Educanon REFORM in WESTERN AUSTRALIA by the Hon, Bob

ED UCAnON REFORM IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA by the Hon, Bob Pearce, B.A., Dip. ee., J.P., M.L.A. Minister for Education; Planning; Intergovernmental Relations. - 26 - ED UCAnON REFORM IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA Those who would re-shape society have always looked on education as a key to their plans. The protagonists of various forms of totalitarian state have seen education as the means by which the individual was inculcated with his or her role in the new society. Equally the proponents of open or democratic societies have seen education as the means by which formal or informal class structures are broken down. Universal education to a high level puts all citizens into a position where they are able (and hence demand) to participate fully in the political, social and economic life of the community. The early Fabians, particularly, saw the role of education in this way. In Western Australia, universal education is a product of this century. The first school in the Swan River colony was privately established and run with a small government subsidy from 1833 until 1839 when the subsidy was withdrawn and the school collapsed. By 1846 the Sisters of Mercy had established a chain of Catholic schools. Before long the demand for education meant that the Catholic schools were catering for m any non-Catholics. The Church then approached the Government for a subsidy, making State aid, in an ironic way, the first educational issue in Western Australia. Not until this century could we lay claim to universal primary education. Universal secondary education to the age of fifteen came much later - my own father, from a working class family in Shenton Park, did not progress beyond primary education, nor did many of his working class fellows. The issue of equality of opportunity first came to the fore in the late 1960s, promoted largely by the National Union of Australian University Students at the time when I was its President. Tom Roper, Education Vice President then, now Minister for Transport in the Victorian State Government, brought together a range of evidence and research that seemed conclusively to.dernonstrate that throughout Australia education systems of that time effectively were reinforcing social inequalities in our society, and not helping to remove them. The late sixties also saw the emergence of the "level of resources" debate, with calls from a range of teacher and parent organisations for dramatically increased funding for education at all levels. These calls came together in the "Federal Funds for State Schools" campaign and became reality with the election of the Whitlam Government and the creation of the Schools Commission. The years of the Whitlam Government were exciting ones for education, as they were for so many areas of social policy. Resources were increased dramatically, and problems of inequality were addressed through a range of Schools Commission programmes. Equally, I think it is fair to say that the Whitlam years did not have much effect on the structure or substance of State education systems. Only South Australia and Tasm ania had Labor governments in that time and conservative governments, while happy to take the money, resisted philosophical and policy initiatives. With the fall of the Whitlam Government came a squeeze on resources, and many of the initiatives, policies and programmes began to atrophy. THE 1982 PICTURE In 1982, with the Liberals faltering and Labor presenting itself as a serious credible alternative all over Australia, it was hard to see the effect of the Whitlam Government in the education system of Western Australia. Schools were better resourced then they might otherwise have been, and improvements in areas such as Aboriginal and migrant education were discernible. But in fundamental terms it was the mixture as before. - 27 - The primary system had seen some evolutionary improvements mostly through the introduction of individual programmes, but was largely unchanged. The lower-secondary system still functioned on the Achievement Certificate model which resulted from the Dettman Report of 1967. Many features of this Reprot seemed progressive and plausible at the time, making, as it did, a philosophical thrust towards meeting a diversity of student needs. The model itself, however, had failed the test of time; in particular, the division of students into three or four levels of achievement had proved to consign large numbers of students to educational oblivion. In upper-secondary an effort had been made, with the introduction of the Certificate of Secondary Education, to broaden the narrow tertiary-entrance base of the Leaving Certificate, but so great was the status difference between tertiary-entrance and the "non-academ ic" subjects that most students not tertiary-bound still took the tertiary entrance subjects. At the tertiary level the binary system in troduced in the Martin Report 1964-65 prevailed. The major issue had become resource levels, with Fraser Government reductions in real terms meaning a slow growth in student enrolments. The forced amalgamation of four CAEs into the W.A. College of Advanced Education by the Fraser Government in 1981 left a legacy of turmoil and dissent as the administration sought to impose a centralised model of management on its four constitutents. PRE-PRIMARIES At the other end of, the educational spectrum, government pre-primaries, first introduced in 1974 with Whitlam Government pre-school funding, had come to provide places for most of the five-year-olds, thus supplanting the community based pre-schools which had provided these places for all of this century. Community pre-schools had begun to take more four-year-olds as their five-year-old clientele disappeared into governmet pre primaries. The Liberal Government had abolished the Pre-School Board in 1978, and in 1981 decided on a policy on one year only of funded pre-school education, resulting in removal of funding for four-year-olds. There was sorn e equity in this, because under the system that had developed some children received two years of pre-school education and some none, as not all five-year-olds could find places. However, none of the money saved by the four-year-old cuts went to provide further places for five-year-olds. This, then, was the position on February 19, 1983 when the ALP, led by Brian Burke, achieved a substantial swing in the State Election and prepared to form a government. Policy development in the ALP in the years before this victory had been conscientious and thorough, but tended to reflect the shopping lists of the various interest groups, as well as the traditional preoccupations of the ALP in areas such as trade unions and minority groups. Thus the ALP Conference in 1982 endorsed a multitude of minor changes to the education system, mostly prom ises of increased resources in particular areas, but did not propose any major changes. 1983 PROMISES The policy for the 1983 election, which I prepared as Shadow Minister, focused on the most electorally appealing of these areas. Thus we promised in summary:- - 28 - 1. To update our education system so that it meets the needs of our moderr society and prepares students for massive social, technological, commercial and industrial changes. 2. To shape an education system that would foster equity and excellence and provide the diversity and flexibility to cater for students according to individual needs, abilities and aspirations. 3. To provide the resources needs to develop the education system that our community needs and wants. 4. To give parents and the wider community more than a token say in the operations of our schools. THE BEAZLEY COMMITTEE However, these were subordinated to the promise which was the key to our education election policy the establishment of a committee headed by the Hon. Kim Beazley Snr., the distinguished Minister for Education in the Whitlam Government, to inquire into the state of education in Western Australia and to propose a new, integrated system. The magnitude of the task, and our determination that the committee should be widely representative, meant that it was very large. To make its work manageable, it resolved itself into five major working groups,with a central full-time secretariat. I met the Executive on a monthly basis to review progress and to ensure that the Government's policy concerns were being addressed. THE MeGAW COMMITTEE At the same time we established the McGaw Committee under Professor Barry :vJcGaw to consider specifically the structure of upper-secondary education and teritary entrance. This comm ittee's task was to broaden the structure of Years 11 and 12, where the straitjacket of tertiary entrance requirements was such that non-tertiary bound students entering Years 11 and 12 were doing pre-tertiary courses not suited to their needs. With dramatically increasing retention rates in these years, this was becoming an increasing problem. The McGaw Report was released in April 1984. Its major recommendations were:- The division of the two-year upper-secondary courses in to single-year courses for each of Years 11 and 12, with only Year 12 work exam ined by the TEE. This was to enable students who made poor choices for Year 11 to change courses for Year 12. Tertiary entrance based on the average of marks gained in as few as three subjects taken from an agreed "academic" group. This was to enable students to achieve a better mix of "academic" and vocational subjects. Implementation of this Report began immediately and the new system was in place for those going into Year 11 in 1985 and in Year 12 in 1986. Despite some resistance from the tertiary sector, this implementation proceeded relatively smoothly. The Secondary Education Authority was established by legislation in December 1984.

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