Prime Minister Scott Morrison is being urged to prioritise education equality during his visit to the Solomon Islands, after a new report found a shockingly low number of girls finish high school in the Pacific nation.
Aid agency Plan International, which compiled the ‘Our Education, Our Future’ report with the help of 60 girls in the Solomons, found the female graduation rate there is only seven per cent.
Expensive school fees, disturbingly high rates of child marriage and teen pregnancies, dangers facing girls walking to and from school, as well as cultural perceptions towards gender are being blamed for mass female dropouts.
«I would say it’s discrimination but it’s also about opportunity. People think that girls are associated to home,» Ella Kauhue, Program Manager for Plan International Solomon Islands, told SBS News ahead of the report’s release next week.
«They do a lot of work at home, they save the family, they look after the children, so they have – in terms of family – they have responsibility more than the boys.
SBS News understands Mr Morrison will visit schools in the Solomon Islands on Monday and read to a class.
Australia is being urged to prioritise the education of girls in the Solomon Islands.
SBS News/Omar Dabbagh
‘Left behind’
«When it comes to the decision-making of parents on who to go to school when there is limited funds, then the boys have a chance to go, the girls are left behind,” said Franklin Kakate, a school principal in the village of Visale.
It is a domestic responsibility that many girls say they do not want.
Best friends, Betty and Betty, aged 18 and 19, dropped out of high school in recent years due to financial stress and peer pressure. And both say they are desperate to complete their education.
«I want to tell other girls that when they receive a good education, they will not be like us – you know, walking around (doing nothing). Boring. They will have a good life,» the girls said.
«I see value in education, so I want to see the girls value that because if they’re educated then they can see things.»
Friends Betty and Betty were both forced to drop out of high school, and say they are desperate to one day graduate.
SBS News/Omar Dabbagh
Schoolgirls from Visale, north of the capital Honiara, have told SBS News they hope to one day break the mould in the Solomons.
«I feel excited because I have the opportunity to attend school while other girls stay at home and do housework,” says 18-year-old Melisa, who is in her last year of school.
«I want be in engineering because I want to be part of the male’s job, because in Solomon Island there’s not much female involved in men’s job.»
«(I want to be a) lawyer so I can solve all the problems in the country,» adds 17-year-old Clodina.
«I want to make our country a better country in the future.»
‘Gender imbalance’
In a bid to prioritise education in recent years, the Solomons government made primary school free. But Plan International claims that policy has not been implemented in many parts of the country. School attendance, both in primary and high school, is also not compulsory.
Seventy-two per cent of girls finish primary school, but as fees increase every of secondary school so too do dropout numbers, whereas one-third of boys are able to complete high school.
Plan International found that two out of five girls are forced to drop out of school due to teen pregnancy or child marriage, with the former seeing many girls expelled as they are often blamed for betraying customary practices.
Simple things like walking home, particularly in remote provinces, can deter girls from attending where there is a high rate of sexual assault.
Eighteen-year-old Judy says she used to walk six kilometres a day to and from her previous school and feared every day she would be attacked.
«I feel scared and maybe we don’t know what is going to happen when you follow the road, that there is no house and someone to help you,» she explained.
«And sometimes if you go to school by yourself and you meet someone who tried to kill you, you don’t have anyone to help you.»
ls for Australia to step up education focus
Australia is by far the biggest contributor of aid to the Solomon Islands, set to donate almost $200 million this year alone.
It bankrolls five per cent of the Solomons’ education budget, of which almost two-thirds funds scholarships and programs to improve school facilities, such as bathrooms and access to clean water.
But coordinator for International Programs at the Solomon Islands Ministry for Education, Christina Bakolo, told SBS News only a sliver goes towards secondary education, let alone the education of girls.
«There needs to be collaborative work if Australia would like to assist the Solomon Islands. For me, personally, there needs to be resourcing. This is one of the gaps here,» Ms Bakolo said.
«It would be very great to see Australia focusing on the marginalised ones in the Solomon Islands, and that includes girls.»
Plan International hopes Mr Morrison uses his overseas trip to take a stand to support young women.
«Gender equality in this country is very imbalanced,» Ms Kauhue said.
«I think the country, the government, will have to see that investing in girls is important and not for today but for the future of this country.»
Source of the notice: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-urged-to-act-on-girls-education-in-solomons-as-93-per-cent-dropout-rate-revealed
A new OECD report, Balancing School Choice and Equity, shows that school choice policies have increased social and academic segregation between schools which, in turn, reduced equity in education
Australia is a prime example of the impact of choice on social segregation in schools. School choice has been at the centre of education policy for the last 20 or more years. Australia now has one of the most socially and academically segregated school systems in the OECD and has highly inequitable education outcomes.
The OECD report looks at changes in school enrolments in countries that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and examines the extent to which schoolchoice policies impacted on the social and academic segregation of students and on equity in education outcomes.
It concludes that school choice can benefit some students but, overall, it increases social segregation of students as choice is mostly used by middle-class and wealthy families:
Empirical results in this volume suggest that weakening the link between place of residence and school allocation is related to a higher level of school segregation by social status. Some resilient disadvantaged students may have access to schools that would otherwise be inaccessible if a strict residence-based policy were applied. But that, in itself, does not offset the social-sorting effects that result when it is mostly middle- or upper-class families that take advantage of school-choice policies. [pp. 11-12]
This social segregation is associated with increased inequity in education outcomes for disadvantaged students:
Panel estimates in this report show that an increase in the isolation of high achievers from other students is associated with lower scores in PISA amongst socio-economically disadvantaged students, without any significant impact on advantaged students. [p. 12]
Extent of school choice
The report considers school choice in terms of changes in the proportion of students in private schools and the extent to which students are allocated to schools according to residence. It also considers the degree of local school competition as perceived by school principals and the extent to which parents are actually able to exercise some form of school choice in systems where schools select students based on socio-economic status or academic ability.
According to PISA data, an average of 18 per cent of 15-year-old students across OECD countries were enrolled in a private school in 2015. This compares with 44 per cent in Australia. Australia has one of the highest proportions in the OECD and is only exceeded in Chile, Netherlands, Ireland and the UK. The report found little change in the proportion in most OECD countries between PISA 2000 and PISA 2015. However, the proportion in Australia increased by three percentage points between 2009 and 2015 which was one of the largest increases in OECD countries, exceeded only in Chile, the Czech Republic and the UK.
In almost all school systems, students are assigned to schools based, at least partly, on their home address. In Australia, 48 per cent of students are enrolled in schools where residence is considered for admission. This is larger than the average of 40 per cent across OECD countries but far lower than in many countries such as Canada (69 per cent), Finland (67 per cent), Norway (70 per cent) and the United States (66 per cent). In the majority of OECD countries that participated in PISA 2000 and PISA 2015, the proportion of students attending schools that consider residence for admissions fell, but there was no statistically significant change in Australia.
Despite a relatively high proportion of Australian students enrolled in schools where residence is a factor in admissions, there is also a very high degree of competition between schools. The report shows that Australia has the highest percentage of students in schools that compete with at least one other local school of all OECD countries except Belgium. Some 94 per cent of students in Australia are enrolled in such schools compared to the OECD average of 77 per cent and 35 per cent in Norway.
However, local competition does not always translate into more choice for parents. Choice may be restricted by several factors such as tuition fees as in private schools, access to transport and using prior student achievement as part of admission criteria. As the report notes:
Because of local competition, schools may be tempted to skim off the most affluent or highest-achieving students. Restricting enrolment to the most able students makes it easier for a school to rank high in public evaluations, thus maintaining its attractiveness to parents…. Low-achieving students may have little opportunity to choose schools if schools base their admissions on prior academic performance. [p. 34]
In Australia in 2015, 34 per cent of students were enrolled in secondary schools in which academic performance is always considered for admission. This was slightly lower than the average for the OECD of 39 per cent. In Denmark, Finland, Greece, Norway, Spain and Sweden less than 10 per cent of students were enrolled in selective schools. The rates are similar for public and private schools in Australia – 34 per cent and 35 per cent respectively – whereas it is much more common in private schools in most OECD countries. In 2015, selection of students on academic criteria was used more by private schools (56 per cent) than public schools (39 per cent) on average in OECD countries.
There was a large increase in the proportion of secondary schools in Australia using academic performance in admissions since 2009 when the percentage was 24 per cent In the case of lower secondary schools, the proportion doubled in Australia from 16 per cent to 33 per cent. The report notes that selectivity in admissions increased in many OECD countries over this period.
Thus, choice and competition between schools in Australia appears to have increased over the PISA cycles, certainly since 2009. A higher proportion of students are enrolled in private schools and a very high proportion are enrolled in schools facing competition from other schools in the local area. Concurrently, selectivity in enrolments by all schools, public and private, has increased significantly.
Choice and segregation
A major issue about increased school choice is the impact on the segregation of students by ability or socio-economic status. The evidence presented in the OECD report suggests that choice increases segregation because it is mostly middle- or upper-class families that take advantage of school-choice policies.
Empirical evidence from systems with country- or state-wide school-choice policies, such as Chile, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States, suggests that providing more opportunities may increase school stratification based on students’ ability, socio-economic status and ethnicity. [p. 20]
In addition, choice means a greater likelihood that the schools most in demand will screen (“cream skim”) for the most promising students – resulting in greater sorting of students by academic results. Evidence shows that selective admissions are a source of greater inequality and stratification within a school system.
The international evidence suggests that schools that are selective in their admissions tend to attract students with greater ability and higher socio-economic status, regardless of the quality of the education they provide. Given that high-ability students can be less costly to educate and their presence can make a school more attractive to parents, schools that can control their intake wind up with a competitive advantage. Allowing private schools to select their students thus gives these schools an incentive to compete on the basis of exclusiveness rather than on their intrinsic quality. [p. 82]
The OECD report uses a dissimilarity index to measure the extent of academic and social segregation between schools. This index ranges from 0 (no segregation) to 1 (full segregation). A high dissimilarity index means that the distribution of disadvantaged students across schools is different from that of students who are not considered to be disadvantaged.
Social segregation of disadvantaged students in Australia is extremely high compared to most other OECD countries. Australia has the 4th highest degree of social segregation amongst 35 OECD countries. Only Mexico, Chile and Hungary have greater social segregation of disadvantaged students than Australia.
The report also uses two other measures of social segregation between schools – the isolation index and the no-diversity index. Australia has a high degree of social segregation on both measures. It has the 5th highest degree of social segregation as measured by the isolation index for disadvantaged students and equal 4th highest as measured by the no-diversity index.
The no-diversity index allows for decomposition of sources of segregation. It shows that social segregation between public and private schools and social segregation between private schools is high compared to most other OECD countries while social segregation between public schools is less than the OECD average.
Segregation and equity in education
The report notes that there is widespread evidence that the social composition of a school impacts on the academic performance of its students. It says that a clear consensus has emerged from research studies on the detrimental impact of attending schools with many low achievers and the benefits of having high-achieving schoolmates.
….this evidence suggests that sorting students into schools by ability or social status may adversely affect both the efficiency and equity of the school system…. social and academic segregation in schools may create additional barriers to success for disadvantaged children and reduce equity in education. [p. 20]
Moreover:
School stratification may also have long-term negative consequences for social mobility. Disadvantaged students may develop biased education and career aspirations because of the absence of inspiring role models that are usually found in schools with a greater social mix. More generally, social stratification amongst schools may threaten social cohesion, as children are not accustomed to social or ethnic diversity. [p.21]
The report found added evidence of these effects from PISA 2015. It found that countries where schools were more socially segregated also had less-equitable education systems. Increasing social segregation amongst schools tends to widen the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students.
In 2015, countries where schools were less socially diverse also had less-equitable education Systems. [p. 67] Empirical evidence suggests that social segregation across schools is negatively correlated with equity in education…[p. 68]
Australia is one of those countries. It has high levels of choice, high competition between schools, high social segregation between schools and high inequity in education.
Balancing choice and equity
Choice of school is highly desired by many families. There can be no going back to totally residencebased admissions to schools. It would also mark a return to segregation in schools based on housing segregation. The issue is how to reduce social segregation and inequity in the presence of choice.
The report considers how school systems can combine sufficient flexibility to fulfil the aspirations of many parents to choose a school for their children and provide enough incentives for schools to improve the performance of all students without reducing equity in education. It says that governments should provide checks and balances to prevent choice from leading to more segregation of students.
One option is to design school catchment areas to ensure the equitable distribution of students between schools. This can be done by combining districts with different socio-demographic characteristics within a single catchment area.
Another option is to introduce specific criteria for the allocation of students across local schools. The criteria used by oversubscribed schools to select their incoming students should be monitored and regulated to prevent “cream skimming”.
Different forms of “controlled choice” have been used to reduce high levels of student segregation, for example, by reserving a given number or share of places in oversubscribed schools to students from different socio-demographic backgrounds to maintain a balanced distribution of students. The use of lottery systems to assign places in oversubscribed schools or formulae aimed to maintain a diverse student composition can also be considered.
Incentives can also be provided to schools to select disadvantaged students, such as weighted student-funding schemes that fund schools according to the socio-economic profile of their student populations. Many governments around the world have adopted such schemes. The Gonski funding model in Australia is one.
The report also suggests that in order to avoid unfair competition between public and private schools, all publicly funded schools should face the same regulations regarding tuition and admissions policies.
The conditions under which private schools are eligible for public subsidies influence the ways in which school-choice programmes affect the accessibility, quality and equity of the school system. Risk to equity can be mitigated if all publicly funded providers are required to adhere to the same regulations regarding tuition and admissions policies, and compliance with these regulations is monitored. Adequate accountability and transparency requirements are also important to ensure that subsidised private schools serve the public interest in providing high-quality education, and to provide parents with the information they need to evaluate different schools’ processes and outcomes. [p. 84]
Governments in Australia should consider how to minimise/reduce the impact of choice on social segregation and equity in education. Some key changes to consider are:
Tighten registration requirements for private schools;
Eliminate over-funding of private schools;
Increase funding loadings for disadvantaged students;
Investigate controlled choice models for public schools;
Review admission policies for high demand public schools;
Contain the growth of selective public schools;
Use urban planning and housing policy to develop more socially integrated neighbourhoods
Save Our Schools
Source of the notice: https://au.educationhq.com/news/59848/school-choice-increases-social-segregation-and-inequity-in-education/
El Partido Laborista de Australia se ha comprometido a financiar la expansión del plan de Children’s University, creando una red de socios en todos los estados y territorios de Australia.
Después de seis años, operando en cinco de los ocho estados australianos, el plan nacional de la Universidad para Niños también se expandió a Nueva Zelanda el mes pasado con una nueva sucursal en la ciudad de Canterbury.
Basada en un modelo británico, la «universidad» se estableció porprimera vez en Australia en la Universidad de Adelaide en 2013, y pone un gran énfasis en brindar a los niños experiencias de aprendizaje significativas a través de actividades fuera de la escuela.
Desde entonces, más de 5,700 niños de 5 a 16 años se han «graduado» de la institución junior en el sur de Australia y un total de 8,200 a nivel nacional.
«Una donación de AU $ 5 millones [US $ 3,5 millones] del Partido Laborista federal apoyará una expansión y creará una red nacional de Children’s University, con socios en todos los estados y territorios», dijo el canciller Kevin Scarce de la Universidad de Adelaida, el contraalmirante, quien también es canciller de la Universidad de los Niños de Australasia.
Dijo que el programa ofrecía «experiencias educativas superiores» para niños de entre 7 y 14 años, así como oportunidades de voluntariado para jóvenes de 15 a 18 años fuera del horario escolar.
Los logros de los estudiantes fueron reconocidos a través de la entrega de certificados formales en las ceremonias de graduación, agregó.
Un resumen en línea de su programa en la página web de Children’s University dice que la universidad junior «aprovecha» a los proveedores locales de actividades educativas y de aprendizaje, incluidos clubes deportivos, museos, galerías y clubes escolares.
«Hay un fuerte énfasis en la experiencia como una herramienta de aprendizaje importante, reconociendo el valor de la gama de diferentes experiencias de aprendizaje y entornos en los que los niños se involucran», afirma el documento.
Vinculado a los estudios universitarios
“Todas las actividades de aprendizaje deben tener un enlace de alguna manera a un curso universitario de manera que ser miembro de un club de fútbol podría implicar la ingeniería deportiva, fisioterapia, gestión, enseñanza, ciencias y así sucesivamente.”
A cada estudiante se emite con un ‘Pasaporte para el aprendizaje’ en el que se registran las horas de cada ‘actividad validada’.
Los niños que asisten a las escuelas primarias de Ludmilla y Manunda Terrace en el Territorio del Norte disfrutaron de una experiencia «directa y personal» con animales australianos nativos. Los jóvenes pudieron tocar y aprender acerca de una variedad de animales nativos, incluidos los planeadores del azúcar, los gansos de las urracas, las serpientes, los lagartos y un Tawny Frogmouth.
El proyecto formaba parte de su membresía en la Universidad infantil Charles Darwin, parte de la Universidad Charles Darwin en la capital del territorio, Darwin.
Además de poder sostener a los animales, los alumnos aprendieron sobre sus hábitats amenazados y lo que podían hacer para ayudar a conservar el medio ambiente.
Su participación en el evento se incluyó posteriormente en el «pasaporte» de cada estudiante y contribuye a la cantidad de horas de aprendizaje necesarias para que los jóvenes se «gradúen» de la inauguración de la Universidad de los Niños de la Universidad Charles Darwin en una ceremonia de graduación en septiembre.
Certificados de graduación
En Australia, los jóvenes que completan las horas necesarias reciben certificados en las ceremonias de graduación celebradas en «lugares de alto perfil» para atraer la atención de los medios.
«Children’s University está dirigido por niños, lo que significa que los niños eligen en qué actividades les gustaría participar, y la participación se lleva a cabo de forma voluntaria», dijo Scarce.
“Todos los niños en Australia, sin importar su origen, deben tener la misma oportunidad de prosperar.
«La educación es la clave para la prosperidad, ofreciendo a los jóvenes, independientemente de sus circunstancias, un camino hacia una vida más feliz, más saludable y más productiva, y les da la oportunidad de realizar todo su potencial».
Scarce dijo que el objetivo era promover «un amor del aprendizaje a lo largo de toda la vida a través del compromiso de la comunidad ”, con un enfoque particular en los niños de entornos desfavorecidos, niños de zonas rurales y remotas, comunidades indígenas y de bajos niveles socioeconómicos en áreas metropolitanas.
Por su parte La Universidad de Lincoln y la Universidad de Canterbury se han asociado para llevar la Universidad de los Niños a Nueva Zelanda.
Cuando se anunció la asociación, James McWha, entonces vicerrector de la Universidad de Lincoln, quien es patrocinador de la Children’s University Australia y Nueva Zelanda, dijo: «Creo que podemos producir experiencias de aprendizaje significativas para los escolares de la Isla del Sur, que esperamos que el futuro
rector de la Universidad de Canterbury, el Dr. Rod Carr, dijo que trabajar junto a la Lincoln University para establecer la Children’s University en Nueva Zelanda, y particularmente en Canterbury, se alinea con los objetivos de su universidad, en particular con la comunidad, un pilar del perfil de graduados de la Universidad de Canterbury.
“El objetivo de la Children’s University es brindar experiencias educativas de alta calidad a los niños en asociación con sus escuelas, comunidades y universidades. Todas las actividades son experienciales, y deliberadamente fuera del horario escolar, por lo que es «diferente a la escuela». »
Kiri Hagenus, directora general de Children’s University Australasia, dijo que cada año había» gran emoción «entre sus familias cuando los estudiantes participaban en el Universidad para niños.
«Se trata de crear igualdad de oportunidades y apoyar el viaje de aprendizaje de nuestros participantes», dijo.
«Los niños solo pueden aspirar a lo que saben que existe y nuestra función es crear oportunidades para que todos los niños comprendan dónde les puede llevar el futuro».
Hagenus dijo que el programa educativo interactivo disponible en la Children’s University también puso a los jóvenes en contacto directo con las instituciones de educación superior y ayudó a crear «aspiraciones de aprendizaje permanente».
Al comentar sobre la subvención de 5 millones de dólares australianos del Trabajo, Hagenus dijo que todos los involucrados estaban «increíblemente orgullosos» de lo que el programa de la Universidad Infantil había logrado en los últimos seis años.
«Damos la bienvenida a este nuevo compromiso de financiamiento, que brinda la esperanza de un futuro brillante para muchos jóvenes en todo el país», dijo.
Worsening school inequality in Australia further entrenches disadvantage. There are children who struggle to afford attendance at free public schools
Bec* loves school and wants to go to university so she can become a social worker, and help children who grew up in similar situations to her own.
The Aboriginal teenager missed a lot of classes when she was younger – from grades five to seven. Her mum was in an abusive relationship, and money was so tight affording petrol just to get to and from school was difficult. Her Naplan test results nosedived in that period, her principal says.
“I was heartbroken when I missed school from years 5-7,” she wrote in her application to the Public Education Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that provides financial aid to students in public schools.
“Not only did I have to face what was happening at home, I was missing out on learning, new friends, and skills.”
By the time she was in year 10 though, Bec was living in a more stable situation with her brother and his partner, and her attendance was back at almost 100%.
“If I was granted $5,000 it would improve my learning and my knowledge,” she said.
“It would help me access internet at home, hire a tutor to help fill gaps in my learning, and cut my hours at work so I can focus on my studies.
“I would like to attend university and become an Aboriginal caseworker to help young children that were like me to know that there is a good ending to it all.”
Bec’s story is far from unique. Guardian Australia was provided with a range of anonymised applications for these scholarships; all were from ambitious students swimming against a current of financial hardship to try to get the best education possible, and to one day make a generational break with poverty. They needed the money not for expensive school fees, but for everyday basics – uniforms and well-fitting school shoes, laptops, internet access and excursion fees.
One student hoped to study nursing at university after spending so much time with her single mum in hospital, two years after her dad died. She said the scholarship could help her get there by covering the cost of tutoring, uniforms and stationery. Another Year 12 student wrote her application while living in refuge accommodation. She was already financially independent and working two casual jobs, and said the scholarship money would make a huge difference in alleviating her financial strain and allowing her to complete school and attend university without going into major debt.
A Torres Strait Islander boy wrote that his mother left home when he was little, then his father committed suicide after a car accident left him with chronic pain and depression. He and his two siblings moved in with their grandma.
“We live in a housing commission and my grandma has low income and struggles to pay for education, resources, excursions, and uniform. My grandma never went to Tafe or University however she has always encouraged me to do my best, my attendance at school is very good, I try my best at school but with all the things that have happened in my life, it’s very hard.”
David Hetherington, who oversees the disbursements as executive director of the foundation, says: “The promise of public education is that any student can attend a public school at no cost to themselves and can get a proper education.
“But we know that there are students who are going without these educational basics.”
Though the scholarships aim to address these immediate financial needs, their aim is something bigger – to disrupt, if only for a select few, the ongoing link that exists in Australia between poverty and poorer educational outcomes.
Despite decades of school funding wars, the landmark Gonski report and major increases in commonwealth funding to schools, children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds in Australia are still falling well behind their wealthier peers at school.
By Year 9, Australian teenagers from the most disadvantaged quartile are still, on average, around three years behind their peers from the most advantaged group in science, reading and maths.
More than a third of students from this most disadvantaged group still do not finish high school, and only a quarter go on to university.
Though the general public may have grown weary of discussions about inequality and education, experts stress there is still much unfinished business. Too many public schools in particular continue to be funded below government targets, while the problem of school segregation – particularly of disadvantaged kids being concentrated in disadvantaged schools, that are being abandoned by other families – is worsening.
It’s a much bigger problem than charities and not-for profits can fix alone.
“Educational investment can break the cycle of economic disadvantage – that’s the wonder of education,” says Hetherington. “But it’s got to be properly resourced and properly managed, and I think that’s still where we’re falling down in Australia.”
***
“Demography is not destiny” was a favourite mantra of former prime minister Julia Gillard, and one she said guided her government’s signature education reforms.
At its core was a new “needs-based and sector-blind” funding model, to distribute higher levels of public funding to those schools educating students with the highest levels of disadvantage. The report established these schools were overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, public schools: almost 80% of students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds attended a public school, along with 85% of Indigenous students and 83% of students from remote areas.
But eight years on, many schools, particularly public schools, are not meeting the government’s own funding benchmarks set in the wake of theGonski reforms.
Attempts to ensure “no school would lose a dollar”, a web of special deals in the years and shortfalls in funding, particularly from some state governments, have left the full vision unmet.
“Funding is not everything, I agree,” says Trevor Cobbold, the convener of the public school advocacy group Save Our Schools.
“But it’s pretty fundamental to being able to employ extra teachers, extra support staff, and so on … we have to direct much larger funding increases into disadvantaged public schools than we have been.
The Gonski model was built around a tool called the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS), the amount of money a school needs to properly educate each child, made up of a base amount of funding plus additional loadings for key areas of disadvantage.
In 2017, government schools were only reaching, on average, 90% of the SRS, while non-government schools were reaching 95%, according to the Grattan Institute.
Julie Sonnemann, a school education fellow at the Institute, points to the funding split between the commonwealth, which is the primary source of funding for non-government schools, and the states and territories, which are the main source of funding to government schools.
“There has been a lot of progress made in channelling more funding to disadvantaged schools, however still a long way to go,” she says.
“Because some state governments have been less effective in meeting the new school target set out under Gonski, government schools have got the short end of the stick.”
Under current Coalition policy, the amount the commonwealth will contribute to government systems will be at least 20% of SRS by 2023, and education minister Dan Tehan has touted the fact education spending has grown every year the Coalition government has been in power.
“We are providing a record $21.4bn for schools which is an extra 66% since we came to government and we can afford to pay for it without increasing taxes,” he told Guardian Australia.
Labor is pledging an additional $14bn for public schools over a decade, effectively lifting the commonwealth contribution to at least 22% of the SRS in the first term, as well as cracking down on some deals that allow states to deduct costs such as transport from their spending on public schools.
Those policies would, according to the Grattan Institute’s Peter Goss, “put government schools on track to reach 97.2% of SRS.”
“Not quite full funding, but within touching distance.”
***
While the wide gap in achievement between kids from the lowest SES group and their more advantaged peers may seem like an intractable problem, many experts don’t agree – for a simple reason. The size of gap varies significantly between different countries.
In Canada, a similar country to Australia in many ways, this gap between students is markedly less, at 2.4 years (compared to 3.1 in Australia) and Canadian students from the most disadvantaged quartile routinely outperform disadvantaged Australian students in international PISA tests.
Canada spends a higher proportion of GDP per capita on school education than Australia, but researchers point to another factor too.
“The thing that I keep coming back to is that schools are more socially mixed in Canada than they are in Australia,” says Laura Perry, an associate professor at Murdoch University .
“Canada has one of the highest proportions of kids in the OECD that go to a socially mixed or diverse school … Australia is the opposite.
“School choice”, the idea that parents should pick the “best” school for their child and not necessarily attend the local comprehensive high school, has long been a governing philosophy in Australia, and one encouraged by the generous public funding of non-government schools and supercharged by publicly available comparison data on the MySchool website.
One result is that disadvantage is increasingly concentrated in particular schools, and the social mix of students from a range of socio-economic backgrounds is often missing.
More than half of students (51.2%) classified as coming from a disadvantaged background in Australia attended disadvantaged school in 2015, according to a recent OECD analysis, while less than 5% attend a socio-economically advantaged school (the remainder attend schools classified as socio-economically average).
Those figures are more polarised than they were a decade earlier, when the proportion of disadvantaged students at disadvantaged schools was 46%.
The trend comes despite a growing proportion of parents choosing public over private schools, in a recent reversal of a decades-old trend.
Research conducted by Chris Bonnor, a former Sydney principal and fellow at the Centre for Policy Development, shows that more advantaged families are seeking out more advantaged public schools – such as selective schools, or ones that have a higher socio-economic profile. As a result, some public schools serving poorer populations are getting left behind.
When Bonnor taught in Mount Druitt in the 1970s, a working class suburb on Sydney’s western fringe, he says there was more socio-economic diversity in the local public high schools than today.
“Even in those very difficult schools – Mount Druitt High, Shalvey High, there was always a small but significant group of high achieving kids,” he says.
“But what MySchool data clearly shows is that sort of critical mass of aspirant kids are less likely to be found in those schools now.”
This trend matters because the concentration disadvantage is compounding the difficulties students face, and is believed to be leading to poorer educational outcomes.
The same OECD analysis found that, on average, students from disadvantaged backgrounds attending more advantaged schools scored markedly better results in standardised tests.
“If you have a school with a significant disadvantaged enrolment there are negative impacts that build on each other,” Bonnor says.
“It’s partly about teacher expectations of kids, partly about resources that the school has, it’s certainly about the intellectual capital that kids bring to school everyday … There’s a whole pile of things that interact with each other to further reduce opportunities for students in low SES schools. And that’s often despite the best intentions of teachers and reformers.”
Concentrating disadvantage in these smaller, public schools also compounds the need for more funding, Perry says.
“When you concentrate students with high needs – and poverty is a high-needs, high stress situation – it makes teaching and learning a lot more difficult, and it also makes it a lot more expensive,” she says.
“Low SES schools are small. Even though their per student allocation is quite generous compared to other schools, you don’t have the economies of scale you have at other schools.”
But while debates about funding have featured prominently in education policy-making for some time, tackling the issue of segregation and residualisation has proved far more taboo in Australia.
Policy solutions could take the form of mandating non-government schools take more students from low SES backgrounds in return for their public funding, removing fees at some non-government schools, as well as changes to entrance policies to make sure selective public schools and more advantaged government schools take a wider range of enrolments.
“There are some parts of the US that have tried to tackle this issue with admissions policies, to ensure there is a diversity of kids in every school, and perhaps Australia should consider policy settings like that,” says Sonneman.
But most experts know this is likely to face deep opposition.
“There is a really strong sense of entitlement among the Australian community that they have the right to choose the best school for their child, and as long as that cultural norm exists, it’s pretty difficult for governments to do much.”
Fuente del artículo: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/12/students-going-without-the-basics-i-was-heartbroken-when-i-missed-school
Gobiernos que administran a 47 millones de personas están en emergencia climática
La lucha contra el cambio climático comienza a alcanzar los niveles más altos de la política, después de que el Parlamento británico declarara el estado de emergencia climática, suscrito también por 520 gobiernos locales de 20 países. Las movilizaciones están en 125 naciones.
Las declaraciones de emergencia climática se multiplican en la misma medida que los efectos del cambio climático se hacen más evidentes. El mes de abril ha sido el segundo más cálido después del fatídico abril de 2016, con una temperatura +0,638ºC por encima de la media del período 1981-2010, según los datos del NCEP-NCAR que se remontan hasta 1948.
2016 fue el año más caluroso desde 1880: la temperatura global se situó 1,1 grados por encima de la que teníamos durante la era industrial. El 2016 fue 0,07 grados más cálido que el anterior, cuyas temperaturas ya resultaron alarmantes en todo el mundo.
El año 2019 promete también ser emblemático en el calentamiento global. Ya es el segundo año más cálido desde que se tienen registros y con el fenómeno El Niño de nuevo activo, la temperatura global tiende a permanecer alta en los próximos meses. La NOAA estima que El Niño tiene el 65% de posibilidades de mantenerse este verano (aunque a nivel débil), y un 50-55% de posibilidades de perdurar durante el otoño.
Reacciones sociales amplificadas
Las reacciones sociales se amplifican. Los científicos han hecho diversos llamamientos para alertar a la población de los riesgos que acechan a nuestra especie, al mismo tiempo que diversos movimientos sociales y estudiantiles han salido también a la calle para reclamar a los políticos medidas urgentes para contener el calentamiento global.
El último gesto de esta escalada lo ha realizado el Parlamento británico: ha declarado simbólicamente el estado de emergencia climática y se ha convertido en el primer parlamento estatal del mundo que asume esta posición.
Anteriormente, los gobiernos regionales de Escocia y Gales habían declarado también el estado de emergencia climática, así como la ciudad de San Francisco en Estados Unidos, la provincia canadiense de Quebec o la ciudad de Vancouver, también en Canadá, entre otras. La ciudad de Constanza, en Alemania (80.000 habitantes), ha sido la última en sumarse a esta cadena.
En total, han sido hasta ahora 520 administraciones políticas de 8 países, que abarcan a un total de 47 millones de personas, las que se han declarado en emergencia climática en todo el mundo, según datos que ofrece el movimiento Declaración de Emergencia Climática. Numerosas empresas también están suscribiendo la emergencia climática.
Origen australiano
En Australia, donde se inició la movilización de la Declaración de Emergencia Climática, 17 gobiernos locales han declarado una emergencia climática. Más de 75 candidatos en las elecciones federales del 18 de mayo firmaron la petición de Declaración de Emergencia Climática. Los consejos australianos representan un poco más de un millón de personas, el cuatro por ciento de la población total del país.
El movimiento se inició con una carta abierta, firmada por 25 científicos, políticos, empresarios y ambientalistas australianos, que fue publicada en el periódico The Age el 23 de junio de 2016. En esa carta, manifestaban que el Acuerdo de París se había quedado corto para contener el calentamiento global, que el futuro de la civilización está comprometido y que hay que iniciar urgentemente la transición energética hacia un modelo de cero emisiones. Terminaba reclamando al Parlamento australiano la declaración de emergencia climática.
Extinction Rebellion
En 2018, un movimiento similar emergió en el Reino Unido. Se llama Extinction Rebellion (rebelión contra la extinción) y fue impulsado por cien científicos que firmaron un llamamiento en el que reclamaban a los políticos la verdad sobre el cambio climático, medidas para reducir las emisiones contaminantes y la creación de una Asamblea Ciudadana Nacional para supervisar los cambios necesarios y crear una democracia que funcione.
Este movimiento ha estado muy activo en movilizaciones que no se han limitado al Reino Unido, sino que se han replicado en 80 ciudades de 33 países. En España este movimiento se ha movilizado también para pedir la declaración de emergencia climática, tanto a nivel estatal como municipal y regional.
Destaca los efectos que el cambio climático está teniendo en España, que afectan ya a más de 32 millones de personas, especialmente por el aumento de la extensión de los climas áridos (en torno al 6% de la superficie de España), la amplificación de las “islas de calor” en las ciudades, la prolongación de los veranos en cinco semanas más que a comienzos de los años 80, y por el aumento de la temperatura superficial del Mediterráneo, que ha sido de 0,34ºC por década, mientras que su nivel ha subido 3,4 milímetros por año desde 1993.
Fridays For Future
También en 2018 una niña sueca desató un movimiento juvenil para pedir a los políticos medidas urgentes contra el calentamiento global. Inspiró a estudiantes de todo el mundo a participar en huelgas estudiantiles con la misma petición.
Desde diciembre de 2018, más de 20.000 estudiantes realizaron manifestaciones en más de 270 ciudades en varios países del mundo, incluyendo Australia, Austria, Bélgica, Canadá, los Países Bajos, Alemania, Finlandia, Dinamarca, Japón, Suiza, Reino Unido, Estados Unidos y España.
Estas movilizaciones culminaron el 15 de marzo de 2019, cuando una nueva oleada de huelgas estudiantiles y manifestaciones se desató por todo el mundo para pedir medidas efectivas que detengan el cambio climático, siguiendo la convocatoria mundial del Fridays For Future promovido por Greta Thunberg.
Según datos de esta organización, esta convocatoria movilizó a 1,6 millones de huelguistas en los 7 continentes (América del Norte, América del Sur, Europa, África, Asia, Oceanía y la Antártida), en más de 125 países y en más de 2.000 lugares.
Analysis of graduate earnings in Australia shows benefit of a university degree is diminishing
Policies to boost female participation have helped narrow the gender gap in career earnings but pushing students to study science has resulted in smaller pay packets.
Those are the results of a Grattan Institute analysis of graduate earnings and employment outcomes, released on Monday, which found the benefit of having a university degree is actually shrinking.
Female university graduates still earn about $14,000 a year more than women whose highest qualification is year 12, while for men the premium is about $12,500. But the report found that the average earnings premium of an early career graduate aged 25 to 34 had shrunk by 8% for women from 2006 to 2016 and by 6% for men.
The report by Grattan Institute higher education director, Andrew Norton, and fellow Ittima Cherastidtham found that Australia’s immigration – skewed towards skilled migrants – and the uncapping of student places between 2009 and 2015 meant “many more people are chasing the jobs that graduates aspire to hold”.
“Growth in the number of professional jobs has not kept up with demand,” the report said. New professional jobs had “dropped significantly” after the global financial crisis in 2009 and at the end of the mining boom in 2013.
The chief executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson, said there was still a “sizeable wage benefit” for graduates and the premium had only fallen slightly despite the significant expansion of access to higher education.
Male graduates saw their earnings fall by 3% from 2006 to 2016, owing to a decline in full-time work and professional or managerial jobs.
Female graduates saw their earnings rise 4% from 2006 to 2016, outstripped by a 10% increase in pay for women with year 12 as their highest qualification.
The increase in earnings was triggered by an increase in workforce participation by women with children, from less than 70% to more than 75%. The report credited additional paid parental leave and improved childcare subsidies since 2008.
The career earnings gap between the male and female median-earning graduate fell from 30% in 2006 to 27% in 2016. Women narrowed the gap by earning the equivalent of one and a half years’ of pay more across their careers.
“Progress is slow, but as successive cohorts of young graduates have careers that are less disrupted by motherhood, the gender earnings gap will continue to decline,” the report said.
For female graduates big increases in average annual earnings were recorded in nursing (+10%), education (8%), medicine (6%) and engineering (3%) – with pay increases in industries dominated by public sector employment leading the way.
Pay went backwards for female graduates in the humanities, science, information technology and law, all down 2%.
For male graduates, only those with education degrees saw a significant pay rise (+7%), while big declines were recorded in law and commerce (-7%), science (-6%) and information technology (-3%).
Engineering, law and medicine graduates remain the highest paid.
Both male and female science graduates face difficulties finding managerial/professional jobs. In 2016 more than 40% of science graduates were employed as labourers, in sales, administration and services or trades, which are less likely to use their qualification.
Only those with humanities qualifications have equivalently low rates of employment in managerial/professional jobs. Nursing, education and medicine all had rates of 90% or more employed in managerial/professional jobs.
The report said the rate of unemployment or under-employment four months after graduation grew from 15% before the global financial crisis in early 2008 to its highest-recorded level of 31% in 2014.
Evidence from previous economic downturns showed there “will be a long-lasting impact on the earnings prospects of early-career graduates”.
But it predicted that the “worst has passed” – because although “new graduates are still less likely to get a full-time job than a decade ago … their prospects are improving”.
Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/16/gender-gap-narrows-but-push-towards-science-has-lowered-wages
Now that the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) has been signed, Australia’s training sector has an opportunity to build on a small base.
Indonesia’s young and expanding population, its geographic proximity and its steady economic trajectory towards the top 10 global economies by 2030 make it a key market for Australia.
Indonesia’s need for education and training opportunities is large and growing. Indonesian authorities recognise the growing skills gap in the economy and the increasing percentage of the workforce that is undereducated. The nation’s long-term economic prospects will reflect how well the country deals with this significant challenge.
To succeed, Indonesia will need to partner with others.
Due to many factors, including geography, history, reputation and other institutional alignments, Australian education and training providers are exceptionally well placed to partner with Indonesia in achieving its education and training goals.
Growing skills need
Indonesia’s education and training needs are massive. Its demographic profile is its advantage. With a young population where half are under 30, and about 67 million are between the ages of 15 and 24 years old, it is the third largest adolescent group in the world, after India and China.
Its population is not only young but becoming more urban. Deloitte consultancy predicts that Indonesia’s city dwellers aged 15 to 29 will total 41 million by 2025.
While its young and urban population is its advantage, the scale of its skills needs is its economic disadvantage. Two aspects stand out: size and quality. Indonesia needs more skilled workers.
To address this, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has set an ambitious goal of adding 57 million skilled workers by 2030.
To meet this goal and keep up with industrial growth, the Ministry of Manpower conservatively estimates that it will need to double its current output of graduates, adding a further 3.8 million skilled workers annually.
The extent of the skills and training needed to drive the desired improvements in knowledge, competence and capability is the other aspect of Indonesia’s disadvantage. The lack of quality human capital poses a significant challenge to the country’s economic and growth aspirations.
Despite successful efforts by the government to improve access to education, local institutions continue to struggle to deliver the types of graduates the country needs. Two-thirds of companies surveyed by the World Bank in 2014 say finding qualified employees for professional and managerial positions is either difficult or very difficult.
Almost 70% of manufacturing employers say they struggle to find skilled engineers.
Taking a longer-term view
Australia is a favoured destination for young Indonesians looking to study abroad. It attracts over a quarter of total outbound numbers, nearly 20,000 students, to its universities, technical and further education (TAFE) institutions and schools.
There are even a handful of Australian education and training providers already active in Indonesia. Some are succeeding. Some are at an early stage of business development. The ones that are succeeding use creative approaches to deliver programmes.
A few of them concentrate their activities on engaging government agencies by offering training solutions or niche policy consulting. Some have chosen to only deal with industry because it is relatively easier and issues of funding are less of a concern.
There are others that seek to partner locally in various ways to deliver programmes directly to students.
TAFE Queensland, for example, has been successful in turning government relationships into commercial outcomes. Over the last eight years, they have capitalised on Australian government schemes that build strategic links into key ministries, allowing them to deliver commercial programmes.
Holmesglen TAFE in Victoria has a fledgling partnership with Universitas Muhammadiyah, an extensive network of institutions, where they offer an accredited practical English programme in a purpose-built language centre near Jakarta.
Monash University’s partnership with a local provider has been offering a pathway programme since 1994. Students undertake pre-university programmes in Indonesia and then move to Australia for parts of their undergraduate degree.
These institutions have some things in common:
• They have all been in Indonesia for a decade or longer.
• They are building reputation, credibility and relationships.
• They have taken the time to find the right partner and get the right model of partnership working.
Institutionally, they have taken a ‘whole of institution’ approach – all parts of the organisation working in unison. They have also developed appropriate business models, invested in people and resources, formed ‘win-win’ partnership structures and, more importantly, visited the country many times.
IA-CEPA opens up new opportunities for Australian education and training. These opportunities should be seen as a long game. It will take more than five years before any benefits will flow. But the time to look in-depth at education and training opportunities for Australian providers is now.
Indeed, the recently signed agreement provides a valuable boost to potential interest.
Source of the notice: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190314124305690
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