Education is slowly starting to make waves on the election scene.
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All three major parties have now released their education policies, and they generally agree on several points.
Pledges to increase teacher numbers, (although both Labor and Liberals argue that each side has counted in existing teachers to their ‘new’ numbers), a focus on early childhood improvement, and greater understanding of needs-based funding for students with a disability are all areas covered.
Where they differ, however, is not just in the amount of money spent, but in the language used to describe and understand policy.
The Liberals’ use words such as retention, attrition, support, invest.
Labor’s language is community, review, partner, restore.
The Greens, the future, rights, invest, embed.
The Liberals’ commitment to providing grade 11 and 12 in all state schools by 2022 provoked sharp responses from the education community, most concerned about the thinning of student numbers in senior secondary through schools and colleges.
Opposition education spokeswoman Michelle O’Byrne described the plan as “death by a thousand cuts” for Tasmania’s college system, but Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff insisted the plan would raise retention rates, encourage students to stay in high school, and be bolstered by raising the school leaving age in the next couple of years.
Saul Eslake argues that if Tasmania’s college system is so successful, why haven’t other states emulated it?
The ACT’s college system, in a far different socioeconomic region, can hardly compare, but college advocates argue the system provides greater opportunity, independence and flexibility for students.
If Tasmania’s colleges could be accessed by absolutely anyone – if an aspiration to college was as firmly embedded in the social conscious as the aspiration to own a home, then perhaps this conversation would not be so repetitive.
Greens educations spokeswoman Andrea Dawkins has kept away from the colleges debate, focused on providing better support for the most disadvantaged students, by bringing trauma-informed care into schools.
Last year several national and international experts visited Tasmania to consider the state’s education system and the needs ahead.
Interviewing those experts, I kept hearing the same things: there was a strong sense of collaborative, cross-sector and cross-party effort to restore, repair and grow Tasmania’s education system.
With Labor and Liberals’ policies so similar, it’s possible to look ahead and get a sense of what the future holds: a necessary focus on early childhood, a push to improve disability education, new schools constructed and repairs to ageing infrastructure.
Professor Ian Hay from the University of Tasmania says while Tasmania’s education reputation has taken several hits over the years, he doesn’t believe the sector is in crisis.
On average across most performance measures, such as NAPLAN, it’s roughly in the middle.
Circular debates about different systems, the comfort of the familiar versus the challenges of change, are perhaps blinding us to the level of quality that is here already: excellent teachers and principals, the determination to improve, and to provide opportunity to students.