LEADING economist Saul Eslake says changes to the education system are needed if Tasmanians want to improve their employment and income earning prospects.
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Mr Eslake said there needed to be fewer public schools and higher educational expectations placed on students.
He said the long entrenched anti-education attitudes passed down through generations needed to cease, as did the structure of the public education system ending in year 10.
While he supported the year 11 and 12 high school extension policy, he recognised a need to finance the necessary changes in education.
He noted that Tasmania already spent more per student in government schools than anywhere else in Australia.
‘‘As much as I applaud the government year 11 and 12 policy you have to pay for it somehow, it doesn’t come for free, and you can’t increase the total of education spending. You have to find savings somewhere,’’ Mr Eslake said.
He has suggested that there be fewer public schools in Tasmania, both in regional and metropolitan areas.
‘‘Schools on average are smaller in Tasmania,’’ he said.
‘‘The average government school has about 280 students, while the average government school interstate has about 330 students.
‘‘The teacher-student ratios are not all that different, but where there is a big difference is the number of non-teaching staff per student, the administrators and gardening and cleaning staff.’’
Mr Eslake said this led to increased costs across the public system, which equalled educational wastage.
He said it was not the job of the education system to prop up small towns at risk of population decline and existence.
Nor was it right for parents and others to use the school system to prop up the value of real estate or the family home at the expense of education.
‘‘If you said to anyone on the mainland that there was something outrageous about sending your child an extra 20 minutes to school they would laugh at you, until they realised they were being asked to pay for it,’’ he said.
‘‘It is not just picking on the little country towns. There are lots of little schools that are pretty close together in Hobart and Launceston as well.’’
Mr Eslake said that while he was not an education expert, he also inferred that changes to the curriculum could also be made.
He raised the NSW school system as a good example of high education standards, where there were high rates of participation and students typically performed better than other states.
‘‘Part of the reason is that they have a more rigorous curriculum, they expect more of their students, have fewer soft subjects, and it is a bit more centralised,’’ he said.
‘‘Tasmania tends to go down the Victorian path, which entails a dumbed down, softer curriculum, and less testing and assessing of students.’’
He said Tasmanian students were no less innately capable than other children around Australia.
‘‘They are not dumber kids but I would say [looking at NAPLAN data] that the longer they stay in the Tasmanian system, the more likely they are to fall behind their national counterparts.’’