankings … but quite often, the richness
comes from digging into [the data] deeply, and looking at trends
over time,” he said.
Despite this, the data’s policy impact on Australia is difficult to
ascertain.
“OECD data is important to Australia, which is not the case for
all countries [but] it competes with other data for attention in a busy
policy realm.” ■
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