We’ve spent the money, now what about the results?

We’ve spent the money, now what about the results?

An old Australian education myth was debunked last week when the Productivity Commission released new data showing taxpayer funding for public schools is growing faster than for private schools.

Over the past 10 years, real per-student funding grew by 27% for government schools and 25% for non-government schools; with government schools starting from a much higher funding base.

We have equity and excellence problems in our school system, but they are not due to the old chestnuts of a growing public-private funding divide and too much government spending being channeled towards non-government schools.

Over the same period from 2015 to 2024, the percentage of Australia students attending public schools declined from 65.2% to 63.4%. So parents do not seem to think the increased funding for government schools is enough to drive them back into the public system.

It’s true that money matters and if you ask most teachers — regardless of school sector — they will tell you their schools need more funding.

But similarly, if you ask teachers for ideas to improve schools that wouldn’t cost more money, they will all give lots of specific suggestions. So why don’t we focus on these cost-free ideas?

Taxpayer money for government, Catholic, and independent schools has increased well above inflation and enrollment growth. What do we have to show for it? The simple answer is not much.

If you are Pollyanna in an especially happy mood, squinting through rose-coloured magnifiers, you might just see some small improvements.

Our literacy and numeracy results seem to have flatlined with slight lifts on some metrics (NAPLAN and international tests) — at least our educational decline hasn’t continued. But there have been no meaningful improvements, and around 1 in 5 Australian students still languish below international literacy and numeracy benchmarks.

It is easy to re-tell the tale of woe about increased funding and worse results, yet there is some reason for hope. There is now a genuine bipartisan commitment to focus not only on how much money is spent but also how it is spent.

This is the big change from 10 or even just five years ago when seemingly both sides of politics assumed simply increasing funding would improve student outcomes.

This assumption was obviously simplistic — and frankly bizarre to most people with any common sense.

But at the time, it was difficult to defy the political moral posturing over ‘Gonski funding’ (or whatever you call brazenly deciding to simply spend more money without first considering what it should be spent on).

We now have consensus that we need to have more rigorous early literacy and numeracy instruction, improve teacher education degrees and professional learning, and lift Australia’s appallingly bad student behaviour standards that prevent learning and drive teachers out of the profession.

Governments, oppositions, academics, education departments and agencies are all using the right language to describe what we need to change. The challenge is to follow through and make it a reality.

Great progress has been made recently in early reading instruction and specifically better teaching of phonics to set the foundations for students to grow into good readers. We have a nationwide phonics check, to assess student ability so we can intervene early if they fall behind.

We need a similar success story in three other areas.

First, many students leave schools without basic maths skills, preventing them from pursuing STEM-related careers and limiting our country’s productivity.

This problem starts early, and so we need early identification and intervention.

We need high-quality numeracy checks in the first school years to track student progress in maths, with a suite of evidence-based interventions available to help students catch up before they lag too far.

Second, teacher education degrees are also failing us, with too many new teachers being unprepared for the classroom.

There is a well-established science of learning that explains how students learn most effectively.

Teachers should understand this body of evidence, and we should be able to measure their knowledge of it — and their confidence in applying it — to assess whether education degrees and the costly compulsory professional development hours they complete are delivering any real benefit.

Finally, we must address the crisis of student behaviour. International surveys show Australia has some of the most disruptive, rowdy classrooms in the world.

There is nothing more frustrating for a hard-working student to be in the classroom ready to learn only to be thwarted by loud chaos around them because the teacher is not sufficiently supported to handle misbehavior.

Improvements in school discipline are a significant predictor of improvements in academic results especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

If students are on task for 90% of the lesson compared to being on task for only 70%, across a whole year that really adds up.

High expectations with a clear set of rules that are consistently applied should be par for the course in every school.

We need to measure student behaviour, track progress over time, and implement effective classroom management practices that enable all students to thrive while improving teacher wellbeing.

We have a great window of opportunity now to finally follow through on education reforms and get long-term improvements for Australia’s education system.

Let’s not waste it like we’ve wasted billions of dollars before on ideas that don’t work.

Dr Blaise Joseph is Director of the Education Program at The Centre for Independents Studies.