Science Education News (SEN) Journal 2017 Volume 66 Number 4 December 2017 | Page 36

ARTICLES
Australia’s Education Asset (continued)
Although the LNP Government has continually attacked the
Gonski plan on its failure to produce tangible results, it has
remained on the table. That is due to its stalwart and courageous
defence by former NSW National Party MP and Education Minister
Adrian Piccoli and former Premier, Liberal Mike Baird. It is to their
great credit that they recognised the need for the reforms, and
were willing to withstand the enormous pressure applied to them.
Otherwise it is almost certain that the scheme would have been
history by now.
that I helped to ‘teach’). Those who were selected were usually
regarded as probationary teachers, required to demonstrate
their capacity to teach during their first year to be accepted into
the team by 2017, at the very earliest. How many of these few
could possibly have made a tangible change to the pattern of
Australian education? It’s like building a marvellous new bridge
across a broad harbour; if it is designed to be opened in 2025,
not much traffic improvement is likely in 2017!
Malcolm Turnbull
With 2018 soon to be with us, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull,
with his team very close behind him, had to decide what would
happen to the Gonski reforms from 2019 onwards. Somebody
very cunning designed what was to be called “Gonski-2.0”. Since
Abbott had planned to cut the Education Budget by $30Bn at the
end of 2014, and the end of 2018 was approaching, and despite
the record low inflation rate, $30Bn in 2014 would be worth more
in 2019, if only $22Bn were to be cut from the Education Budget,
that could be announced as an INCREASE in the Education
Budget of $8Bn! If that were repeated often enough, loudly
enough, and publicised by the usual docile channels, it could
be okay, and not upset the polls too much. Might even make it
through the Senate! And so it did.
Mike Baird
What are the consequences?
The original Gonski plan was to provide funding for disadvantaged
schools to provide specialist staff of various kinds, including
language aides and equipment for schools having a large
proportion of students whose home language is not English. One
such school near my home is Kogarah High School, where results
have been improving in every one of the past four years, but the
support staff will finish when the school loses $3.4M in 2019 and
2020. Bexley Primary school will lose $400K and its support staff.
Adrian Piccoli
One has to take into account that the Gillard Government
introduced the scheme in 2012. Assuming that University
Education Faculties learned of its implementation early that year,
and had time to redesign their courses appropriately, the initial
intake of students receiving the changed approach could have
only entered their course in 2013, and completed the basic
three-year course by the end of 2015, emerging into a teaching
pool that includes literally thousands of STEM-trained teachers
waiting to be assigned to schools. Some had already been
waiting for more than two years (which (includes three with PhDs
But many schools are disadvantaged for other reasons. Some are
located in impoverished regions of the cities, where survival within
a group is more relevant to young people than academic success.
Others are taught in regional schools, some in isolated schools,
where assistance for the low number of teachers simply does
not exist. Students in such schools are seriously disadvantaged.
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SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 66 NO 4