Bill Shorten vows no delay in school funding reform

Education minister Bill Shorten – a 'negotiated agreement' is best. Photograph: AAP

Education minister Bill Shorten says there will be no delay to the implementation of Labor's landmark school funding reforms despite ongoing consultation with state premiers and the independent schools sector over the key elements of the package.

Shorten told Guardian Australia, "I think we owe it to the parents and children of all our schools not to short change their future by delay.

"Why should a child wait 12 months to have more science classes, or a child with disabilities and their parents not have the option to go to a non-government school and exercise their choice?" he said.

The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has reopened discussions over his predecessor Julia Gillard's signature reform – the Gonski schools reform package. He has done so because of concerns expressed by the non-government schools sector about their autonomy under the new funding system, and about ministerial discretion over future funding allocations.

Rudd has given the non-government sector a month to make their case on the technicalities to the new education minister, and he's given state premiers until mid-July to sign on to the school funding reforms.

Rudd has met Catholic school representatives, and told reporters on Thursday morning he had made calls to most premiers and chief ministers, apart from the Queensland premier, Campbell Newman, who is on leave.

Shorten flew to Tasmania on Wednesday and spoke to the premier about the package. On Friday, he will meet the Victorian education minister, Martin Dixon and representatives from the independent schools sector.

Ahead of talks with Victoria – a state which has not yet signed on to the national package, and is signalling it wants more money before doing so – Shorten said: "If there's been some arguments and debates in the past, they've got a chance to press the reset button."

He was not holding out hope of a major injection of new money from Canberra. "In terms of money, the commonwealth has already been very generous. If there's implementation questions, then we are respectful," he said.

Shorten declined to telegraph specifics of any compromise proposal with the non-government schools over autonomy or ministerial discretion over funding, but he expressed confidence that the government could address the current concerns. "I think the best alternative for the children of Australia at school is for us to have a negotiated agreement. Working out our issues, meeting in the middle," he said.

Shorten said he had no bias against independent schools. He was "pro-choice. I'm not anti-anyone." He said the government had an obligation to address Australia's decline in the global education rankings. He noted that "a lot of work has already been done."

"I will give the independent schools the benefit of listening to them before I comment, I think I owe them that courtesy. To be fair to them they've embraced the better schools plan," he said. He added that the government had a responsibility to ensure taxpayers funds were spent wisely. "Everyone's accepted that," he said.

"I think the (current) challenges are of translation and listening, not of loggerheads. The money is good money – let's be clear. In my experience, where there is massive disagreement on money, that is harder to bridge than disagreement on translation and implementation.

"The money's good. I accept they have concerns. I look forward to hearing about them in more detail. There's been a lot of negotiation (already). It's not like I'm in an empty room with a blank sheet of paper and nothing's happened. I'm standing on the shoulders of the accomplishments of others."

Shorten said his task was not a dramatic overhaul of the package, but bringing it home. "This is not a massive departure from the past. The clock has gone around from 12 to 9 o'clock. Now we've just got to finish the final quarter."

View the original article here

I-levels replace GCSEs: Gove's great reform or another bemusing move?

Michael Gove is trying to reform the entire curriculum and qualifications system for pupils up to the age of 18 years. Photograph: Tim Cuff/Alamy

It is a near full-time job keeping up with the constant changes, backtracking and new developments in education. So what parents and pupils make of it is anyone's guess.

The latest idea is for I-levels to replace GCSEs in some courses starting from 2015. This comes a year after the education secretary, Michael Gove, first suggested a radical change to exams at 16, with GCSEs to be replaced by traditional, harder, O-level-style exams and, most controversially, a qualification for supposedly "less intelligent" pupils similar to the old CSE.

Gove – who is attempting to reform the entire curriculum and qualifications framework for five- to 18-year-olds during a single five-year term – sees a GCSE overhaul as central to that, citing England's largely static performance in a major international testing study as evidence of the need for change.

The CSE proposal was dropped last September, seemingly under pressure from the Liberal Democrats, but Gove pressed on with proposals for a new English baccalaureate certificate exam to replace GCSEs.

Alongside it, the current system of several competing exam boards for each subject would be replaced in favour of a "franchising" model in which the boards would compete for a contract to run each subject's exams. Gove also wanted to remove the tiering system by which pupils took either harder or easier papers in most GCSE subjects, saying it "capped ambition" for lower-achievers.

But in February, he retreated on both the name of the new qualification – saying that GCSEs would remain, but be "reformed" – and on the franchising idea, after both the exams regulator Ofqual and the Commons education select committee expressed reservations.

He persisted with aiming to scrap tiering, but this was another idea vetoed, at least for maths and science, in the latest development: a paper reportedly to be put forward by Ofqual, with the regulator suggesting renaming the GCSE "I-level", for "intermediate".

GCSEs might need renaming for two reasons: first, to act as a signal to the outside world that these new exams will be different – harder – than current GCSEs. And second, to distinguish them from the Welsh and Northern Irish versions of the GCSE, whose ministers are not keen to follow England's reform plans.

Gove believes England's exams must be toughened up to make them more stretching, spurring pupils to compete with countries such as Singapore and Japan, which do better on international tests.

The situation is complicated, however, by the way policy-making works. Although Gove is supposed to set the overall direction of travel for exam developments, Ofqual looks at the detail. It has been acting increasingly independently in the past six months.

Gove, who criticised GCSEs last year during a furore over the marking of English exams in the subject, has been attacked for undermining confidence in the system for pupils going through it. It seems fair to assume many will be bemused to learn, during exams season, of yet another possible change.

With legal changes meaning all pupils must be in some form of education or training to the age of 18 to be introduced by 2015, some – including the CBI leader John Cridland – are questioning why we continue to need conventional exams at 16 at all.

Last month, Gove told the select committee that his policy-making style was to put out a suggestion, listen to arguments against it and then accept the "strong parts" of that criticism. He would present the many changes of course, then, as evidence of his having listened. But, for those potentially on the end of these reforms, it must present a very confusing picture.

‧ Warwick Mansell is author of Education by Numbers: the Tyranny of Testing

View the original article here