It is very appropriate in Youth Week 2014 that a group in Gippsland, Victoria, the “Gippsland Youth Commitment“, has developed an online architecture and business model that is designed to get agencies and organisations to work collaboratively by sharing online resources.. for the sole purpose of improving outcomes for young-people.
Yes, there are many such initiatives.
What makes this different is that it has been led from the “ground-up” by the Baw Baw Latrobe Local Learning and Employment Network, staff within the DEECD in Gippsland and their partners across many service providers and organisations in Gippsland.
This is not a trivial thing.
The project has developed an online youth services directory that will function on any mobile device, designed particularly for young people looking for services and support within Gippsland.
This is really just the tip-of-the-iceberg.
The system also has as a “back-end” management system that is designed for detailed sharing between organisations working to provide youth services in Gippsland. The business model and architecture means it really is “sustainable”, [an often over-used and misrepresented term.]
This is the key, Combining local leadership and a budget model that understands the financial and technical constraints of rural and regional communities….
The most recent report by the Victorian Auditor-General on Access to Education for Rural Students highlights the glaring challenges when it comes to deploying Government Policy on a place-based or customised basis. Readers of this blog will know my views on evidence-based-planning.
This initiative is one of a few that I am aware of that can genuinely address the challenges in the Auditor-General’s report in a positive, meaningful and cost-effective way.
Caveat/Disclosure
I have assisted in the development and deployment of this project.
I was privileged to attend the Broadford Secondary College awards night [ last night, December 18th] and witness the launch of the Delaney Family Endowment for Year 12 students studying at Broadford Secondary College. This is a $20,000 Endowment in perpetuity.
How simply the policy challenges facing the nation can be distilled in to an eloquent and most generous commitment by a family that simply wishes to see everyone have the opportunity to achieve, regardless of their personal circumstances.
Such a genuine, humble and heartfelt commitment to an entire community will, I know, have an impact for many, many generations to come. This is philanthropy in its truest form.
What a wonderful example for all communities and policy makers.
The Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) has been published today by The Honourable J. B. Hockey MP Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia and Senator the Honourable Mathias Cormann Minister for Finance of the Commonwealth of Australia
The Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 requires the Treasurer to publicly release and table a Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) report by the end of January in each year, or within 6 months after the last budget, whichever is later.
Since the first MYEFO report in 1997-98 the Treasurer and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation have issued the report as a joint statement.
The purpose of the MYEFO report is to provide updated information to allow the assessment of the Government’s fiscal performance against the fiscal strategy set out in the current Budget Papers (Budget Paper No. 1).
Overview:
The key summary position of the document states:
The budget position has deteriorated significantly since the 2013 Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO). Budget deficits totalling $123 billion are now expected across the forward estimates, with a $47 billion deficit expected in 2013-14 — 3.0 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Without policy change and taking no remedial action, budget deficits would be projected in each and every year to 2023-24.
The major economic parameters suggest a softening and slowing of domestic prices and wages and thus there is a commensurate reduction in the forecast Real GDP from 3% [ PEFO Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook ] to 2.5%
MYEFO 2013 Parameters
Education, Training & Climate
Of immediate note and direct interest to many of my readers will be the changes within the Education and Training portfolio indicated over the outer years of the budget, particularly:
Trade Training Centres — cessation
redirecting funding over six years under the Building Stronger Communities Fund ($528 million) and Trade Training Centres ($987 million) and other smaller portfolio savings, to broadly offset the cost of Students First — A fairer funding agreement for schools. The savings decisions for the Building Stronger Communities Fund and Trade Training Centres are expected to decrease cash payments by $104 million in 2013-14 ($841 million over four years);
The Government will achieve savings of $986.5 million over five years (including $375.8 million in 2017-18 and $298.0 million in 2018-19) by ceasing the Trade Training Centres programme.
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority — reduction in funding
The Government will refocus the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) activities to ensure it is developing the highest possible standard curriculum and direct its resources to developing benchmarking processes so Australia can compare its curriculum against the world’s best. As part of this refocussing, ACARA’s funding will be reduced by $20.0 million over four years.
Department of Climate Change
The Government will achieve savings of $45.0 million over four years (and $12.8 million per annum from 2017-18) by reducing the functions of the former Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency that were transferred to the Department of the Environment, the Clean Energy Regulator, the Department of Industry and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Those of us interested in the performance of education systems broadly [at a professional or policy level] or perhaps those of us interested in the specifics of educational results [perhaps as a business-owner, looking for a skilled pool of workers or as a parent, concerned for the future of those most-dear] should equally be interested in two [somewhat juxtaposed] reports , the New Zealand productivity Commission’s report ” Productivity by the Numbers..” and the Council of Australian Government’s Reform Council [COAG] report on Education Performance in Australia over the last five years.
In a field of hotly contested ideologies and practical realities, it appears there is a lot to like about much of the specific performance of the mid-to-longer term efforts to improve intergenerational mobility amongst Australians. Of course, there is room for genuine concern, but the positive gains are the focus for today.
Simplistic public debates about skills, education, schools and/or universities, would do well to consider some of these trends. The educators are educating.
Education, skills and the ability to adapt to the realities of labour markets and skills needs are key challenges that we hear almost everyday, whether it be from Politicians, Business Leaders or Educators. The COAG report provides some insights in to the current performance of Education systems across Australia and what this means for the nation as a whole. It is also interesting to get a perspective from our “cousins across the ditch” and New Zealand’s Productivity Commission’s comparative assessment of the structural differences in the Australian and New Zealand economies.
Australian – New Zealand
Source: New Zealand Productivity Commission
The New Zealand Productivity Commission reports notes:
New Zealand and Australia have had remarkably similar employment growth since the mid-1950s. But Australian firms have been much more successful than their New Zealand counterparts at converting that labour input into output
When we turn a little closer to home and look at the COAG report on the Education reforms of the last five years, we also find some key improvements.
Some of the key findings [at a National Level] suggest:
Reading and numeracy are improving in the primary years but not in secondary
More young people attain Year 12 but fewer are fully engaged in work or study after school
Progress for Indigenous students appears slow and patchy
Outcomes for students from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds still poor
The figures also suggest that historical inequalities are proving true to that description. They are historical inequalities that perhaps require resources and focus of an historic nature.
Equity – The long-tail challenge for policy makers and practitioners alike.
Between 2008 and 2012, the reading achievement of students in the lowest socio-economic group increased in Years 3 and 5 but declined in Years 7 and 9. Large gaps in achievement between low and high socio-economic groups remain in all year levels of testing.
Over the period 2006 to 2011, Year 12 attainment increased for the lowest socio-economic group to 73.7% compared to 93.3% for the highest socio-economic group. The gap between the two groups remained similar to that in 2006. There were greater improvements for the lower and middle socio-economic groups (quintiles 2 and 3). Year 12 attainment for both these groups increased by nearly 5 percentage points, to 81.9% and 85.8% respectively, reducing the gap with the highest group.
Those that are within the Local Learning and Employment Networks in Victoria would be pleased with some of these trends.
In 2011, after leaving school, 41.7% of young people from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds were not fully engaged in work or study, compared to 17.4% for young people from the highest socio- economic backgrounds. This gap widened between 2006 and 2011. [Source: COAG 2013]
The “teachers dispute” is still not settled. Telecommunications, Climate Policy, Labour Market renewal and work such as the Gonski review appear distant references on some future policy horizon.
The treatment of education and skills as a simple cost in a budget, or some “sector” to “manage” fundamentally misunderstands the needs of a modern economy [which wishes to remain one] in this century. Envisioning future Victorian and Australian communities that are literate, numerate, engaged, sustainably employed, self-reliant and generous is the task of all leaders.
By most objective comparative measures, for many years (decades) Australia and/or Victoria have been one of the most high performing societies and economies [I place them in that order] on the planet.
The teaching workforce requires the investment and reform commensurate with the strategic “lever” that it is. Not because it is flawed [although of course there is improvement possible], but because it is one of the only truly public policy levers that can establish and underpin a competitive and harmonious society in to the future.
Yet, as my colleagues in the US would say, we have a Kabuki Dance called the Teachers EBA that suggests the most significant outcome required by Government is saving a few percentage points over the life cycle of one industrial agreement.
There could be nothing less strategic in my view.
Yr 12 Attainment
At a local level, I note that in the Shire I live in, Mitchell Shire, the Year 12 attainment rate for young people has dropped from 71% in 2007 to a startling 59% in 2010 [the fourth lowest in all LGA’s in the State].
There are a number of other metric’s I could point to, but this serves to make my point I hope.
How does anything that relates to the current position of Government to the teacher’s agreement, suggest this position will or can be improved?
How does having less skilled, less-schooled, less trained individuals in our community good for business or investment, let alone, the individuals themselves or the communities they live in?
Public debate and discourse appears to have collapsed and we have ridiculously doctrinaire views from political parties and commentators that frankly, in the 21st century, serve no-one, except perhaps the [increasingly] narrow self-interests of the few in power. The status-quo is well served.
Scanning the newspapers in New South Wales and Victoria today, provides a stunning treatise of potential corruptions, conflicts-of-interest, self-interest and just plain apparent incompetence that sadly, supports my basic premise.
We need to be smarter.
And ethical.
There appears to be genuine challenges of competence on both sides of the ever-increasingly irrelevant aisles of power.
We have a new Premier of the State and I doubt anyone understands why?
This will cover our news and air-waves for weeks.
It seems if one side of politics says it is raining, the other side will suggest it is sunny and what was once a fearless and informed fourth-estate, chooses to publish the controversy of the disagreement, rather than take the time to look out the window and report the facts.
In the mean-time, tens of thousands of public school educators remain without any reasonable commitment to the individual and profession-wide resources they require to respond to the needs of vastly diverse and rapidly balkanising communities. Evidence-led, place-based planning has never been more critical.
I am reminded of an opine from 2005 [I think from Barry Jones] when he referred to the rise of the “un-reading managerial class” in modern policy circles.
I don’t see what has changed.
While I can be considered a “partisan” [in the broader meaning] when it comes to supporting state education, I do consider myself rationale and collaborative, [Bruce, please don’t snigger..] and thus able to see areas of reform that require all stakeholders to be prepared to compromise the tactical, to achieve a shared strategic vision.
As yet,as far as I can tell, such a vision has not been articulated nor necessarily sought.
Management appears easier.
Nevertheless, the signal to noise ratio is such in public debate, that I simply add my voice to the ocean of noise, if only to satisfy myself and the few hundred colleagues, here and abroad that I share my views with.
Settling the teacher’s Enterprise Bargaining Agreement would be the first indication that we can and want to get smarter.
It appears from contact with family and colleagues at what appears to be the largest state-wide teacher stop-work action ever held in Melbourne, Australia today, we are still very much in the cycle of what I like to call “retail economics and policy planning”.
It is sad to see such limited public debate about what is REALLY happening in schools, not just in Victoria, but across the country.
At a time when we have more information, data and knowledge about both TEACHING and LEARNING, we are still destined for what appears to be a policy debate that does not get much beyond either “kicking a teacher” or demanding unlimited funds with little or no accountability.
It is an insult to offer those in the service of educating our young such limited salaries, career structures and resourcing. Likewise, this will always appear to be the case as long as the teaching service allows a quasi-profession to be externally controlled, cajoled and manipulated because it does not manage and oversee its own standards and status.
It seems, the major actors in current policy are happy to frame the debate in terms of choices that perhaps even Faust would not consider. Although such policy positions play well on TV and Radio i.e “We need to reform teaching”, “we need to get rid of poor teachers” or “our schools are crumbling”, ” our rankings are falling”, we seldom discuss the opportunities a bi-partisan, multi-party commitment to education would bring to the country as a whole.
The half-truths and selective reasoning for political-gain, [at all levels] while well-crafted, is simply that, well-crafted. Our lack of cohesion and focus, our lack of collective support for the teaching service as one of the key strategic industries of our country’s current and future prosperity, is the key to many other social and economic policy dilemmas. Just ask the residents of Hackney.
We have in fact seen enrolments in non-government schools reach approximately 34% of total enrolments and yet concurrently, we have seen the rise of policy and public debate about “falling standards” and “falling rankings”. The shift of student enrolments to non-government schools [without apparent academic improvement] and the concentration of lower-performing students in many government schools is a challenge often simply ignored, it appears, by many policy makers.
Spending & OECD Performance
A lot has been made of discussions about spending and OECD rankings in the last few weeks and months. Here is a little chart that shows spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product and the OECD Country Rankings in PISA Tests in Maths, English and Science.
Dear reader, I would simply ask you to look closely at this graph below and ask yourself a few things about Australia’s rankings, mindful of the fact that MOST of the TEACHERS that were responsbile for the PISA results in 2000 are still in schools now.
Question. What has changed?
Question: What should we do now?
This chart requires flash.
Could you pick two of these? Education, Competitiveness, Civil Society
The project has developed an online youth services directory that will function on any mobile device, designed particularly for young people looking for services and support within Gippsland.
